Hi, welcome!
You might be wondering what this blog is all about… well, I’ve called this blog ‘Inside Out’ for a number of reasons. Firstly, the focus will be on organisational communication and how this has been impacted by the rise of social media, so it’s all about looking at internal communication – looking from the inside out. Secondly, social media has literally turned the world of internal communication inside out – it has changed not only how internal communication practitioners do things, but it has fundamentally changed what they do. And finally, when talking social media most people would think of it as external to an organisation first of all – but this blog is all about the insides of organisations!
But moving on. Let’s start with a quick look at what internal communication actually is and what internal comms people do.
Ok, so that’s a bit of humour for you right there and while internal comms folks surely often feel like magicians or get accused of being spin doctors, it’s time to move on to a more serious definition: Melcrum (a leading industry body) states that at its most basic, internal comms
“facilitates strategic connections and conversations within your organisation. This communication takes place between leaders, managers and employees – or peer-to-peer, from leader-to-leader or employee-to-employee, for example. And when it’s smart, this Internal Communication ensures your people are committed to achieving ground-breaking business results, by helping improve collaboration, productivity and performance.”
So in short, internal comms galvanises people power to achieve business results. The internal comms field has also changed broadly over time, moving from being crafters of messages through to strategic partners through to organisational connectors:
While this journey has been happening, a major influencer has been the rise of social media and the changing ways in which people communicate. Social media has of course greatly affected traditional media but it has also had a game-changing impact on the internal communication industry – just like Poster describes when he speaks of the First and Second Media Age, we now live in a world where communication is two-way and decentralised and audiences are fragmented. There is a ‘many speak to many’ approach and there is an emphasis on networks, rather than broadcast.
Internal comms is feeling this shift too. Whereas previously organisations relied on channels such as employee newsletters, intranets, company meetings or visual collateral such as posters to get their messages across, there is now a greater push towards two-way communication, user generated content, customisation and self-selection. Employees are expecting to be not only communicated to, but communicated with – they want to have a conversation, be able to share their feedback and opinion and find out information in real time.
So let me ask you – how is your organisation currently communicating to employees? Have any social media tools been introduced? And more broadly, do you believe social media has had an impact on internal communication?
UTS Rethinking Media: Inside Out 