Listen to the target group

Employees should make demands on management

Every employee at a business or an organisation is responsible for representing the business in an appropriate manner through his or her communication. This responsibility is best undertaken if the top management, middle management and employees of the business always have the right knowledge and support required for communicating.

In large organisations with several layers of management and many separate physical locations, the process of communicating internally in an expedient manner represents a constant challenge. The most common situation is where large staff groups suffer from information overload and other groups lack information. The group under the heaviest pressure is typically the middle managers. And expectations of middle managers to communicate in an expedient manner are generally enormous, both from above ─ their superiors, and from below ─ their staff.

Obvious and energy-generating benefits

The reality is often that internal communication is inexpedient from all groups, both from the top management, from the middle management and from the staff. This is why an improvement of internal communication at most organisations will lead to very obvious and energy-generating benefits for the organisation.

The basic philosophy of Line-of-Sight is that too heavy and unrealistic demands are often placed on middle managers’ communication. Similarly, the demands made of top managers’ communication are not always appropriate. It is possible to get nearer to an explanation of how to communicate in the individual organisation by listening to the target group by means of simple measurements or focus group interviews tailored to the organisation concerned and asking the employees how they prefer to receive the various forms of information. In most organisations, a survey will show that the role assigned to middle managers as the most important communicator of the business is exaggerated.

Role distribution in internal communication

Usually, the staff will say they expect their immediate superior to make the strategy or commercial objectives of the business relevant to them and to create a connection, a line-of-sight, between the goals of the business and the goals of the employees in their day-to-day work. When it comes to communication of the commercial objectives of the business, the staff will usually say that they would like this communication to come direct from the top management. Precisely as with the external stakeholders of the business, the employees also find that the top management is far more trustworthy than anyone else when it comes to communication regarding the overall objectives and strategy of the business.

Line-of-Sight offers to perform the necessary internal measurements or focus group interviews and to translate the commercial objectives of top management into strategic communication objectives, so as to create the right preconditions for expedient internal communication. Moreover, Line-of-Sight offers to plan and carry out the relevant internal communication activities. We can do this by employing a combination of traditional communication channels and new media, such as web 2.0-inspired internal communication activities or electronic communication activities, borrowing knowledge from the gaming industry, possibly in the form of e-learning.