Internal Communications Gaining Credence?
I was reading Lucy Sanderson-Gammon’s excellent article in CW Online recently and think she did a great job in highlighting the long-overdue credibility that internal communications is now gaining.
She writes:” The concept of partnering HR and internal communication certainly has support internationally.”
One expert, Mark Schumann, ABC, managing principal of Towers Perrin in Houston, Texas, goes as far as to say that HR and internal communication should be “joined at the hip. We each invest in each stage of an employee’s relationship with the company,” says Schumann.
“We each invest in the credible actions of leaders, we each invest in employee’s answer to ‘what’s in it for me?’ and we each bring skills, insight and passion to a common goal to recruit, retain and engage employees. Every organization has challenges finding the right talent, keeping the right talent, securing the trust of its people and engaging its people to live up to the ‘brand promise’—and HR and communications are the glue that binds it all together. It’s essential they collaborate.”
While the impact of internal communications is far less sexy than PR and media relations, only true visionaries can see the fine balance of internal and external relations. Sanderson-Gammon’s article also points to a juncture where HR and internal comms meet, which has been debated about – sometimes rather heatedly – in numerous other communication blogs.
