Developing internal

communication practice that

supports employee engagement

KEVIN RUCK, UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL

LANCASHIRE

SEAN TRAINOR, UBER ENGAGEMENT

An exploration of current internal communication practice to understand:

- What proportion of time is spent on activities that support the four enablers of engagement highlighted by MacLeod and Clarke (2009)

- How much time practitioners would ideally spend on these activities and, from their perspective

- The different levels of understanding of internal communication within organisations.

Aim

Research Design

SurveyAn online survey was conducted between July and August 2011 that combined a range of graded questions and open-ended questions. The key questions for the survey were:

Enabler One: Strategic NarrativeEnabler Two: Engaging managersEnabler Three: Employee VoiceEnabler Four: Integrity

A total of 357 internal communications practitioners based in the UK completed the survey.

Respondents were more likely to be in a senior role working in a team of less than 10 and located in London and the South-East of England. There was an equal balance of respondents from the public and private sector and across small, medium and large enterprise.

Organisational engagement

A social and communicative approach whereby employees are informed, have a voice that is heard and acknowledged, and where managers show commitment consistent with organisational values.

Saks found (2006, p. 612) that, “…there is a meaningful distinction between job and organization engagement” and “organization engagement was a much stronger predictor of all the outcomes than job engagement”.

Leiter and Bakker (2010, p. 2) affirm that “Employees’ responses to organizational policies, practices and structures affect their potential to experience engagement”.

Millward and Postmes (2010, p. 335) conclude from an academic study involving business managers in the UK that “The fact that identification with the superordinate grouping of “the organisation” was particularly relevant to performance is important for theoretical, empirical and pragmatic reasons”.

Wieseke et al found (2009) that found the higher the level of organisational identity of sales managers the greater the sales quota achievement.

The academic case for organisational engagement

Practice is improving

Reasons for improvement

Employee understanding of strategy

Allocation of resources to enablers

Changing practice

Senior management understanding

Line managers

Summary

Internal communication practitioners believe that the board, the executive team, senior managers and line managers generally see internal communication only as “quite important”, with significant numbers reporting that it is no more important than any other function or not very important at all.

Practitioners expressed an overwhelming desire to give more attention to employee research and feedback and on strengthening line manager and team communication.

In terms of employee voice, there appears to some resistance to this from senior managers and this represents a significant barrier to better performance through higher levels of engagement.

Contact Kevin at:

kevin.ruck@pracademy.co.uk@pracademy