Employee Communications is the Chicken...

Marketing is the egg. In a preliminary post to the IABC Communication Commons, I reiterated my oft-stated view that employee communications is the most important communication effort a company undertakes. I have too often seen a dynamite marketing campaign undermined by employees who didn't buy into the message or understand the vision. Conversely, I believe engaged employees can overcome the worst marketing. Sadly, most internal communications departments look like orphaned stepchildren compared to marketing, advertising, and external corporate PR. In a reply to my post (which should be the only one I contribute-we have an outstanding corps of internal communication efforts who will handle blogging from here on out), engaged employees, the organization will produce crappy products and inferior service no amount of outstanding marketing will be able to overcome. Of course, my belief in the importance of internal communication does not diminish the need for marketing communication-or corporate PR, investor relations, government relations, or any of the other communication disciplines that make up our profession. It's interesting, though, to see how the lines between them are starting to blur. GlaxoSmithKline, for example, the $35.4 billion pharmaceutical behemoth, has announced that it is turning to its 8,000-strong U.S. sales force to assume PR duties. According to an article today in Thomas Nelson Publishers, companies are putting their companies reputations more firmly in their employees' hands, not only as the producer or products but as the touch points for customers. This is an encouraging trend, one I hope like hell continues. It's a natural extension of leaders asking employees to be brand ambassadors among their families and friends. Customers should love having real live employees doing real work as their touch points. But throwing employees into the public spotlight without the benefit of a strong internal communication effort is beyond risky. It's stupid. Hence my belief that internal communication needs renewed attention from management. It needs resources to achieve strategic objectives and it needs that seat at the table. Our external marketing efforts depend on it. Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.