Businesses to grow and prosper often need to overcome traditional challenges and problems. Whether these challenges are related to people, processes, business environment, or regulatory issues for that matter, they become key issues for organisations to move forward.
Issues can be related to managing the change while bringing in new technologies, new machines, new business practices, and new management for that matter. Most human beings are conditioned towards thinking in a certain way, following a certain routine, pattern, and adjusting to a repetitive behaviour at work.
Any organisation geared towards growth and becoming a larger one will be more and more complex than what it used to be while remaining a smaller organisation. And what happens when there are mergers and acquisitions, of two different organisations. There are individual work cultures that each of the organisations would carry with them in such cases.
Is there a need to merge the cultures too? Or the work culture of one organisation needs to supersede another one’s or is there a need of evolving an entirely new work culture for the new entity? And not only the work culture, how would this affect the systems and processes, workflow, business opportunities, and employee work behaviour among others?
How would it be different if the changes involve cross-border participation? What if the management changes lead to inducting a lot of global leaders coming in and managing local resources to deliver results at a local level? How about a difference in understanding and not having enough insights from the perspective of local markets, people, and processes in ex-pats? How should this be addressed?
Similarly, there are hundreds of similar questions posing serious challenges and hurdles in the growth trajectory of any fast-growing organisation. In today’s times, technology allows creative and innovative digital solutions to solve most of such traditional problems. Yes, it calls for effective internal communications using digital tools.
Making the relevant information available through multiple channels from where it is being consumed for the employees can be one good starting point. Today, there are multiple interfaces where employees access information about the organisation, both vertically and horizontally.
Intranet, mobile phones, company websites, and emails are various channels that can be used for disseminating information. While those who are on the desktop engaged through the day may find an email a better option, those on the field and are desk less employees may find it better to get inputs on their mobiles.
Information shared needs to create an engagement within the employees, where they should be able to share it within themselves internally, communicate and represent the company among external audiences, and also become a voice of the company. In such a scenario the employees also become shareholders in the success of the organisation.
Internal communication can creatively address how each department or a set of employees could be impacted by the changes that are being brought in, how they would benefit and be able to contribute better, how these changes will enhance their productivity, output, and organisation’s growth. And thereby, communicating what’s in it for the company’s employees and their personal and professional growth within the new environment.
Effective communications function within any organisation can be a great boon to bring in transformation for the organisation smoothly and pleasantly.
The views and opinions published here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the publisher.
Praveen has been closely associated with many national and international events related to cinema for children, art and culture. He has a well-rounded experience that cuts across all key sectors of PR & Corporate Communications.
He started his career with URJA Communications, an advertising agency specialising in technology brands, where he was instrumental in developing the PR division. Post this, he had a stint with Horizons Porter Novelli, a global public relations consultancy. Thereafter, he was heading the IT & Telecom division at Clea PR, a leading Indian public relations and communications company followed by a fairly long stint with Omnicom Group agencies viz. TBWA\India and Brodeur India.
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