Institute of Internal Communication

Catherine Park explores the nature and significance of effective internal communication in gaining employees’ commitment to quality management systems.

Internal publications and news writing: should you use 'we' and 'us' or [company name] / 'the company' in your house style guidelines? And why? That was the question posed by IoIC member Simon Henning, Senior Corporate Editor at National Grid, on the IoIC LinkedIn group, as Steve Nichols reports.

Poor literacy skills among school leavers is a cause for concern among the UK's business leaders, according to news reports.

In June 2010 Sir Michael Rake, chairman of BT, said they had received 26,000 applications for 170 apprenticeships - but 6,000 were not worthy of consideration. He said: "They were unable to complete a form because they could not spell, put it together or read properly - completely illiterate. It's a disgrace. The politicians have a huge amount to answer for over the past 50 to 60 years."

A recent discussion on the Institute of Internal Communication LinkedIn group looked at the best ways to get people engaged in an online forum on their intranet. Will Foy, Internal Communications Manager at NHS Blood and Transplant, said: “We are looking at revamping our rather tired online intranet forum as a viable IC tool. Historically, it has been owned by IT and has been left to fester for many years.

Jos Harrison’s offers tips on influencing the communications strategy in your company in this extract from a longer feature originally published in Communicators magazine - the member-only publication for CiB (now ioIC) members.

Social networking involves building and joining online communities that share interests and activities, facilitating information-sharing and relationship building. In the internal communication context, it is about helping employees to: develop constructive and fruitful workplace relationships; understand the challenges facing their colleagues and the organization as a whole; and readily offer and receive support, ideas and feedback. It is, therefore, potentially a useful way to build and maintain employee engagement.Social networking encompasses a wide range of tools including intranets, wikis, blogs, as well as external social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Within any organisation, remote workers have distinct communications needs. Steve Doswell, IoIC director and president of the European federation of internal communications associations, discusses strategies for ensuring remote workers remain part of the team and committed to organisational objectives.

Dominic Walters, chairman of the Institute of Internal Communication, discusses the role of organisation leaders in ensuring that internal communication genuinely contributes towards enhanced business performance.

Most organisation leaders know that employee engagement is important: in a recent major study by the Engage Group, it was one of the top three factors cited by senior management as driving performance, well ahead of more traditional issues such as strategy, innovation and execution. However, this same survey also indicated that implementation was falling short of the ideal with only just over a third of employees feeling that their organisation was successful at engaging them and their colleagues. So what should internal communication be achieving for your organisation, and what role should CEOs and Board members play in making this happen?