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The business case
Staff play a crucial role in building a council’s reputation. Whether they are frontline staff or officers representing the council externally, the way they behave and how they talk about the council can have a huge impact. Good internal communications is therefore very important in helping a council achieve its objectives.This is particularly important when a high proportion of council staff are also residents. Ipsos MORI research shows that:
- council staff are less likely to speak well of the organisation than private sector employees – with only one in three likely to speak up for the council and sell its work externally
- the councils that perform most effectively are most likely to have staff who would speak up for their council externally
- councils that keep their staff well informed are rewarded with more motivated staff and, it seems, better comprehensive performance assessment (CPA) scores.
Getting your internal communications right is crucially important at a time of organisational change, for example, for those districts and counties which have just become unitary authorities.
Communicating well with staff – consulting, listening to and involving them – is one of the 12 core actions of the Local Government Association's (LGA) Reputation campaign.
More about the 12 core actions
Good internal communications will:
- help create a 'can-do' culture and build a committed and high-performing workforce focused on achieving the council’s goals
- boost morale and motivation
- encourage staff to be your ambassadors
- help the organisation learn – your staff are a vital source of information and ideas
- provide a better customer service – informed frontline and other staff will be up to speed on what’s happening in the council and why.
Strategic internal communications
A strategic approach is needed to make sure that you are focusing on the right things at the right time and that you are making an impact.The best way to do this is to develop an internal communications strategy which takes you from where you are now to where you want to be, and sketches out how you will get there. It should be backed up by a detailed action plan.
Internal communications audit
Start by carrying out an internal communications audit.Look at the results from staff surveys and focus groups to measure:
- how staff feel about the council
- their understanding of what the council is trying to achieve
- their role in it.
Examine how the council is perceived externally by looking at findings from:
- inspection reports
- residents’ surveys
- focus groups
- youth or citizens’ panels.
Internal communications strategy
The next stage is to develop an internal communications strategy which sets out your internal communication objectives and broadly how you will achieve them. This should be driven by the communications team but you may want to develop it with your human resources (HR) team to ensure that their objectives are included.Your internal communications strategy may include:
- where you are now – a summary of the audit findings
- where you want to get to – key priorities and clear aims and objectives, including targets
- who your key stakeholders are, for example staff, managers, unions, members
- key messages
- milestones
- 'quick wins'
- resources available – budgets and staff
- the communications tools you will use, for example, poster campaigns, staff roadshows, managers’ seminars, team briefings, newsletters
- evaluation – how you will measure success.
Internal communications action plan
A good action plan will tie in directly with the strategy, setting out the activities, targets, deadlines and resources needed to implement each element of the strategy. It will also identify lead officers responsible for each action, and build in evaluation so that you can monitor the success of each action.The action plan is a working document which can be updated and revised as targets are met, circumstances change or new objectives are identified.
Top tips for communicating with staff
When it comes to big issues or bad news, staff strongly prefer regular face-to-face contact – with both top and line management. This makes them feel valued and provides an opportunity for questions and discussion.They do not like formats, such as videos, that do not allow them to question managers directly. You can use top-down tools – such as newsletters and emails – to reinforce key messages but they should not replace face-to-face contact on important issues.
Tips for your internal communications
- Make it two-way – that means listening and acting on it too.
- Make it face-to-face as much as possible.
- Explain your vision, values and messages – so that staff understand how their own work and individual services or projects fit into the bigger picture.
- Make it interesting and focused – staff bombarded with emails will switch off. Plan your internal communications and be imaginative.
- Be honest – tell the bad news as well as the good news – say when you can't give the full picture making it clear when more information will be available.
- Involve managers – staff like to find out about issues that affect them from their line managers.
- Tie it in with external communications – staff feel valued if they know important council news as soon as possible. Don’t make them read about it first in the local paper.
- Find out how your staff prefer to be communicated with.
Engaging staff in organisational objectives
A number of councils have run successful campaigns to engage their staff in the bigger picture work of the organisation. Here are three brief award-winning examples.Preparing for the comprehensive performance assessment (CPA)
To prepare for the CPA, Rushcliffe Borough Council:- ran a series of staff events, including 'tea and biscuit' sessions
- put information on the intranet and in weekly e-bulletins to staff
- produced posters.
The London Borough of Westminster highlighted CPA in end-of-year and New Year messages from the chief executive and the leader. The council:
- gave every employee a mug, a chocolate egg and a tea bag to thank them for their hard work
- encouraged managers to discuss CPA with their staff over a cup of tea
- created an interactive website where staff could create doodles about ‘what CPA means to me’ – the best of these were turned into posters for a staff competition and the winning poster became the centrepiece of the campaign.
The campaign exceeded all its targets. It contributed to boosting Westminster’s overall 'staff informed' rating to 87 per cent and the 'committed to goals' score to 84 per cent. The council won gold in the LGCommunications Reputation Awards ‘Internal communications’ category in 2008
The London Borough of Lewisham created a 'Success Factor' competition. They invited staff to make one-minute YouTube-style videos on their service’s proudest achievement, with support from the communications team. Twenty-two films were made and put on the intranet for staff to view and vote on the best. Staff without access to the internet had the opportunity to vote at a lunchtime screening of all the films. The winner was the 24-hour library service. The council won bronze in the LGCommunications Reputation Awards ‘Internal communications’ category in 2008
Boosting staff morale
King’s Lynn and Norfolk Borough Council ran a campaign to:- tackle low staff morale
- address the low scores in its staff survey
- improve the poor perception of the council internally and externally.
The elements of the campaign included:
- setting up focus groups to explore the issues
- setting up an online question-and-answer forum hosted by the senior management team
- introducing weekly team-management updates
- developing staff briefing notes and running regular face-to-face core briefings and team meetings
- the launch of an annual staff celebration event, 'It’s All About You'
- the relaunch of the staff magazine after setting up an editorial board to involve service areas and staff
- launching a new induction scheme, including a ‘get to know you’ session with the chief executive.
Methods for communicating with staff
Staff events
Staff events can help communicate cultural change programmes or council achievements or priorities. They bring staff together who may not have much contact normally and raising the visibility of senior managers.Staff events should be well planned to ensure they are clearly focused and engage as many staff as possible. There should be a balance between managers talking on an issue and staff having a chance to say what they think or ask questions. It’s often helpful to provide some form of workshop or breakout sessions so that less confident people have a smaller, ‘safer’ environment where they are more likely to participate actively.
Some of the successful events councils run are:
- roadshows
- annual staff conferences
- lunchtime staff briefings from the chief executive and senior officers
- away-days for frontline staff
- meet the chief executive sessions
- ‘back to the floor’ programmes, where directors spend time on location, for example, at a day centre or out with the refuse collection service – make sure you capture the experiences of both the staff and the director, for example in the staff magazine or on the intranet.
Cascade team briefings
Staff prefer communications on important issues to be face-to-face with their managers.Regular team briefings with managers can improve relationships and help staff feel involved and informed about developments that affect them or residents. Cascade team briefings can quickly disseminate key messages throughout the organisation. This method is also very effective at quashing grapevine rumours.
The team environment means that no one is overlooked and it reinforces group motivation. Team briefings should not replace regular team meetings with the staff's line manager – which is the most popular form of communication – but the brief can be given at the start of the team meeting.
To be successful, the cascade team briefing must be mandatory and regular – at a set time, day and place – so that everyone has it in their diary. Information should be relevant and brief. The briefing should contain corporate and departmental items. It is a good place to set out the council's position on some of the bad news, for example, a financial crisis. A system for feeding back and responding to questions from staff should also be built in to the process.
You need to monitor the system regularly to ensure that it is operating effectively across the organisation. Councils thinking of introducing a cascade team briefing system should produce a toolkit and a training package for managers.
Recognising staff achievements
Staff surveys show employees want to feel recognised and valued for the work they do – and this is often a far better motivator than pay.Some of the ways that councils celebrate achievements include:
- publicly acknowledging colleagues on away days
- congratulatory letters to staff from the director or chief executive
- highlighting achievements in the internal newsletter
- holding an annual achievement award ceremony
- giving something in recognition – such as an extra day’s annual leave, a voucher or a small gift.
Staff panels
Some councils have a staff panel which works in a similar way to a citizens’ panel. It is made up of a representative pool of staff who have agreed to take part in a number of surveys on a regular basis. These might include questionnaires, workshops, interviews and focus groups.A staff panel can be used to identify employees' views on service provision and priorities but also on matters that concern the council as an employer. The advantages of a staff panel include:
- demonstrating a long-term commitment to consultation with staff
- cost-effective regular consultation
- higher response rates than one-off surveys
- a representative sample for consultation
- it helps to identify specific groups of staff for separate surveys and focus groups.
Staff suggestion schemes
Suggestion schemes are deceptively simple but take a lot of effort to get right. Where they are well implemented, they can be very effective.Staff suggestion schemes can encourage ideas and the best ideas can be singled out for praise in the staff newsletter or at an awards event. Often token prizes are offered. The scheme needs to be well publicised in posters, online and in staff newsletters to be effective – with evidence that staff contributions are implemented.
Staff surveys and focus groups
Most well-performing councils conduct staff surveys at least every two years. But this can be increased during the course of an internal change programme to aid evaluation.To achieve high participation, the surveys need to be confidential. So it is a good idea to use an external agency to conduct the survey and monitor the results.
Participation can also be encouraged through posters, the staff newsletter and intranet and by using incentives such as prize draws. Posters, the newsletter and intranet can also be used to feed back to staff the main findings from the survey and any actions arising from them.
Surveys will give valuable quantitative feedback on questions relating to staff satisfaction, motivation, priorities, views and perceptions and preferences. Focus groups will add qualitative feedback into the research and help give a fuller picture. Again these can be conducted by an external agency to give greater credibility to the confidentiality factor.
Email-free days
If used well, email-free days can be a good way to get managers out and about meeting different teams or spending a day doing a frontline job. They can be used for team ‘open days’, where other staff can come along to meet individual team members and learn more about what the service does. They can also provide opportunities to get out and talk to residents.Staff and managers can be sceptical about these schemes, so there needs to be:
- commitment and direction from the top of the organisation
- good communication beforehand
- willingness of senior staff to get the ball rolling.
Communications networks and champions
Creating a network of communication champions across the council can help promote better internal communications. Many communication channels work vertically or hierarchically but the advantage of these networks is that they work horizontally.Where departments have communication officers, they could be brought together as a group. They can meet regularly with corporate communication colleagues to build a stronger sense of shared direction and to exchange ideas.
In large departments, several communications champions can be created to fully represent all the service areas. These champions can be developed with training and meet regularly with their departmental communications officer to feed into the council’s communications group.
The communications group can help:
- contribute ideas and copy for the staff newsletter and intranet
- ensure posters are changed regularly in their department buildings
- monitor the effectiveness of team briefings
- encourage service areas to enter awards
- help spread good communication practice.
Staff newsletters
Regular newsletters to all staff play a vital role in internal communications – especially at a time of change – by:- promoting key messages and information
- celebrating staff and council achievements
- profiling individual staff or teams
- providing ‘softer’ information, for example about starters and leavers.
Staff newsletters do not have to be costly – many councils produce them electronically and print off copies for staff who do not have access to computers. Most councils favour monthly newsletters, but weekly ones may be useful during rapid developments.
Regular feedback and evaluation is important to make sure newsletters are meeting the needs of staff and the objectives of the internal communications strategy.
Customer service staff
Staff dealing with customer enquiries should be well equipped to do so. They are a vital resource and can have a big impact on how residents view the council.You should make sure that they are trained sufficiently to:
- communicate effectively with colleagues
- know the roles and responsibilities of staff in other departments
- know how to contact staff in other departments.
It tends to fall down most often when contact centre staff have to pass on queries. Communication practice with the ‘back office’ is not always good and means that queries are not dealt with as effectively as they should be. At worst, customers get lost between different parts of the council.
Evaluation
Evaluation of internal communications should be built into the strategy and action plan right at the start so that activity is regularly monitored and evaluated to measure its success.Key stakeholders – managers, staff and members – should be surveyed regularly to give feedback on the methods and impact of the internal communications methods. If, for example, in the staff survey, satisfaction ratings show no significant increase after the first year of a cultural change programme, the programme itself is having little effect and will need to be reassessed.
Individual communication methods – such as cascade team briefings or the internal newsletter – can be monitored and evaluated regularly. Staff panels can be useful in providing ongoing feedback. It is important that feedback is acted on to improve staff confidence. Residents' surveys and residents' panels can give useful feedback, for example, on any improvement in the council's customer service.
(http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=7816302 )
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