Greg Burke, director of communications at IESE Business School, presented three keys to making an organization's Internal Communications more efficient, during the cycle "Internal Communications, the Best Ally".
CULTURE, LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNICATION/ Laura Bello
The "Internal Communications, the Best Ally" series, organized by the University of Navarra and the Human Resources Forum, kicked off the program with a talk by Greg Burke, current director of communications at IESE Business School. The U.S. native holds a graduate in Comparative Literature from Columbia College. Among his long professional career, one of the most important positions he held was as spokesperson for Pope Francis I and senior communications advisor for the Vatican.
Internal Communications has taken on a critical value during the pandemic, and companies have realized the pivotal role it plays in employee engagement. For this reason, Burke has organized the conversation around three key drivers of how this area works:
The relationship with HR teams
HR and Internal Communications teams often play a parallel role in achieving their objectives. For the expert, as soon as they combine their efforts, they enable a clear corporate culture to be built that is "aligned with the organization's values".
In the training of culture, the role of communication is "to be an amplifier of those values. An organization that is clear about this is better prepared to "deal with difficult situations," Burke explained.
However, he also assured that having a strong culture is not an easy task and, "the larger a business is, the more important it becomes to have a defined purpose and mission statement that gives a direction to the work of all employees".
Knowing the goal audience
The director explained that the second core topic of corporate communication is that it should never be improvised, but that there should be a work of getting to know the organization's collaborators. "Communication is a work that costs more when you want to do it well," he said.
The work of knowing the audience necessarily requires being close to the people, all types of employees, and being able to recognize their needs. One of the examples Burke highlighted to understand this core topic is the Me Too movement in the United States and the ineffectiveness of some companies in communicating bad news.
In this core topic the executive concluded that: "When the construction of the corporate culture and the study of the audience has been effective, the employees become the best ambassadors of the organization, because the values are aligned with the people". A good management of Internal Communications has the power to be at the service of people's needs, allowing greater loyalty and positive retribution at work.
Communication is a two-way task
The talk closed with Burke's emphasis on the need for Internal Communications to have the opportunity to receive feedback. "You have to impact people with communication and allow room for feedback on what you communicate. In other words, create an open environment to express oneself," he said.
The difficulty here is that you have to be very careful about the strategies you use to communicate your message. "People are reading less and less and the message reaches them better through visual culture and images," reflected Burke. In this case, messages and feedback are not going to be the same in all types of communication.
One example he referred to in the use of strategies was that sometimes External Communications can also communicate internally: "If a boss makes a post on LinkedIn intended for his external audience, he should keep in mind that he may also be sending a message to his internal audience."
Internal Communications teams must be able to perceive their employees' response to messages so that they are consistent and aligned with what they want to communicate.
