Peter. Apologies for the delay in replying.
Let me add a little flesh to the bones of my brief original message. I have spent my career designing and branding for clients. I have always had an enthusiasm for internal communications which, since the arrival of the internet has changed what companies and organisations can do for - and with their employees.
Let me differentiate immediately between the medium & the message, I deal with words and pictures - talking to people who have complex attitudes, feelings and relationships with each other. Winning hearts and minds in the workplace is preferable in my opinion to prescriptive practices.
Purely having an intranet site doesn’t mean it will succeed. How many die through lack of interest and decent content? How many training seminars don’t end up as best-practice sites? How much knowledge should be passed on to employees? Admittedly many of the larger organisations have these features (often it must be said, as process-driven support) but many SME's for instance admit to needing just this kind of input.
Having put together, branded and promoted a best practice site for a leading pharmaceutical company (where 19 other internal initiatives failed incidentally!) and watched it make £4 million in savings within 6 months I have become a devotee of managed knowledge and the potential of internal communications.
Management consultants have, in my view, great opportunities to add effective communications campaigns to their normal consultancy offerings - a great additional revenue stream! I know management consultants provide clients with communications plans but I see little evidence of them promoting the subject in the way I see it, that is - implemented with imagination - in much the same way ideas are sold to the consuming public in the ‘outside’ world. After all, the same sophisticated communications receiving skills exist inside as well as outside work.
Happy to discuss further, Ian Butcher
