FAQ

What do you mean by "internal communication"?

Whether your organization has two people working or 2,000, your staff needs to communicate with one another about work-related decisions and procedures. 

Small offices or start ups may heavily rely on face to face meetings, bulletin boards, or email chains/Slack messages to keep everyone aligned. As your business scales up, different tactics or tools could serve you so that your team saves time and reduces costly errors. 

In large organizations, tools such as intranets, newsletters, surveys, digital signage, and town halls serve the same purpose. The needs remain the same, but the way messages are sent impacts how the messages are received. 

What is the difference between internal communication and corporate communication?

Sources differ, however, here is my interpretation: 

Corporate Communication comes from the c-suite, and is the authoritative voice of and within the organization. Corporate communication tends to be top-down, directed to employees as well as customers or clients, and likely sits quite near to the CEO. 

Internal Communications is what my title has always been. I define internal communications as driven by employees, mostly peer-to-peer, with goals to foster connection and culture. Dynamic and variable between business units, internal communications allows for many types of nuanced and rich communication. The types of messages from accounting or legal are going to look, sound, and feel nothing like those from Human Resources, creative, or facilities. 

Rather than one identical voice or purpose, internal communications encompasses many solutions to internal business problems. Internal communicators could spend one day announcing the opening of the renovated cafeteria; the next, you're sending out open enrollment information; or inviting employees to join the new softball team; or redesigning the homepage of the company intranet. No two days look alike, and no two internal communications programs look alike. 

What's with all the Scrabble tiles?

My grandmother was an avid Scrabble player, and I have fond memories of playing hours and hours of games with her, my mom, and anyone else who would allow themselves the humiliation of swift and utter defeat. I am the proud inheritor of the vintage deluxe Scrabble set from the 1970's, with the raised edges on the elevated rotating board, the original Dictionary, and the dark red tiles with white letters.

The game to me reminds me of the skills that internal communicators bring to the table for their roles. Often, you receive a random assortment of resources, sometimes too many vowels, sometime not enough. Each player somehow turns those letters into words. Your opponent's success is also yours - you build off of each subsequent word and reach new sections. No two games are the same, and each game can be rather slow-going and strategic. 

When I approach internal comms at client organizations, it is an "inside-the-box" creativity exercise. The four walls (metaphorically speaking) of your company - your culture, your mission, your objectives, and your constraints - form a neat little boundary inside of which we can have a lot of room to brainstorm. 

I'm intrigued. How do I find out more?  

I'd love to get to know you and see how I can help your business succeed! 

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