Why do you need to understand your audience in internal communication?

Working in internal communication is great, it's so rewarding, but hard work too.

This year I'm going to be sharing some of my wisdom each Wednesday to not only help people who may be struggling with how to communicate effectively, but to help stimulate and create debate by bringing together a few thoughts and ideas.?

Following on from a conversation earlier in the week, I’m talking about ‘understanding your audiences’… While the conversation went on for a while, I thought I’d delve a little deeper in to audiences and why they are so important in internal communications…

Why do you need to understand your audience in internal communication?

It’s very rare that one size fits all in effective internal communication, with this in mind, it’s important to understand that different audiences may have different needs, preferences, and expectations when it comes to receiving and responding to internal messages.

Marketing teams use this all the time to make sure that the message they want to get across is landing in the right way. Why shouldn’t this be the case for internal messages too?

Let’s break this down a little bit more…

Think about different levels:

I don’t generally like to talk about hierarchy when talking about internal communications, but for this particular subject it’s so important… you need to make sure that your message lands in the right way, to the right people.

As an example, senior managers may need more strategic information, while a frontline worker may need more operational and detailed information. In the same way, people leaders may need a different message with more detail to be able to share this information in the right way…

What different teams do you have in your teams, and how do you need to pan your communication in the right way for each?

Think about where colleagues are:

I’m not talking emotionally here (although that is important too!) I’m talking specifically about the location of the audience. Depending on your message you may need to think differently about how you can communicate to the team.

For some it may be as simple as a weekly meeting in the office, but for others it may be that you need to use different tools to share the message as you don’t get together regularly. It's also worth thinking about how you can use technology here too - does everyone have access to what you want to communicate?

Where do your colleagues work? Make sure that you’re meeting them where they need with your communication.

Think about the regularity of your messaging:

Linked to the previous point… it may be that you need to vary the amount of communication to different teams. Colleagues who are regularly in an office may need less ‘interaction’ as they’re hearing the message face to face. This will be different to someone who is working away from an office at home.

This area has become especially relevant since Covid with more hybrid ways of working.

Watch your language…

This is a big one, and so important for how communication lands (and is probably something I need to talk about in some more detail at a later stage too).

How do you talk in your organisation, and does it change for different teams?

While the overall tone of voice should not change, the content of what you say potentially will. Think about sharing the same message to two very different teams, an engineering team may need a completely different explanation to the change than the marketing team. While this is not always the case, it’s important to make sure that your message lands right first time.

While we’re on this subject… most organisations are now creating briefing documents in many different languages to cater for their different audiences. I worked with one organisation with over 12 different translations for one document – which is great! While this may feel like a right pain in the backside, it wasn’t, the feedback received made all the difference and really hit the spot.

This is also linked to…

Why not use pictures?

Your audience will have different levels of understanding , sometimes it may not be possible to create multiple translations for documents. It may be easier to use video or pictures to share key information that can be understood by all.

I've recently spoken about how video can help share key messages in a simple, yet effective way, this is the same for pictures too (and you can use some great tools online to help!)

Keep it simple!

The average reading age isn’t going up, so how are you making sure that you keep the message as simple as possible to all your audiences? Many people tend to include far too much information in their briefing documents for fear of missing something out - I'd be tempted to flip this thinking on it's head. Start by thinking about what people really need to know and then strip it right back so you can get to the point far quicker.

(To demonstrate my point... maybe I should have just said "keep the message short and people will understand it better" in the paragraph above!)

In summary:

By understanding your different audiences, you can use the right communication channel for communicating to your teams. Not only that you can create a relevant message that will land in the right way and avoid any confusion.

It’d be great to hear how you are understanding different audiences in your organisation, and how you are changing your communication methods to communicate in the best way.

I work with forward thinking business leaders who don’t want to forget about their most important assets; their colleagues and customers.

I deliver practical advice & coaching to help your organisation communicate the right way, at the right time.

Please contact me on [email protected] or 07779 700 675

Let’s start the conversation and arrange a consultation to enable you to communicate to your people with impact.

sparkconsultants.co.uk

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