During 2009 we managed a significant amount of internal communications work, largely due to redundancies and job uncertainties around the recession. Despite the current lift in the economy, these enquiries are still forthcoming – but have now switched more to the public sector.

In January the Guardian reported that the Government wants to embed behavioural thinking throughout its various departments. A Conservative government would require all public bodies looking to launch marketing campaigns to state precisely what behaviour change the advertising is designed to bring about, and an element of the advertising agency fee will be made contingent on achieving the desired outcome.

David MacLeod’s report “Engaging for Success” is based on the same principle, but focuses instead on the internal audience; how to get your staff to change their behaviour in order to deliver exceptional public services with less resources.

Launched to a group of HR and internal comms specialists at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in January, the report outlines four key enablers that need to be in place.

The four key enablers are:

Leadership – provide a strategic narrative giving a line of sight between the job and the organisation’s vision. Why are we doing this and how does my job contribute to it? They can then make sensible decisions when you are absent

Effective line management – trained in the skills on how to deal with people they are responsible for. They are clear about what to do, of the outcomes, and of the scope of their influence.

Giving employees a voice (two-way comms) – for reinforcing and challenging views, between functions and externally. Communication is not the same as voice – telling is not listening. Give them the chance to voice their anxieties.

Organisational integrity/reputation – such that espoused values are reflected in behavioural norms. How can people live the values if they don’t know what they are?

All this requires a culture change in the civil service. It’s not about targets and regulations, nor about conducting a staff survey. Department Heads now have to interpret the above for their own workplace. They have to realize that emotional commitment is more important than cognitive understanding of goals.

The problem is they don’t have time to do it, and their directors of comms are too busy focusing on external messaging campaigns. Who to turn to? HR have their heads down looking at the regulatory environment, and most of the communicators/press officers have been hired as artisan crafters and distributors of messages, focused on tactics.  True staff engagement requires strategic thinking. (Communication is the most basic function in all organizations, and most of the time it is sorely neglected).

Consultants like ourselves work with boards and senior management teams to address these issues. We are usually called in as a result of poor staff surveys which reveal low staff morale and high incidences of absenteeism and sickness.

We always work from the psychological point of view of the employee, rather than from the organisation’s point of view. The hardest job of all is working with chief executives who think that internal comms is all about telling people what to do. We never take a project without a strong evidence base for change.