Internal Communication – linking people with people

Too many organisations treat their people as production units. They do so at their peril. Organisations aren”t a collection of offices, factories and sales outlets, they are a group of people working towards the same goal. Success isn”t dependent on the assets an organisation has, it”s what people decide to do with those assets, and how they use them, that brings about success. So effective communication is vital. No one understands this more than one of Australia’s leading communicators, Meryl David.
Meryl is the Internal Communication Manager for Zurich Financial Services in Australia. She is based in Sydney.
She describes her role as helping managers communicate effectively with people across the organisation.
“I think my job is to connect people with each other, and people with the company,” Meryl says.
That might seem like a simple explanation of her job role, but it also says much more about Meryl and her approach to communication. She connects people, not employees. The difference is more than semantic. The difference is in her attitude.
Apart from being a leading business communicator, Meryl is also a long-time member of the International Association of Business Communicators, and former Asia Pacific Director of that organisation. Few, if any, people around the world have done more to progress the interests and professionalism of business communication.
Lee Hopkins spoke with Meryl about communication and its importance to organisations. It’s a conversation that I’m sure both skilled communicators and students will get a lot out of.
There is another interesting interview with Meryl on the Ragan Postcard blog too.

Digging deeper

• If you”re interested in how internal communication plays a role casino games in people interpreting organisational mission statements, you might like to read: Whitbred, R. (2005). They don’t see things like we do: A simultaneous analysis of the influence of formal organisational, emergent, and individual factors on emergent patterns of perceptions of organisational mission. Available at: http://praxis.massey.ac.nz
• If you”re interested in learning how to write content for newsletters, podcasts and other tactics that will keep people coming back for more, have a listen to Donna Papacosta”s Trafcom News Podcast #37.
  
• Shel Holtz has a good “rant” about internal communication in the September 11 edition of For Immediate Release.
  
• For a great overview of internal communication you can”t go past our own Lee Hopkin”s post What is internal communication? It”s cross posted from the very fine Forward blog

[audio:http://themediapod.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/themediapod_hopkins_david.mp3]
theMediaPod interview with Meryl David