Internally Yours

In case I haven’t talked about it before, allow me a few moments to give you a little synopsis of my working life. I work for a state university here in Alabama and have done for over 5 years now. I originally started out working in what we call “satellite locations,” smaller locations outside the state of Alabama that housed 4-7 employees and facilitated online learning at the university for students located near the satellite locations. I handled everything from recruitment, to admissions, from testing to graduation. Anything a student who was, say, 3 hours away from the main campus, needed from the university I was their girl. I worked for two different satellite locations with similar operations up until last November. That’s when my now fiancé and I moved to Alabama for his job and I was transferred to our main campus. My job functions are still very much the same. I still help students navigate from recruitment stage, through admissions. But now I don’t have to also focus on graduation and retention. I have an office located in my administration building that handles that. I don’t have to come up with creative flyers for my recruitment events. I have a dedicated department that is able to do that for me now. It’s been quite an adjustment, going from working with the same 4-7 people day in, day out, to working in a building with literally hundreds of employees working on different aspects of student management every day, aspects that before I had handled myself. It’s tested my communication skills and allowed me to see how even though I have worked at this same university for 5 years, I had no idea just how different it is between the out-of-state locations and what goes on at the campus. This week, I wanted to talk a little bit about communication itself, particularly internal communication. I’ve noticed over the last 6 months that I depend on it more and more to get my daily tasks done and have learned so much about different strategies to improve it, if and when the need arises.

Working in higher education, and in management functions within higher education, I can tell you firsthand how important communication is in day to day operations. Without good internal and external communications you lose out on a lot of valuable time. Communication is at the heart of what we do but too often I think we can all get bogged down in the external and lose sight of the internal. Internal is proven to be just as important as external communication, particularly in crisis situations. You have to let your employees know what’s going on often times before the public knows so they can be prepared. But if you don’t have a good foundation for facilitating internal communication you can’t do that effectively.  Having good strategies in place to facilitate internal communication is a key component to ensuring you don’t get bogged down in office “politics” when the time comes to really get down to business. So let’s dive in to some tactics that can help you and yours when and if the time ever comes when you have to re-evaluate how you are communicating within your organization.

First things first…what is your company culture? I think a lot of us when we hear the words “company culture” think about Silicon Valley. Facebook and Google in particular are notorious for their inspiring company cultures (Facebook vs. Google.) They focus not only on the work but on the people they employ- one big aspect of this that you’ll notice is that they trust their employees. They have some of the most amazing benefits packages in the world and everybody knows once you get a job with them you don’t ever leave. These companies have fostered and maintained a company culture that is “a climate of openness that encourages the free flow of communication and information in all directions” (Promoting Internal Communication.) If you have an organization who is secretive, who only tells certain employees what’s going on and expects it to filter down to everybody else, that is not a very open culture. My university is sometimes guilty of this. Certain employees will hear something in a meeting and then the next thing you know that statement has filtered down until it doesn’t even resemble the true statement anymore. Instances like this create panic amongst employees and often lead to poor decisions. Having good systems in place during the training and hiring portions of an employee’s tenure will ensure that good communication and open company culture are promoted. You want people to know right off the bat what their getting themselves into and who and wear to go for correct information.

Secondly, you want to make sure everybody has a chance to be heard. Feedback is a great way to do this at the managerial level. Asking for the type of feedback you want or expect and scheduling specific times when employees can voice that feedback is critical for any organization’s internal audience (Communication and Leadership.) It allows that open company culture to thrive and continue to grow. It also let’s your employees feel like they are valuable members of the organization. Dysfunctional communication is a killer for any organization or company. And as with all things it “occurs the most as the number of people involved grows” (Recognizing Dysfunctional Communications.)  This is something I have been adjusting to in my new location. There are so many more people to interact with daily than there ever were before. I find myself asking “Is this ok?” a lot more than I ever have before. I am still learning what everybody does and asking for feedback about how I am interacting with them and if I am helping or hindering their work has been invaluable. It has helped me strengthen my communication skills and has hopefully helped my coworkers just as much as it has myself.

Last but not least, once you have achieved a good internal communication system or level, you want to maintain it. Constant observation is crucial for maintaining a positive company culture and a positive internal communication experience (Promoting Internal Communication.) Identifying any sticking point that may have occurred recently is a good place to start. Is somebody unhappy at work and self-sabotaging their projects? Is there a system that isn’t working for your company that you thought was working just fine? This has happened to my university in recent months.  A simple process we thought was helping admissions was actually hindering it. Luckily our higher ups were able to recognize that we had a problem and have since been able to re-work the process in a manner that works for all parties involved. Like everything, evaluation is needed and shouldn’t be overlooked, particularly when it comes to communication.

I have really taken these three processes to heart in regards to internal communication and I hope they help you as much as they have me. Have a great week and I’ll see you next Sunday!