I’ve been slightly delaying commenting on the survey below, regarding the role that HR departments play in communicating with employees. The full article, from Human Resources magazine, is below.
http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/news/1019276/business-leaders-disagree-hrs-role-internal-comms
Essentially, the survey reveals that some business leaders feel HR teams communicate too much, whilst some communicate too little. But I’ve been mulling over this, with one key question: what does it actually tell us about any HR team’s effectiveness at engaging employees?
Very little, I would argue. How much communication is ‘too much’? Or ‘too little’? This will vary between organisations, depending on each company’s specific aims and circumstances. Commercial, structural and cultural factors all shape the role that a company envisages for its HR team, and therefore the way in which that department needs to communicate with employees.
And requirements can change rapidly. In some circumstances, particularly in times of change, it’s very difficult to ‘over-communicate’ (and it’s a real temptation to do less than is needed). In others, a more restrained approach may be preferable. The HR team has to match its approach to the specific needs and circumstances, within their particular company, at any particular time.
It’s also interesting that there is nothing in this survey (at least the coverage of it) regarding the role of HR in sparking and sustaining dialogue with employees. When it talks about “communication”, the research seems to mean “information”. But any HR Director worth his or her salt uses communication as a tool to build stronger, more productive relationships with employees. This means establishing dialogue, so that employees know they have a voice, that leaders want to hear from them and will take their ideas and feedback separately. It’s not just about pumping out information and hoping employees will respond well to it.
So it’s really difficult (and unhelpful) to draw any conclusions on the effectiveness of HR in engaging employees on the basis of surveys like this. What organisations should do, however, is use such findings as a prompt to assess strengths and weaknesses in HR communications, in the context of their specific needs and circumstances. This will tell them a lot more about what they could or should to strengthen relationships with their people, and the role that employee engagement should therefore be playing.
