Internal Communication

Communicating with hard-to-reach employees

In Melcrum's new report on How to communicate with hard-to-reach employees our research shows that in many non-wired environments, finding the time and the physical space for communication can be a big challenge. Which means the little time and space available becomes extremely valuable.

Use communication opportunities wisely
As the authors point out, carrying out research to understand your stakeholders will pay dividends in helping you identify where the opportunities for communication are and how to use them wisely. Here are some tips taken from the full report on what to find out about your non-wired audience groups in order to produce more effective communication:

1. Know your demographics
   Is your audience predominantly male or female? What generation do they belong to? What languages do they speak? How long have they worked for the company? How much do they earn?
2. Understand how people spend their working day
   What’s their work environment like? What hours do they work? Do they have downtime between customer calls, or might there be the odd opportunity to chat if a machine breaks down? When and where do people gather together for breaks? Do they go somewhere regularly to sign on?
3. Identify how people prefer to interact
   Do you have a workforce full of tech-savvy people who spend their lives outside work skipping between YouTube and Facebook? Do they use mobile phones? Would they prefer a print magazine they can read in their breaks or while waiting for clients? Is the best you can hope for to put eye-catching posters next to the coffee machine?
4. Establish when and where you can communicate face-to-face
   The hour-long monthly meeting that works in the rest of the company may be completely inappropriate here.
5. Understand what people are interested in
   Are people ambitious and interested in knowing about the company and the competition? Or are they focused purely on anything relating to their job and their team – do they only come to work to earn a wage? Do they just want short, action-oriented bullet points? Or do they want to know the detail?
6. Learn who people trust
   Do they see communication from the senior team as useful and honest or as corporate propaganda? Do they trust their line manager? Would peer-to-peer communication work more effectively, and if so, who are the influential people in the team?

One word of advice from communication measurement expert Angela Sinickas: it’s tricky to carry out research with hard-to-reach audiences and you may need to be creative about how you approach it. It’s well worth asking line managers for advice about the best methods.

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