What Are Some Best Practices For Internal Communication

Hello, my name is Jim James, and welcome to this issue of PR FAQs filmed here in our Beijing studios. And the question that came in actually was from, I think, probably an HR manager, which is, what are some of the best practices for internal communications? PR agencies often get involved in this. Now, one of the key points, in fact the key point about internal communications, it has to be CEO-led. In an organisation, lots and lots of people are stakeholders who are helping to influence the way the organisation is moving forward. But ultimately, the CEO or the chairman or the prime minister has the authority to decide on that direction. So internal communications must be CEO-led and must be CEO-approved for them to work. The second is that internal communications really is about 1% vision and 99% alignment. If everybody has their own vision and is communicating that differently, then the external audiences will get very confused and the organization won't move as quickly as it could do. So the CEO should articulate the vision, and everybody else and every other activity should be about alignment around that key vision and those key goals. And of course, a vision takes time to implement, so it must be ongoing. We— when we start with internal communications, we look at at least a 12-month plan, because every organization is going to be in existence For greater than the 2 or 3 months that the initial programme takes place over. So internal communications must be CEO-led and CEO-endorsed. We are really trying to get alignment throughout the organisation, and we are trying to do that not just once but over a long period of time. So I hope that answers that question, at least in a superficial way. So thank you for that, and if you have got any questions, do please send them to us, to our website, or you can send them to Twitter or our Weibo @EastWestPR. And I look forward to answering your FAQ. Thank you. Thank you.