Management: Is Your Business Healthy on the Inside?
The Business School UK’s Operations Director, Helen Chambers talks about the importance of businesses being healthy on the inside, as well as looking good on the outside.
As individuals, we want to be understood and respected. Personal success is dependent on the levels of understanding and support we can generate from others.
It’s the same for organisations or businesses. They, too, need to work on their corporate ‘personality’ in order to make friends and influence people.
So any organisation should give serious attention to the way it thinks about planning, structuring and delivering its marketing through public relations, advertising, websites and social media activity.
Organisations mostly understand this and make plans, consider budgets and engage with a raft of people and agencies to deliver against a range of ambitions and targets.
But they forget something really important. It’s easy to forget that their own staff are actually a key target audience for marketing. Internal communications are essential to this process and good communications’ systems are needed in order to function effectively.
How do we look good on the inside?
- Find out the best way to keep staff updated, this might be in the form of regular newsletters, bulletins, weekly meetings or even daily stand up meetings. The method of delivery will depend on the business and people within the business. Don’t just assume that an email is the best solution.
- Make sure your staff are “onside” and feel part of the team that they understand the senior management team’s aspirations, ambitions and target. Don’t assume that they “just know”.
- It’s important that everyone in the business understands the “big picture”. Get your departments talking to each other. Make sure everyone knows where responsibilities lie and who does what.
- Have personal development appraisals so staff are receiving effective feedback and training is identified to ensure currency of practice.
- Train your leaders to be effective leaders who understand how to communicate.
- Respond to staff surveys when they happen, not at some point in the distant future. Show that you are listening to your staff.
Put simply, looking good on the outside is likely to be the result of taking care of ourselves on the inside. That goes for your body as well as your business. Taking care of the internals is the starting point for good marketing because organisations that don’t communicate well internally get found out.
Does your business need to get itself “healthy” on the inside? If it does, taking one step at a time to get communicating can get your business where you need to be. Analyse the results along the way to see where you need to see what works best for your environment. It’s essential if your business targets are to be achieved. So why wait? Get started today.
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Free Guide
Print off our Turning Goals into Results Essentials PDF, created for you in A4 format. With one half for your own notes and the other as shown below, you can fold in half to create a handy guide.
How Can We Make Our Business Healthy On The Inside? Essentials Printable.pdf
Over To You
What is the most important aspect of communication, in your experience? We’d love you to share by leaving a comment in the comments section below. If you have enjoyed our post on management we would appreciate you sharing, and don’t forget to subscribe to our blog so that you can easily keep up to date with our latest articles and news. Helen Chambers, The Business School UK’s Operations Director.