Summary : the recent evolution of intranets make internal communication face many new challenges. First they have to broadcast their message on a information system that’s more and more split and where their own media will be less and less a mandatory landpage, capture users’ attention while everything (and even the interest of the enterprise) make the latter focus on more productive activities. Internal communication will have to reinvent its cornerstones on concepts like “sense”, “contexte”, “split media” and “attention”. Successful communication will be the one that will find its place in a decentralized and contextualized digital universe.
The purpose of internal communication is to deliver the corporate message, to inform employees. The purpose of employees is to do their job. One of the enterprise and managers’s biggest concern is to prevent key resources wasting, people’s time and attention being one of them.
The way internal communication, employees, managers and the enterprise try to meet their goals, each of them paying very little attention to the others’ concers is quite funny to observe from an external standpoint. It’s more worrying from an internal standpoint.
Communication communicates, everywhere it can, where it has the more chances to meet their audience. So, logically, on the intranet when internal communicants makes anything to be sure their message is well placed, occupy most of the screen. A little bit like brands fighting to have to best place to display their ads in cities.
Messages are hierarchized in a way that’s logical for any headquarters person : the most important is the corporate news, then branches news, then business units new etc…
As for them, employees focus on what matters to them. To such and extent that, when an intranet is mainly dedicated to corporate communication, the first thing the do is to close the window that automatically opens when they launch their browser because it’s been used as a mandatory home page. They focus first on what’s related with their word, then their close environment, then what’s happening elsewhere in the organization and, last, the far and neutral corporate message. In short that’s exactly the opposite of the way internal communication is hierarchized. There’s another funny side : when internal communication says something that really matters for a given employee, the employees seldom manage to find the information.
Hence surprises when one have a look at the “transformation rate” of corporate news even if they are pushed on employees’ homepages. Wide broadcasting, mandatory display…and few reading.
Managers can have a different analysis : communication tries to capture employee’s attention, what is resource they try to protect from any distraction that’s not immediately useful and productive.
In the end it seems that the goals of the ones are contradictory with the goals of the others and that the success of needs the failure of the others. But, from a global standpoint, it’s essential to reconcile all parts. Yes, employees should focus on their mission and businesses need to deliver their message and news because it improves engagement, understanding, situational awareness etc… But is it possible to find a balance ?

You can find the "original" french version of this blog here

