The following article appeared in
Strategic Communication Management, August/September 2002
Melcrum Publishing, Limited, London

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When integration becomes duplication

By Angela D. Sinickas, ABC

 We know that we need to use an integrated mix of channels to best reach our audiences, but that doesn't mean sending every major message through every available channel. That's not integration; it's duplication. Our employee audiences are telling us loud and clear that they are offended by thoughtless message reiteration.

Employees are time-pressured for what they need to accomplish at work before they can go home to their "real lives." They're frustrated when they're forced to waste their time sitting in meetings to listen to information they've already read about, or they have to sift through their e-mails to delete several copies of the same message forwarded to them by their supervisor, their department head and their dotted-line reports.

Increasingly often in the focus groups I conduct, I'm hearing employees getting angry. They are automatically tuning out many messages that they might really have wished to know about. They delete e-mails based solely on the subject line or sender's name. They clear voicemails after the first sentence. They often consider corporate information as noise that they need to protect themselves from, just like repetitive TV ads or telemarketing calls.

What's the solution?

Choosing the right mix of channels for a specific combination of message and audience is a process that needs to combine the professional expertise of a communicator with audience research. Research consistently offers surprises to the communicators who conduct it. We often act on what we think we know, not on what our audiences tell us reality looks like to them.

To choose the best mix of information channels for different types of messages, we need to conduct research to identify the current and preferred channels of information by subject. The answers will vary by subject, by company, by type of job, and over time as the available channels are increased or improved.

What we often find in research at individual companies is that on certain topics people want more from face-to-face sources (and not always their supervisors), on others they want more available electronically. Surprisingly, on some topics, they even want more information via print.

The role of electronic sources

On many topics, employees' top two preferred sources may be quite different from each other: one might be electronic and the other, face-to-face. Employees want different levels of information from each, and our job is to integrate which parts of a message should be communicated through each, not merely duplicating all of the same details in each source. For example, a print channel can be used to communicate the big picture about a company goal, a face-to-face meeting can provide localized, two-way discussion on how the goal affects a particular work group, and progress against the goal can be provided in timely electronic updates.

Another choice communicators need to make is which channel to use within a category of channels. For instance, with electronic channels, should progress against goals be posted on the intranet news page, or put in an electronic newsletter, or sent as a separate e-mail? Each of these options has its own pluses and minuses, and is preferred to a varying extent on different topics. They cannot be interchanged effectively any more than you could bake a cake with talcum powder instead of flour, even though they may look similar to each other.

Statistics to share

I recently reviewed changes in employees' preferred information sources over the last five years at 15 companies. I came to some surprising conclusions about how the advent of electronic information sources affected historic preferences for more traditional information sources. See the box for more information.

The Advent of Electronic Channels

How well do you know what role electronic communication sources are playing for today's employees? Take a 10-question True/False quiz at www.CommToolbox.com. As soon as you complete it, you can see how your answers compare to some research we've conducted, as well as how many other communicators answered as you did. Some results to date are as follows: How many employees want publications in print versus online? 31% of respondents prefer a printed newsletter in print only, 40% want it available both in print and online, and only 29% prefer it solely online. How often do employees visit their intranets? About one-third of respondents say they visit the intranet once a month or less often, and 39% say they check it at least once every business day. Also, 32% check it between once a day and once a week. Do employees prefer their companies' external Web site as one of their top two choices for company news? Actually, less than 10% of employees do prefer it.

Angela Sinickas, ABC, is president of Sinickas Communications, Inc., a communication consultancy specializing in helping corporations achieve business results through targeted diagnostics and practical solutions. You can visit her new website, CommToolbox.com, to see the automated planning, measurement, and benchmarking tools she has developed based on her manual, How to Measure Your Communication Programs.