Internal communications

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Purpose	This research was commissioned to give the internal communications team within corporate communications a greater understanding of employees' views of Your Magazine. In particular they wanted to gain a greater understanding of how staff find out what is going on in the County Council; understand the perceptions of Your Magazine's look, feel and content; and investigate the opportunities to establish an employee forum to help steer future internal communications activity.
Subject	Communications
Commissioned by	Internal Communications Team, Corporate Communications

Geographic area	All staff
Method	Focus group Questionnaire - online
Consultation with	Staff
Date	01/06/2005 - 31/07/2005
Undertaken by	Corporate Research and Intelligence Team, Policy Unit

Results

Number of responses	352
Key findings	The research gives an invaluable insight into internal communications and clearly demonstrates the need for a staff magazine. However the research also raises the much larger question of how employees are communicated with. The answer to this question is much wider than the scope of this research and the scope of internal communications. The lack of a strong employee engagement foundation will influence the positioning of Your Magazine in the communications mix, and this is evident in the comments made in the survey and during the groups. There were points made during the discussions about the glossy look of the magazine, the use of pictures, the balance between information and entertainment, the distribution of the magazine, and whether the magazine should be in an electronic or hard-copy format. These are explored within the report, bearing in mind the wider organisational context driving some of the themes. Recommendations are made to agree the positioning of Your Magazine and decide on its balance between entertainment and information. The placement of the magazine should be set against the organisational context of internal communications, and how internal communications generally can be developed. Opportunities exist to produce one magazine to cover the whole organisation. Intranet publishing should be explored further, but at this stage should not be seen as a replacement for the printed products. Overall further product development work should be done to ensure the product meets readers' needs.

Number of responses

352

Key findings

The research gives an invaluable insight into internal communications and clearly demonstrates the need for a staff magazine. However the research also raises the much larger question of how employees are communicated
with. The answer to this question is much wider than the scope of this research and the scope of internal communications.

The lack of a strong employee engagement foundation will influence the positioning of Your Magazine in the communications mix, and this is evident in the comments made in the survey and during the groups. There were points made during the discussions about the glossy look of the magazine, the use of pictures, the balance between information and entertainment, the distribution of the magazine, and whether the magazine should be in an
electronic or hard-copy format. These are explored within the report, bearing in mind the wider organisational context driving some of the themes.

Recommendations are made to agree the positioning of Your Magazine and decide on its balance between entertainment and information. The placement of the magazine should be set against the organisational context of internal communications, and how internal communications generally can be developed. Opportunities exist to produce one magazine to cover the whole organisation. Intranet publishing should be explored further, but at this stage should not be seen as a replacement for the printed products. Overall further product development work should be done to ensure the product meets readers' needs.

Project document(s)

Report(s)

Internal communications report

Contact information

For more information about this research contact:

Mike Walker
01772 533445
mike.walker@lancashire.gov.uk

Mick Edwardson
01772 530290
mick.edwardson@lancashire.gov.uk

Email: haveyoursay@lancashire.gov.uk