There was a Towers Perrin study that flies in the face of what we believe all our fancy digital communications could do for getting everyone up to speed, and on the same page.

It states that there were significantly more disengaged employees in the workplace than those who were engaged. The big problem of course is communications –or the lack thereof of senior Management communicating to employees what was going on in the organization. They call it the “engagement gap” and it’s closely tied to employee performance.

What does that mean for communicators? I could come up with three ways to bridge the gap:

1. Invite employees to the party. Involve them before and during the implementation of a new strategy –not after. This could be done by conducting surveys regularly, not only when “issues’ come up.

2. Be transparent. Be very clear as to the objectives of the marketing or media campaign. Never try to spin the concept, because guess what? Employees are much smarter than corporate marketing gives them credit for.

3. Make them your evangelists. Assign them roles in the communication process. This may seem obvious, but how often have you seen employees described as “target audiences?” Maybe you want to get the message across to them, but they’re not targets. They’re nodes and channels.

For an expanded discussion of this check Melcrum’s InternalCommsHub.