Research into internal communication - are practitioners able to do the type of communication that leads to employee engagement? Full report is on the PR Academy website

1. Developing internal
communication practice that
supports employee engagement
KEVIN RUCK, UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL
LANCASHIRE
SEAN TRAINOR, UBER ENGAGEMENT

2. An exploration of current internal
communication practice to understand:
- What proportion of time is spent on activities
that support the four enablers of engagement
highlighted by MacLeod and Clarke (2009)
- How much time practitioners would ideally
spend on these activities and, from their
perspective
- The different levels of understanding of
internal communication within organisations.
Aim

3. Research Design
Survey
An online survey was conducted between July and August 2011
that combined a range of graded questions and open-ended
questions. The key questions for the survey were:
Enabler One: Strategic Narrative
Enabler Two: Engaging managers
Enabler Three: Employee Voice
Enabler Four: Integrity
A total of 357 internal communications practitioners based in the
UK completed the survey.
Respondents were more likely to be in a senior role working in a
team of less than 10 and located in London and the South-East of
England. There was an equal balance of respondents from the
public and private sector and across small, medium and large
enterprise.

5. Organisational engagement
A social and communicative
approach whereby employees are
informed, have a voice that is heard
and acknowledged, and where
managers show commitment
consistent with organisational values.

6. Saks found (2006, p. 612) that, “…there is a meaningful distinction
between job and organization engagement” and “organization
engagement was a much stronger predictor of all the outcomes
than job engagement”.
Leiter and Bakker (2010, p. 2) affirm that “Employees’ responses to
organizational policies, practices and structures affect their
potential to experience engagement”.
Millward and Postmes (2010, p. 335) conclude from an academic
study involving business managers in the UK that “The fact that
identification with the superordinate grouping of “the organisation”
was particularly relevant to performance is important for theoretical,
empirical and pragmatic reasons”.
Wieseke et al found (2009) that found the higher the level of
organisational identity of sales managers the greater the
sales quota achievement.
The academic case for organisational
engagement

7. Practice is improving

8. Reasons for improvement

9. Employee understanding of
strategy

10. Allocation of resources to
enablers

11. Changing practice

12. Senior management
understanding

13. Line managers

14. Summary
Internal communication practitioners believe that the board, the
executive team, senior managers and line managers generally
see internal communication only as “quite important”, with
significant numbers reporting that it is no more important than
any other function or not very important at all.
Practitioners expressed an overwhelming desire to give more
attention to employee research and feedback and on
strengthening line manager and team communication.
In terms of employee voice, there appears to some resistance to
this from senior managers and this represents a significant
barrier to better performance through higher levels of
engagement.

15. Contact Kevin at:
kevin.ruck@pracademy.co.uk
@pracademy