An Employee Communicator Benefits Your Employees and Your HR Team
I was talking to my father-in-law, a retired mechanical engineer, the other day. He understands (and remembers) more math that I could ever hope to comprehend, but when he tries to explain a math or engineering concept to me, he may as well be talking in another language. I don’t understand a thing.
As I was talking to him, I had a flash of understanding on another level.
A ”subject matter expert” can have difficulty conveying informaton about his/her field to people in other jobs. More specifically, when a project team needs to rollout a process or a system, they often talk too technically for the average user. They may give too many details or go to the other extreme and overlook key information that would help the user understand basic concepts or background information.
For the HR team (or any corporate team, for that matter), that’s where an employee communicator can help. HR professionals develop policies and procedures, benefits and pay practices that can be very complicated. There are legal and tax aspects to almost everything in HR, which often make it difficult for the average employee to understand even the basics. Employees and managers, after all, are busy working on their own deadlines and goals.
I think my HR clients have depended on me to:
- Listen to what they need to communicate and “interpret” the information so that busy employees can understand the company’s policies and benefits. I don’t think that employee handbooks have to be written in “legalese.” They should be reviewed by an attorney, but it’s okay write the policies in everyday language that employees can read easily and understand.
- Develop a communications strategy that delivers the message to employees multiple times, in multiple formats, not to harass employees, but to ensure that they get the message. As adults, we have to be told something several times before it sinks in. (If you’re a parent of a teenager, I bet you can relate to that.)
- “Advertise” their successes to get “buy-in” from employees and managers. (Why should I use that corporate recruiter–I can do it on my own! We know you can, but the recruiter can do it in half the time and at cost savings.)
I’ve seen HR departments communicate with lots of paper, lots of emails and lots of exclamation points. It works. They deliver the message. However, an employee communicator can consolidate delivery and ensure consistent messaging, which means employees “get it,” and they get it with fewer emails and fewer questions and in less time.
There’s an additional benefit–adding an employee communications professional to your HR team gives HR professionals more time to focus on HR issues (and we all know there are lots of those).
