In this episode of Engaging Internal Comms, The Big Picture People’s Craig Smith talks to Jennifer Sproul, Chief Executive of the Institute of Internal Communications since 2016, and currently leading the institute through the most uncertain and difficult times in the profession.

She is also the co-presenter for IoIC’s podcast, for which you can find a link at the end of these show notes.

The IoIC celebrated its 70th year last year and is the only independent professional body that is solely dedicated to promoting a deeper understanding of internal communication. It has 1,800 members, who work mostly in corporate organisations and the public sector.

Prior to her role as Chief Exec for the IoIC, Jennifer worked in the Market Research Society and a variety of senior marketing and comms roles.

For some time, internal communications has been used as a broadcasting function, acting as an executive megaphone to transmit messages.

Today, internal communication means much more. It provides essential access to engagement within an organisation and empowers learning and organisational development. Internal comms is now a key mechanism in successful and forward-moving organisations.

Through communicating internally, organisations can learn:

• How people share information, through feedback and dialogue
• How line managers can communicate effectively amongst teams
• What’s important to the organisation
• How people perceive their role and how engagement creates empowerment, purposefulness and inclusion, resulting in employee loyalty

In 2020, communication became more important than ever before. “In this pandemic, if we’ve learned nothing else, we’ve learned the power of communication,” says Jennifer. “It’s our tool in the fight against what we’re dealing with right now in the world.”

Currently, internal comms people have a clearly defined role in facilitating greater communications. However, the future of internal communication as a profession will lead beyond message distribution. Internal comms will assist the learning and development of middle and line managers to act as communication conduits directly with their teams.

As we emerge through a game-changing pandemic, Jennifer identifies this current climate as a pivotal opportunity to develop managers’ skills to communicate more effectively with their teams. This includes helping them to:

• Digest and understand the context of an organisation’s message
• Understand employees’ reactive feelings and behaviours as feedback

Internal comms people are now helping managers upskill to become better communicators, an advantage felt even more acutely in remote teams.

“It’s about redefining what good management is,” says Jennifer. “As we move to more distributed working, where the line managers are going to play more of a pivotal role, now is the time to really be thinking about making that seismic shift and helping to embed that good facilitation skill throughout the organisation.”

Another development in internal comms is that secondment to positions to which they are communicating is now more common. This helps internal comms people to understand the issues that people are experiencing, thus deepening their knowledge of the organisation from the ground floor up.

2020 has been a historic year. It forced individuals and businesses of all sizes to adjust rapidly to survive. There has also been immeasurable trauma – mentally and physically to individuals, and logistically and financial...