Internal Communications Excellence: Optimizing Group Activities & Roles

STUDY OVERVIEW

Internal communication groups play an vital role in informing an organization's workforce on important corporate/human resource issues as well as the development/approval of new products. The effectiveness of an internal communications group is closely related to the activities it focuses on and how effectively it works with internal and external partners.

Best Practices, LLC undertook this study to examine what internal communication activities are valued most and to identify favored approaches to working with internal and external partners. It also recounts executives' perspectives on combining the internal and external communication functions to optimize resources. Companies can use this study to better align the internal communication groups with overall goals and to create more effective relationships with internal and external partners.

The data are presented in two segments: Total Benchmark Class and Pharmaceutical Companies.

KEY TOPICS

• Internal Communications Service Levels: Trends in Activities that Inform the Enterprise
• Building Bridges: Working with Colleagues
• Working Effectively in the Integrated Pharmaceutical Network: Forging Accountability & Clear Roles among External Partners
• Communicating the Value of Communications in a Global Bio-Pharma Company

• Differentiated Services Hold Great Value During Times of Resource Reductions: For Internal Communications, continue to employ differentiated services in conjunction with customer-issue specialists and clearly defined prioritization rules. Across industries, Communications leaders observe the most effective approach for serving internal customers is to assign staff 100 percent to either customers and/or an issue/topic. Continue to do this with differentiated service among stakeholders. Standardize prioritization rules to inform and guide differentiation. Economics, issue impact, issue urgency, and impact on company strategy/reputation are cornerstones of prioritization systems.

• Integrate / Align internal and External Communications to Leverage Resources and Standards: A small but passionate group of communications leaders advocated the combination of Internal and External Communications groups to leverage resources enhance messaging consistency and standardize communications. Integration might be accomplished through combining the groups or establishing one communications leader to head both sub-functions.

Internal communication benchmark class: Participants in this portion of the benchmarking research included 30 Communications executives and managers at 26 leading companies from bio-pharmaceutical, healthcare and other industry segments.

Internal and External communication benchmark class: Participants in this portion of the benchmarking research included 39 Communications executives and managers at 33 leading companies from bio-pharmaceutical, healthcare and other industry segments.

Field interviews and study analysis produced many observations and benchmark findings to reflect opportunities across the communication group function for organization growth and profitability.

If you purchase Best Practice Database document(s), you will have 30 days from the date of purchase to apply some or all of the cost of the document(s) toward the cost of a Full Access Individual, Pharma, Group or University Membership. Write us at DatabaseTeam@bestpracticesllc.com or call David Guinn at 919-767-9179 if you have any questions.