Communicating to Employees When They Are Not Really Your Employees

Internal communications is vital to any organization that is seeking to improve morale, productivity and growth. But many companies today are confronted with motivating employee groups who in some companies are not their own. Firms that hire union members for manufacturing, independent contractors (such as real estate agents), distributors and franchisees have a unique challenge of gaining acceptance and changing behavior among a group that ultimately relies on another organization for its paycheck. Fighting this us vs. them mentality can be detrimental to workplace culture, productivity and morale.

The reality is that this employee base is in essence an external audience and we as communicators should think about approaches that are more externally focused in nature than traditional internal communications tactics. In many scenarios, carefully crafted vision stories from the CEO in leading industry trade magazines can be an effective tool for delivering a message to an internal audience.

The key to communicating to a third-party employee is to understand the importance of getting “buy-in” for a vision, philosophy or change in policy. Our agency is experienced in helping companies such as coal mining concerns, manufacturing facilities and real estate companies – all of which deal with independent employee structures. One thing that our teams keep in mind is that these are external audiences who respect authentic information presented in a way that is non-threatening.

Many tactics can deliver this result, including newsletters, executive speeches and online tools:

• Newsletters – Within the writing of a newsletter to a non-direct employee audience, it is important to present information as an objective voice that is independent of management. When working with a national construction firm that is led by a third-generation family, our teams took great strides to make sure that the voices within internal communications were coming from all corners of the company and not just the family members who line the corner offices. This attention to communication detail can make internal communications carry an air of independence, which is important in gaining “buy-in” from union, independent contractor and franchise employees.
  
  
• Executive speeches – The most effective executive speeches for this group bypass the corporate speak and motivate the team with plain language.  And they also put just as much emphasis on the Q&A as the speech itself so third-party employees feel like they’re not being “talked to,” rather they’re being “talked with.”   Planning these speeches on a regular basis for small groups made up of employees from all levels within the company makes the impact even stronger..



• Online tools – Blogs and company Intranets can take the benefits of a newsletter and make them even stronger with the added element of two-way communication capabilities.  Opening these tools up to employees of all levels – both internal and third-party – also drives the message that the company cares about their ideas and opinions so much that it has given them a vehicle through which to express them.

At the end of the day, companies succeed when a clear vision and message is conveyed and accepted throughout all levels of an organization. It is important to understand that union, contractor and franchise employees, among others, need to be treated in many ways as external audiences in order to bring any level of acceptance of the company vision.