Development of an internal communication program

Development of an internal communication program

This assignment will be developed in two parts. Part A will be a report that is aimed at securing support and resources from the senior management team in your organization. Part B will be a three-four minute presentation giving an executive summary of the final report.
PART A – 2500-3000 word report:
Choose a small to medium organisation that has a website or with which you are familiar (40-200 employees, no global companies or major vehicle manufacturers please). You will become the Corporate Communication Manager for this organisation. The aim of this assignment is to develop a report to your senior management team advocating the establishment of a comprehensive internal communication program within your organisation. In addition, the report will open negotiation for resourcing such a program, laying the groundwork for a strong negotiation position.
The aim of this report is to have the senior management team absolutely sold on the idea of the internal communication strategy, and to secure everything you ask for to allow you to implement this strategy.
In this report, you will include sections that will:
1. Introduce the report and give the reason/s for its presentation
2. Introduce and explain the concept of internal communication
3. Discuss the benefits of internal communication, giving some examples that have produced concrete outcomes in other organisations and that will resonate with your executive team. Use these examples to explain how they might work in your own organisation. This section should provide hard data from research on employee communication – avoid general statements and fluffy assertions that can not be proven. Include in your discussion any research and/or case studies that you have been able to find on employee relations and communication in the industry in which your chosen organisation operates.
You will need to use the Library’s online databases and extensive catalogue of online books to secure resources for this section.
It is expected that the case studies presented in the course materials will be extensively supplemented, especially with case studies from the industry that your organisation works in. They must be clearly introduced, clearly referenced and a one paragraph summary provided of the situation that prompted the organisation to introduce an internal communication program.
4. Outline your vision for an internal communication strategy in the organization, including:
· Three specific objectives – preferably these will emerge from outcomes that you have seen in the examples and which you think might be achievable in this organization.
· How you might segment the staff to create more manageable target publics and why you would do this; you should emerge from this step with a brief profile of each of the target publics (about 2-4 paragraphs on each). You could look at geographic location, their access to technology, their professional profiles (eg office staff, professional staff, factory floor staff, managers).
· What tools you might use to engage them (and why you have selected each tool, referring back to the characteristics of your target publics).

· 5. Develop a list of resources (including staff) that you will need to implement your strategy, and budget these. The resources list should emerge naturally from the tools list, so work through each tool and cost everything that might be needed to implement each one.
· 6. Sum up the benefits to the organisation, including drawing attention to the return on investment you expect will occur, based on your research and the resources required.
In such a report, referencing is VERY important as it boosts your credibility with your work colleagues and allows them to trust what you say. Use Footnote referencing, in HARVARD style.
Use layout and language to make this report easy to read. If a report is easy to read, the contents will be received favourably by the senior team. If it is hard to read, you start off with a grumpy manager even before you have tried to persuade this person to do something.
If you are presenting a list of features, use bulleted or numbered lists. Make good use of paragraphs – if it’s a new idea or direction, use a new paragraph.
PART B – three-four minute presentation:
Instead of writing an executive summary for your report, you will develop a three-four minute video recording to summarise your findings and recommendations.
This presentation can be developed a smart phone or software such as iMovie, with a supplementary Powerpoint presentation. We must have visual of you delivering the presentation.
You will make the presentation as if you are selling the idea of your employee communication program to your senior management team – this means it must be knowledgeable, passionate, dynamic and able to grab and hold your audience’s attention for the entire three-four minutes. In other words, do not read from a script. If you work with a script, you must know it so well that you do not have to read or refer to it during your presentation. Of course, Powerpoint slides can be used to prompt you and also to provide interest to the audience.

Please do not make this presentation to me, your teacher – make it to the people who really make the decisions. These people are your CEO, your chief accountant, your own direct manager and the managers of the other organizational teams. After all, this program will be designed to make their job of managing people much easier!

This presentation should include a summary of each section in your written report:
· An introduction to the concept
· Some of the key research findings that provide data on improved organizational performance that you have included in your report
· An outline of your strategy, summarizing each section
· The key resources that you are asking for
· A summary of the benefits
The best way to structure this is to allocate each of these sections appropriate time and then fit your presentation around these times.