Is your employee newsletter management propaganda?
By Robert F. Abbott
It should not be. If it is an effective newsletter, it will
serve the needs of readers (employees) as much as it serves the
needs of the publisher (management).
Let me explain how to ensure it serves employees as well as
management, by reviewing four key points I make in A Manager’s
Guide to Newsletters: Communicating for Results.
Objectives and reader responses: First, state your objectives in
terms of reader responses. This forces you to focus on your
readers, and what they're likely or not likely to do. Nothing
brings objectives down to earth more quickly than the reality of
implementation.
Now you may have self-serving objectives, such as increasing
employee productivity, which is fine. But, once you state that
objective in terms of reader responses, you are forced to see
that objective in new terms.
For example, let's say you want to increase productivity. The
desired reader response might be that employees will participate
in lunch hour learning sessions. Now, you have to plan and write
articles that give readers some good reasons to attend.
Reader goals: To find those reasons, you'll have to identify
readers' goals, and which of them they can achieve through your
organization. Chances are your organization can offer a stable
income, but probably not the chance to become fabulously
wealthy. Nor would you expect most organizations to be part of
spiritual or family goals. So the second key point is to focus
on the goals that your organization can help readers attain, and
leave the rest alone.
Content in which you share an interest: Third, select content
that serves both your objectives and readers' goals, and I
emphasize the word 'both.' If there isn't something that
interests both management and employees in an article, then it
doesn't belong in your newsletter. You both must have something
to gain or something to lose in choosing subjects for coverage.
Presentation style: Fourth, the style of presentation should be
appropriate for the characteristics readers bring to the
newsletter. They don't pick up a newsletter with their minds in
the blank slate position. Instead, they bring to it emotions,
degrees of involvement, and ranges of consistency with your
attitudes and beliefs.
You need to do at least some basic profiling, to identify these
characteristics. For example, if morale is poor, you need to
address the reasons and the solutions. It makes absolutely no
sense to pretend everyone's happy when the opposite is true.
Of course, not every organization covers these four issues. Take
a look at many employee newsletters and you'll see something
much different. These newsletters have objectives that serve
only management, and not management and employees both.
You'll see what amounts to a brochure, a sales pitch that does
nothing to help employees advance toward or achieve their goals.
And, if there's nothing there for employees, why would they read
it?
And, if they don't read the newsletter, how will it help
management achieve its objectives? It won't, of course, and the
employee, having found nothing of relevance to her interests in
the newsletter, will assume it is management propaganda.
In summary, an effective employee newsletter addresses the needs
of both the publisher (management) and readers (employees). And,
ironically, a newsletter can only achieve its self-serving
objectives by serving the interests of readers, too.
About the author:
Robert F. Abbott is the author of A Manager’s Guide to
Newsletters: Communicating for Results, which explains how to
create effective newsletters, newsletters that get the desired
responses. Learn how to start a newsletter, with real-life
examples, at: http://www.managersguide.com/articles.htm
Use Your Knowledge to Write Your Own Ebook
Back to Articles Contents Page
|
