This document provides an overview of internal communication and collaboration practices for corporations, highlighting the need for effective channels and tools to enhance communication efficiency. It addresses the challenges posed by evolving communication technologies and the importance of developing clear policies to manage information flow and security. The document concludes by recommending strategies for improving internal communication and collaboration through structured policies and the use of technology.

1. Internal Communication and Collaboration (ICC)
Basic considerations and practices for efficient corporate communication and collaboration
Alexander Zehnder
Head of LOB Solutions
MIB, BSc Computer Science
isolutions AG, Bern (Switzerland)
May 2013
Source : http://encouragingcommunication.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/communicating-symbol.png
Abstract
The purpose of this document is to provide a general overview about internal communication,
considerations and practices. It shall be a guide suggesting certain channels and tools in order
to improve the effectiveness of corporate communication and collaboration.
Introduction
The unstoppable evolution of communication channels has penetrated corporations just as
much and fast as it has our private live. Whilst there has been a separation of preferences by
generation and age rather than anything else, the future use of digital communication tools will
affect the efficiency of us all in our daily work. The “Native-Digitals” will RULE within a few
years and companies must not delay a serious preparation of those new media channels.
Internal Corporate Communication is a topic that gains importance as the awareness for
negative impact of bad communication grows.
Business runs differently today as it ran a decade ago. It is faster and tends to become chaotic
if not guided by corporate policies and best practices. There is a constantly growing risk of
losing control of information as well as increasing time to find relevant information.
isolutions ag laupenstrasse 1 ch-3008 bern www.isolutions.ch
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2. Literature review
It is common to find little information about concurrent academic information about latest
technologies and its usage due to the lifecycle duration of such papers. Nonetheless, this
document includes some academic information about internal communication as a field as well
as self-experienced practices and thoughts where technology meets IC in enterprises.
The “public relation review” issue 38 includes a good definition of internal communication, its
parameters and outlook for what might be coming in that field (Ana Tkalac Vercic, 2012).
Whether employees think the IC is appropriate and accepted is documented by Mary Welch
from the Lancashire Business School, University of Lancashire, Preston – UK (Welch, 2012).
It is a combination of complex activities and tools that provide a comprehensive environment,
which nourish good internal communication. The challenges in communication of a networked
enterprise were discussed in the “Inf Syst Front” online magazine (Barjis, Gupta, & Sharda,
2011). Enterprises face the situation that over time the digital natives drive internal
communication towards new levels and communication channels (tools) based on their media
preferences and environmentally influenced behavior in gathering information like social media
interaction in their private lives (Friedl & Vercic, 2011). Even if the importance of IC in
enterprises gains awareness throughout the academic and economical world, the return on
investment is rather difficult to foresee. Juan Meng and Bruce K. Berger from the department
of advertising and public relations from the University of Georgia have written an interesting
work about the ROI of IC efforts (Meng & Berger, 2012).
Whilst more academic work needs to be done in the field of internal communication, this short
literature review shows a glimpse of how wide this topic already is and that there is much more
to be expected in the near future.
Communication and Collaboration
Enterprises have been drenched with technology from planning, manufacturing, logistics,
accounting and communication. Most of the transitions towards the technologized
environments have been carefully planned and executed. The enterprise internal
communication and collaboration mostly lacks of such proceeding. Employees bring new
behavior from their personal lives into the daily labor with mostly little awareness of its impact
for the enterprise. Confidentiality and security of company information is at stake. For example,
it is widely seen, that Documents are simply sent as attachments across the World Wide Web
as attachments with little concern about the security problems that might include. Nonetheless,
it would be possible with little effort to improve the security of that common practice using
digitally signed and encrypted emails. Another issue is the collaboration of several external
and internal persons in documents. Sending a document to several people for them to add
their information results in a quite chaotic and time-intensive task of coordination and merging
that not seldom leads to redundant work and even loss of information and time. Enterprises
have discovered that online-collaboration is key in order to increase the efficiency of their team
activities. Finally, online-collaboration and enterprise internal communication needs to be
streamlined and organized to prevent information to be lost. This document aims to help
enterprises to get a practical overview about IC and collaboration, how to use new
communication technologies and when.
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3. Issues of internal communication
From an academic point of view, the IC has to deal with several main issues whereas the top
ten were identified by the Delphi Study in Europe as followed:
1. New internal digital (including social) media
2. Change communication
3. Crisis communication
4. Trust and credibility of leadership
5. Employee engagement, loyalty, motivation
6. Cultural diversity
7. Developing internal communication policies and standards
8. Auditing, budgeting, and return on investment measures
9. Value for money
10. Outsourcing
(Ana Tkalac Vercic, 2012)
This shows how broad the field of IC really is and makes it possible to image that its importance
is highly underestimated.
Types of communication
To be able to gain an overview, it is necessary to classify the types of communication.
Regarding the direction of communication, it can be divided in:




ONE-TO-ONE
ONE-TO-MANY
MANY-TO-MANY
MANY-TO-ONE
It must be understood, that MANY-TO-MANY as well as MANY-TO-ONE in practice always
results in ONE-TO-MANY and ONE-TO-ONE as it is an individual who provides information to
be sent. On the other side it is similar, even information is meant for MANY, it is an individual
that receives it. This shows that even if we think about mass communication, finally it ends up
in one person transferring information to another.
Verified and unverified
When information is provided, the sender sometimes wants or needs to make sure, that the
recipient has actually got the information. For an example, you send an Email and expect the
recipient to send any kind of acknowledgement, that it has been received. We will call this,
VERIFIED COMMUNICATION. If you want to share your thoughts or opinion like in social
network walls generally you do not expect a specific answer or acknowledgement, then we talk
about UNVERIFIED COMMUNICATION.
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4. TYPE
ONE-TO-ONE
ONE-TO-MANY
(1►1)
VERIFIED
 Email (delivery receipt)
 Chat
UNVERIFIED
 Email (no delivery receipt)
(1►n)




Newsletter
Website
Broadcast
(TV, Radio, etc.)


BLOG
WIKI
Conferences
(Video, Voice)
MANY-TO-MANY (n►n)
MANY-TO-ONE
(n►1)

Webforms
Table 1: Verified and unverified channels
It is very important, to be aware whether the information should be verified or not in order to
have clear expectations from the recipients. For example, an email should be answered
within one working day unless the recipient is CC or BCC, which means it is only for their
information but no action required. If information is communicated in a BLOG or alike, the
writer cannot expect anyone to have read it except there is some feedback written. With
other words, do not expect the information to be transferred to a specific individual using
unverified communication channels.
Real-Time and Non-Real-Time
Communication might be very time critical in some cases wherefore the following table
identifies the channels being real-time or not. If someone is calling a person by phone and the
respondent answers it, a Real-Time communication has started. If a person sends an Email,
the respondent does not need to answer immediately. Several minutes, hours or even days
may pass before the answer is given, therefore it shall be considered Non-Real-Time
communication. Just like the Email, a Chat does not necessarily be real-time, as the
respondent may answer later.
TYPE
ONE-TO-ONE
(1►1)
REAL-TIME
 Calls
(Voice, Video)
NON-REAL-TIME
 Email
 Chat
ONE-TO-MANY
(1►n)

Live-Broadcast
(TV, Radio, etc.)



MANY-TO-MANY (n►n)

Conferences
(Video, Voice)


Email
Website
Broadcast
(TV, Radio, etc.)
BLOG
WIKI

Webforms
MANY-TO-ONE
(n►1)
Table 2: Real-time and non-real-time channels
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5. Even in the fast world we live today, it should be always considered if information needs to be
transferred immediately and not. Usually real-time communication is a very invasive way as
the recipient is forced to leave any activity in order to communicate. For example if someone
is in a meeting and there is a phone-call coming in as urgent, the meeting needs to be
interrupted.
Information retention
Another important issue of ICC is the fact of whether information transmitted can be retained
technically and how efficient can it be found and accessed later. For example a phone-call
usually is not recorded, but even if it would be, the unstructured information transferred is very
hard to find as the call would have to be re-listened completely and there is no current practice
how to search in phone-calls for certain topics except for police, FBI and other legal
investigation offices. Voice transcription nonetheless might become more relevant in the
unified communication field enabling content search in voice messages. Further in the future
of course would be such search in video messages for content. Anyway for now, it is not a
common practice in ICC and therefore awareness must be increased of when transferred
information can or should be retainable and how much effort is necessary to find it.
TYPE
ONE-TO-ONE
(1►1)
Retainable/searchable
 Email
 Written chat
ONE-TO-MANY
(1►n)

MANY-TO-MANY (n►n)
MANY-TO-ONE
(n►1)




Broadcast
(TV, Radio, etc.)
Email
Website
BLOG
WIKI

Non-retainable/searchable*
 Phone calls
 Voice chat
 Video chat
Webforms

Conferences
(Video, Voice)
*commonly not recorded
Table 3: Retainability and searchability
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6. ICC recommendations
Considering the importance of corporate wide internal communication and collaboration,
following recommendations to streamline the flow of information.
Policies
As more numerous a company grows, the more important clear rules become. Taking into
account the previously classifications, rules shall be provided and institutionalized in order to
streamline internal communication. Leaving employees the freedom of choice their preferred
channel of communication and sharing documents may cause disorder of information flow and
even failure of internal communication itself.
Following some examples that show the difficulty of the absence of communication policy.
Example: Documents send by Email
An employee (A) of the sales department sends an Email with an offer draft as Word-document
attached to his three colleagues (B, C and D) for them to comment on it. No read nor delivery
receipt has been requested which leaves it up to the colleagues to manifest they got the Email
and its attachment. That the company has disciplined employees in regards of reading and
answering Emails, wherefore two of three (B and D) send a response to the sender confirming
that they received the Email and will work on the review during the day coming back at the end
of the day. As the sender (A) has not heard anything from colleague (C), he decides to call.
The colleague C answers and confirms that he has no yet read the Email because he is in a
meeting and will do so later. Everything works out fine; the employee (A) receives the
comments of B, C and D that evening. As each one has reviewed the draft, there are now 4
versions of the document that need to be merged. Several points were addressed in parallel,
which caused unnecessary workload. Additionally, the new reviewed and merged draft needs
to be resent again to everyone for approval. The circle starts again and it becomes clear that
such “collaboration” and communication by Email is rather inefficient, but still widely used.
Real-live example: Document management by collaboration tools
The same initial situation as before, an employee (A) works on an offer draft and wants his
colleagues to review and comment on it. The sales department share a common workspace
with sub-sites for each project. The employee (A) saves the offer draft on the collaboration
workspace with versioning enabled and sends a notification to his colleagues (B, C and D).
To provide documents consistency, the CHECK-OUT/CHECK-IN feature is enabled. This
feature causes that only ONE employee can MODIFY a document at once and each change
results in a new version. Due to this document management, the employees are forced to work
serial one after another, but avoid double work and the need for final integration (merge) of
documents.
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7. Policy recommendations
GENERAL
- Written clear and simple polices for internal communication
- Avoid redundancy of information and documents
- Define which channel for what information shall be used and when (Scenarios)
o VERIFIED:
If information has a specific receiver and you need to assure message was
delivered
o UNVERIFIED:
If information shall be searchable and available later for TEAM-MEMBERS
- Use BLOGS for discussions
- Provide SINGLE POINTS OF ENTRY for:
o Change requests
o Issue reporting
o Proposals
o Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
WORKSPACES
- A workspace should be opened for each project or client from the very beginning
- Grant ALL involved users appropriate permission to create/read/update/delete
documents from the very beginning
- Use workspaces instead of local folders
- Include META-DATA whenever possible
BLOGS
- Create BLOGS inside the Workspaces and take the scope and team-members into
account
- Use BLOGS instead of Emails for information that is of concern for the involved team
in order to provide this information also to new joining members who otherwise would
not have access to this information
- Ask team-members to FOLLOW the BLOGS that are relevant for them
- You MUST NOT believe, information in a BLOG has been read by any individual as
long as no response has been posted
- Keep MESSAGES short and concise
- Posts MUST be placed in the right BLOG
- Assign a responsible MODERATOR for each BLOG (usually PL or creator of
BLOG/Workspace)
Meetings
-
-
Use shared calendars and propose Date, Time, Place, Duration, Agenda for each
meeting (do not ask but propose)
Review availability and respect BUSY-BLOCKS
Define:
o Responsible
o mandatory members
o optional members
Reference/include additional information
One MUST NOT wait for all attendance but start on time
(Waiting does punish the punctual and reward the late)
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8. Interruptions
-
-
Notification POP-UP may disturb and distract employees
Emails shall be checked about three times a day:
o First thing to do
o Before lunch
o Before leaving at night
Like that EMAIL-NOTIFICATIONS should become unnecessary (less interruptions)
Chat POP-UP interrupt and may interfere during presentations, consider turning the
notifications of and review chat events several times a day similar to Emails
Voice- and Video calls are highly interruptive, as the receiver has to attend them
immediately wherefore Email or Chat should be preferred if possible
Conclusions
Due to the essential importance of corporate internal communication and collaboration, each
company should do an effort to identify its specific needs and provide employees with a concise
ICC-Policy or ICC-Guide. First identify the stakeholders, then classify the used communication
and collaboration channels and observe how employees use them. GOOD-PRACTISES
should be analyzed if they might apply and improve the ICC. Put the ICC-Guide in place, review
the results and user acceptance and adjust the ICC-Guide if needed.
Internal communication and collaboration is permanently evolving wherefore it is necessary
for enterprises to add this as a recurring issue to be managed. It must not be underestimated
as the impact of failing ICC may put the future of the company at stake.
Tables
Table 1:Verified and unverified channels ................................................................................4
Table 2: Real-time and non-real-time channels ......................................................................4
Table 3: Retainability and searchability ..................................................................................5
Bibliography
Ana Tkalac Vercic, D. V. (2012). Internal communication: Definition, parameters, and the
future. Public Relations Review - 38, 223-230.
Barjis, J., Gupta, A., & Sharda, R. (2011). Knowledge work and communication challenges. Inf
Syst Front, 615-619.
Friedl, J., & Vercic, A. T. (2011). Media preferences of digital natives’ internal communication:.
Public Relations Review, 84-86.
Meng, J., & Berger, B. (2012). Measuring return on investment. Journal of Communication 164, 332-354.
Welch, M. (2012). Appropriateness and acceptability: Employee perspectives of internal
communication. Public Relations Review, 246-254.
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