by
Debra Corey, Group Reward Director
about
Employee Communications
Employee Benefits
3 min read
Have you ever started a communications campaign and realised that you weren’t exactly sure what you were trying to achieve? You get so wrapped up in the ‘doing’ that you don’t spend time thinking about the WHY. As Simon Sinek talks about in his book, ‘"Start with Why," we need to always start by asking the important question WHY. “Knowing your WHY is not the only way to be successful, but it is the only way to maintain a long lasting success and have a greater blend of innovation and flexibility,” he says. And isn’t this what we’re trying to achieve with our communications campaign, long lasting success and IMPACT?
When you start a communications campaign with tactics, versus setting goals, you’re more likely to fail.
But if you follow Sinek’s thinking, you should always be thinking of the ‘WHY.’
Here’s how it can help you strengthen your communication objectives:
Gives you focus
Picture a dart board, with the different sections having different point values. Doesn’t this help you decide where to aim? That’s exactly what objectives do for you, giving you clarity on where to focus and aim your time and attention. Without them, just like with darts, you could be going (or throwing) in the wrong direction and at the wrong targets!
This focus will also help as you deal with the inevitable obstacles you’ll need to overcome throughout your campaign. For example, let’s say you’re launching a new recognition platform, and a week before the launch event you discover that one of your offices cannot participate due to a business priority. How do you decide what to do? If you had set an objective that your communications would have ‘one voice to the entire company’ then you would know to reschedule the event, as you wouldn’t want to communicate to different parts of the business at different times.
Not sure how to create these objectives? We'll tackle that in my next blog.
Author
Debra Corey
Reward Gateway
Debra is the co-author of "Build It: The Rebel Playbook for Employee Engagement," which she wrote with Reward Gateway Founder, Glenn Elliott. She's a Rewards guru, having over 20 years experience as a rewards leader, speaker, teacher and a frequent contributor to the Reward Gateway blog.
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