It’s not about you. (Or is it?)

Losing employees? It may be about you. And it may be time to assess your communications efforts, your communications team, and your communications channels.

Isn’t it amazing how little management often knows about its employees? In a world in which Amazon know what you read, Rent the Runway knows what you wear, and Spotify knows what you listen to, it’s a damn shame when employees leave because no one took the time to understand them, their likes, their needs, and how they want to be communicated with. It ain’t brain surgery, folks.

It used to be just about salary and benefits. It also used to be just about memos and then emails. Today that just isn’t the case.

If you’re hemorrhaging resources (time and money) in employee turnover, it’s time for a communications assessment. (If you don’t know your turnover numbers, find out. It costs a fortune to replace an employee.)

With more years than we care to think about in journalism, public relations, marketing communications, corporate communications, and now in a consultancy, we’ve learned quite a bit from good bosses and shall we say, less good bosses.

We’ve built great teams, dismantled mediocre teams, mentored newbies, and learned the ins and outs of corporate life. We’ve turned that knowledge into one of the things we do best – evaluating communications teams and/or assessing communications between an employer and their employees. Or a franchisor and its franchisees. Or a university and its stakeholders.

Since our founding, we’ve done many assessments, all of which have resulted in strong data for the company and better communications in terms of the channels used, the information included, and the voice of that communication. Using our Clarity Playbook, we provide a comprehensive report with (often sensitive) findings and very candid recommendations for improvement.

With a qualitative evaluation, we take the time to get to know your Public Relations (or Marketing Communications or External Communications) team, spending quality time with each of them and the department’s key stakeholders.

With our quantitative audit or survey, we are able to validate the findings from the qualitative work, and dig deeper into the communications vehicles, the “voice” of the company, the frequency of the communications, and the perceived value from the end-users.

Recently, the leadership of a large, national franchisor wanted to know how effective its communications were with both employees and franchisees. Take a look at what we did.

Starting with an assessment of the communications channels, we uncovered a lot of new information and confirmed much of what was already known. Around six months later, we conducted a similar exercise for franchisees. Today, we continue to work with the franchisor, mentoring the person in a position filled partially as a result of our work as we continue to add value with “fresh eyes.”

When it’s time to really understand your team, talk to ours.