Chapter 07 – Internal Communications
Teaching Notes
Chapter 7
Internal Communications
Everyone says that internal or employee communications is the most important part
of any corporate communication program today. I regularly work with companies
in this exciting area and can tell you that even those that are committed to changing
the way they communicate with employees still have a lot to learn.
This chapter gives you a fairly straightforward account of the best thinking out there
on employee communications. You can supplement the basic information with fun
You can also, however, get them focused on other material in this chapter. For
example, how have workers changed over the last twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years?
If they have read an early work of fiction in the beginning of the semester, you can
focus again on that here. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is excellent for this purpose
because it shows how awful the work environment was in the early part of this
century.
Get students to talk about their own values and their own previous work
experience. Are they going to commit their lives to some corporation? What would
Other useful tools are sample company newsletters or internal intranets or blogs.
Along the same lines, get students to talk about their own experiences with
employee communications tools at their former jobs. How did they react to these
publications compared with co-workers from different backgrounds or age groups?
Chapter 07 – Internal Communications
Teaching Notes
With constituencies morphing and technology changing the speed at which and
manner in which information is disseminated, I think that internal communications,
along with reputation management are likely to be the two most important areas for
corporate communications classes to focus on in upcoming years. You should also
look at Chapter Six in The Power of Corporate Communication for more examples
and a more managerial approach to this topic.
Teaching Note
Westwood Publishing
Again, as with many of the sub-specialties in this book, you can always get an
employee communications specialist in to your class to discuss this subject with the
group if you know someone who does a good job for a fairly large company.
Bosworth is shirking her own responsibilities here. Get the students to come up
with solutions to John’s problems that will help them use the material in the case
while at the same time dealing with some of the political and other problems
introduced.
Chapter 07 – Internal Communications
Teaching Notes
Problems
1. The boss is shifting down responsibility for her problems.
2. The company doesn’t have a strong corporate communication person and is
about to give the bad one they have the axe. What should you do about this
given what you now know about the field of corporate communications from
the previous chapters?
3. How will the remaining employees respond? What can you do about this?
Solutions
A good strategy for Westwood Publishing should include:
1. A way to stratify employees into constituencies.