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Linking corporate communication to business goals: the planning process. Michelle Archard Senior Consultant CommOut www.commout.com.au. About CommOut. Comm unications Out sourced
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Linking corporate communication to business goals: the planning process Michelle Archard Senior Consultant CommOut www.commout.com.au
About CommOut • Communications Outsourced • CommOut consults to B2B companies on marketing and corporate communications and specialises in lead generation and online presence – websites, intranets, online marketing
Why link your plans to business goals? • Credibility – you are more likely to get resources • Helps you prioritise and fend off service requests • Positions Communications as a valuable service within the company • Use the plan to make everyday decisions
Step 1: Situation analysis – the ‘now’ • Get a picture of communications within the organisation today • strengths • weaknesses • operating environment • challenges
Situation analysis – how • Identify your stakeholders • Work out how many of each group you can realistically reach • How are you going to reach them? • 1-to-1 interviews • Focus groups (live or online) • Walk arounds • Surveys (paper and/or online)
Situation analysis • SWOT analysis of the communication function with your team • Strengths: what do you do well? • Weaknesses: what do you do poorly? • Opportunities: What developments represent opportunities for future success? • Threats: What’s coming up that could make things worse?
Step 2: Business goals • Gather information: • Annual reports • Other corporate reports e.g. Sustainability • Business plans • Major projects • Key business data e.g. profit, share price • Employee survey results • Customer survey results • Benchmarking data & Best practices
Step 2: Business goals • Interview your key stakeholders • If there is a business plan then clarify it with them: what communications support do they need/expect for the elements of their plan? • If there is no business plan then find out what the focus areas are going to be: what communications support will be needed? • Ask them for the priority on the plan elements
Step 2: Business goals • Write up short descriptions of all the goalse.g. “Develop sales and marketing excellence across the organisation” or “Expand into Eastern Europe by acquisition” • List them in order of priority (usually according to the most influence on the bottom line)
Step 3: Your vision of success • What does success look like? • Work with your comms team to write down statements of what success means e.g. • All employees understand the key goals of the company and how they can contribute to those goals • The Comms department operates as a well oiled service machine
Step 4: Determining Comms objectives • How will you move from the ‘now’ to ‘success’? • What are you trying to accomplish?
Step 4: Determining Comms objectives • Using all the data you’ve collected, brainstorm with your team what the key objectives should be for the time period of your plan. Consider: • Content/materials Tools & vehicles • Structure Processes • Partnerships Reputation • Leadership communication
Step 5: Prioritise objectives Critical: Improve Critical: Maintain Importance Success Improve value-add & performance or abandon Non Critical Importance = How important is this to achieving your vision of success? Success = How successful are we today at achieving this?
Step 5: Prioritise objectives • Aim to get 5-7 objectives • If too many in top quadrants then ask each team member to score them 1-5 and choose 5-7 with most points
Step 6: “How” • Work out strategies and tactics for each objective e.g. Objective =“Create and implement templates and processes to ensure consistent communications” Tactics: Create written procedures for common comms tasks Create MS Office templates for common documents/presentations etc Update style guide Train all communicators outside of the Comms department
Step 6: “Who, when and metrics” • For each tactic, work out who is responsible, a timeline, deliverables and any metrics
Sources of metrics • Employee engagement survey • Polls on Intranet • Dedicated survey • Phone, email & time logs • New hire interviews/testing
Metrics – measure of success, not completion e.g. Strategy = “Convey the strategy of the new CEO to all employees” Tactic = “Host a series of web meetings” Metrics: • Basic metric – event occurrence • Medium – event feedback • High – awareness and understanding • Highest – Behaviour change
Selling your plan • You need to present your plan to your key stakeholders • Use the mouse mat plan to show linkage between corp goals and your objectives • Show the tactics for each objective • Explain what didn’t make it onto the plan and why