Corporate DispatchPro TANJA TATOMIROVIC
How to avoid extra stress caused by Frequent and Intensive Internal Communication Some practical principles of internal communication in times of crisis or information overload One of the things I learned in childhood was not to accumulate material goods, because, as my parents taught me, in that case, I would not recognize the value of any of those specific things. In my work, as well as in crisis communications, in which I have been engaged for certainly more than a decade, I have recognized the principle of sufficiency. When I worked in the petrochemical industry, where people’s lives were endangered every day, as well as in the much more benign crisis of Eutelsat satellite failure, I recognized that it’s only the v-team that needs to know as much as possible, but not all the information is required at all times to be shared with a wider internal audience within the company. Today, in an age when we have a need to have intensive internal communication, and every day we have new information packed in different ways and for different audiences, and based on my experience so far, I think we need to keep the basic rules. Not to create panic by communication, nor to communicate anything that might, under normal circumstances, need to be brought to light. 1. SIMPLICITY IS THE KEY: Gather all available information and group it by topic. Give communication channels simple names that will be remembered by all, and that will not arouse the aversion or opinion of employees that this is completely irrelevant in times of crisis. The language of communication should be simple, much simpler than usual when the business is as usual. Things need to be simplified in times of any crisis. In every sense.
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