“In today’s market in which survival depends on retaining talent and delivering high levels of customer satisfaction, no organization can afford to fail at understanding how to communicate effectively to its employees,” says writes Carm Porco, VP, Prescient Digital Media, in his recent article, Tuning in the right employee communication channel.

“If those market imperatives weren’t enough, one would think that the broadest array of communication channels in human history would provide a sufficient incentive for organizations to take this topic seriously.”

Understanding what the employee wants and needs (and there’s a key difference between the two) is imperative for intranet success. If you don’t intimately understand – both quantitatively and qualitatively – what your intranet users expect then you might as well just have a one-way newsletter.

Here’s some stats cited by Carm…

• An estimated 22 million workers are “actively disengaged” or extremely negative in their workplace, resulting in a $300 billion cost to the U.S. economy annually.
• A study found that negative employees can scare off every customer they speak with — for good.
• The magic ratio: 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative interaction (Source: Donald O Clifton: How full is your Bucket?”).
• A 2004 IABC Survey states “Better employee communication leads to increased employee morale, loyalty, faith in management and productivity.