Creating Awareness for Your Speak-Up Culture: How to Ace Your Internal Communication

When talking about speak-up culture, most organizations primarily think of reporting channels, feedback processes and responsible contact people. But these measures can be ineffective without a proper communication strategy. You need to inform employees about your speak-up measures — before they find themselves in a crisis or conflict situation.

According to the APE model, a speak-up culture is built in three steps: creating awareness, establishing processes and fostering engagement. Of course these three stages are connected, but internal communication plays a special role in the first step. Let’s have a look into how companies can raise awareness for their speak-up culture and make sure that existing processes and channels are used effectively.

1 — Identify effective communication strategies

Each company culture is unique, and internal communication works very differently from organization to organization. A highly individualized communication strategy is crucial when promoting a topic across your company. You should start by analyzing the styles, media and channels that suit you and your employees best. Ask yourself the following:

• Have you laid out your company values or your code of conduct, and are these documents accessible to everyone?
• How familiar are your employees with your values and code of conduct? How are violations handled?
• Is there documentation about the processes when dealing with critical feedback or reports of misconduct? How familiar are employees with these processes?
• Do employees actually use existing reporting channels? Or do you have the feeling that sensitive issues only come up in exit interviews and on employer rating websites?
• Is everyone in the office regularly? Do they travel or work remotely a lot?
• Which communication channels do you already use to share information (email, intranet, meetings or other communication tools)?
• Which communication strategies worked well for other initiatives? Have there been any campaigns where communication failed, and why?

Best practice would be to talk to many different employees about these questions, then discuss the results with your management team. This analysis will significantly help to find the right communication strategy.

2 — Clarify the value for employees

A speak-up culture benefits everyone, especially employees in conflict or crisis situations. It’s easier to get access to help and stressful situations can be solved quicker. However, it can still be hard to take the first step and talk about problems or sensitive issues in the workplace. Therefore, with each communication, you should emphasize the advantages of addressing conflicts early — for those affected, but also for bystanders.

Based on your previous analysis of your employees’ preferences and habits, the following approaches could make sense for you:

• Altruism: “We want to enable our employees to do the right thing and work together on building a fair and respectful culture.”
• Growth: “Our company is changing fast and we need the right processes to manage this growth. We are hiring fast, and this especially concerns new colleagues. We want each employee to contribute to preserving our values and solving conflict fast.”
• Improvement: “We know that our processes for dealing with sensitive issues and reports of misconduct were suboptimal in the past. We want to solve unpleasant situations and conflicts quicker, so our conflict management will become safer and easier for all employees.”
• Company values: “Our values are an essential part of our company identity. We want every employee to live by and uphold these values. Our processes help us to understand the situations where this is not the case, and what measures we can take to preserve our values.”
• Management as ambassador: “As part of a larger audit, our management team identified the need to start a conversation about a speak-up culture and promote feedback from employees. This will aid us to solve conflicts more quickly and to make help more accessible for those affected.”

3 — Plan a campaign

Usually, there are a number of initiatives running in an organization at the same time, and a lot of information is shared every day. Therefore, the main goal of your communication strategy should just be to make all employees aware that reporting channels and processes exist, and where they can find out more about them. This core message should be clear, comprehensible and easy to remember.

Make use of the classic campaign format to build initial awareness for this topic. Connecting your message to a slogan can be very helpful, for example “Speak up with Confidence”. At the same time, you should point to additional information, e.g. a website or other materials about conflict management and speak-up culture. You can inform employees about existing or new processes and repeatedly feature your code of conduct.

But keep in mind: Employees always fear the worst-case scenario when contemplating making a report. They are afraid of not being taken seriously or that their honesty will lead to retaliation or other negative consequences. You can sooth this fear with anonymous reporting channels. Assure anonymity in every communication measure you take. Emphasize that all reports are handled confidentially. This will build trust and reduce employees’ fear of negative consequences.

Campaign planning can be complicated, especially if your organization is large or very decentralized. Often, mailing lists are incomplete or many employees work remotely. At Lytt, we specialize in setting up an individual communication strategy, because we know how hard it is to talk about cultural change. So if you want to discuss your specific campaign or need some inspiration, just get in touch!

4 — Remain present

To promote awareness across your organization, the core messages must span various channels and media — repetition and distribution are key to reaching all employees. In your analysis from step 1, you ideally figured out the ideal channels. Combine these to achieve the best possible effect:

• Use print and digital media
• Address all senses, e.g. with visual (posters), audio-visual (meetings, videos) or written messages (emails, intranet)
• Combine short-term and long-term measures, e.g. an initial campaign using posters and stickers combined with subsequent e-learning and quarterly or semiannual newsletters

Even if your initial campaign is a success, your communication strategy is not fully implemented yet. You must make sure that your core message will not get lost when onboarding new employees or as the company evolves. For example, you could ask new employees to read and sign your code of conduct. Teach new employees about your processes and reporting channels, and inform everyone regularly about the conflict management in your organization.

Communication is key when it comes to implementing a speak-up culture. Creating awareness is just the first step to promote further measures. But if you do everything right, it is a solid foundation upon which you can build an inclusive and healthy culture.