Evolution of Employee Communication
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From the telegraph to the intranet : The evolution of employee communications
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Slide 2 •As the telegraph was making history in the mid-1800s by providing rapid communication across distance, it also was revolutionizing the way companies conducted business. •Adoption of communication technologies can easily follow Everett Rogers’ – S-Curve in his “Diffusion of Innovation” theory. •Railroad companies were the early adopters of the telegraph because lines were strung along the right-of-way of railroads and they received lower rates due to this relationship. •In addition to the railroads, only a few industries that were both geographically dispersed and needed to send information that was highly time-sensitive – such as the meatpacking industry – used the telegraph regularly in the early years. •By the late 1800s – large companies with several offices began leasing private telegraph lines for internal communication between different sites, since internal messages could then be sent for free, and large organizations could be centrally controlled from a head office. (p.173) Slide 3 – PAST – WRITTEN TECHNOLOGIES •The implementation of three forms of written technologies: the typewriter, duplicating methods and filing systems fundamentally changed the way businesses communicated externally and internally. •The first copying technology to gain traction in American business was the press copying – allowing businesses to make one copy at a time so they wouldn’t have to rewrite the document. •The typewriter took business communication to the next level and allowed communication from the boss to be written by a third party. •Pairing carbon paper with the typewriter revolutionized the small-scale reproduction of documents and allowed internal communication to evolve. •With 10 copies produced with one typing, now documents could be shared with multiple people throughout a company. •During the 1940s and 50s, employee communications as we know it today was in its infancy. Many scholars called this time period in employee communication – the human relations era as it was the beginning of two-way communication between employees and their managers. •In the 1970s, large companies started evolving into more complex entities with departments, such as marketing, production, finances and sales. Communications between departments became more prevalent through multidirectional channels. Slide 4 – INTRANET AND COMMUNICATION STRATEGY •Over the next twenty years, internal communications evolved with new technologies such as e-mail and internet, yet it wasn’t until the early 2000s that these tools hit the late majority phase of Rogers’ “S-Curve.” •Before the Internet was mainstream, employee communications was more static and most messages were broadcast in what one scholar called a “tell style” of communication – think memos and newsletters. •The purposes of the messages were to inform and persuade employees to help companies achieve a goal. •Over time as more companies were using the internet for employee communications their strategies evolved from more of a top-down mode of sharing company information to more of a strategy to build employee engagement and company advocates. •The intranet and company blogs were key technologies in helping build more two-way communication. The intranet allows companies to deliver their positions and receive feedback. •An example of using a company’s intranet for employee feedback comes from Hewlett Packard. In the early 2000s during an economic downturn, HP had to ask staff to take a voluntary payroll reduction. Information was posted on HP’s intranet, @HP, and it provided a tool where employees could volunteer for reduced hours and see how many employees had already volunteered. Within three days, 30,000 people (90% of staff) had volunteered Slide 5 - BLOGS •Company blogs – both internal and external – seem to be an important interactive tool f
Transcript of Evolution of Employee Communication
From the telegraph to the intranet: The evolution of employee communications
It begins with the telegraph
The next phase: written technologies
Efficiencies in two-way communication
The future is in the phone
CreditsLara Underhill
May 31, 2011, University of Washington
Contact: [email protected]
Photos/VideosSlide One – Memo, Microsoft Office Images
Slide Two – Railroad Station, by DC Public Library Commons (Flickr)
Slide Three – Typewriter, by toastytreat87 (Flickr)
Slide Four – Internet URL text heading, Microsoft Office Images
Slide Five - Vida Killian: Employee Storm , Ragan Communications (YouTube)
Slide Six – 7-Eleven on my phone, by SimonQ
ResourcesArgenti, P. (2006). How technology has influenced the field of corporate communication. Journal of Business and
Technical Communication, 20(3), 357-370. Hay, R. (1979). A brief history of internal organization communication through the 1940s. The Journal of Business
Communication, 11(4), 5-11. Retrieved April 26 from: Ebscohost.com, University of Washington Library.Forbes, S. (2010, August 31). Internal communication get smart [Web log message]. Retrieved from
http://www.simply-communicate.com/news/internal-communication-gets-smartMcGovern, G. (2002, November 18). Intranet return on investment case studies [Web log message]. Retrieved April
26, 2011 from gerrymcgovern.com.Rogers, E. M. (1982). Diffusion of innovation. London: The Free Press. Diffusion of innovations.
fromhttp://www.provenmodels.com/570Standage, T. (1998). The vicorian internet. New York: Walker and Company.Yates, J. (1989). Control through communications: The rise of system in American management. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press. Retrieved online book from: University of Washington Library
