Why Do We Lie To Employees?

Most of us would have trouble remembering employee communications that didn’t reek of, well, employee communications, and that’s a problem.

Lots of factors conspire to inhibit or misdirect people who are otherwise talented and principled communicators to obscure the often valid and important information they’re tasked with sharing.

There are three questions you could ask the next time you decide you’re going to tell you employees something:

First, do you see them as customers? If you talked about customers in terms of what they should know or do, or assumed they’d open or read and watch whatever you throw at them, you’d be laughed out of the next marketing meeting.

Employees have no obligation to consume or believe what you say and no opinion survey will tell how how, where, or when to address their needs and interests. In fact, they’re more critical consumers of information because they know more about your company, which also makes them potentially more valuable (and believable) as advocates when they embrace an idea or program.

So, that article on your glorious environmental program in the employee newsletter has no credibility if your people know that there’s little operational reality behind it. Those images of meetings populated with smiling, racially diverse stuntmen and women that flash across your intranet or internal digital signage carry no weight if employees know there’s no substance to your diversity claims. Celebrating teamwork holds no water…