Communicating business fluency across the organization

Every employee’s role is tied to a larger part of their organization’s overall function. However, employees might not always think about how their job functions relate to the business’s machinations, thanks partly to their heavy workload and workflow.

The good news is that communicators can help overcome these challenges by connecting the goals and functions of the business for employees, leaders and managers.

By combining a deep knowledge of the business and the ability to translate those functions to different audiences, communicators can help get everyone on board with a business-fluent understanding of how their roles contribute to the company’s bottom line and overall strategy.

When your employees learn more about how their jobs fit into the overall business, you’ll set your organization up for clearer communication and sustained success.

Beyond the spreadsheet 

Employees don’t always think about their impact on the business when they begin their workday every morning. There are complexities, structures and processes that might fly under the radar for some workers. Communicators can help employees see how their work impacts business outcomes by connecting the dots between financial metrics, operational and departmental goals, and even daily tasks.

Melissa Kanter, head of communications and brand experience, Americas at ING, said that comms pros need to dig deeper beyond the numbers in a spreadsheet to help leaders relate what those mean for employees and managers.

“How do we take the jargon out of business talk and clearly define terms so everyone can understand them?” asked Kanter. “When you understand how the business works, you can serve as an outside voice and assist leadership in translating it for the different internal audiences with whom those leaders share information.”

Kanter also said leaders need to use visuals to help simplify the sometimes complicated or abstract business objectives and situations they’re trying to explain to the general employee base. She added that audience settings should influence the method of information sharing.

“It doesn’t always need to be graphs with lots of text, try simplifying things with images or trend arrows,” she said. “If people have further questions, leaders can arrange conversations in smaller settings to drill deeper into the details behind business performance.”

Here are a few steps that comms pros can take to become that valuable conduit between leadership and employees for business fluency:

• Immerse yourself in business operations: Shadow key departments and attend executive meetings.
• Build relationships with leaders in finance, operations and HR.
• Create a framework for translating complex business information into employee-friendly formats. Help fellow communicators interpret and pull out relevant narratives from financial documents, paying particular importance to the balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flow. “They’re all pieces, and they are interconnected, but you use different ones for different things and different reasons,” said one CCO in the Ragan Communications Leadership Council’s Business Fluency report last year. “Look at them as pieces to a whole and not in isolation. Financial statements always exist within a context.”
• Coach executives on simplifying and communicating business concepts effectively and colloquially to managers and employees. Jackson’s Erin Mercer recently unpacked how her team leads upskilling through business fluency beginning with this process.
• Regularly assess and improve employee understanding of business goals—either in HR reviews or via learning and development (L&D) throughout the employee journey.

The importance of collaboration with HR for employee advancement 

In many organizations, HR and comms work together to provide employees with information about their benefits, compensation and more. That relationship should also include cross-functionality when it comes to creating messaging about the function of the business.

Christy Noland, vice president of executive and business communications at Elevance Health, shared that her organization recently collaborated with HR to create a comms framework for leadership that not only talked about the functions of the business but also the external factors at play that impact the company.

“One of the top questions we got from associates centered on what the big picture was,” Noland said. “In conjunction with HR, we provided our leaders with resources that helped our leaders explain where employees fit into the larger goals of the company and how they can make the most impact for the organization. For us, that meant diving in much deeper than a lunch and learn. The toolkit we used to tell this story had 99% positive feedback from the leadership team.”

A closer relationship between comms and HR  also provides employees with organization-wide support to perform strongly within their roles.

Kevin Berchou, head of internal communications at M&T Bank, emphasized that knowledge sharing on the part of the two departments is key to high-performance, satisfied employee populations.

“A deeper understanding of the business for employees will help all employees become the best versions of themselves at work,” Berchou said.

Positioning managers as business fluency guides

An employee’s direct manager is always their closest touchpoint to the rest of their organization. That’s why it’s so important for managers to know how to explain the functions of the company to their reports in a way that frames their importance on a team-wide level.

Noland shared that her company equips managers with the business knowledge they need to share with their reports by hosting a monthly forum in which different leaders in the company can talk about new business priorities, tools for success and initiatives that are worth sharing to associates and the wider employee base including business updates.

“We’re trying to create a much more connected ecosystem in which managers have the business information they need to share at their fingertips,” she said.

Managers can also serve as a guide for employee learning and development that’s attained within the needs and function of the business.

“As managers, we have a responsibility to help people understand what the business does and where they fit into it,” Kanter said. “If you don’t encourage individuals that don’t fully understand to ask the right questions or provide them with the right resources as a manager, you’re missing an opportunity to provide much-needed business fluency and clarity.”

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports and hosting trivia.