What? Where did that one come from?!

Are you ready to deal with that last minute communication? Managing that curved ball…

The great thing about working in internal communication is the fact that no day is the same, you’re in a privileged position of knowing so much about a business through the interactions and communications that you have to deal with on a day to day basis.

While I’m always going on about the importance of a plan, sometimes that curved ball will come from nowhere and smack you right in the face! It’s then that you really have to think on your feet and get moving and prove your worth!

This year, I’ve been lucky enough to work alongside a care home company on improving their internal communications, and one thing that came out of nowhere for the whole team was the speed in which the Covid vaccine became available to our teams.

For me there are three key areas to help communicating last minute messages:

You need to work at pace:

Sometimes you need drop everything to create that communication, that sometimes means working all hours to get the communication signed off and ready to go.

Being clear with your message:

Sometimes when communicating at pace, information and guidance changes quickly. At the same time, it’s typical that people are hungry to hear the messages too.

With this in mind, it’s important to share a clear message and share what you know. At the same time it’s also important to be up front and not be afraid of saying that you don’t know all the answers.

Provide a clear process for questions and feedback:

As above, if things are changing at pace, it’s a great idea to be able to share a regularly updated Q&A document along with a process for where questions can be asked.

In summary, communicating at pace can be tough, but it’s so exciting at the same time – after all not everything can be planned!