Marie works as a senior Sister in a large hospital. One of the key communications vehicles is the fortnightly Team Brief written by the Chief Executive. She is supposed to assemble her team together for 30-45 minutes, read out the brief and then discuss its relevance to her area. However, as all her nurses work on the wards, there is absolutely no chance of taking them away from patients all at once. She just leaves copies in the staff area for them to read. Nobody does.

Fred is a supervisor in a Warehouse. He too has a weekly team brief which he has to read out to his storekeepers and fork lift drivers,. He has tried but he is not the best reader in the world and his staff think it is boring. They also feel that the content is only very rarely relevant to them and more often than not about the assembly lines or the staff areas. He has to do it so he goes through the motions but his people tell him it’s a waste of time.

Brian is the owner of a large process based company. When asked about how he tackled communication, he pointed to an eight page glossy magazine which he tried to get out every two months, but didn’t always succeed. He figured largely in it as many of his employees worked shifts and did not see him for long periods. The workforce view was somewhat different to his perception. “ Brian means well but the magazine is really sugar coated to appeal to customers rather than the workforce. There is little about the issues we want to know about and it’s usually out of date when we see it. Stories about golf days for the sales staff and Brian dressing up for Red Nose day don’t go down to well with the shop floor. “

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