Why Most Employees Do Not Understand Corporate Communication
Ask most employees what 'corporate communication' means, and they will describe a newsletter, an email from head office, or a poster in the break room. Ask a CEO the same question under pressure, and they usually understand it is closer to the nervous system of the entire business.
That gap between what most people think communication is and what it actually does is one of the most persistent problems within most organisations; it rarely gets fixed because nobody thinks it needs fixing.
I Saw This Gap Every Week for Thirty Years
In my career at organisations including Electronic Arts, Virgin Media, and Etisalat, I noted the same pattern repeating. Staff treated internal updates as background noise to skim past, something to be endured rather than read, while HR genuinely believed they were being kept informed.
Meanwhile, leadership assumed that a message sent was a message received and understood. It rarely was. The information had gone out. Almost nothing had actually landed.
The same instinct produced things like "Employee of the Month" certificates handed out in departments of three people, or a glossy "Most Valued Employee" award with no pay rise attached. Everyone understood exactly what that actually communicated, and it was not appreciation.
Communication is not the memo; it is the belief it creates.
The mistake is treating communication as the act of sending something out. It is not. Communication is whatever belief actually forms in the mind of the person receiving it, regardless of what the sender intended. A brilliantly written memo that nobody trusts has communicated nothing except distrust.
A clumsy, honest conversation that leaves someone genuinely reassured has communicated everything that mattered. Most employees never see this distinction because nobody has ever shown it to them; they assume the newsletter and the truth are the same thing, when the two are frequently unrelated.
Why Lighthouse PR Works With the Whole Organisation, Not Just the Top
This is why Lighthouse PR does not stop at advising the boardroom. We run internal communication audits that test what employees actually believe after a message goes out, not just what was sent. We train managers at every level to carry a message accurately rather than relying on a single company-wide email to do the job.
A strategy is only real once the people executing it understand it in their own words, and that understanding has to be built deliberately. It does not happen on its own, no matter how well the original message was written.
The gap between sending and understanding is not a communication department problem. It is a leadership problem wearing a communication department's clothes.
Closing it takes more than better wording; it takes treating every employee as someone who has to actually believe the message before they will act on it, which is the standard Lighthouse PR holds every client to, inside the business as much as outside it.
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About the Author
Steve Gardiner (exec MBA) is a senior marketing and commercial leader at Lighthouse PR, bringing global experience from Accenture, Electronic Arts, Virgin Media, Telekom, and Etisalat. Latterly, as VP Business at Etisalat, he was responsible for $1.8B in revenue.
Today, Steve applies his strategic, marketing, and growth expertise to support Lighthouse PR clients as part of the agency’s service offering.
About Lighthouse PR
Lighthouse PR is a leading PR agency in Romania that works with a select number of organisations across Central and Southeastern Europe, delivering media relations, reputation management, crisis communications, social media and an extensive range of business growth and business continuity services — always led by senior practitioners.
We hold exclusive membership for Romania and the Republic of Moldova in both the Eurocom worldwide PR network and the CCNE, Europe's leading crisis communications network.
Lighthouse PR: Clear. Concise. Convincing.