Implementing Communication Policies

Your Head of Communications reports to Marketing. Marketing reports to the CMO. The CMO needs CEO approval for employee announcements? You built a telephone game. Example: A company needed to announce a policy change. The journey: - Comms writes the message. - Marketing reviews for "brand alignment." - Legal checks for compliance. - HR adds edits. - Executive team debates tone. - CEO makes final approval. Timeline: 3 weeks. By the time it reached employees, half had heard rumors. It was what the delay revealed: Nobody trusts the person they hired to communicate. Companies spend six figures hiring communications experts. Then treat them like junior copywriters. Multiple stakeholders dilute the message. Legal reviews strip out personality. Executive wordsmithing removes humanity. The result? Messages written by committee. Employees tune out corporate-speak. They create their own information networks. Meanwhile, the communications leader gets blamed for poor engagement. Here's what works: Hire someone with judgment. Give them decision-making authority. Let them communicate directly. Review results, not process. The companies with strongest internal communication treat comms as strategic, not service. Their communicators have: CEO access. Real-time information. Authority to act quickly. Messages arrive when relevant. Tone feels authentic. Employees trust what they hear. You can't build trust through approval chains. Let your communicators communicate.

An editor at The Atlantic was accidentally added to a high-level Signal group chat where Trump administration officials were planning military strikes in Yemen. Yes, you read that right. A journalist, in a chat with top government officials, while they were actively discussing where and when to launch missiles. It's an appalling breach of national security. It’s also a teachable moment for employers. If the highest of federal officials can accidentally include a reporter in a thread outlining imminent military action, your company's employees can accidentally include the wrong person in a message about a client, a deal, a product launch, or a sensitive HR issue. This is your reminder to: ‣ Audit your internal communication tools. Who has access to what, and why? ‣ Train employees to think before they type. Not everything needs to be shared via chat, and definitely not in group messages with unclear boundaries. ‣ Define acceptable platforms. Personal WhatsApp groups aren't secure. Neither are random Slack DMs or rogue Teams channels. ‣ Limit use of informal tools for formal business. If it needs to be preserved, secured, or privileged, it shouldn't live in a disappearing message or outside of your network. And if you don't already have a digital communication policy, here are a few essentials: 1. Specify approved platforms for internal and external comms. 2. Define levels of confidentiality and how/where each type of info can be shared. 3. Address personal device usage (BYOD) and security requirements. 4. Outline consequences for noncompliance. 5. Make it real. Don't just write the policy—train on it, talk about it, and revisit it regularly. Because in today's digital world, one accidental message could be all it takes to destroy trade secret protections, create legal liability, or land your company on the front page.

Most employee handbooks are about as engaging as a terms & conditions page. HR spends months writing policies, yet employees skim, sign, and forget. Then when something goes wrong? "Oh, I didn’t know that was a rule." That’s not a compliance issue. That’s a communication failure. The best policies don’t just live in a PDF. They’re lived, breathed, and reinforced daily. Here’s how: - Write like a human. No one wants to decode legal jargon. Make policies digestible, culture-aligned, and easy to search. - Speak their language. If half your workforce speaks Spanish, why is the handbook only in English? - Group similar policies together. Employees shouldn’t have to scroll endlessly to find PTO, remote work, or compliance policies. Make sections a one-stop shop. - Use searchable headings. Employees don’t read policies word-for-word. They search. Make it easy for them to find what they need fast. - Repetition = Retention. Use team meetings, emails, and Slack updates to reinforce key policies before they’re an issue. - Timing is everything. Remind employees of vacation rules before spring break. Be proactive, not reactive. - Don’t just write it—talk about it. New hires should get a walk-through, not just a signature line. Team meetings should highlight key policies before they become problems. HR bulletins and Slack messages should keep policies top-of-mind. - Explain the “why.” People resist change when it feels arbitrary. Tell them why a policy update is happening. Even if they don’t like it, they’ll respect it more. - Document everything. Not just the policy updates, but how and when you communicated them. This protects the company and holds employees accountable. - Train, don’t just inform. Static PDFs? Useless. Mandatory training with real engagement? Very Effective. Employees should practice policies, not just sign off on them. If your employees aren’t following policies, it’s not always on them. Maybe it’s time to rethink how you communicate them. #HRLeadership #CompanyCulture #EmployeeEngagement #WorkplaceSuccess #HRStrategy #CommunicationMatters #FutureOfWork

Develop And Write A Great Policy And Then Assume No One Will Read It Standards and controls, including policies, are an important part of an effective ethics and compliance program. While I have many other #SundayMorningComplianceTip posts that address policy development and writing, there is one important assumption I think policy owners should make when it comes to policies: assume no one will read your policy. Hopefully the relevant employees will read the policy, but the point is to recognize that your busy employees are probably subject to scores of policies and have equally little amounts of time and interest in reading new policies. If we assume that employees are not going to read a new policy, we force ourselves to think a bit more about how to bring the policy to your employees and help them understand the requirements. Here are some examples of how to apply this assumption in practice: 1. Engage Leaders, Managers & Supervisors: You can do this through Compliance Manager Toolkits (a one page summary that helps managers understand their role with respect to the policy and how they can support employees with the new policy) and providing them short Compliance Tips of the Month so they can talk with their teams about some key points about the policy that are relevant to their team and will resonate with them. 2. Marketing Campaign: Embrace the marketing principle of the “Rule of 7” - you need to have multiple messages and communications for the relevant employees to help ensure that they are aware of the policy and the key policy requirements. 3. Help People Learn: This can include training (online or live), engaging them during the policy development stage, providing real life (or at least realistic) FAQs that provide realistic scenarios that relate to the policy, and advising employees on how to deal with any challenges or awkward situations that the new policy might create for them (e.g., how do you decline a gift that violates your new gifts and entertainment policy without burning important business relationships). Even if your employees are going to read all your policies, applying this assumption will only help support both your employees and your ethics and compliance program. Policy documents are just the written version of the policy - there are many other ways that we can communicate a policy to employees and help ensure the words on the page are reflective of the policy in practice. My #SundayMorningComplianceTip series is taking a break for the next few weeks and will return in January. _____ #SundayMorningComplianceTip #EthicsAndComplianceForHumans 📚 Want to get more compliance ideas and suggestions like this? Connect with me here on LinkedIn or get your copy of my book called Ethics & Compliance For Humans (published by CCI Press and available in print and kindle format on Amazon and various other online book stores)

You don't need a hostile work environment to end up in court. You just need a team that never learned how to talk to each other. Over the past decade, as an employment lawyer and founder, I’ve seen one habit consistently prevent workplace claims and save companies millions in litigation costs. It’s not software. It’s not a training platform. It’s not even your policy manual. It’s a shared language for workplace behavior. Most claims don’t begin with bad intent. They begin when one person feels uncomfortable, the other doesn’t see a problem, and no one has the language to close the gap. That’s where shared language comes in. We developed the Workplace Color Spectrum to give teams a common, practical vocabulary for navigating behavior at work. The framework is simple and scalable: - 𝗚𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗻: Intentional and productive - 𝗬𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄: Reactive and concerning - 𝗢𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲: References a protected characteristic and problematic - 𝗥𝗲𝗱: Toxic and requires immediate action When teams align on what these categories mean, three things happen: • Feedback becomes easier to give and receive • Concerns are surfaced earlier—before escalation • Leaders intervene with more consistency and less defensiveness I’ve seen CEOs reference “orange behaviors” in town halls. I’ve watched team members course-correct in real time using this framework. Over time, it becomes part of how people work together. If you’re thinking about implementing it, start here: 1. Introduce the framework with real, everyday examples 2. Train your leaders first—they set the tone 3. Reinforce it through regular team conversations 4. Celebrate when people use it effectively 5. Capture examples that reflect your culture and context Here’s one simple step to start: What does a “yellow behavior” look like in your workplace? Take time this week to document a few real examples, then share them with your team and use them as a jumping-off point for discussion. The more fluently your teams can talk about behavior, the less likely you are to face a conflict that spirals into legal risk. Have you tried using a shared language in your organization? What’s worked—and where have you hit roadblocks?

There’s a quiet danger in HR that no one talks about. Everything looks fine on paper. That’s the issue. It doesn’t show up during audits. It doesn’t appear in your documentation. Most leaders don’t see it coming. Until they feel it. Have you ever paused and asked yourself Why is your organization struggling, while another with similar structure, similar size, even similar policies… is thriving? What’s the difference? It’s rarely effort. It’s rarely intelligence. Sometimes, it’s alignment. A policy can exist… and still not work. Why? Because policies copied from global templates may look impressive — but fail to reflect the organization’s culture. Because procedures layered in legal language make managers hesitant to enforce them. Because teams proudly say, “we treat everyone equally,” while the policy itself ignores operational realities. Because version confusion quietly creates more risk than having no document at all. And perhaps the biggest misconception? That writing the policy is the work. It isn’t. And here’s where many HR professionals get frustrated. They did the work. They drafted the policy. They reviewed compliance. They benchmarked best practice. But what they weren’t taught is this: Creation is technical. Implementation is strategic. A policy must be interpreted. Communicated. Contextualized. Enforced consistently. If managers are not equipped to apply it confidently, if employees don’t understand the intent behind it, if updates are not cascaded clearly, The policy loses credibility. And once credibility is lost, trust erodes quietly. That’s when culture begins to shift in ways leadership didn’t anticipate. Tomorrow, I’m teaching what most policy workshops skip. Not just how to write HR policies and procedures. But how to move from creation to implementation deliberately. How to align policy with culture. How to communicate without resistance. How to build clarity that protects both the organization and its people. Because compliance protects the company. But clarity sustains it. Details are in the comments.