What Is this Intervention?

Employee newsletters can build performance within organizations by offering how-to articles, case studies, tips and techniques and good-and-welfare content to promote employee morale and relations between employer and employee. Technical issues, product information and general company information can help build performance through communication and employee recognition.

According to author Ronald D. Smith, Chair and Professor in the Communication Department at Buffalo State College, a newsletter is a “periodic publication distributed by organizations to a particular information-seeking audience.” He adds that it is “part news, part letter,” and usually written informally. Most significantly, he notes, a newsletter should impart information that is relevant to the intended audience, that is, information readers find useful, not just messages the publisher wants to sell. Newsletters can be printed, published online, or distributed as a file in PDF format.

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When Should this Intervention Be Used?

Use newsletters to provide information related to one or more performance improvement initiatives. The types of content can vary, depending on the performance goal. For example:

• To help workers who have been introduced to a new technology but not yet developed expertise with it, include relevant tips and techniques. For example, a newsletter might include a column of tips about using Office 2007.
• To provide and maintain ongoing communication between organizations and their employees. For example, product news announcements, management changes, policy changes, organizational achievements.
• To promote successful performance where significant performance gaps are increasing. For example, include a section of tips and techniques with stories on how to succeed in sales and service performance.
• To provide, where there are numerous inquiries addressing the same issues, a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section where frequent queries are listed and answered. Rather than take up valuable time of department heads fielding the same questions repetitively, a newsletter’s FAQ section can effectively provide those answers.

Ultimately, the more forthcoming organizations are with helpful and useful information, the better their employees will perform.

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Issues to Consider when Using this Intervention

Clearly identify how the newsletter will be used to build performance. For selling techniques, clearly state where common gaps exist and how the article will address them. If an article is written to introduce new products, begin with a paragraph stating the informational value contained within so that employees can better acquaint themselves with details to help them market products.

Another way to build performance is to provide workers with positive reinforcement through management appreciation. This can be expressed using stories of employees’ positive involvement in the company, acknowledgement of employees’ longevity in the organization, and awards presented.

Clearly identify the newsletter’s audience. Smith calls audiences “key publics” or communities—“…groups of people in a relationship with your organization.” Typical publics for newsletters include:

• Internal, such as all employees across the entire organization, or a subset of them or members of an organization.
• External, such as suppliers and customers.

Ultimately, the intended audience is the one whose performance is supposed to be improved.

Choose relevant content to promote desired performance. Announcements of training courses, pertinent readings or excerpts to help employees perform more effectively can help where performance gaps have been detected and solutions decided upon to fill them.

When appropriate, author Shel Holtz, Vice President of Crayon Marketing, suggests publishing different versions of the newsletter, each tailored to a unique part of the company, such as a divisions, departments, geographic area, or career group. This not only provides convenience for readers, but ensures some level of harmony among organizational and local messages within the organization.

When appropriate, publish the newsletter in several languages. For example, a Canadian organization should publish newsletters in both official languages—French and English. Even when a language is not an official one, its wide use within the organization might justify a version in another language, such as Spanish-language materials in the US. In addition, organizations have the choice of publishing separate versions of the newsletter in each language, or a single version that has articles in both languages.

Entice readers into newsletter articles. A few ways to do this:

• Write compelling lead paragraphs. A lead paragraph is the first paragraph of a news story and is intended to tell the main point of the story, suggest what is presented later, and do so in a way that encourages readers to continue.
• Write short articles, no more than 400 to 600 words (about 2 to 3 pages of typed, double-spaced manuscript).
• Use short sentences and a conversational style.

Choose the format that’s both convenient for readers and most likely to be read by them. Many newsletters have gone from print format to electronic form, delivered through email or by a website, and in web and PDF formats. Designer Sheila Hoffman offers the comparison described in Table 2. She finds that, for cost reasons, most organizations choose to publish newsletters electronically.

Table 2: Comparison of Formats for Publishing Newsletters (excerpted).

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Examples of this Intervention in Use

Barnes and Noble, Inc. booksellers, prints its newsletter Community, four times a year. Editor Mel Gordon notes that Community is distributed to all 40,000 of Barnes and Noble employees, and builds employee performance by including sections on employee recognition, bookseller recognition, nationwide good-and-welfare and partnership information. Event information, best practices, sales information and corporate news are all ways in which Barnes and Noble’s newsletter fosters employee performance, applying principles earlier mentioned.

Until December 2006, Pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer’s Canadian unit published Pfizerama, a full-color employee newsletter. According to former Managing Editor Wayne Saray, the bi-monthly publication built employee performance by exchanging good ideas between offices. He noted, for example, that “New Brunswick might do something that BC never thought of.” The paper was published in French and English, and was replaced in early 2007 with e-ssentials, an online newsletter to be offered through the company’s intranet.

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References

Abbott, R. F. (2006.) Manage communication to add value. Communication ideas for leaders and managers. Retrieved December 4, 2006 from http://www.communication-newsletter.com/value.htm

Hoffman, S. (2004.) Printed newsletters vs. electronic alternatives, Hoffman Graphics website. Retrieved December 3, 2006 from http://www.hoffmangraphics.com/print-vs-electronic.pdf

Holtz, S. (2003.) Corporate conversations, A guide to crafting effective and appropriate internal communications . AMACOM Division, American Management.

Seidman, D. (2000.) Careers in journalism. LOCATION The Rosen Publishing Group.

Smith, R. (2002.) Strategic planning for public relations. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Smith, Ronald. (2003 Becoming a public relations writer (2nd Edition). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Stolovitch, H. & Keeps, E. (2004.) Training ain't performance. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press.

Zappala, J. M and Carden, A.R., (2004.) Public relations worktext: A writing and planning resource (2nd Edition). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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List of interventions