Case study on supporting employee engagement with internal communication
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Journal Title
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2023
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Management and International Business (MIB)
Language
en
Pages
73
Series
Abstract
War for talent is a known battle in today’s corporate world. Companies are competing for the same applicants, and they want to keep the best talent inside the organization as long as possible. One way to attract and retain talent is to invest in employee engagement and employer branding. Employee engagement and employer brand can be affected with internal communication. It is known that effective internal communication has multiple positive outcomes and one of them is its effect on employee engagement (Welch and Jackson, 2007). Therefore, improving internal communication is a great way to increase the level of employee engagement. Employee engagement does not only help to keep the talent inside the company and avoid loss of knowledge but also it leads to innovation, competitiveness, and organizational effectiveness (Welch, 2011). Nevertheless, the academic research on this area lacks empirical studies where this relationship between internal communication and employee engagement is explored. So, the purpose of this thesis was to understand the significance of internal communication practices from the employee engagement perspective. The thesis was conducted as a descriptive case study for a case company which was a Finnish medium sized company operating at media field. The objective of the study was to explore the current situation of internal communication and employee engagement in the case company as well as investigate how employee engagement can be supported with internal communication. The data was collected from internal communication and work community surveys as well as from the observations conducted during the research process in the case company. The findings of the study illustrated that the case company has many aspects of internal communication as well as employee engagement that could be improved. The case company did not have clear rules on how to communicate in the company which has resulted the communication developing without clear direction. This has led the information spreading across different channels while no one has taken the responsibility of updating and sharing the information. The company has not invested in employee engagement which can be seen from the eNPS score. In addition, the culture of doing together has suffered from the lack of common goals and targets. Nevertheless, the findings together with the literature suggested a model on how employee engagement can be supported with internal communication in the case company. Internal communication can promote nine important factors that help to strengthen the three psychological aspects of employee engagement (safety, meaningfulness, and availability). By promoting employee engagement with internal communication, organizational benefits, such as competitive advantage, can be achieved besides the individual level benefits.Description
Thesis advisor
Koskinen Sandberg, PaulaKeywords
employee engagement, internal communication, internal corporate communication, strategy communication, employer branding