The Naked Truth About Great HR Communication

I’ve been doing HR communication for about 150 years. I’ve seen my share of good communication and more than enough bad communication to say I don’t want to see any more junk. I wrote down this list. It’s blunt. It’s the naked truth.

The Naked Truth About Great HR Communication.

1. You’ll never get the exact right word.
2. The exact right word doesn’t matter.
3. Communication integrates words and design.
4. Without a good design, your communication gets pitched in the trash.
5. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it think.
6. Throwing in the kitchen sink makes a mess.
7. If you write like people talk, they’ll get it.
8. If you write like you’re in high school English class, you’ll fail.
9. If you’re not a good writer, acknowledge it and put down that red pen.
10. Heard of the Tower of Babel? It had more than one editor.
11. One edit is good; two is bad; any more is a disaster.
12. Leaving some raw edges in communication makes it real.
13. Stock photography of impossibly happy and diverse employees is a joke.
14. Believe it or not, people go to school to study communication. You didn’t.
15. What you learned laying out your 8th Grade newspaper doesn’t count.
16. Just because you know the words “Sans Serif” doesn’t qualify you as a typeface expert.
17. Employees need stories to remember.
18. Employees roll their eyes at corporate speak.
19. If you write in corporate speak, you should be looking for another line of work.
20. There’s no such thing as a small change in graphic design.
21. Great communicators spend a ton of time on design elements that you’ll never know about.
22. If designers didn’t spend that time, you’d notice.
23. Effective editors question every single one of their edits — just like great writers.
24. There are lots of different ways to say things.
25. If you don’t close your eyes and think about who you’re communicating with, it won’t work.
26. You’re not communicating to your bosses, you’re communicating to employees.
27. There’s nothing wrong with repeating yourself. In fact, you should.
28. There’s no synonym for synonym.
29. About the time you’re getting tired of what you’re creating is when most people hear it the first time.
30. Employees still like printed materials.
31. You have to get to visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners. Otherwise, you’ve done one-third of your job.
32. People hate surprise more than change.
33. You wonder why people don’t look at your online stuff? It’s because you don’t know a UX specialist.
34. Just like you do with your leased car, keep your pixel miles to a minimum.
35. Communication experts want to help you. Let them.