Your Employees Are Already Spokespeople

Your employees don’t need media training to become spokespeople for your company. They already are.

They talk about work at dinner. They answer questions from friends and family. They post on LinkedIn, attend industry events, talk to recruiters and recommend—or don’t recommend—the company to others. And when something significant happens inside an organization, whether it is a layoff, leadership change, restructuring, or a new workplace policy, someone will eventually ask them a very simple question: “What’s really going on over there?”

How they answer matters.

Over the years, I have trained executives and others to prepare for media interviews, presentations and difficult questions. That work is important, but it has also taught me something broader: everyone is a spokesperson within their own circle of influence. Some people may speak to reporters. Most will not. But all of us talk to friends, family members, colleagues, clients, and people in our professional networks. Today, those circles also extend online, where a comment, post or review can reach far beyond the people we know personally.

Last week, I wrote about how a company’s reputation is often shaped in meetings Communications never attends. Decisions are discussed, tradeoffs are weighed, and plans are made, sometimes long before anyone considers how employees, customers, or the public might respond.

But another part of that conversation matters. Once those decisions leave the meeting room, employees become part of the company’s communications whether we planned for it or not.

Companies spend a great deal of time developing their official messages. We create talking points, FAQs, leadership statements, press releases, social media posts and carefully crafted language explaining why something is happening and what it means.

Employees have something those materials do not: firsthand experience.

If a company says it values transparency, employees know whether that has been their experience. If leadership says people are its greatest asset, employees know how people are treated when times get difficult. If an organization talks about flexibility, collaboration, innovation or inclusion, the people working there know whether those values actually show up in the workplace.

That experience carries weight because people tend to trust someone they know who actually works inside the organization. And those conversations are not limited to social media.

A job candidate might quietly call a friend who works at the company before accepting an offer. A client might ask an employee how things are going after a leadership change. Someone at an industry event might ask about a recent reorganization. A former employee might share how the company handled a difficult situation.

None of those conversations will necessarily appear in a media monitoring report, but they are still shaping the company’s reputation.

That is one reason I have always believed internal communications and reputation management are deeply connected. Employees should not learn about major company decisions from the news, social media, customers or office rumors. They should not have to decipher corporate language to understand what a decision actually means for them. And managers should not be left trying to answer questions they were never prepared to address.

This does not mean handing employees a script or expecting everyone to repeat the same talking points. In fact, that can make communication feel even less authentic. It means giving people enough information and context to understand what is happening, why it is happening and what it means.

And sometimes what gets labeled a communications problem isn’t really a communications problem at all. It’s an experience problem.

You can write a thoughtful announcement. You can prepare executives. You can develop strong talking points and explain the business rationale behind a decision. But if employees believe the company handled something unfairly, disrespectfully, or inconsistently with what it says it stands for, no amount of polished messaging will erase that experience.

This is another reason Communications belongs in the conversation earlier.

An experienced communicator can help leaders think beyond the announcement and ask questions that might otherwise come later: How will employees interpret this? What questions will managers get? Where could a disconnect exist between what we say and what people experience? What are employees likely to say when someone outside the company asks them about it?

Those may sound like communications questions, but they are really reputation questions. And reputation is a business issue.

Your reputation isn’t shaped only by what the company publishes. Employees contribute to it every day, through what they experience and what they share with others.

So the question is not whether your employees are representing your company. They already are. The more important question is whether their experience supports the story your organization is telling.

Because when someone really wants to know what a company is like, they may read the website, look at the LinkedIn page or listen to the CEO.

But there is a good chance they will also find someone who works there and ask: “What’s it really like?”

What that employee says next may tell them more about your reputation than anything Communications could ever put in a press release.