A national communications exercise by Barnardo's found that its employees knew as little about the charity's operations as did the public. The exercise was prompted by Barnardo's decision to re-brand itself through national TV and radio advertising. This led to the 18-month exercise, which discovered that a large number of its employees held outdated views of the charity's work. The outcome was the development of several training and communications programmes to rectify the perceptions and change attitudes.

Internal marketing exercise

Questionnaires, workshops and interviews with a cross-section of managers, staff and many of the 200 000 volunteers revealed surprising results about the nature of Barnardo's ‘brand image’. For example, many of its staff believed that the charity had been running orphanages for more than 20 years, yet this was not the case at all.

Barnado's set up an internal marketing department from its HR and advertising teams. The first test for the charity's newly formed internal marketing department was to interpret employees’ feelings about the organization. Banner McBride, a new agency specializing in ‘behavioural change’, claimed that Barnardo's approach to employee relations is becoming increasingly popular with commercial companies who are keen to manage their own change programmes.

Banner McBride's managing director, Michael Pounsford, highlighted: ‘This exercise has been an essential way of getting every member of staff involved in the brand's success. Barnardo's was very keen to avoid its volunteers seeing TV and radio advertisements and being concerned that money wasn't being spent on children.’

However, Pounsford also notes that many HR departments in large organizations may be missing a trick by not working closely enough with marketing professionals to communicate their values and objectives, especially in times of change. ‘Marketing is seen to put an emphasis on lasers, lights and dry ice at the expense of more thoughtful HR thinking. But the two together can help to manage change very effectively.’ John Grounds, head of communications at Barnardo's, admitted that his department needed to be more aware of ‘mutual support’ and consultation. ‘I don't think we are as far down that line as we would like to be, but we are talking to the same audience, so we need to develop a close relationship.’

The fact is that many HR and marketing departments have, historically, been guilty of being overly secretive, often to the detriment of their organizations.

Source: Welch, J. (1988). Barnardo's points the way to HR and marketing link-up. People Management, 4 (1), 13–14