PanARMENIAN Media is happy to share the following practice with whoever is interested and is ready to consult companies that are willing to implement this useful tool and improve their internal communication matters.

How we came to this

While doing a SWOT analysis at the beginning of the year, we identified that one of our major weaknesses is the inadequate internal communication. Being one of the fastest growing organizations in Armenia, we are facing difficulties in managing the work between the departments and divisions due to our increasing staff and the rapid development of the company.

One of the solutions we came up with, was the creation of an internal newsletter, with the primary aim to fill the information deficiency and help avoiding miscommunication and misunderstandings.

Structure and format

It’s a document with a simple layout consisting of the following fixed sections and headings:

• Announcements
• Acknowledgements
• Munq = Us
• Idiocies and offtopics
• Corporate news
• Partner relations
• Birthdays and holidays
• PanARMENIAN on the net
• It’s interesting to know
• Let’s get acquainted

The main language is Russian (relating to the fact that the working language of the staff majority is Russian), however, while the format is generally informal, everybody’s free to write in Armenian, as well as in English.  Some jargon and mixed language texts might also occur.

The newsletter is being sent out once a week.

Main functions

The newsletter directly addresses several issues and has the following functions:

• Updating the staff on the corporate affairs; new partnerships, clients and achievements; as well as the new services and products developed in the company.
• Providing weekly dose of fun: having an informal format, the newsletter contains lots of jokes and entertaining materials. We write about amusing incidents related to our work and the industry in general.
• Creating a platform for self-expression of the employees, that also helps identifying additional skills that they have. More and more employees are sending their short essays and thoughts to be published in the newsletter.
• Getting to know each other better by the “interviews” section, where 2  employees are being questioned each week. Others get the chance to ask questions that are mainly entertaining and help to reveal hidden qualities of their colleagues.
• Inform about global trends: a special section in the newsletter is created in order to inform the staff about the current global trends related to our work: online journalism, journalism in general, IT and social media.
• Spreading announcements about staff meetings, trainings or call for suggestions for an upcoming project/
• Informing about staff birthdays, congratulating, notifying about celebrations and holidays.
• Expressing gratitude and publicly acknowledging employees that excelled and distinguished during the week
• Describing and sharing some useful software and web services for the more effective work-flows.
• How-to’s and tips for effective organization of the work, e.g. time management, tips on email signature usage, etc..
• Internally promoting corporate social media channels and products.

Organization of the work

The newsletter is being created in a teamwork of the department heads, i.e. the company officers.

At first, we created a basic template and in a lively brainstorming session chose the newsletter’s title: Munq. Munq is the intentionally misspelled word “Menq” (meaning ‘us’ in Armenian) that is mistakenly associated with the Artsakh dialect (where munq = menq).

The newsletter is being prepared during the week and sent out on Friday. With each email, the names of the next interviewees are announced, so that others can send their questions.

Each issue’s final editing is being done by the company CEO, who adds some flavor to the content with his green-italic notes.

Technical solution

At first, we created a simple word template and were editing it by turns. With the next issue we discovered the power of Google Docs and our efficiency drastically increased.

At the moment the newsletter is a Google document, shared between the company’s officers team that’s being edited simultaneously.

Due to the not sufficient computer literacy of some staff members, we were avoiding the option to send out the public Google doc link to the staff mailing list, and were creating a document file (then PDF) to attach to the mailing. The difficulty here was in Google docs’ horrible formatting of the downloaded document. We had to allocate some time for fixing it, or “copy-paste”-ing the google doc’s content to the word template.

Eventually, we simplified the process when the remaining people learned to click proper links in the emails :) and so currently, an email containing the google doc’s preview link is being sent out to the staff.

The file is being duplicated by each issue and the new content is being added.

Pros and cons

The reactions are very positive and the outcome is evident. We have bridged the gap in the internal communication and drastically increased staff’s motivation. Various comments, direct to the management or indirect – e.g. statuses in Facebook, indicate that the employees are eagerly waiting for the newspaper (even counting the days to it’s sending off) and that our efforts pay off properly.

The main disadvantage is that the officers are commited to an additional task that sometimes requires a significant time devotion, however that process is also a subject of optimization.

Further development

By the end of the year, selected content from the newsletter archive might be selected for creation of a corporate “diary” that will display company’s growth over time and bring out pleasant memories from the year.