Lessons from the NHS front line

Last night's BBC Panorama programme on maternity care was truly shocking and upsetting.

Among the numerous stories of poor care, understaffing and incompetence on Britain's maternity wards was at least one valuable lesson on internal comms.

There was a tell-tale dialogue between the undercover reporter and a midwife who couldn't explain what happened to all the incident forms she and her colleagues completed, day in day out. I'll paraphrase, but the upshot was "we fill them in and then they go up to management who then sit on them. We never hear anything back". Dismal.

And we're not talking about a bit of potentially useful staff feedback, we're talking real life and death stuff.

The CEO of the trust under fire made a valiant attempt at defending management practices, but you really can't argue with that. It captures clearly the gaping void between senior management and those on the front line.

Of course, internal communication is not nearly as important as the welfare of mums and babies, but I suspect deep down it's part of the problems Panorama highlighted.

How can any employee do a good job if they're not kept informed and up-to-speed on things; if they are given no direction; if they give feedback but receive no response. Whatever the sector, it's a recipe for disaster.

Whether crap communication is the a symptom or cause of failures like these is debatable, but its virtually always a hallmark of a poor performing organisation.

One of the most important things an internal communicator can do inside an organisation is to tune into and expose the views of front line workers like this. Whilst our job is to serve the leadership of an organisation (by ensuring employees are aligned to its strategy, etc) we also have a duty to listen to what everyone else is saying, to relay this to leaders and to demand appropriate responses. Communication is about action, not just words.