Internal newsletters
ⓒ Marja Flick-Buijs
Beccy Downes has produced newsletters for Norwich Union and NHS Direct. Her current role involves balancing her busy duties as Mental Health Information Support Coordinator with producing a quarterly newsletter that’s distributed to 3,000 members of staff.
I inherited the newsletter from a predecessor of my current job role so the framework was already set for my first venture into writing… or so I thought.
Trying to produce a new incarnation of a long-standing newsletter is possibly more difficult than producing one from scratch.
I had to conform to the organisational form and style, and wanted to make my version consistent to some extent with what had gone before, but also bring a whole new interpretation and vision to it, breathe new life into it, and, hopefully, maintain the standard of the newsletter from the past months and years.
The idea of an internal newsletter is to communicate the activities and policies of one section of the organisation with the wider organisation as a whole. One of the main challenges is your readership, as getting even a little bit of knowledge or information across to people who are very busy and don’t have time to trawl the news, information and policies for themselves can be difficult when they aren’t sure they have time to even read your newsletter!
I have established regular features to give it some structure, but also try and get different contributions from members of the team for each issue, partly so that they will feel involved with the newsletter themselves (and may be more likely to read and distribute it), but also because I accept and value the fact that their knowledge on different subjects is much greater than mine.
It provides the newsletter with a variety of voices and viewpoints, so I make an effort to get people who have interest in different subjects to report on them in turn. In addition, it gives the newsletter a bit more credibility throughout the organisation to have features on certain subjects written by the people who are the experts in that field.
Of course there can be difficulties in actually physically obtaining the articles. Some people need more reminders than others! And of course there is always the risk that the articles may not be quite what you were looking for and then you have to either find a way to work them into the newsletter, take it back to the contributor for more work, or make the changes yourself. Diplomacy is an important skill in this job!
I have conducted some interviews the newsletter, and this again can be tricky when people are a) very busy or b) living in the furthest corner of the country from you. I tend to prepare the questions in advance and then if I don’t actually interview them face-to-face, I can ask them the questions over the phone, or just send the list off in an email.
I always invite readers to provide feedback on the newsletter – it trickles in and is so rewarding when it does. Even if people have negative comments, it’s really helpful to know that they’re reading it, and it gives you the motivation continuously work on improving it.
Occasionally you come across a real gem of a comment that you can make into a story or feature. I’ve had several people send through offers of help and contribute ideas. However, you really can’t rely on getting any feedback at all, so expect little and regard anything you do receive as a bonus!
One of the biggest obstacles when writing an ‘organisational’ newsletter is that it is only a small part of the job – I never know exactly how much time I’ll have to produce it, especial as I have to drop it at a moment’s notice if something else comes up – it’s always the last priority, which is a shame. I find myself juggling several things at once, so time management is very important!
The best way I have found to counter this (and I am still learning how after nearly 18 months and five issues!) is to set realistic deadlines and to communicate any problems to colleagues and to the manager who reviews it for sign off.
While there are no official print deadlines, I do have an obligation to turn out an issue every quarter, and planning ahead really does make the difference.
