Debra Corey
2 min read
In my last IMPACT blog I talked about the key reasons for communications, explaining why it’s critical to put time and effort into developing your communications campaign. In this blog I’m going to introduce you to a tool I’ve created to help you achieve this objective, and that’s through the IMPACT model, something I developed from over 30 years of working in Reward roles and on communication projects. This model, and this one word, will help you understand and action the key steps of effective and impactful communications.
So why IMPACT, why name it this? Here are my 3 reasons:
1. Explains all of the critical steps
As we all know, communications is often not a simple task, trying to get everything to work well together can be challenging. In developing the model I looked at all of the steps we need to take to ensure our communications is effective, and identified these six critical steps. Each of the IMPACT steps focuses on tasks, processes and actions to be taken when we communicate to our employees, overcoming challenges to meet our objectives.
2. Easy to remember
There’s a variety of research showing how quickly we forget information, ranging from 40 - 80% forgotten by the end of the day. Regardless of the percentage, we all know that in this busy world where we are inundated with information - we will forgot most of what we hear/read! For this reason I created a model that should be easy to remember, having one easily remembered word to spark the memory of the other six words (and critical steps).
3. Links to the objective
I didn’t want to pick just any word for the model, but a word that would link/connect back to an objective of communication. The word IMPACT seemed perfect, as the word means to have an effect or influence on someone, which is exactly what we’re aiming to do through our communications. So it’s a double win - we remember the one word and it (1) helps trigger us to remember the critical steps and (2) helps trigger us to remember what we are trying to achieve!
