Why can't you get a Masters in employee comms?

This morning I got a query from an FYA reader in Spain asking me if I know of any Masters programs in employee communications. A quick note to veteran IABC-ers Les Potter and Wilma Matthews turned up nearly nada. Les doesn't know of any, and Wilma pointed to the only one she knows of, the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication's Masters program, but it's pretty broad.  Current areas of study include "intercultural communication and cultural studies, interpersonal communication, performance studies, organizational communication, and rhetorical studies and public communication." That doesn't really sound like the kind of specialization my Spanish colleague was looking for.

Dear blog readers, do you know of any Masters-level programs in employee/organizational communications?

And, if not, which is probably the case, the question is, why not? The answer, of course, is that employee communications is not generally recognized as a distinct profession, but rather as an offshoot or subset of human resources or public relations.

I think over the next 10 years this is bound to change. I've talked about this a lot: employee comms is on the rise, because of many economic, societal and technological changes that are putting huge pressure on big organizations to smarten up and treat their employees as if they are extremely important, and, in fact, a competitive advantage, to their businesses. We now know that companies who do employee communications well also deliver better business results. This knowledge is going to seep into the corporate world and it will eventually raise the game of internal communications.

This trend will also reach the highest levels of academia, and maybe now is a good time for that to happen.

From my super-powerful position as an obscure blogger about employee communications, I officially call upon the business community - specifically, one of the big consulting firms like Mercer, Towers Perrin or Watson Wyatt -- to fund a new chair in employee communications at a North American university. Maybe IABC and Southwest Airlines could chip in.

Wouldn't that be cool?

Comments

[Don]

Kingston university, UK - Internal Communication Management PgDip/MA top-up and Bournemouth Media School Internal Communications Management .

[Ron Shewchuk]

Thanks for pointing to those programs, Don. For everyone's convenience, here are the links to each:

Kingston U: http://www.kingston.ac.uk/pgintcomms/

and here's Bournemouth:

http://courses.bournemouth.ac.uk/3Details.asp?programmeCode=dbac

It looks as if Kingston's Masters is specifically devoted to employee communications, while Bournmouth's is a more general program in which one could probably choose internal communications as a topic for one's research paper.

So, is Great Britain more advanced in how it approaches internal communication? Is there more recognition of the value of internal comms within large organizations over there?

[Laura Hunter]

There's also the Master of Science in Communication program from Northwestern University. As a past student, each class is geared for both internal/external communications purposes. But as any one who's had a memo leaked to the press knows, the line between those audiences often blurs.

http://commweb.soc.northwestern.edu/mscmanagerial/

Laura Hunter MSC '04

[Ron Shewchuk]

Thanks for the link, Laura. Of course you're right about the blurry line between internal and external communications. And any high-level academic pursuit of the field would need to take that into account. I think, though, there's room for more programs with sharply focused look at internal communication as a distinct discipline.

[Greg Marsh]

That would be cool. A colleague of mine is taking master's degree classes in "corporate communications and public relations" at Georgetown University, and I'm sure there's an employee communications component in there somewhere, but it's probably not the focused sort of curriculum you envision.

[Ron Shewchuk]

Yes, and the kind of curriculum I'm envisioning would be subject areas like:

* employee communication as a driver of organizational change

* measurement and the link between communication and engagement

* the nature of bureaucracy and the communicator's role in fighting it

* leadership communication and the role of the CEO

* cross-functional relationships; how employee communications integrates with HR, legal, PR, etc.

* the role of social media inside organizations

* implications of globalization on internal communications

* cross-cultural communication

And so on. I'm sure you could do a masters in any of the above if you enrolled in one of those broad, general programs in PR or communications, but I'm talking about having an actual department, with the head of that department being an employee communications specialist.