UNICEF Internal Communication: Strategies, Challenges, and Solutions

This report provides an analysis of UNICEF's internal communication system. It examines the various methods employed, including email, newsletters, and the intranet, particularly the use of SharePoint for global employee communication. The report highlights the advantages of SharePoint, such as ...Read More

Running head: COMMUNICATION
Internal communication of UNICEF
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1COMMUNICATION
UNICEF: Internal Communication system
The United Nations Children’s Fund or most commonly known as UNICEF is program
by the United Nation, whose purpose is to provide developmental and humanitarian assistance to
mothers and children in the developing countries (UNICEF 2017).
Internal communication system is the function, which is designed for effective
communication among the employees of an organization. This is a two-way process. There are
various ways of internal communications, such as, email, telephonic conversation, newsletters,
notices, leaflet, booklet, poster, websites, human resource portal and face to face interactions
(Men 2014).
Like any other organizations, UNICEF also uses the above methods for communicating
with the employees. Along with these, it also introduced intranet in 2009 and re-launched it on
the SharePoint platform in 2014 for maintaining the communication process with its employees
globally. Through intranet, the organization maintains a focal point for sharing educational and
training documents for all the employees, creates internal communication plan for various
activities, disseminates many internal communication products, like, international broadcast
messages, blog post, newsletters, presentations, FAQs, webiners, office stories and manages the
internal mobile apps and encourages more employees to use these communication products
(UNICEF 2017).
SharePoint platform is a collaborative web based platform, integrated with MS Office. It
is used to store, share, access and organize the business information of a company from any
device using cloud computing. Employees of UNICEF use SharePoint for communicating among
themselves and with the authority (Van Beneden 2015).

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The advantages of using SharePoint are as follows:
 It offers accessibility to cloud, resulting in more collaboration from any device and at any
point of time.
 Mobile access features make SharePoint quite user-friendly. It also allows the UNICEF
employees to access the intranet even from the field.
 MS Office integration allows the employees to access the MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint
and other products easily for their job and it is accessible by others when they are doing a
collaborative job.
 The security options are greater in SharePoint that allows for enhanced authorization
protocols and greater authentication so that the user access is completely individualized.
This allows the users to access only the relevant information in the intranet for their work
and none of the unnecessary information comes up (Stuart 2016).
The disadvantages of SharePoint are as follows:
 The search options need many internal customizations; hence, a lot of time needs to be
spent on customizing the platform for the organization.
 The features are not easy for a new user and SharePoint also does not support any public
websites for browsing to complete their work (Van Beneden 2015).
 Apps are difficult to use and sometimes isolated and unmanageable.
It can be recommended that, since SharePoint is a new platform, especially for the new
employees, UNICEF must arrange training for them before creating their access. In many cases,
the employees cannot understand the customized features and they make critical mistakes while
accessing the platform. It creates a risk for data loss and security threat.

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Internal communication chain refers to the structure of communication of the
organization. In UNICEF, it works like other corporate houses. The head of the organization
addresses the employees directly through newsletters, emails, web conference for any major
announcement and the structure followed is the Pyramid network. In this network, the CEO,
chairperson or MD of UNICEF directly communicates with different departments or regional
offices in different locations. The head of the organization occupies the top position of every
department and hence, the internal communication network structure takes the pyramidal form.
In this network, diagonal or sideways communication usually takes place. The organization head
uses various channels to communicate with the employees across the world. On the other hand,
the employees also follow the hierarchy for responding to the messages (unicef.org 2017).
In the context UNICEF’s internal communication, Munter’s ‘Communication Strategy
Model’ can be applied. It is a cyclical communication model between communicator and
audience and the two way process of message and response. It also adds cultural context and
channel choice. This circular model is more effective in two-way communication within an
organization. This theory starts with organization as the communicator and its employees as the
audience. UNICEF delivers its messages via various channels to its employees and their
responses come as feedbacks (Bharadwaj 2017). Even if the internal communication network
follows the pyramidal structure, the communication process takes the circular structure, as stated
in the Munter’s model. UNICEF communicates with its employees through the head of the
organization, and the employees respond to the company messages by giving feedbacks to their
immediate supervisor. Hence, a circular process of internal communication is followed.
From the above discussion, it can be recommended that, UNICEF should make
improvements in their feedback section for the employees. The organization has established the

4COMMUNICATION
methods for delivering messages to their global employee base, but the feedback system for the
employees are not designed properly and efficiently. In many cases, the responses from the
employees do not reach the higher management, and the authority does not get proper feedbacks
for their policies, messages or notices. Hence, the organization must focus on the efficient
designing of the feedback system for the employees for a more effective two way internal
communication plan.

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References
Bharadwaj, A.V., 2017. Constructing Communication Strategy Templates for Managerial
Persuasion and Argumentation Cases. International Journal of Marketing & Business
Communication, 6(1).
Men, L.R., 2014. Strategic internal communication: Transformational leadership, communication
channels, and employee satisfaction. Management Communication Quarterly, 28(2), pp.264-284.
Stuart, A., Ims Health Incorporated, 2016. Dynamic linking in sharepoint (TM). U.S. Patent
9,436,774.
UNICEF, 2017. UNICEF's mission statement. [online] UNICEF. Available at:
https://www.unicef.org/about/who/index_mission.html [Accessed 1 Nov. 2017].
unicef.org, 2017. UNICEF - Communication for Development - Vision and Mission. [online]
UNICEF. Available at: https://www.unicef.org/cbsc/index_42334.html [Accessed 1 Nov. 2017].
Van Beneden, P., 2015. What does information governance really mean for sharepoint?. IQ: The
RIM Quarterly, 31(1), p.49.