Communications and stakeholders

So soon after NBN Co bungled its restructure - leaving it to a leak of the internal e-mail - Internode has done the same thing.

Both share the position of not being listed and hence don't have the discipline of needing to inform equity markets in an orderly fashion. This is what results in a process at listed firms of major restructure communications being staged through notices provided to the stock exchange before or at opening and staff comms being triggered at the same time.

My only comparable experience was at Unwired/vividwireless. we didn't issue a release to announce the departure of David Spence. We did, however, have it fully drafted as a "today we confirmed" release and hit send as soon as the story got outside (took 3 days!).

Stuart Corner wrote;

It took Internode all day to respond. (We received its announcement at 17:49) and the company was ducking for cover. The statement opened by saying: "As this was a primarily internal change, this is the only public comment Internode will make about this restructure." ...

Tapper said "We have a vast amount of technical skill and knowledge at Internode, with many long-standing employees. It is very much full steam ahead at Internode."

After the way the company handled this, nobody is going to buy that line.

Elsewhere Stuart noted "Tapper was also reported to have alluded to "some very difficult times, especially over the last 12 months," on which he did not elaborate."

All the actions of a company are communicative - and they affect not just shareholders and current employees. They effect current customers, prospective customers and prospective employees.

It is something about the modern mindset of senior executives that they have forgotten all about "stakeholder theory".


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