If you were starting up a company and had a robust communications team onboard from day one, I’m sure that before long they would be advising you on your brand identity, corporate colour palette, house style-guide and all the other essential ingredients that go into making organisations a consistently-presented success.
But when does the glossary kick in? How many times have you joined companies and spent the first few days, if not weeks feeling like a Martian on another planet as people rush around you throwing around acronyms and jargon in their conversations and written communications? And be honest… how long is it before those phrases start creeping into your own vocabulary and alienating the new starters that arrive at your very own planet? Have you ever found yourself engaged in a discussion and not actually been 100 per cent sure what the very important acronym stands for? Ha, I knew it.
Enter stage left the glossary; a comprehensive document that should include all the nuances of the language that your company uses. Not only will this document be an invaluable resource for new starters and to help refresh the memories of all employees, it should go hand-in-hand with your style guide to become the tool for communication in your company. Particularly important if you are starting up a brand new company and want to get your employees all understanding the corporate lingo from day one.
How many companies that you’ve worked for have glossaries? How many are up to date? How many are filed on the intranet – somewhere – but never treated as a living document that can be updated by everyone?
The reason this sprang to mind today was my recent foray into the world of Twitter. I’m tweeting, retweeting, downloading twadgets, generating twaffic and tweading away to my heart’s content. However that last sentence alone still doesn’t sit quite right in my mind and I’m sure just alienated a fair few readers… bear with me, I have the answer!
Big thanks to Site Masher for pulling together all the latest lingo into their very own glossary – a Twittonary in fact. Let’s retweet and share to make sure that everyone understands what on earth we’re all going on about and to actually feel less like Martians and alienating people and more like communicators.
Great idea Rach and thanks for this useful post. Every company should have a glossary – it can break down so many barriers and it’s easy for an internal community to create it online and keep it updated.