Telling People Once Is Not Telling Them
A policy issued at hiring and re-signed annually has been communicated to nobody. What actually transfers is smaller and more frequent.
Communication of this policy
Enforced
As written
This policy will be issued to all employees on commencement and will be available on the intranet.
What happens
Issued and available, both of which are true and neither of which is communication.
The intranet copy is findable by somebody who already knows it exists and is looking for it.
Enforced in the administrative sense. The understanding it is supposed to produce is produced by something else entirely.
Issuing a document is not communicating a rule. The distinction is obvious stated plainly and is ignored by essentially every organisation.
The maintenance work in “Telling People Once Is Not Telling Them” matters after software selection as much as before it. For teams assessing Monitask resources for remote desktop monitoring software in relation to remote desktop monitoring software, rollout should include manager guidance, employee notice, a review date and a simple route for reporting inaccurate data or a setting that no longer matches the written rule.
What issuing achieves
Evidence, which is real and which the acknowledgement note covers.
For a separate benchmark relevant to “Telling People Once Is Not Telling Them”, consult the CERT insider-risk research. Use it to test purpose, notice, permissions, retention and response procedures against the proposed operating model rather than treating a generic checklist as proof that the rule works.
Availability, for the small number of people who go looking.
And nothing else.
What actually transfers
Something said out loud by somebody they report to. The single most effective channel and the least used.
A short, specific message at a moment when it is relevant — the week somebody starts travelling, the day a new system arrives.
What happened to a colleague, which is the strongest channel of all and is not within the organisation's control.
And repetition, which is the part nobody budgets for.
The frequency problem
Rules are communicated once, at the point of maximum information overload, and never again.
A new starter receives the policy in a batch with the pension, the holiday process and the fire procedure. Whatever is retained from that morning, it is not the acceptable use document.
Which means the rules have been communicated at exactly the moment nobody can absorb them.
What a realistic arrangement looks like
Five minutes at induction, covering four or five rules, delivered by a person. Not the document.
A line in a team meeting when something changes, from the manager rather than from a circular.
And one annual reminder that is about the rules rather than about signing — different content from the re-acknowledgement, which is an administrative task.
Three touches a year, none of them long.
The test
Ask three people what the rules are.
Not whether they have read the policy, which they will say yes to. What are the rules. If three people give three different answers, the document has been issued and nothing has been communicated.
What to stop doing
Measuring acknowledgement completion as though it were understanding.
A hundred per cent completion rate reported upward implies something it does not establish, and the resource spent chasing the last few signatures would do more as five minutes in an induction.
Three touches a year
Five minutes at induction, a line in a team meeting when something changes, and one annual reminder about the rules rather than about signing. None of them long and none of them the document.
What to stop reporting
Acknowledgement completion as though it were understanding. The figure describes a signature collection exercise and is presented upward as though it described something else.
Measuring the wrong thing
A hundred per cent acknowledgement reported upward implies understanding it does not establish. The effort chasing the last signatures would do more as five minutes in an induction.
The test for communication
Ask three people what the rules are. Not whether they read the policy, which they will affirm. If three answers differ, the document was issued and nothing was communicated.
Three touches, none of them long
Five minutes at induction, a line in a team meeting when something changes, and one annual reminder about the rules rather than about signing.
The document is none of these. It is the record, and the record and the teaching have been treated as the same artefact, which is why organisations with full acknowledgement rates have workforces who cannot state the rules.