Change the communication channel: Web, paper or face-to-face: knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each channel can help you choose the one that best suits your message.

Professional communicators have messages to communicate. They also have a choice of channels. Do different messages belong on different channels? The answer is yes. The Web is best for short, quick information retrieval; paper, for new, long and complicated ideas; face-to-face, for overcoming resistance to change. Knowing which medium is best suited to your particular communication needs is the key to ensuring that your message is received and understood.

The Web: Best for short, quick information retrieval

Not everything belongs on the Web.

Messages that are new, long and complicated belong on paper, not on web pages.

Understanding is higher when that kind of message is read and absorbed from a paper document.

The Web's strength is its search capability, not ease of comprehension. The Web is at its best when employees can use it to locate small pieces of data buried in big data sets. For example:

* Finding the temperature for a welding operation

* Locating a mailing address

* Checking the accumulated value in a 401(k)

The Web's use of hyperlinks is the reason for its lower comprehension. Links focus the mind on navigating, squeezing out the mental energy left for comprehending. Click one and you may be taken to the definition of a highlighted word; click another and you may be taken to a picture; click yet another and a video commentary begins, or an e-mail page opens inviting your comments to the site host. Thinking about where to go next is the dominant mental activity, not understanding the content.

The Web user is a hunter, leaning forward, senses pricked, visually aware, searching and eventually tracking down the targeted information. This is a great mental state for searching but a much poorer one for comprehending.

PROVING THE POINT

* Engineering students using web pages with links missed 33 percent more test questions than students using the same web pages without links.

Source: D. Hailey and Christine Hailey, "Hypermedia, Multimedia and Reader Cognition: An Empirical Study," Technical Communication, Third Quarter 1998.

* The additional mental task of navigating links on the Web steals mental resources away from comprehension, explaining the users' need for print when the material is complex.

Source: J. Spyridakis, "Guidelines for Authoring Comprehensible Web Pages and Evaluating Their Success," Technical Communication, Third Quarter 1998.

* Hypermedia (that is, a web page with links) affords the most advantage for users in specific tasks that require rapid searching through lengthy or multiple information resources. Outside of this context, existing media are better than or as effective as the new technology.

Source: A. Dillon, "Hypermedia as an Educational Technology: A Review of the Qualitative Research Literature on Learner Comprehension, Control and Style," Review of Educational Research, Vol. 68, No. 3, 1998.

Paper: Best for learning new, long, complicated ideas

A paperless office only makes sense if you have nothing new, long and complicated to communicate. Think paper when communicating a:

* Major change to your benefit plans.

* Big strategic change in your business direction.

* New software system.

Paper's strength is comprehension. People use the Web; they read paper. When reading from paper, employees can devote all their mental resources to understanding. On paper, the author controls the navigation: The reader turns the page, reads, then turns another page.

It is wrong to say that younger people can comprehend directly from web pages while older people need paper. Age has nothing to do with it. The cause of the Web's lower comprehension is navigation, not age.

Research with students as young as 10 by Wendy Sutherland-Smith of Monash University in Australia shows the frenetic approach that everyone brings to the Web. One student, Jake, 11, said, "On the Internet, you have to be really quick and can go lots of places to find out heaps of stuff, but with books, you need to go slower." Another student, Sue, 10, said, "You need time to look at the book, but, like, you need to be real fast at typing and clicking to find the stuff you want on the Net."

"Snatch-and-grab" is how Sutherland-Smith describes the behavior of these very young Web users. However, when these same students are given a book, she describes how they become quieter, lean back, relax and begin reading.

The calmness of paper, with its lack of navigation, frees mental resources for the difficult task of comprehending.

PROVING THE POINT

* The IRS studied its communication of tax law changes to its call center employees. Improving the online web pages increased employee call center accuracy by 10 percent. Printing the same web pages on paper and leaving them in employees' cubicles raised accuracy by 42 percent.

Source: J. Brooke et al., "Technical Communication Team: Test Call Results," IRS, U.S. Government Printing Office, 2000.

* Six studies show that when web page content is new, links often confuse the users and lower comprehension. However, as users become more familiar with the topic, comprehension from web pages begins to approach that traditionally found on paper.

Source: K. Lawless et al., "Knowledge, Interest, Recall and Navigation: A Look at Hypertext Processing," Journal of Literacy Research, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2003.

* A review of seven studies shows that people learning a new software program prefer print rather than online instructions. After six months of experience with the program, however, the preference for print begins to fade.

Source: K. Smart, "Assessing the Need for Printed and Online Documentation: A Study of Customer Preference and Use," Journal of Business Communication, Vol. 38, No. 3, 2001.

* A study examined 100,000 U.S. high school and university students practicing for upcoming SAT and GRE examinations by using an online test-preparation service. Only 20 percent of these students even attempted one reading comprehension exercise even though they knew reading comprehension accounts for half the total verbal score on the tests.

Source: A. Trotter, "Online Test-Preparation Habits Examined," Education Week, Vol. 24, No. 1, 2004.

Face-to-face: Essential for overcoming resistance to change

Choose face-to-face communication when you need to overcome employee resistance. More than 50 years of research into how words change behavior is clear: People change their behavior when someone in their group whom they know and trust adopts the new behavior and recommends it to the others.

Formal communication from a faraway source (town hall meetings, company newspapers, web sites, broadcast e-mails) does not change employee behavior. The words that change employees' behavior appear in informal conversations.

Yet formal communication is still essential. Town hall meetings, company newspapers, web sites and e-mails create awareness. They push the topic into informal conversations. But formal communication does not do the heavy lifting; it does not change resisting employees.

This is critical knowledge for professional communicators. No matter how many messages are blasted out of headquarters, it will never be enough. Face-to-face must be added to the communication mix. Professional communicators must equip managers to do their own face-to-face communication within their own teams.

How do you know the local managers will support the change during the critical conversations? You don't. However, you increase the likelihood of their support by treating them as what they are: the most critically important link in the communication process.

PROVING THE POINT

* Consumer behavior research shows that a word-of-mouth recommendation is 13 times more powerful than print or television advertising when it comes to buying a product for the first time.

Source: E Sultan et al., "A Meta-Analysis of Applications of Diffusion Models," Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 27, 1990.

* In a study of mergers, formal communication had no direct effect on synergies. However, informal communication (face-to-face and small group) had a large effect. Every unit of informal communication added to the communication mix was associated with a one-half unit increase in merger synergies (beta = 0.53).

Source: P. Whalen, "How Communication Drives Merger Success," IABC Research Foundation, 2001.

* Hay Group research found that communication from one's own manager creates four times more employee support than a senior manager town hall-type meeting, and nine times more employee support than an article in the company newspaper.

Source: Hay Group, "Communication Measurement--An Oxymoron Bites the Dust," Strategic Communication Management, February-March 1997.

This article is based on a larger report, "Communicating Big Change." The full report is available as a free download from the Larkins' web site, www.larkin.biz.