I heard this recently at my company. Our group, which is relatively removed from the main business of writing software, doesn’t always have the best relationship with everyone else. I think some of it might be that they don’t understand what we do, and some might be that they don’t see us doing anything often.

My boss was talking about how we might want to do more internal marketing. In other words, presenting some information about what we do, and how we help the business, to other groups.

That sounds strange, and if you have a small company, you might think that everyone knows what each person does. And they understand it.

However that’s not necessarily true. Often people get caught up in their work, and when they’re stressed or overworked, they might feel that others aren’t working as hard. Or that they are doing more than their share, even if everyone does a different job.

It’s natural that anyone feels that way. Just go do some manual labor, like moving boxes. If you work fast and hard, after a short time you’ll be a little annoyed if your partner doesn’t keep up.

Internal marketing is something that you ought to do periodically. If people get along well enough to do this informally, it is more helpful. Venting about your work, issues, or even successes over a drink after work goes a long way. If the workers don’t do this enough, think about buying lunch for everyone and having some informal presentations from different groups. Or even just letting them chat, but teach them to market their job.

It doesn’t have to be impressive or spectacular, but just show how the efforts are relevant to the business. I need to work on some sort of presentation to show what I mean.