Trevor Cook

Best Buy's employee driven communications

Management Leaders Turn Attention to Followers - WSJ.com.

Best Buy also learned the hard way that rank-and-file employees -- not bosses -- determine the fate of clever-sounding software tools designed to share knowledge within big organizations. Best Buy's bosses have bought several such tools and urged employees to embrace them. "But the problem is, people don't use them," Ms. Ballard says.

Instead, she says, front-line employees at the 140,000-worker company created their own site, www.blueshirtnation.com, where employees share tips, gripes and personal interests. It's proven far more popular than its management-driven predecessors.

I'm sure many more organisations will have to move down the path of having employee driven comms sitting beside the usual range of management-driven stuff. Usually, the idea of something like this fills managers with fear and anxiety but the times have changed. In an age of self-publishing and social networking, the excuses and rationale for not letting people talk amongst themselves are rapidly evaporating.

Union Renewal

Union Renewal.

What is the trade union movement doing to organise young, minority and flex workers? How does it cope with globlisation? What are its activities at the local level? How does it put social justice on the agenda?

A new website focused on the questions of renewal that contront trade unions around the world.  A great use of social media.

Email reliance damages employee communications

PR Disasters & Shel Holtz

‘A human resources consulting firm called Novations has surveyed 2,046 senior HR and training and development executives and found that many have poor internal communications skills… A Novations spokesperson said: “The survey results aren’t just disturbing, they’re also startling, given the time and money devoted to internal communication.” 35%—Senior management relies too much on email (and not enough on face-to-face communication) 30%—Senior management assumes a single message is adequate 28%—Senior management has no feedback loop in place 24%—Senior management’s messages often lack clarity 03%—Senior management communicates too much, too often

Ways to recognise employees

From Michael Specht:

• Almost 10 years ago Dr John Sullivan wrote a great list of 63 ideas for retention, many of which are actually recognition ideas.
• 15 Ways to Recognize Employees
• The 10 Best Ways to Recognise Employees
• 10 Ways to Recognise Employees
• Overview of the book 1,001 Ways to Recognise Employees
• The Best Ways to Recognise Employees
• 10 Ways to Recognise and Reward employees
• 9 Ways to Keep Employees Engaged
• Stop Demotivating Your Employees
• Read The 1,001 Rewards & Recognition Fieldbook

Poor communication a key cause of unhappiness at work

Age Management blog: "The Happiness at Work Index has some thought-provoking findings: a quarter of employees describe themselves as happy at work, one in five says they're not; women are happier than men; the happiest employees are the ones working for smaller companies; the longer you stay with an organisation or in the same role, the less happy you are; people who work part-time are happiest; the happiest employees are the ones aged 55 and up and 73 per cent cite relationships with colleagues as being the key factor in happiness at work. And one of the biggest causes of unhappiness at work is the lack of communication from the top".

Human beings are a resource

Ted Keating of Tallai in Queensland writes on the Sydney Morning Herald's letters page this morning about a reunion of former employees at a company he worked 10 years ago.

Ten years on, while many former employees are now highly paid executives within multinationals, they still reach back to something that mattered to them, something that felt good to be a part of - an unrestrained respect for the individual, whether they were an employee, a customer or a supplier.

The company stands as one of the finest examples I've seen of how fair work practices and inclusiveness bring benefits to both the employer and employee.

Read the whole letter here.

Eight key drivers of employee engagement

A review of a series of recent studies of employee engagement identified the following key factors:

• Trust and integrity – how well managers communicate and 'walk the talk'.
• Nature of the job –Is it mentally stimulating day-to-day?
• Line of sight between employee performance and company performance – Does the employee understand how their work contributes to the company's performance?
• Career Growth opportunities –Are there future opportunities for growth?
• Pride about the company – How much self-esteem does the employee feel by being associated with their company?
• Coworkers/team members – significantly influence one's level of engagement
• Employee development – Is the company making an effort to develop the employee's skills?
• Relationship with one's manager – Does the employee value his or her relationship with his or her manager?

Nothing radical or new in this list but interesting to see the reseach confirming some of the verities.

So you need a book to realise this?

Amazon.com: 73 Ways to Improve Your Employee Communication Program: Books: Jane Shannon.

"One of the best ways to learn about your organization, business issues, goals, and challenges is to talk with your colleagues about what's going on..."

Lee says this is an excellent book but its hardly a devastating insight so I'm not sure why Amazon chose it for the blurb. As anyone who has worked in a medium or large organisation knows, informal communications is more interesting, sometimes more accurate than the powerpoint presentations and newsletters but often it is useless or malicious gossip.

Downsizing hurts the survivors too

Downsizing damages mental health.

Staff who survive a round of corporate downsizing run a significantly increased risk of suffering mental health problems because of the increase workload they face once colleagues have left.

A study by Finnish researchers published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health showed that men who worked for a downsized company were 50 per cent more likely to be given a prescription for drugs such as antidepressants or sleeping pills than those whose had not been through a period of redundancies.

New UK survey on employee engagement

Survey published on employee 'passion for work'.

The main drivers of employee engagement are: • having opportunities to feed your views upwards • feeling well informed about what is happening in the organisation • thinking that your manager is committed to your organisation.

They also found that:
• women are more engaged with their work than men
• older employees are more engaged than younger employees.

'Workers Online' bows out

Workers Online : Editorial : 2006 - Issue 355 : Seven Year Itch.

When we began publication back in 1999, we created a clearly defined role. In the absence of a coherent media policy for the movement, Workers Online would package the news that should be published, the way we wished it would be - tabloid and in your face.

It is perhaps a reflection of the success of this idea that in 2006 the media does cover union affairs again, tabloid press and TV in particular. The niche we set out to occcupy has been back-filled.

Back in 1999, it is fair to say that Workers Online was at the cutting edge of political activism on the web. Even our dearest friends would concede our look, and more importantly, our model is getting a little retro. Back then, we thought we were constructing virtual universe - today, post dot.com buts - we know this was only ever a communications tool.

Workers want more happiness

The Age Blogs: Management Line / Can't buy me, love Archives.

Professor Ciaran O'Boyle from the Royal College of Surgeons has told the Irish Management Institute that workers are now less interested in financial gains and more interested in personal achievement and fulfilment.

As O'Boyle says, companies that label their workforce as "human resources" and "assets" are ignoring this big change.

Are Your Employees Engaged?

Chief Executive Group, CEO.

Recent research has surfaced that quantifies the difference employee engagement can make to the bottom line. ISR, a Chicago-based HR research and consulting firm, conducted a study of over 664,000 employees from 71 companies around the world.  Most dramatic among its findings was the almost 52 percent difference in one-year performance improvement in operating income between companies with highly engaged employees as compared to those companies with low engagement scores. High engagement companies improved 19.2 percent while low engagement companies declined 32.7 percent in operating income over the study period. The data covers financial performance through 2005 (www.isrinsight.com)

Managing the grapevine

Rumours can trigger a wide variety of effects in an organisation: the most common being low morale, bad press, loss of trust between managers, employees and customers, increased stress, decreased productivity, and tainted individual and corporate reputations.

The most effective strategies to prevent or neutralise rumours include: stating the values and procedures governing organisational change, establishing timetables for full information release, adopting measures to increase trust, and confirming rumours where they are true.

Researchers identified two broad strategic approaches: strategies to structure (limit) uncertainty and strategies to enhance the efficacy of official comments. Of these, strategies that structure uncertainty are rated as most effective, followed closely by strategies to generate trust in official comments.

[Source: Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia, How Top PR Professionals Handle Hot Air: types of corporate rumours, their effects, and strategies to manage them, Institute for Public Relations, University of Florida, 1999]

Survey swindle is newest fad

There were staff opinion surveys. Which became staff attitude surveys. And transformed into employee engagement surveys. There was also survey mania. Followed by survey fatigue. Now there’s survey swindle.

A report in The Australian Financial Review has disclosed that employees at the National Australia Bank admitted fudging answers to last year’s engagement survey. At the time the bank ran its survey, it had just delivered a strong financial result but was cutting staff numbers by ten percent.

The Finance Sector Union engaged a research firm to ask bank staff how they had answered the survey. It was found that employees gave falsely upbeat responses in an attempt to get better treatment from their managers.

Employees realise that a lot rides on the survey scores, which are generally made available to staff, can leak and impact a company’s reputation and share price.

The Centre for Workplace Research says employee engagement data should be regarded with “great caution” since “historically they always trend upwards over time” irrespective of how people really feel.

Is CEO chat really worthless?

For about 15 years now TJ Larkin has been travelling the world, writing books and lecturing at conferences offering business communicators the key message that “CEO communication to employees is fundamentally worthless”.

Now, when I first heard TJ enunciate this hypothesis many years ago, I had three insurmountable problems with it:

§         All the field research I’d done with employee groups as a communications consultant consistently showed employees nominating that they preferred to obtain information from immediate supervisors and CEOs somewhere in their top three preferences.

§         Any student of situational behaviour will tell you that where people prefer to source information will very much depend on the circumstances they’re in.

§         Hard and fast rules like “CEO communication to employees is fundamentally worthless” are themselves worthless since they deny the role of an overarching strategic approach to employee communications which, in itself, will have many different components.

A year ago, when he heard TJ Larkin speak at a conference in the US and TJ once again expounded on the worthlessness of CEO communications, American employee communications guru Shel Holtz decided enough was enough.

The entertaining – and important - sequel is on Shel’s web log. Begin with the original reaction here (remember, it’s a blog, so start at the bottom). Then move on to the next page of debate here.

Interns? No Bloggers Need Apply

New York Times.

ON the first day of his internship last year, Andrew McDonald created a Web site for himself. It never occurred to him that his bosses might not like his naming it after the company and writing in it about what went on in their office.

Communications is the secret to employee engagement

Watson Wyatt Worldwide Research Reports.

Firms that communicate effectively are 4.5 times more likely to report high levels of employee engagement versus firms that communicate less effectively.

Hardly a surprising finding, but good to see confirmed when some people tend to look past communication when they are looking to find ways to get employees more engaged.

If an organisation says there is an employee engagement problem, you can do a lot worse than address the communications problem and then see if there is still an engagement problem.

Intranets and regulatory compliance

Allianz Australia Insurance, Australia: one of 10 best designed intranets.

Telstra's employee communications gets slammed

Intranet Blog :: Main Page.

In fact, to quell panicky employees fearful for their job, Telstra internal communications circulated an e-mail with a few Q&As (An e-mail; how progressive! My god, what thinking! What planning! What communications!). Unfortunately for all involved, the e-mail was horrendously written, contained grammatical errors, was limited to the worst clich� stock answers ever written, provided virtually no information, and in sum was so horrendous that it ended up in Australian newspapers that added their own brutal commentary and opinions of Telstra’s communications.

The blathering boss

Radar:

One of the most dismayed critics is Don Watson, a former speech writer for Paul Keating. He has written several books on misuse of the English language, including Death Sentence and the 2006 Weasel Words Diary.

To Watson, management jargon is a prime example of weasel words, which he defines as the tool of "the powerful, the treacherous ... assassins and thieves".

"This is language without possibility," he writes. "It cannot convey humour, fancy, feelings, nuance or varieties of experience. It is cut off and cuts us off from provenance - it has no past. This dead, depleted, verbless jargon is becoming the language of daily life."

Visitors to www.weaselwords.com.au, a website inspired by Watson's work, seem to agree.

"Paradigm" and "leverage" are the worst offenders, a survey on the site reveals, and the term "going forward", unless used by a bus driver, raises people's blood pressure. In forum postings, visitors argue whether "cube farm" - partitioned offices - is a weasel word or just plain silly.

Focus group tips & traps

Ingrid Jackson of Executive Management Solutions has produced a useful compilation of tips and traps for people facilitating focus groups in her paper, 'Focus Group Do's and Don'ts'.

Download focus_group_dos_and_donts.doc

Ingrid has helpfully categorised her advice into a number of sections including the facilitator’s role, approach, methodology, questioning, probing and follow-up.

She has assembled a great deal of practical knowledge into one concise package.

Social media inside the organisation: Intranets 05 presentation

I had a great time doing this presentation on Thursday afternoon in Sydney. The idea of how web 2.0 might apply internally and reshape the way we design and use intranets is fascinating, and as you can see from these slides  Download Intranetpresents.ppt (1.7mb), I think, I am just starting to grapple with it myself. I'm amazed to be on a conference agenda like this, it shows just how fast interest in the new medium is growing. Twelve months ago, it just wouldn't have happened.
The first question I got was - 'isn't blogging just narcissism, just kids talking about what they did last night' - there's an enormous smugness and ignorance behind this question, but it's unfortunately very popular in Australia and held by people who really ought to know better (for instance, an ABC radio discussion featuring dinosaurs whinging)
I think quite a few at the Intranet conference were interested, but as one participant told me afterwards many are also wedded to the centralised control that their CMS software gives them. I'm not sure that there is any real problem here, but ..maybe my discusion of folksonomies was a little unnerving for anyone obssessed with order and control.
A few of the speakers I heard emphasised the need to know what was on the intranet at all times. I'm not sure why we need to obssess about this, its a big organisation thing, I guess.
I was also struck with the look of many of the intranets. They are clearly based on the idea that you market to your employees, as if employees are just another demographic.
I was recently chatting with a supervisor who told me that one of the biggest barriers to effective communication in his organisation is the dickhead suit problem. As soon as you create distinctions ie in dress, location, and so on, the employees act as if you have put on a 'dickhead suit'. To me, marketing to people you work with is one sure way to put on a dickhead suit.
Anyway, I've always believed the internal marketing concept is just a sucker punch delivered by ad people on susceptible managers.
So all these intranet sites seem more concerned with brand image and message control rather than working out ways to get people to work in the intranet and share knowledge in dynamic ways etc.
But its a fun debate, which I think will get real big in the years ahead.
BTW, I'm doing a one-day 'masterclass' on blogs, wikis, podcasts etc in Sydney on 1 December, if you're interested more information can be found here

Slogans don't work on your employees

WSJ.com - Cubicle Culture

When Jim Costello was working at a retail garment company in the 1980s, a new president took over and brought with him a fistful of slogans. They included things like "The Big Event" and "Dare to be Different."

They were intended to unify and inspire the employees. They ended up distracting the staff and customers. "The focus went from building good, desirable products to supporting concepts," he says. "Our customers, young men, don't care about any of that; what they care about is … well I'm sure you know."

Product meetings, which once addressed clothing, deteriorated into discussions of what items fit the rubric "Dare to be Different." That talk led to concepts too confusing to staffers and, hence, changes too radical for customers. "All you knew was you were supposed to be inspired," he says. He was more confused.

That's the problem with slogans and other internal branding efforts. They mean to sharpen focus but end up as emblems of corporate wishful thinking, objects of satire, and indicators of how clueless upper management is and how childish supervisors think their employees are.

Online fun, offline prize is Qantas game plan

smh.com.au

Qantas has found a way to turn tedious annual compliance training into a game, complete with prizes. By December, its 6800 domestic and international flight attendants will have undergone their annual refresher standard operation procedures course online via an interactive game that takes only 20 minutes to play.

Thanks to learning technologies for the link.

Defending the role of leadership in communicating change

Shel Holtz's response to TJ Larkin on what works when it comes to communicating change is well worth reading:

In my world, employees want to be led by leaders who lead. They want to trust their leaders and know they are guiding the organization forward and not to its doom (and their own unemployment). And there are plenty of examples of leaders who communicate effectively to drive organizational change and influence employee behavior. As my friend Angela Sinckas noted, Chrysler’s turnaround was not the result of supervisor communication, but rather Lee Iacoca’s dynamic leadership communication. Need a current example? Intel CEO Paul Otellini is blogging over the intranet, sharing issues and concerns with employees and soliciting comments that inform his decisions. Employees feel listened to and engaged. Otellini makes better decisions. Trust grows. Intel wins.

Dealing with workplace rumours

Workplace rumours trigger a wide range of effects. The most common are lower morale, bad press, loss of trust, increased stress, decreased productivity and tarnished individual and corporate reputations.

When surveyed for this paper, PR experts proposed a variety of strategies to prevent and neutralise rumours.

The most effective strategies are: [1] State the rationale behind and processes by which upcoming changes will be made, [2] Set a timetable for the release of detailed information, [3] Specifically attempting to increase trust, and [4] Confirm the rumour.

In addition, two broad approaches emerged: [1] Strategies to structure (i.e., give boundaries to) uncertainty; and [2] Strategies focusing on enhancing the efficacy of official comments. Of these, the strategies that structured uncertainty were rated as most effective.

[Source: ‘How top PR professionals handle hot air: types of corporate rumors, their effects and strategies to manage them’ by Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia]

Employee engagement study

A new study from Northwestern university has confirmed the links between employee engagement and financial performance. You can download the report here.  Key findings from the study include the following:
• There is a direct link between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, and between customer satisfaction and improved financial performance.  
• The key organizational characteristic for explaining employee satisfaction is organizational communication (a measure of  the downward and upward communication in an
organization).
• It is an organization’s employees who influence the behavior and attitudes of customers, and it is customers who drive an organization’s profitability through the purchase and use of its products.

Thanks to Neville Hobson for the pointer.

Yahoo's employee blog guidelines

 From Media Guerrilla: Yahoo today released its corporate guidelines/best practices for employee blogs.  Jeremy Zawodny shares some insight and links to the guidelines doc (PDF).

A directory of work-related blogs

A great idea, and service, from James Richards, a management lecturer in Scotland. 

A-Z of work-related blogs (by name given by blogger)

A-D
E-H
I-L
M-P
Q-T
U-Z

If you have a work-related blog why not let him know- bluecow74 AT hotmail.com

A tip on mergers from Andy Lack, Sony BMG

Getting on with it is one of the keys to successful mergers, procrastination is death, as Lack told the Financial Times last December:

FT: Having crashed the companies together, is there one side of the equation which is executing the integration?

AL: Not to be semantic about this with you, but I think the success in this integration is that we didn’t ‘crash’ the two companies together. We listened. We stayed open to hearing what the companies wanted to try to do together and then we went about doing it. Now they’re good business people here, on both sides of the equation.

They’re not sitting around saying, you know, we’ll give you our view of that six months from now. They – this was a surprise to us – they wanted it to get done fast. They didn’t want their employee bases to be saying well, who’s in charge? What happens next? Well, nobody’s told me whether they are going to put X into place or Y into place, or whether this person will be working. They wanted it to move quickly. And so it found its rhythm that way.

There were no advisory teams that went out and said, well, after investigating and discussing and contemplating and we’ve issued reports and sent them back to the home office and now they‘re going to digest and consider and they told us that beginning of the first quarter of next year they will … all of that. There was no bureaucracy in the process.

Internal comms survey

I know Allan Schoenberg too and he produces good stuff, so help out and do the survey!

Link: Media Culpa.

A former colleague of mine (aschoenb[at]cme.com) is conducting research for his master's degree of in-house/corporate communication practitioners and their influence and relationships with senior management. He is hoping to understand what attributes, such as organizational structure, individual leadership and relationship management, contribute the most to our role as professionals. I've personally taken the survey and it should take only 15- 20 minutes to complete. The survey is completely confidential and he's promised to send you the results if you're interested. If you work on a corporate communications team here is a link to the survey

Choosing the right words (or avoiding a $48 cab fare)

Choose your words carefully.

Returning to the office this afternoon from a client's office in the Sydney CBD, I was caught in traffic appraching the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

I text-messaged a colleague who I knew was about to leave the same client's office.

"Bridge traffic terrible take your time" was approximately what I texted.

A couple of minutes later I drove past a head-on collision on the bridge, complete with tow trucks, police etc.

"Head on" I texted my colleague, 10 years as a journalist leaving me with an unstoppable urge to file an update and wanting to convey the gravity of the situation.

Reading my message, my colleague jumped into a taxi thinking I had just told him to "head on" to the bridge.

An hour and a $48 cab ride later, my colleague arrived at our office.

Having stopped to pick up some shoes from a cobblers, I'd  jumped on the bus. Cost: $1.97.

I'm apparently paid to communicate...

Listening - an underutilised skill

Research has shown that, when a job contender fronts up to an interview panel, most panel members make up their mind about the candidate’s suitability within seconds.

Memo to job seekers: yes, first impressions do count. Memo to interviewers: it’s your job to do some active listening.

Listening is one of the most critical, and perhaps underutilised, skills in communicating effectively. Here are some tips from the University of California (Berkeley) website.

1. Use non-verbal communication. Be aware of what you communicate with your body; your posture and expressions can convey your attitudes toward a speaker even before you say one word. Use body language to show the speaker that you are engaged in the conversation and open to hearing.

2. Recognize your own prejudices. Be aware of your own feelings toward the speaker. If you are unsure about what the speaker means, ask for clarification instead of making assumptions.

3. Listen to understand the underlying feelings. Use your heart as well as your mind to understand the speaker. Notice how something is said as well as the actual words used.

4. Don't interrupt: Be sure you think carefully before you speak. As a listener, your job is to help the speaker express himself.

5. Don't judge the person: A speaker who feels you are making judgments will feel defensive. Avoid making judgments and instead try to empathize and understand the speaker's perspective.

6. Do not give advice: Keep in mind that the best resolutions are those that people arrive at themselves, not what someone else tells them to do. If you feel it is appropriate, and only after you have encouraged the person to talk, offer some ideas and discuss them.

Policies for employee blogging

Neville Hobson: From an organizational point of view, it's far better to embrace blogs within the overall communication framework and make it wholly clear what the parameters are. It's about managing potential risks for both the company and the employee.

TheEmployeeCommunicationsManifestoWiki

Wikis - websites that anyone can edit - are gaining a following for group activities and project management within companies. There is a pr wiki that grew out of global pr blog week. The best known wiki is probably wikipedia, a free-content encyclopedia. There is also disinfopedia, sponsored by the Center for Media & Democracy.
UPDATE: Unbelievablely, I seem to have done everything but discuss the employee communications wiki. (Sorry Shel, see comment below). Wikis work if they have lots of participants and users. We (pr wiki) found a lot of people are reluctant to just add their name to the wiki and start adding content. I think its a psychological and cultural thing. Plus, us non-techies can be a little daunted by the idea at first. I'm going to sign-on in the next few days - and I urge anyone with content they want to share to do the same. If we do that it will become a fabulous resource, and a truly 'living document'.

Re-invigorating internal communications

Amsterdam blogger, Neville Hobson, recently addressed a European conference on internal communications, it left him 'cautiously opitimistically':

On the challenges - which really addressed all the topics everyone discussed - three clear issues emerged:
1. Build up the role of communicators as key value-add facilitators to help the organization achieve its business goals
2. Strive to convert too-often tactical activities into strategic activities
3. Get the balance right between leadership expectations and communicators' ability to deliver

IBM on employee blogs

THE SMH has picked up an article on business blogging (hooray)

IBM sees blogs as a way to revolutionise employee communication, one executive said on the sidelines at the conference, which attracted about 300 attendees.
"It's about decreasing social space between employees, and increasing the amount of knowledge shared between people," said James Spohrer, director of IBM's Almaden Research Centre.
An example of an employee blog, he said, might contain elements of a resume, some of an individual's educational background and work experience, along with information on product development strategies colleagues and customers can view on a round-the-clock basis.
The sharing of such information between company employees and customers promises to speed feedback on efforts to produce new products and improve business processes, Spohrer said.

'He's hopeless and I want him fired'

Sydney's top sports commentator and talkback host, Ray Hadley, is a man with a notoriously short fuse and a reputation for outbursts about the under-performance of staff and colleagues. Nevertheless, the sloppy2GB network Olympic coverage which he is fronting without distinction in Athens has obviously caused him to blow a few major gaskets.
In this bootleg tape which appeared on the Crikey site yesterday he holds nothing back. Don't listen if swearing offends you, as Crikey says

The tape is studded with the f-word (20 by our count). At times, Hadley is incoherent with rage. At one point he refers to a senior 2GB news director as "a f*cking spastic", and demands that he should be fired by the station's program director, John Brennan. Even radio people accustomed to Hadley's bullying fits of fury are startled by this one. They say it has hit a new low. Morale at 2GB, already low over its Olympics fiasco, is now reported to be bumping along the bottom.

Obviously, this sort of abuse is unlikely to improve the station's on-air performance. But I wonder how common these outbursts are among managers in less public fields? All too common, I suspect is the answer.

A communicator looks at American industry

Experience has confirmed that many corporations look upon communication as a kind of cosmetic overlay on the serious business of the company or as a bag of techniques designed to keep the public and the employees at peace. It is my conviction that the communication dimension is an integral part of the business of the corporation and that it can be the quickest and most cost-effective way of advancing the goals of any corporation.

So true. More ....

Wikis - a boost for corporate team communications

From Businessweek - Like open-source software, wikis may make their biggest mark less as a business than as a potent force for change -- in this case, in the way people work. Nowhere is that potential more apparent than in today's far-flung, time-pressed corporate teams. Aaron Burcell, director of marketing for e-mail software startup Stata Laboratories Inc., says working on a wiki has cut the daily phone calls he made on a raft of projects to one a week. It also has allowed Stata to outsource more work, such as engineering, to India. Says Burcell: "I could justify the cost of the wiki just from the lower teleconferencing bills."
What is a wiki? - The amazing thing is that wikis work at all. Created in 1995 by Oregon programmer Ward Cunningham, who named them for the "Wiki-Wiki," or "quick" shuttle buses at Honolulu Airport, wikis are special Web sites on which anyone can post material without knowing arcane programming languages. Likewise, anyone can edit them. This can lead to mischief: Jokers have posted images of male anatomy on Wikipedia. But graffiti is usually gone within minutes, because the previous version of a page can be restored with a click. In sensitive corporate situations, access can be controlled, too.
via socialtext
Look at these wikis: The new PR & bizblogdirectory

One person's experience of employee comms

A colleague sent me this 'case study' in response to my employee communications paper..

A few years ago, when I worked for XXX, I was part of team tasked with reviewing the current corp comms for my division and setting up a "system" to redress the perceived deficiencies.
The move was driven from the top of our division of about 1500 people who, through the Employee Opinion Survey, rated comms within the group as something near abysmal. The survey was company wide and our GM was forced to act as his division's results were at the bottom of the pile. Although he committed resources to the project we always felt that it was, in his (an engineer's) opinion, a load of rubbish. I was chosen for the project team only because I produced a weekly newssheet late on Fridays for my 80+ staff scattered all over SA and the NT. It was distributed by fax because some centres had no e-mail!
We eventually chose a calendar-based, face-to-face (or phone where people were interstate or otherwise distant), cascade system. It started at the top with the GM briefing his direct reports on company and division news. Then they each added relevant material for their groups and briefed their direct reports - and so on, cascading through the organisation over a day. Verbal briefings were backed up by printed material to ensure the message was consistent - but verbal delivery by the immediate supervisor were two of the fundamentals. PowerPoint was positively discouraged - as much to maintain equality between the tech-rich and the tech-poor groups but also to ensure face-to-face was the primary medium. Because of the speed of the flow-down the documentation frequently wasn't real polished. Often it had been faxed a few times by the end of the flow. But this gave it a hot-off-the-press and absolutely consistent feel from GM to field worker.
The cascade was matched by a feedback system; an equally robust question process - where all questions that could not be answered locally were fed back through a single person (one of the executive team) who obtained and distributed a response from the appropriate person/level. People could avail themselves of this process without going through their team meeting and supervisor if they chose.
Everyone in charge of a group received communications training. A second benefit of this was that the training bought people in similar roles around the country together for, for many, the first time.
Twelve or so months later the company EOS rated the corp comms in the division among the best in XXX.
The hard part was not so much identifying the deficiencies or even the desirable attributes of corp comms, rather to find a workable model - one that was sufficiently robust to ensure it survived beyond the initial
enthusiasm but flexible enough to cope with office and field staff, white-, blue- (and every other colour) collar workers, shift workers, people in the 15th floor of our Melbourne national office and two-person teams in the outback. Apparently, the staff were impressed enough (at least by the by the effort) to rate the outcome well.
Of course, it's all gone now. I doubt that it survived the first Divisional merger/takeover.

Employee communications paper

I've done up this paper on employee communications based on a lot of CEO and other comment and survey results that have been published over the last six months ago. Most of which I have come across during my work and I thought some people might find it useful if it was brought together in one place and given some structure. Feel free to pass it onto anyone who might find it interesting. I'd appreciate any feedback - including additional sources, other issues/developments etc. Download EmCom.pdf

At least they tried something different (updated)

From the NY Daily News:. It could be true.

I found out about it from alert reader David Rankin, who sent me the Jan. 3 front page of the Sevier County (Tenn.) Mountain Press (Thanks to Dan Horowitz at Fleishman-Hillard for this link). On it is an article by J.J. Kindred about a Danville, Va.-based textile company called Dan River, which was closing its Sevierville plant and laying off workers.
Evidently, some savvy individual in management realized that the workers would be unhappy about losing their jobs. And so, to cheer them up, the company gave workers something extra in their severance packages - something that would make these layoffs truly special: Barbie dolls.
I swear I am not making this up. According to The Mountain Press, the severance package included a $100 Wal-Mart gift card, a Dan River cap, a calculator, a plaque and "three red-headed Barbie dolls." That's right: THREE Barbie dolls. And all red-headed!
The Mountain Press published a photo of one worker's severance Barbies, still in their boxes, smiling with radiant perkiness and ready for some layoff fun.
Incredibly, according to The Mountain Press, some workers were not thrilled with their Barbies. The Mountain Press contacted a human resources official at Dan River headquarters who wouldn't comment on the Barbies but did say "we are doing our best to help the employees" and "we have the best management staff around." No doubt! Probably some of them are M.B.A.s!
But this is one of those situations where, before implementing a plan - even a seemingly flawless and airtight plan such as giving dolls to grownups who are losing their jobs - management should have consulted with a normal, noncorporate human or even a reasonably bright hamster. ("We have good news and bad news: The hamster liked the Wal-Mart card, but it made doots all over the Barbies.")

Poor culture, staff communication contributed to USA Today plagiarism problems

Lax editing and newsroom leadership, lack of staff communication, a star system, a workplace climate of fear and inconsistent rules on using anonymous sources helped former USA TODAY reporter Jack Kelley to fabricate and plagiarize stories for more than a decade, an independent panel of editors has concluded.
More..

NASA's communications audit prompts management reform

An employee survey that found a broken safety culture with people afraid to speak up has prompted NASA to look at stopping people with technical excellence and little communication skills from being put into management positions.
"If there are highly skilled technical people who prove to be poor managers with inadequate communications skills then the agency will not let them manage other people. Two tracks for employees may be needed, to separate management from technical excellence and to allow some people to advance and be rewarded without becoming managers, a pokesperson said."

Internal communications pays dividends

A new study provides further support for the idea that organisations that communicate effectively dramatically outpace organizations that don't, in terms of ROI.

Big blue outsourcer

John Robb comments on a WSJ article about IBM's job creation efforts "a company outsources thousands of IT jobs to IBM. IBM quickly moves to offshore them and radically cut the pay/benefits of those that remain. The net result is a net gain in jobs (from the few that remain after the offshoring)." No matter how much big companies try to pretend that they are creating jobs the reality is that this is a huge issue and it isn't going away, it could even see George W. become one of its first casualities

The problem of fear - Part 2

The story so far. Our hero has been called in by a company undergoing massive change to design a communications program that will give employees a bit of a gee-up and hopefully get them engaged with the company's new vision. He notices that Dilbert seems very popular here, the Intranet is exciting when compared with a grocery list and the posters from the last 'big change' are on the walls.
All employees know that change = cost-cutting = job losses. If you say - 'this is not about redundnacies, its about a new vision etc' - no-one's going to believe you. So you are up against cynicsm, well-defined as an inability to cope. What the cynical worker is not coping with is fear and its close cousin, 'uncertainty'.
No-one will listen until you deal with the big issue - redundancy. So start with it.
If possible, outline the problem, the options etc before final decisions are made. Inclusion builds trust - the very opposite of what most managers expect.
Our hero won't be at this task very long before some marketing type will get in on the act and start talking about getting people excited. Mr or Ms Marketer will advise the CEO to stop talking problems and start talking about challenges and opportunities. There'll be recommendations for truck loads of flash materials with 'exciting' images and inspirational taglines.
The problem (sorry, can't help myself) with this approach is that it plays right to the CEO's weaknesses and not his or her strengths. Flash materials and upbeat copy seems much easier to do than getting up in the canteen and saying 'Sorry, we're getting hammered in the markets, we're going to have to make changes to survive and keep ROI at a realistic level. Some jobs will have to go. We'll keep that to a minimum, we'll help those affected anyway we can. Nothing will happen immediately, we'll keep you informed". This is the tough thing to do, it takes moral courage.
Inclusion will help you retain good people - uncertainty will drive them away. Good people know the company is not traveling well, if you pretend you're not doing anything about it they'll lose confidence.
Uncertainty is worse for productivity than a knowledge that bad times lay ahead but a sensible process is underway to make adjustments.
So our hero will have to fight the easy option instincts of all concern and push for straight talking instead.
The challenge is not just employee fear, it is cowardice at the top as well.

Part 3 soon

Interlude 1: No workplace is an island

A common fallacy in workplace change and communication programs is to assume, and act as if, the workplace or company is somehow separate from the rest of society.
Employees, of course, don't act like this. They listen to their partners, their peers in community and social groups, their religious ministers, their mates in the pub, the nightly news and so on.
Many corporate change programs aim at getting people to change their attitudes and behaviours in radical ways - and these change programs, no matter how plausible they may seem in the isolation of a cloistered planning room, will always begin to crumble as soon as they get exposed to the outside world.
These change programs employ similar techniques to those used by religious cults and North Korean communists - you isolate people from their past and from other influencers, you undermine the ideologies / philosophies they currently use to translate the world and give it order, and then you give them a new set to enable them to see the world in a different way. So that a proposition that seemed ludicrous in the past will now come to seem obvious and desirable.
As well as raising some moral dilemmas for free societies, this approach simply can't work where people are in contact with a full range of influencers and interpreters. Most people most of the time will revert to their comfort zone - just think of the difficulties we face changing personal habits like eating, drinking and smoking. You eat salads all week, you go out with your friends on Friday night and they order pizza. What do you do - well, one piece can't hurt can it?
The better alternative is to understand the world your company's employees live in and work with it, not against it.

The problem of fear in employee communications - Part 1

When a PR practitioner is called into do an employee communications project many factors have to be accepted as givens in the short-run at least. The most important given is the relationships between senior management (representing the company) and employees. With few exceptions the characteristics of employee responses are fear and, consequently, disinterest.
If you notice a lot of Dilbert cartoons in their workspaces you know its going to be a tough ask.
Yet, in these situations managers very rarely see themselves as the problem. Employee hostility and passive resistance are problems to be addressed by further communication programs. Often these are just stupid and insulting. Grown adults will get 'rewards' for appropriate behaviour, just like their school age children do. Of course, these incentive programs often have short-term improvement effects. If you ignore someone for long enough any sliver of recognition will be gratefully accepted. Promoters of these programs rarely cite long-term success statistics. The negativity can even be exacerbated when people feel they've been patronised.
Quality guru, W Edwards Deming, exhorted his followers to remove fear from the workplace - yet he was not particularly specific or helpful on how this was to be done.
There's also a lot of fancy stuff published about leadership and so on - but the basics of human relationships are often ignored or glossed over. As if sensible human beings might be distracted from the truth of their condition by some soothing words.
For a start, fear is usually present in a relationship of dependence. If I need you, I'm afraid you might let me down.
Second - if you can act capriciously and are likely to do so, I need to keep an eye on you at all times. Look for signals, for patterns. When my father started work as a menial in a Sydney Hospital in the late 1940s an older mentor told him to watch the boss and do what he does. Fear doesn't encourage independence it requires conformity.
Third - if you don't care about me or you are mean and ungenerous then I must always fear your motivations.
If I'm afraid of you, I'll hate you for it.
Employees are too often dependent, weak and fearful.
They resent it and that resentment costs businesses many billions of dollars every year.

Part 2 soon

Blogs in the Workplace

An old but useful article Blogs in the Workplace

Why don't businesses blog?

Blogging is so simple and so cheap it seems almost a no-brainer as a business communication tool yet while a million or more people blog everyday, very few of them are senior business prople. Perhaps blogging is just too free-wheeling to crack-it in the heavily controlled corporate universe. Still I think any CEO who takes up blogging in a serious way can potentially do more for her (who am I kidding, his) company's image than any number of newsletters and media releases. Blogging appeals for the same reason that face to face is still the most powerful communications mechanism - it is direct, unfiltered and authentic.

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Blogging business

Corporate blogging

Corporate PR has a good post on the use of blogging by corporates

Employee communications tips

Here are some ideas to bear in mind
1. Communicate in real time and continuously - the tendency is to leave communications until too late, but people get annoyed if they think something has been going on behind their backs (ie in the executive suite). Sometimes there are genuine confidentiality issues, but not as often as claimed. Communicate in the good times as well as the bad, when there is not much happening as well as when there are big announcements
2. Communicate on the issues that concern employees - that means issues that directly affect them and that they have some involvement with. Long dissertations on the impact of globalisation or the company's investment plans in some other part of the world are boring - after all, all news is local.
3. Talk face to face, where possible - its still the best and most effective method, other mechanisms (memos, emails etc) should always be seen as supplementary
4. Provide real information - avoid corporate glosses and content free statements. If something is stuffed, its stuffed - its not 'performing at a level below expectations' or some such drivel
5. Provide opportunities for questions, feedback and discussion - it doesn't matter what happens, it matters that there are real and valid opportunities
6. Make sure communications has CEO priority and endorsement - anything less is a prescription for failure. Why not start management meetings with an item on internal communications rather than the usual financial performance.
7. Enjoy it! After all talking with your colleagues even those below you in the corporate hierarchy should be a pleasure not a burden. They're just people and they have at least some interests in common with you.