Back over at FIR (#166), Shel Holtz weighed in with a comment about the recurring theme ‘around these here parts’ of the death of employee communication as a strategy now that intranets are commonplace. I’m not sure the blame can be laid at the foot of the intranet front door.

My own experience as a communicator AND as a sometime-employee leads me to believe that employees are so disengaged that traditional non-face-to-face communication vehicles such as newsletters, videos, etc., are just more ‘junk’ to attend to during an employee’s day.

No one seriously trusts an employer to care more about the employee than the P&L line these days; the old mantra of ‘our people are our most important resource’ is hackneyed and thankfully has gone the way of the dinosaur. Whilst the mantra is true, it is unfortunate that redundancy-led cynicism leads one to smell ‘fish’ when some HR or senior management person tries to push that line.

I think employee comms is in crisis not because of social media or a lack of strategic intelligence, but simply because no one ‘cares’ anymore. The vast majority of employees turn up, do their job, collect their pay and return home to their families, their hobbies, their tvs and their extra-curricular studies. Why develop a psychological bond with an employer who may dump you next week, or whom you may leave for a better offer?

But… but…

There will always be a need for employee comms in any change management program — and that means more than just dumping a whole lot of html and pdfs on the company intranet.

I’ve just finished a project for a major company where the regular, consistent communication, via an emailed pdf newsletter they could print off and read on the bus journey home, was integral to the project’s success.

Feedback from random employees rated the newsletter comms exceedingly highly in helping them feel ‘engaged’ in the change process.

It would be a shame to lose the power of employee comms vehicles, especially when personalised, to a management world-view that says, “we paid a gazillion clams for this feffing intranet, now get some content up there and make everyone use it”.

Technorati : fir, for immediate release, shel holtz

A client of mine is in the process of relocating to a brand new building and as part of my work with them I have created a series of staff newsletters about the move — all the way from the initial announcement of the start of the final phase of the project (getting the staff ready to actually move) to the first week of being in the building.

The client has, at the entrance to their floor in their current building, a large feature wall where they have a home-made ‘journey and milestone’ display, showing their progress from initial formation just two years ago to where they are today, what major projects they have undertaken, and so on.

As part of the ‘packing up’ and getting ready to go, the ‘journey wall’ has been taken down, leaving a large space. So I took the opportunity to reprint all of the newsletters, laminate each page separately, and hang them on the wall. It is still a ‘journey’ — but this time a journey and countdown of the move to the glorious new offices.

It is also a celebration — every member of the client’s project team (and me too) is very proud of the results of this mammoth undertaking. Feedback from the 120 staff has been overwhelmingly positive about how informed they have been throughout the project, how much they love the newsletters, how helpful the project team has been in answering their questions.

So the question I ask each of us is this: do we take enough time out to celebrate the projects we handle? Do we take time out to reflect and bask in the sunlight and recharge our self-esteem batteries? Or do we plough on from one project to the next? I know that I am guilty of the latter; it is refreshing to be given the opportunity to take a breath of fresh air and receive a few pats on the back for a job well done (even if it is just from myself).

Technorati : celebrate, success

In a recent television interview, Whoopie Goldberg described how she got her first one-woman show in New York: Whoopie was performing her nightclub act and (the director) Mike Nichols was in the audience. He came backstage and offered to create a show for her in a Broadway theater. Whoopie said she didn’t know if that was such a good idea. What if she were lousy? Mike asked if she’d ever been lousy before and Whoopie said “Sure!” His response was, “Then it’s no big deal. You’ll just be lousy on Broadway.”

To me, that reply was brilliant!

Fear of failure is one of the biggest obstacles to success. Yet every major achievement is preceded by many failures.

“Failure is not a crime. Failure to learn from failure is,” said Walter Wriston, the former chairman of CitiCorp. But it can be difficult for people in an organization to have a genuine discussion about failure that doesn’t include blame or rationalization. To facilitate this kind of productive conversation, the United States Army developed the After Action Reviews. AARs are now used by organizations around the world to help employees learn from their mistakes, prevent future errors, and find new solutions to problems.

Basically, the AAR process assembles people who were involved in a planned project or event and asks them to answer these questions:
1. What was the desired outcome?
2. What was the actual outcome?
3. Why were there differences between what we wanted and what we achieved?
4. What did we learn? (What would we do differently next time?)

What about your communication strategies? Had any good failures lately?