The death of employee comms? Not yet…
28th August 2006 by Lee Hopkins
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”.
August 28th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
[...] I posted a comment to the show blog, but elaborated on it over at the IABC Employee Commons blog. [...]
August 29th, 2006 at 10:38 am
I wouldn’t necessarily agree that a newsletter constitutes communication. Communication is two-way. A newsletter about the change process, while a useful information source, does not engage employees. During the change process, two-way dialogue is critical. Staff meeting, work groups and direct connection with one’s manager are key. They help employees feel that their input is valued. They become the agents of change.
August 29th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
The end of employee comms? Nonsense. Organizations will always have information that it “needs” employees to hear/see and understand. The “news” carried on the intranet is only one portion of (what one hopes is) an array of useful applications and other resources. Matter of fact, the productivity gains associated with moving formerly paper-based processes to intranet are augmented by effective use of the E-news channel.
What absolutely is ending is the type of employee comms that one saw 10 years ago — no more birthdays, babies and bowling scores. No more “nice to have” — no more cute puppies. Yes, you do need to learn what employees want to read, but it all has to go through the prism of strategy. The Business Strategy and the part employees need to play.
That’s our job. Take the business news inside our organization, add the industry or focus area that our organization plays in, find the means of demonstrating the strategy in action. Deliver all of it through the channel most likely to get employees to pay attention — and support our management’s efforts — all in a compelling, interesting, innovative and creative way. Tell the story. Sometimes many people will like our work, sometimes not.
But - we dare not think the technology will do the work for us. Podcasts are still rare — as are Ipods. Most people don’t want to watch TV on their cell phones, and if they do, they don’t want to watch corporate fluff. But, they will watch critical information that they cannot get elsewhere. Content is critical, and vehicle/channel/means are tools.
On our intranet at Goodyear, our traffic is up 350% in two years — 45% of subscribers to our email newsletter are from outside the US — our unique daily visitors are up 150% — more visitors, looking at more content. A few new applications — but a lot more news. And, Applications Drive Traffic! So, as we add apps, we’ll get even more eyeballs.
Oh, and by the way — 67% in a recent intranet poll said they know more about workplace safety now than a year ago — and we’ve trimmed safety incidents 20% since last year. The intranet was the one global vehicle in the mix — all else was local.
So, employee comms are far from dead.
Sean
P.s., social media will make our jobs even more important…and that’s another post…
August 30th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
You know, like Ron Shewchuk I’m kinda partial to still having a bit of ‘fluff’ in the newsletter, like anniversaries and stuff.
But I take your point, Joanne, about communication being a dialog not a one-way medium. Interestingly, I think newsletters can still be dialogic in one sense. There is always the opportunity to ‘email the editor/writer/key person’ to get more info, give more feedback and so on. So then the conversation gets time-shifted and becomes, like podcasts, discontiguous but still a conversation. But there is no doubt that face-to-face is by far the best way to communicate corporate news (as long as you don’t use ‘corporate speek’ to do it).
Sean, I agree that we are foolish to let the technology do our ‘thinking’ for us. The value we add as communicators is in shaping the message for best reception, aligning messages to strategic goals and outcomes, and so on. One of my personal ‘to do’ goals is to help businesses realise how important that knowledge and experience is… and be rewarded in a financially appropriate manner
August 30th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
I agree that “the intranet is not about to kill employee communications.” If one is worried about that, I would argue that the worrier has not articulated their professional value sufficiently and may wish to change the way they market their services internally. . .or change jobs.
However, we as communicators cannot ignore the fact that the evolution of easy to create web content and the rise of social media are going to fundamentally transform our profession. Blogs and wikis make it easy for a project manager to deploy a project site with content to keep everyone up to date on the latest change initiative. If it is not happening inside your company because IT has the network locked down, it will happen out on the internet using Blogger or some other free tool.
In my opinion, it is up to us to be innovative and use these technology tools to reshape and renew our roles, rather than debate their penetration into the enterprise or worry that they will replace us.
August 30th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
I fear that a lot of people are responding to my original commentary without having listened to it. It was in this past Monday’s edition of For Immediate Release (www.forimmediaterelease.biz).
My point was this: Before the intranet came along, communications were planned strategically in an increasing number of organizations. Tools and channels were selected based on the desired outcome and as the result of a planning process. With the introduction of intranets, though, a lot of organizations — including many of those that had adopted strategic communication processes — strategy went out the window and everything was simply dumped on the intranet. Communicators began to worry more about how their web pages looked than about how well the communication influenced employee attitudes, opinions, or behaviors.
There has been no bigger advocate of intranets than me — I’ve written a book and two manuals about using the intranet for communication. But like any other communication tool, it needs to be viewed as an option, not THE option.
I never suggested the death of employee communications was at hand or that intranets will replace us, nor do I believe this. I did suggest that the oveall quality of employee communication is at its lowest state in a long time based on my observations of its practice in a number of companies.
If we’re going to debate what I said, we should debate what I actually said!
August 30th, 2006 at 7:04 pm
Hi Shel,
I apologise — it was me paraphrasing your comments and lining them up, perhaps inappropriately, with something Ron Shewchuk posted a few months back where he also commented on employee comms being at its lowest point in his memory.
I agree with you that employee comms as a strategic tool is not dead — but my unintentional sensationalising sure created some movement here, hey?
September 6th, 2006 at 7:38 am
I don’t believe that intranets are delivering the death of internal communications. But, add the newer elements of social media to the electronic communications mix and you may well see the death of the traditional corporate communicator.
From this side of the pond, what’s most apparent is that communication control is moving increasingly from those with ‘Communication’ on their business card to anyone within a business - or even its wider stakeholders - who can find their way around a PC keyboard.
Until the turn of the Millennium, those of us who are paid to set the strategy, tone, and style of our organisation’s communication held the trump card. We owned the media and were in a position to manage the messages on behalf of our bosses.
Now, of course, anyone can create their own media tools and attendant messages within an organisation, and the growth of electronic tools has led to a new phemomenon: feed the monster.
We’ve broken the barrier of having communication goals built into almost every department’s objectives….and what could be easier in the visible achievement of these goals than build an intranet, bolt on a blog and bash out a webcast. Result? Either it’s ‘tick box’ communication - job done and get back to the real work of evolving the organisation….. Or, it’s information overload. Publish everything - never mind the audiences, their needs or what’s important to communicate. If we have the tool, we’ve got to use it.
So, it’s increasingly easy to bypass the professional communicator and approach communication in a narrow-cast tactical manner. The outcome is a lot of data masquerading as information and a lot of information masquerading as communication flying around in the ether.
It’s no wonder employees are more disaffected than ever before.
And where does it leave the professional communicator? Thankfully, it’s shaken out of the comfort zone. It’s battling hard to re-establish the imperative of having planned, outcome-focused communication; and it’s being visible to a far wider range of people within one’s own organisation.
There’s little point sitting solely at the right hand of the CEO now, since it’s every other manager who’s making noise around the organisation.
Employees are still ‘engaged’ - but they’re increasingly engaged locally in their own locations, projects or communities of interest. I’m still seeing just as many people blisteringly keen to do a great job. But their loyalty probably is more selfish now and the corporation matters less.
Our job has to be more than ever to help people cut through the morass of verbal slurry parked on every possible electronic interface and turn the wheel once again so that the new tools become the means to achieving the right business outcomes - not an unsatisfactory end in themselves.
If we can’t get across these issues, what relevance do we have for the future?
May 1st, 2007 at 11:23 am
No longer traffic cops or message police, can employee/internal communicators transform ourselves into information management gurus — providing tools, guidelines and consultative services to our “clients”? Build the playground, put in the right equipment and a soft safe landing pad — the rest is up to the “kids”.
May 3rd, 2007 at 1:39 pm
I totally agree with Shel, unfortunately Intranet is being used in some companies as the basis for communicating with employees without any strategy behind it.
As communicators, I think we should not loose the focuss first of all in the objectives we pursue with communications, which should be, at least amongst them, to increase or maintain a high level of engagement and belonging pride amongst employees. So Intranet should be seen as one more communication medium within the internal communications strategy, and as the official source of information of the company available for everyone or even for groups with restricted access in some sections.
The way information is posted there should be in a different shape from how it is published in electronic screens or printed magazines and newsletters. Every medium has specific guidelines for publication depending on the different types of audiences it is addressed to.
Intranet, as every other internal medium, should reflect the strategy and the objectives communications and the company are pursuing together, and it should be supported by other type of media like portals to talk to the CEO, teleconferences with him or town hall meetings. Key messages should be present always in every publication in every internal medium.
Only with this alignment of key messages and strategy we could say that Intranet can really be a useful medium to contribute to achieve the communications goals, and then turn into a helpful tool rather than into our enemy or murderer.
Erika Ruiz
Erika Ruiz