« February 2006 | Main | April 2006 »
March 31, 2006
Getting alignment at the top
I had a very interesting discussion this week while in Belgium with the chief communications officer of a major "Bel20" company about the issue of too many priorities at the top. More specifically, this company is undergoing rapid change (even more rapid for a Belgian firm) and each senior leader has his or her own priorities that, when added all together, create an environment of unclear direction and conflict for the employees trying to carry out their wishes.
What energized me about this conversation was the fact that this CCO was trying to address this problem and create greater alignment of organizational priorities -- rather than just shrugging and suggesting it wasn't a problem for a communications person. All too often we see communications taking a back seat to these discussions, saying "When they figure it out, then we'll communicate it." As business moves faster seemingly every day and companies demand more and more change of their employees, the role of communicator as chief facilitator, coach, moderator and organizational conscience has never been more important. For those of you regular readers, you'll know that this is one of my hot buttons -- communicators who don't view themselves as business leaders.
For the particular situation of this Belgian company, one of the ideas we discussed was to stage a leadership conference with the top 100 or so leaders of the organization. The main advantage of this is actually more in what happens during the preparation rather than in the meeting itself. It's an excuse to force leadership to articulate a clear strategy and set of priorities -- and a golden opportunity to uncover misalignment or conflicting (or too numerous) priorities. And a strong communicator can be right in the middle of those conversations, helping leaders work through it.
Posted by Christopher at 4:11 AM
Comments
Post a comment
| TrackBackMarch 24, 2006
Are you ready for Avian Flu?
Although I know none of us are looking for something extra to worry about at work or in our personal lives, I guarantee those of us in the area of internal communications will be spending significant amounts of time in the coming months supporting corporate teams preparing readiness plans to respond to a major outbreak of Avian Flu.
Watson Wyatt just released interesting survey results at http://www.watsonwyatt.com/news/press.asp?ID=15840 that essentially can be summed up as: "Companies are much more likely to already have plans in place (32 percent) in Asia-Pacific to deal with the effects of the avian flu. Only 15 percent have plans in place in the United States, 11 percent in Europe, 10 percent in Canada and 9 percent in Latin America. In addition, about one in five companies is not at all concerned about the avian flu."
You can get out ahead of this by asking some smart questions in your organization:
1. Do we have a central information point for employees to call into to register their whereabouts in times of emergency?
2. What plans and backup plans do we have to get information to employees quickly?
3. What information have we been sharing with employees about Avian Flu and how to prepare both at home and work for an outbreak?
While these questions are just the tip of the iceberg, they will at least provoke the beginning of some good discussion. My suggestion is to couch communications about Avian Flu in the larger context of crisis readiness and preparedness -- this can help people keep perspective and not feel panicked. I'll be blogging about this more in the coming weeks.
Posted by Christopher at 9:05 AM
Comments
The good news? Companies can dust off the unused Y2K plan.
The bad news? The date for 1/1/00 was easier to predict than Avian Flu.
Posted by: Ike at March 28, 2006 12:42 AM
Post a comment
| TrackBackMarch 20, 2006
Does it pay to treat your employees well?
When Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list was published recently, it drew the attention of not only prospective employees but investors as well. The 56 publicly traded companies on the 2005 list out-performed the S&P 500 with an average one-year return of more than 16 percent vs. nearly 10 percent. In fact, these companies have consistently beat the market over the past decade posting average annual returns of more than 12 percent over three years, nearly 9 percent over 5 years, and almost 20 percent over the past decade. This is compared to the relatively modest S&P 500 returns of 7 percent, nearly 5 percent and 12 percent over the same periods.
While it's difficult to establish a definitive casual relationship between employee engagement and shareholder return in this case, the duration of this relationship certainly cannot be ignored. In fact, if you were to take the companies on the original 1998 Fortune list, they would have beaten the S&P 500 nearly 3 to 1 from Dec. 1997 – Jan. 2004 and if you were to change your holdings each year along with the list the ratio would grow to 5 to 1 over that period.
This does not just hold true for comparisons to the broad market. Multiple studies have documented that companies on the list have better returns, higher market values and higher return on assets than comparable organizations. All of this doesn't even begin to touch on the comparative advantage companies on the list have in terms of qualified applicants and employee retention.
All of this provides more empirical support for what many organizational have known for a long time: an environment that values and engages employees can be a key driver of growth and increased returns.
Posted by Christopher at 8:50 PM
Comments
My book PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH, studied 139 professional service businesses and was also able to demonstrate rigorously the economic benefits of employee engagement.
Posted by: david Maister at March 20, 2006 11:48 PM
Post a comment
| TrackBackMarch 13, 2006
French "loosening" of employment laws stirs protest
For those of us familiar with employing people in the United States (a country where employment is "at will" and, with the exception of certain classes that are protected by discrimation law, employees can quit when they want and employers can fire people when they want) the weekend protests in France over minor changes to employment regulations may have seemed laughable.
French students stormed and occupied the Sorbonne at the University of Paris in protest of the new regulation, which allows people under 26 to be hired for a two-year period during which they can be fired without cause. This change is meant to spur employment by easing restrictions on employees to make it more attractive for companies to hire more part-time employees, especially younger people.
Interesting to wonder what the French students are afraid of: actually being held to perform and do their best during the first two years of a job? Or is related to worry about discriminatory practices playing too large a role in firings?
Posted by Christopher at 8:57 AM
Comments
Interesting points. Without knowing the cultural influences that may have impacted this decision, I personally think that there issue is a fundamental one. It seems that this regulation provides companies with a lot of leverage in the process, while not providing much job security for the younger employees. Regardless of their performance, this described regulation would enable to treat these employees more as hired help than valuable employees, and what could potentially result in that is a lack of focus on their personal and professional development, as well as a decrease in employee accountability, satisfaction, performance and loyalty.
Posted by: Matthew at March 14, 2006 7:34 AM
Matthew, thanks for your comment -- much appreciated. The changes in the regulation are designed to give French employers more flexibility in who they hire and retain; and in doing so create a more competitive and high-performing environment (at least as I understand it). You raise interesting points about whether eliminating or reducing job security is bad, or ultimately beneficial to inspire employees to always "be on their toes."
Posted by: Christopher at March 20, 2006 9:13 PM
Post a comment
| TrackBackMarch 9, 2006
Advertising invades the workspace
I've been following an interesting phenomenon lately: the increasing prevelance of advertising in the workspace. Recognizing that employees of a company are a captive audience, many advertisers are targeting them in bathroom stalls, in their offices and, yes, even their paychecks.
A company called AdCheck, based in California, coordinates the printing of ads and coupons on the back of pay stubs. The company says it has more than a million employees at a dozen companies receiving ads through paychecks. Among the advertisers are American Express, EarthLink and Sears.
Other tactics often used: video screens in elevators and lobbies carry ads for a variety of services, logos are put on hands-free cell phone headsets, computer memory sticks and mouse pads. And this is big business: a spokesman for the Promotional Products Association estimates that between 30 and 40 percent of the promotional products they track are geared toward the office marketplace.
I think this raises interesting questions for internal communicators, who are also trying to get the attention of their internal audiences. We're certainly not going to get rid of workplace advertising, so the challenge to develop internal communications and employee engagement programming that "breaks through" and connects with employees is now greater than ever before.
Posted by Christopher at 9:38 AM
Comments
Post a comment
| TrackBackMarch 4, 2006
Pay for internal communicators lags behind external disciplines
The 2006 salary survey published in the February 20 issue of PR Week confirmed how under valued most internal communicators are to their organizations.
Here are the median base salaries by discipline:
Financial/IR: $165,620
Crisis management: $150,000
Reputation management: $143,000
Public affairs: $98,500
Brand management: $91,430
Marketing communications: $90,690
Internal communications: $85,420
Community relations: $59,910
I was particularly dismayed to see the disparity between reputation management and internal communications, especially when employees have an increasingly large role in shaping public perception and corporate reputation.
This is not to say that internal communicators themselves are not in large part to blame for their smaller paychecks. We too often view ourselves as order takers, rather than order givers; purveyors of one-way communication, rather than enhancers of multi-direction information flow. We frequently do a poor job in quantifying the business benefit of our work and in educating senior leaders about that benefit.
I have seen tremendous progress in and increased awareness of the field of employee engagement and internal communications over the past three years; now it's time for practitioners to start building the case for why their pay should equal (if not exceed!) their externally focused peers.
Posted by Christopher at 6:52 AM
Comments
Post a comment
| TrackBackMarch 1, 2006
Know what your employees are saying about you on MySpace?
We often talk about how corporations are "losing control" of the conversation about them in the general public and among internal audiences as well. Perhaps no where is this more evident than on MySpaces, a social networking site of explosive popularity. My colleague and fellow blogger, Jeffrey Treem, had some interesting insight into this topic on his blog: http://insidethecubicle.blogs.com/blog/2006/02/wild_world_of_m.html.
If you haven't looked to see what your employees are saying about you on MySpace, you probably should.
Posted by Christopher at 5:39 PM