What’s the coolest thing about working at the CEC? Without a doubt, it’s the opportunity to speak to a lot of communicators at different companies, in different industries, with different business models, and get a cross-industry perspective of their various approaches to shared challenges. So, when a member asks us a question, often we have the opportunity to provide insight into how someone else at another company tackled the same problem.

Recently, I’ve been working on a project on stakeholder mapping, and I’ve been keeping track of some of the challenges that members face, and the questions that they’ve asked. Below are some of the more interesting questions, matched up to some of the cooler approaches that we’ve been able to glean from other communicators in the network. This is an ongoing dialogue, so if there’s anything cool that you’re doing at your company, feel free to share it below!

Challenge #1

“We keep a running list of all of our stakeholder relationships, but it’s become pretty unwieldy – it’s currently about 1,000 strong! It doesn’t really help us make decisions about who to engage and who not to – how can we make it more action-orientated?”

“It would be way too difficult for us to think about every stakeholder that can have any influence over our company – there’d be too many of them. So, narrow it down a bit. We use our material issues as our starting point – we take the five strategic outcomes that’ve been identified by our executive team, and identify the stakeholders who will have the potential influence those outcomes. This helps us to be pretty targeted in our engagement – I wouldn’t recommend wasting time mapping every stakeholder who’s tangentially related to your company.” Read More »

You’ve long championed the need for an employee collaboration platform at your organization. After building a business case and securing resources, you launched a brand new social media platform for employees. However, the sad realization dawns soon. After some days of buzzing traffic, the platform looks deserted with just a few irregular visitors. You’re left disappointed and wondering why employees aren’t taking advantage of the opportunity to connect and share, given that they were clamoring for it.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone! Most companies struggle to not only drive initial adoption but also ensure sustained employee interest when they deploy internal social media platforms.

Here are two main reasons why it’s such a challenge—and what you can do about it.

1)  Limited Visibility: Having limited knowledge of who they can connect to and learn from, employees resort to connecting with those they already know (i.e., obvious connections based on function, title, and proximity), and thus don’t quite achieve the anticipated benefits of networking.

2)  Extra Effort: Due to the complexity of sifting through overwhelming irrelevant content, employees struggle to remain engaged with the network.

Leading communicators realize that it’s not the size of an employee network that matters, but the quality and diversity of connections that impacts employee performance. Moreover, the platform needs to be as intuitive to use as anything else that employees use in their personal life to find answers and stay in touch with friends.

Case in point: MITRE

MITRE developed an internal social media platform “Handshake” that automatically suggests relevant peer connections and aggregates relevant content for each employee based on his activity on the platform.

• Relevant peers are recommended based on shared interests (e.g., submissions around same topic, common memberships, etc.), irrespective of function, hierarchy, or geography, thus helping employees to build diverse, non-obvious connections across the organization. 
• Relevant content is recommended based on the employee’s activities and interests (e.g., keywords searched, discussion forums participation, etc.), enabling employees to quickly view and join relevant conversations.  

CEC members can learn more about how MITRE’s internal social media platform enables employee sharing and learning.  

CEC Related Resources:

• Peer Learning Platform (The MITRE Corporation)
• Principles for Peer Sharing and Learning
• Customizable Business Case for Internal Social Media

 CEC Related Blog Posts:

• Improve Your Performance through Peers
• What Makes Novo Nordisk’s Global Collaboration Effective
• How MITRE Measures the Impact of its Internal Social Network

• Do you wish you received more recognition of your talent and appreciation for a job well done?
• Do you wish you could get your job done faster and with fewer roadblocks along the way?
• Do you wish you received more support from your managers in getting things done?

Well, it’s not just you! Most employees wish they received quality mentoring, better recognition, and more clarity about organizational strategy. Think about the level of commitment, enthusiasm, and vigor you had when you initially joined the organization. Do you find it hard to maintain the same level of engagement now?

While your immediate manager might be best poised to help you discover newfound meaning in your work, don’t expect too much from him. After all he’s human and might be grappling with his own day-to-day work, too busy to focus on you. Or, he might just not be capable enough to understand what really keeps you going. Similarly the senior leadership—focused on setting and resetting strategy—is too far removed from your day-to-day experience to be of much help. 

That said, there is another critical but often unrecognized factor that helps keep the enthusiasm flowing. It’s your peers at the workplace. You spend a significant part of your day interacting with them and even if you don’t realize it, they influence your behavior as much, if not more, as your superiors. Peer recognition of your daily impact and support of your projects can help you to do better and have more fun at work commitments.

Employee Engagement: What role can Communications play?

Communications is uniquely poised to seize the opportunity to drive employee engagement by fostering peer support. However, rather than simply encouraging peer support from leaders and managers, Communications should play the role of an “enabler” and facilitate greater peer-to-peer interaction to build these personal bonds and foster peer support organically.

Case in point: TD Bank Read More »

You may or may not have noticed, but we upgraded the CEC member web site last week.  In addition to some aesthetic enhancements, this upgrade adds three cool functionalities that I encourage all our members to check out:

 1)     Recommended for you.  An earlier upgrade added a reminder of recently viewed content.  Now, that viewing history lets us populate a “top 3” section based on what else your peers who also viewed that content are reading.  It’s not unlike the collaborative filtering tools now used by many consumer web sites, such as eBay and Amazon.

2)     Member spotlight.  One of the coolest aspects of the Council is the incredible network of over 9,000 communications professionals at CEC member companies.  Now, we’ve added a “member spotlight” section on the right margin to showcase some of innovators among this group and share what they are up to.  Read More »

This post is shared by Anastasia Milgramm of our sister-program, the Customer Contact Council.

Customer interest in reducing energy consumption is higher than ever.

In fact, “80% of US households recently [invested] in some form of energy-related improvements for their home,” according to Stuart Sikes, President at international research firm Parks Associates.

Many are also interested in the potential cost savings of energy efficiency. Parks Associates research found that while “80% of customers don’t know the price they are paying for electricity, 62% strongly believe that saving energy and lowering their utility bills are desirable.”

So with national attention focused on the need to reduce energy consumption and budget-conscious consumers paying attention, what role can utilities’ organizations play in engaging consumers in energy management?

Some strategies you might consider:

• Alert customers about their energy consumption. Many customers don’t know or keep track of their energy usage. In fact, customers are likely to call utilities providers when they receive their energy bill if they perceive the bill to be unexpectedly high. Prevent these unnecessary contacts by alerting customers when their energy use exceeds a certain benchmark, even if this happens before the end of a billing period.  CEC members, ensure customers are receptive to these alerts by understanding customer values and selecting the appropriate channels.

• Educate customers about energy-saving techniques and products. Teaching customers about energy efficiency will boost engagement and encourage customers to take steps to reduce energy usage.  This can also create cross-sell opportunities, as customers opt to buy related products or services offered by utility providers.  CEC members, learn how to engage stakeholders on green-related topics. Read More »

Last week Alan Marks from Ebay and CEC hosted 16 of the smartest minds in Communications for a Thought Leaders Roundtable in San Jose.  The mission: share ideas on the changing nature of the communications profession and understand what the best companies are doing differently.

We often hear our members talking about the importance of having a seat at the table: “if we were only brought in earlier then we could have had more value.”  These communicators very much have that seat at the table and it’s no accident.  They aren’t focused on proving the value of communications activities – instead they are making sure that everything their teams does is constructive and driving business value.

There were a couple of key themes that stood out for me that felt different from most Communications teams we speak to:

1. Actively Building Business Acumen of the Team – It is not enough to have a super-savvy head of communications. If the function is to be taken seriously as a strategic partner then everything the team does and every person needs to really understand the business. Here were a couple of ideas shared on how you can build business acumen:
   • Action Learning Teams – teams of 4-6 communicators with different expertise are given a business focused project to partner together on and present a strategy and action plan for communications e.g., creating a plan for how the company can better use mobile.
   • Rotation Programs (within and outside Communications) – exposing comms team to different roles and parts of the business e.g., media specialist works in internal comms for 3 months.
   • Exposure to Other Functions/BU Thinking – bringing in experts from across the business who have a stake in a shared problem (e.g., safety) to educate communicators about the issue and facilitate an idea sharing session to come up with ways that Communications can help solve the challenge.
   • Active Listening – creating opportunities for communicators to “go native” into the business or stakeholder environment and either run focus groups, ethnography or simply ask smart questions to boost their audience understanding. Read More »

Are you responsible for PR, Media Relations, Public Affairs, or similar? If you are, then the chances are that how you do your job will have changed significantly in the last 5-10 years.

On Wednesday 15th February, the CEC invites you to spend an hour with us looking at how PR professionals need to adapt to succeed in a stakeholder environment that has undergone significant change.

Where stakeholders once received information from a finite number of media outlets, they now get it from a huge range of sources – particularly in the online space. Where once they got news at fixed times in the day, they now get a constant stream of information through 24 hour news channels, or via their social connections on media such as Twitter. As the stakeholder environment becomes increasingly dynamic, many communicators are finding individual outreaches to have diminishing impact.

Creating content that ‘flows’

Many PR teams have responded by pushing the same old company-centric messages through a new range of channels. Instead, leading communicators are creating stakeholder-centric content, designed to flow naturally across stakeholders’ informal networks.

Join us to discuss:

• The skills required for PR success in the social age
• How to identify channels with the greatest impact
• How to create content that provokes dialogue and discussion

You can register for this webinar here – we look forward to having you on the line!

Details
Title: Proactive PR in a Networked Environment
Date: Wednesday 15th February
Time: 7am PST / 10am EST / 3pm GMT / 4pm CET

Tiered Communications Service

Can you relate to the following statements?

• My team has a difficult time saying “no” to routine or low-impact partner requests.
• My team spends too much time supporting tactical projects and too little time on high-value initiatives.
• My team is concerned about allowing non-communicators to “self-serve” their communications needs.

If you nodded in agreement to any of these statements, it might be time to reevaluate (or create!) your existing service level agreements. The truth is all of us in Communications have felt exasperated at times when business partners ask us to complete low-value work. In recent years, this frustration has been compounded as Communications budgets remain flat while business partner requests increase.

Of course, you likely already have some tacit agreements in place with business partners or have agreements tucked in a dusty file cabinet somewhere. In theory these SLAs are great, in practice they are harder to implement because it’s hard to: a.) assign value to individual activities, b.) shift partner perceptions of what Comms can do, and c.) ensure consistency and quality of communications pushed back to the line.

When we explored this challenge, ING Insurance Americas tiered service-level framework stood out. What made it better than your typical SLA? Three things:

1. It was co-created with partners to prioritize their business needs and the related communications support most critical to those needs. Read More »

I found myself walking into the closest branch of my bank the other day to take care of a transaction.  The people at my bank are super nice.  They always go the extra mile.  They always offer me coffee, which I always decline.  Really, they have the customer service thing down.  But for all my fond feelings towards them, I mostly just resented having to drive all the way to my bank to take care of a transaction that I would rather have handled remotely on my own.  The reason—I didn’t want or need their advice—I simply needed their logistics.

Apparently, I’m typical.  For years we’ve worked to entice our banking customers into our branches with the quality of our customer service—wooing them with friendly faces and a hot drink so that they’ll want to entrust us with their financial future.  But by the time they’re easing themselves into our comfy chairs, they’ve already made their financial decisions—they’re simply there because they have to be to finish the transaction. Read More »

As the world becomes more and more connected by technological innovations, it’s no wonder that communicators have become far less reliant on reactive response strategies. Waiting for a reputational threat to arise before thinking about solutions just won’t cut it. But no matters how fast information spreads, communicators — even those well-armed with response tactics — can only move so quickly.

Communicators are successfully enlisting line manager support in limiting reputational risks by erring on the side of simplicity in developing tools and processes for managers to use. Clear decision rules guiding the frequency, nature and venue of stakeholder interactions — plus making clear when to involve the communications team — line managers can play an essential role in local stakeholder engagement.

Line managers represent a powerful resource in identifying reputational threats as well as mitigating risks through engagement with key stakeholder groups. In companies with widely varying stakeholder groups across many locations, managers are much better suited to handle the basics of local stakeholder relations than a centralized corporate communications team. Leading communicators account for the real challenges in developing line managers as players in stakeholder engagement.

Read More »