CEOs are gearing up to share their 2012 strategy with employees through live and virtual town halls, blog posts, and Q&A sessions. While no one underestimates the importance of company leaders’ plan for the year ahead, employees often leave strategy sessions unsure of what, exactly, they should do with the insight and how they will be expected to contribute.

One of the best tools to think about engaging employees in strategy conversations is your employment value proposition (EVP). Your EVP is the set of attributes that employees value about working at a company. Attributes like compensation, future career and development opportunities, and work-life balance are usually at the top of the list. Understanding what employees value and feeding these insights into leadership communications and business unit discussions about the implications of company strategy.

EVP, or employment brand, is usually the purview of Human Resources because of its importance in recruiting and retaining employees. But Communications can play an important role by supporting HR in crafting and communicating about the EVP, and taking the lead on driving employee engagement through organizational alignment with the EVP.

Learn how you can support HR in creating a successful EVP and engage employees through your EVP. By breaking the EVP realignment process into two stages, it’s easy to see just how big a role Communications can play: Read More »

Today’s the day that CEC has been counting down to all year… No, it’s not the renewal date of your CEC membership – it’s our Christmas party (at least, it is in our European HQ, where I’m based). I must say, I’m looking forward to it, and most of the CEC crew assures me that they are as well. However, in speaking to several of my friends from other companies, I’ve been struck by their negativity, cynicism, and trepidation at the prospect of navigating an event that one of them described to me as “the most socially awkward of the year”.

Of course, for CEC’s audience of loquacious communicators, “social awkwardness” isn’t an issue – we’re good socially! But remember – not everyone else is. What happens at one of these parties when you’re stuck between the weird lady from the IT help desk who’s pushed past you at the coffee machine all year, the social recluse  from Finance who prefers spreadsheets to his own family, and the spotty graduate whose name no one can remember, but is irritatingly keen to impress?

This, of course, leaves you with two options. One is to politely excuse yourself and head for the bathroom, the bar, or – if things have got really bad – home. The other is to use your skills as a communicator to enable some social interaction between your colleagues.

Building Social Connections

And funnily enough, this is something that CEC can really help with. One of the things we often get asked is how communicators can encourage peer sharing among employees. As companies become more complex, organizational barriers increasingly prevent employees from connecting, sharing and learning with each other. And, interestingly, the same principles that will help a couple of socially inept guys from IT to open up at a Christmas party will also apply to creating an organization in which peers open up and share their expertise with each other. Read More »

Each November, the parent entity of the CEC, the Corporate Executive Board, releases to our members a widely read Executive Guidance briefing outlining management imperatives for the coming year. This year’s document addresses one of the most common challenges raised by Communicators – the promise and perils of globalization. The opportunity is clear: between 2010 and 2030 the percentage of global GDP from emerging markets is expected to grow from 37% to 59%; however, most organizations focus on market-level investments and fail to address how corporate center functions such as Finance, IT, Legal, and of course, Communications need to adapt. The Corporate Executive Board has outlined six management disciplines critical for long-term success in emerging markets (and members will have upcoming opportunities to digest them all); however, one in particular struck me as a place for immediate impact from a high-functioning global Communications department: Accelerated Collaboration and Innovation.

While access to new markets and talent should offer opportunities for market shaping innovation, less than 40% of employees perceive effective collaboration – even in just one location. The results are troubling: innovation vitality (the percentage of sales from new products) is troublingly low to keep up with the necessary pace of growth in these new markets and less than a third of R&D staff in developed or emerging markets report high levels of trust with their global counterparts.

So how is this all a Communications problem (other than the fact that everything is a communications problem!)? Corporate Executive Board research shows that most organizations wrongly attribute these deficiencies to the innovation skills of geographically dispersed R&D centers; however, leading companies instead focus on increasing 1) the willingness of global employees to share and receive information and 2) the strength of connections to actually identify and apply new ideas – in other words, the effectiveness of the communications environment. Two lessons from our research into global intranet platforms suggest some immediate solutions. Read More »

Can leaders do anything right?  A lot of our work over the last few years – especially on Mobilizing the Workforce and Building a Change-Ready Organization – has challenged conventional wisdom around leadership communication:

• Be transparent?  Insufficient.
• Build buy-in?  Misses the mark in a high-change environment. 
• Give clear direction?  May actually do more harm than good.

But this doesn’t mean that leaders don’t matter or can’t communicate in ways that motivate employees and boost their productivity.  It’s just that we need leaders to play a different role – to empower:

• Seek employee feedback and input.  I don’t mean a “suggestion box,” which puts the burden to act back onto the leader.  Empowering leaders ask employees questions that they can answer to take action within the scope of their day-to-day work.
• Coach, don’t tell.  Empowering leaders – when possible – guide staff to figure out what to do rather than tell them what to do.
• Provide opportunities to experiment. Empowering leaders point out learning opportunities and help staff seize them and other employees share in what is learned.
• Connect employees to helpful people and tools.  Empowering leaders’ broad reach within the organization lets them make staff more productive by making smarter connections.  Read More »

In my time with CEC, I’ve been involved in a variety of projects.  My latest, looking at what Communications can do to improve workplace safety, has been the one that’s been easiest to get excited about! Members we’ve spoken with have been more passionate about this subject than any other I’ve discussed with them, and I guess it’s kind of rubbed off!

That said, something that was discussed in CEC’s recent webinar, “Avoiding Crises: Building a Preventative Safety Culture”, is that some (but not all!) of this passion, energy, and expertise has been misdirected. Communicators are doing more than ever to raise employee awareness of the need to be safe, but awareness alone may not be sufficient to drive the desired safe behavior.

Conflicting Messages

The safety messages that employees receive telling them to take care of themselves, or reminding them of the risks inherent in their jobs, aren’t the only messages that they’re receiving. What about the pressure they receive from their supervisor to hit production targets? Or the pressure from peers, who insist that “real men don’t wear gloves/helmets/goggles?”

A Better Way Forward Read More »

Safety communications has received a lot of interest from CEC members in recent months as more organizations look to Communications to aid in (re)engaging employees around safety.  Unfortunately, it is often a tragic event or disturbing trend in employee accidents that leads business partners to approach Communications for help.  Regardless of initial spark for these campaigns, one thing is clear: organizations are seriously concerned about safety and want to know what they can do to help prevent accidents, injuries, and unsafe behavior.

Through my conversations with communicators who’ve recently worked on safety campaigns, I’ve found that their first step is often to build awareness of safety policies and procedures.  In the more effective campaigns, communicators help employees to build personal, often emotional, connections to safety issues.  For example, several companies have seen significant reductions in accidents by helping employees consider how an injury could affect their families and friends, often through victim storytelling and subsequent dialogue sessions.

While effective in some situations, this tactic is best used when the safety challenge can be solved by awareness alone.  A common challenge cited by communicators is complacency.  In these situations it’s often not that employees don’t know how to work safely, but rather that they’ve performed the same tasks over and over, without incident, and have developed bad habits or have lost appreciation for the dangers of cutting corners.

But what if there is a more complicated challenge to address – say, between productivity and safety — where an awareness campaign alone won’t work?  Here are a couple communications tactics that will help: Read More »

Speaking to our network of thousands of communicators you begin to hear a lot of similar themes. Some of the most common revolve around demonstrating the value of communications and moving from a service provider to consultative partner with the business.  While I am cautious to use the term “silver bullet” there is one change you can make that will make serious progress against all of these: the way you take in requests from the business.

I believe there are two different types of communicators: the order-takers and the value-creators. Let’s play out an everyday situation to see if you can identify which one you are.

Situation: A business partner comes to member of the communications team and asks for an employee video to be created around the company’s focus on safety.

• Order-taker: “Absolutely, we’d be delighted to help with this important strategic priority. Let me get an understanding of the key messages you want to send and we’ll use our expertise to create a video that is both engaging and memorable for employees.”

Doesn’t seem too bad.  They are using their expertise in communication channels to help create a much more compelling video than the business partner would do alone.  The main problem here is that the communicator is assuming that a video is the right answer, jumping straight to the solution.

• Value-creator: “Great, happy to help.  Before we start talking about the video, it would be good to get an understanding of what it is we want to achieve and see if there are alternative ways communications can help you reach your goal…”

Read More »

1:53 PM- I’m in an elevator and it’s shaking violently.  As it pinballs back-and-forth between the walls of the elevator shaft, metal screetching on concrete, all I can think is please let me get to my floor in one piece.  The elevator continues chugging along until it reaches my floor.  The doors open uneventfully and for the next few seconds I feel an intense feeling of relief — must have been an elevator malfunction.  I’ve made it!

As I leave the elevator bay and turn the corner to my hallway, my stomach sinks and I feel a surge of panic come over me — I see my colleagues rushing for the emergency exit.  I want to know what’s going on, but I don’t have time to think it through.  I jump in line and ride the wave of bodies down the stairwell, corkscrewing 17 floors to the street.

As we pour on to the sidewalk I can see that everyone has their cell phones out, contacting friends and checking websites to figure out what just happened.  “My twitter feed says that it was an earthquake, 5.8 magnitude,” someone says.  “Apparently it spanned from the Carolinas to New York.”  My phone buzzes with text messages from family wondering if I’m okay.  Thankfully, at least from what I can gather, everyone and everything is fine. Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

Every week, employees are expected to make hundreds of decisions that affect your company’s big picture strategic goals.

The problem? Though they are often in the best position to make an impact, most employees lack the knowledge to develop business-aligned solutions on their own.

That’s where you come in. Your communications team can help immensely by equipping employees with the kind of information that enables them to solve problems on their own. There’s no doubt that you’re already sharing lots of information with employees, but is it the “right” information?  That is,  rather than doling out directive information that explains what employees need to do, how about providing tools that empower employees  to build their solutions themselves?

We got the scoop on how one member company helps business partners think get inside their employees’ heads and think differently about the information shared. ConAgra Food’s information need assessment process involves using a series of refining questions to drill down to the information employees need in order to create their own solutions. They help by:

• Clarifying business goals and challenges
• Determining  how to explain information to someone not sharing your expertise Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

Online newsletters are an all-important way to relay information and keep employees up-to-speed on company happenings—if they’re executed correctly, that is.

With continuously evolving technology and an ever-changing audience, it’s easy for companies to fall into a rut and for newsletter styles to become outdated.

In case you’ve been wondering how your peers are designing their newsletters, we got the scoop from members who recently gathered in our Employee Communications Forum to offer tips on making changes to improve electronic employee newsletters. Here are some of the takeaways:

• Make it easy to read. This may seem like a no-brainer, but a lot of companies still send out newsletters that are hard to browse. Keep in mind that time is scarce, and text should be simple to scan for key points—no one wants to spend a long time searching for pieces of information. Create clearly defined segments, e.g., group info by region, and have a separate section for employee news. Bulleted headlines that are hyperlinked to a full article on the company site are also a good way to reduce clutter. Read More »