CEC Insider

As the English football team returns home with their tail between their legs, you can hear a collective sigh of relief from most of us tortured fans. We no longer have to go through the anguish and frustration that is watching a team of individually talented (and very highly paid!!) footballers fail to gel as a team.  The World Cup has yet again reminded me of how important teamwork and peer support are in driving success.  The anxiety felt by the millions of England supporters on sofas and in pubs everywhere is probably a similar anxiety employees have felt with all the cuts, layoffs and change companies have been going through over the past 2 years—a sense that everyone is looking out for number one and not each other.

So how are engagement levels faring as we start to see the first green shoots of recovery in the economy? I took a look at CLC Human Resources’ engagement survey across over 145 organizations and 204,000 employees worldwide and picked out a couple of trends that show that we’re not out of the woods yet:

• Engagement is still at risk—With 21.6% of employees in the “disengaged” category, it’s clear that this is a problem with real roots. The low levels of discretionary effort coupled with high levels of intent to stay are causing very real performance issues for a lot of companies. Read More »

In retrospect, it seems pretty funny that social media’s permanence was debated in the not-so-distant past.  (“It’s a trend.” “This will all blow over.” “Make it stop.” Etc.)  It’s clear today that social media has created a paradigm shift in how people communicate—and consequently businesses as well. It’s important for Communications to evolve with the times, of course, and CEC has seen quite a few members make fantastic use of blogs, video, Twitter and wikis both internally and externally.  That said, I’m personally fascinated by the notion that communication behaviors originating in social media can create a ripple effect on in-person communication.  So why not get creative in adapting our in-person employee communications to better tap into the same motivators that draw people to social media?

In that spirit, here are 3 social media features that can be re-imagined for the “real world” of any employee—wired or not:

Read More »

Over the past six months, I’ve been touring the world to meet with CEC members about the topic of Mobilizing the Workforce (some of the best work CEC has ever done, IMHO). One of the central themes is the power of personal connection…when employees can see a clear link between their daily work and the organization’s larger mission. These employees are proven to work smarter and harder on the things that matter most…and hey, who couldn’t use more of THAT these days?

But how can we as communicators help every single employee make that connection? The short answer is simple: WE can’t. That responsibility has to rest with the managers throughout the organization—the people who employees know, and have some kind of relationship with.

At this point, you might be wondering, OK…so how can I help managers create that connection? I think you already know. And I think I can prove it. Read More »