Despite the “DO NOT RUN” sign on the pool deck, every kid at the pool ran until being whistled at by the lifeguard, being yelled at by Mom, or experiencing their first good scrape from the cement. And how many times were we reminded to put on a helmet, wear our seat belts, make sure our laces were tied tightly, or stop running with scissors? While we often test the limits, safety has been instilled in us all from a young age.

That said, safety often comes at the cost of efficiency (and sometimes a little bit of fun). In parts of our lives there is still someone there to demand a certain level of safety from us—be it a traffic cop, a TSA security guard, or a Mom (yep–she’s still around!). But at work, even if it is a small part of a manager’s role description, no one can be a full-time “safety cop.”

Many companies, particularly those in the energy/utility, manufacturing, and other heavy industries have been asking us about how to increase awareness of safety goals within their organizations. What is most critical for communicators, however, is to understand our role in helping employees align their everyday behavior to these safety goals—independent of a manager being there to remind them to use the handrail, drive more carefully, wear a helmet, etc. Read More »

We all know that Comms and HR folks have a lot in common (e.g., effective HR is often reliant upon strong communication). How far do you sit from your HR counterpart – 10m across the office? 20m? Separated by one or two stops in the elevator / lift?

Although they may sit near us, we probably don’t talk as much as we should.  With that in mind, I thought it would be valuable to take a look at the joint objectives that we share with our partners in HR.  Each quarter, our sister program, CLC Human Resources announces the latest trends from the HR world.  As we just begin to step forth from the recession, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the latest insights (from Q4 2010) made for some pretty depressing reading.  I’ve pulled out some of the key HR challenges facing businesses below:

• Decline in Engagement / Increased Retention Risk: As the job market begins to pick up, disengaged employees who had been ‘sitting tight’ have begun to look for new pastures.  Levels of intent to stay have fallen every quarter since Q4-2009 (from 26% – 22%). Crucially, line managers are identified as key to influencing engagement, and to customizing retention strategies to manage turnover risk…
• Performance Management & Productivity: Managers’ effectiveness at stewarding the performance of their employees continues to decline.  While productivity increased slightly in Q3, the overall downward trend in productivity across the year indicates that managers are struggling to provide effective performance feedback (18% decline in manager effectiveness), and to articulate clear objectives to their direct reports (7% decline in manager effectiveness)… Read More »

The beginning of every new year is the perfect time to promise yourself that you’re really, really, REALLY gonna make the changes you’ve been meaning to make for many years.  Among the perennial favorites:

• Losing weight
• Exercising more
• Getting yourself out of debt

But as a corporate communications professional,  even if you become more athletic, more financially sound, and tone your abs to the point where you can scrub laundry on them — 2011 is not gonna be “your year” unless you make one other big change.

You’ve gotta find a way to convince your company to measure the communications effectiveness of your line managers. Read More »

Business is in a state of permanent crisis. In its most frightening definition, a crisis is “a stage in a sequence of events at which the trend of all future events, especially for better or for worse, is determined; a turning point.” How many of these turning points have you and your company experienced in the last two years? How many more do you foresee in the coming years?

The pace of change and level of uncertainty in the external environment is putting pressure on companies to build a new competency within their organization—adaptive leadership. In a 2009 HBR article, Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis, the authors argue that leaders need to solve for the underlying causes of major crises while simultaneously making the changes that will enable their organizations to thrive in unpredictable environments.

Adaptive leaders, according to article, do three things well. Read More »

Managers are your most effective communications tools.  In fact, Comms teams that focus on improving their line managers’ ability to lead dialogue with employees can benefit from a 12% increase in employee mobilization.  (For those unfamiliar with CEC’s term, “mobilization,” it’s a combination of discretionary effort and active alignment…essentially, mobilization = employees working hard on the right things.  CEC members: you can learn more about mobilization here.)

So, if effective managers are Communications’ best tools, what is the best tool for communicators to use to equip managers with the information and skills they need?

One of the best tools is manager dialogue training. CEC members: you can access our full-blown Dialogue Training and Workshops AND learn more about how training managers to “dialogue” is very different than training them to “cascade.”

Of course, with thin training budgets and dispersed workforces, dialogue training may not be a feasible option for your communications team.  In that case, your intranet may be the best way to help boost your managers’ communications confidence.  I took a look at a recent discussion thread in the CEC Employee Communications Forum to pull out some smart ways your peers are taking advantage of their intranets to boost the impact of line manager communications:

• Toolboxes

Quick-tips, key talking points, worksheets to plan for a dialogue — intranet toolboxes that are easily accessible by managers help them confidently share information with their employees.

“I set up a Manager’s Toolkit site where there is a discussion board and a document library where they can pick up talking points as developed for key messaging.  I want to ‘teach them to fish’ so that they become better at communication and can deliver messages as leadership would hope for them to be delivered.”
Communications Consultant, Financial Services Read More »

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 »

By Mike Wellman

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 »