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“In her first couple months as chief executive of Time, Inc.,the country’s largest magazine publisher, Laura Lang took some time to hold town hall style meetings and field questions from many of the company’s 9,000 employees.” ...According to the Times, Lang “quietly devoted her first months on the job to talking to employees. She traveled to Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and London to meet with them. She convened senior executives in New York to review each magazine and assess what each one needs to thrive in a digital world. “
The best thing about the article was Lang’s quote about why she chose to spend her first crucial months on the job talking to employees:
“The point of the process was to say we’re not going away in a room and shutting the door and whispering,” Ms. Lang said.
Not shutting the door and whispering. Beautiful....
[Refreshing leadership and internal commun ications- JD]
Just finished reading the new IBM CEO survey, Leading Through Connections. There is alot of great information about how CEOs see the world, particularly the new workforce. Instead of the usual command and control state of affairs, CEOs now realize that they will be building their company reputations on their employee intelligence networks and shared values. As the report says about CEOs, “they are arming the people who represent their brands to the world.” Without knowing what the values, mission and purpose of an organization is, there is little hope that reputations can be steadied and differentiated in the present sea of information chaos and overload. ”For organizations to operate effectively in this environment, employees must internalize and embody the organization’s values and mission.” Companies with the best reputations will have employees who help build and safeguard their companies reputation every minute of every day because they understand what the company stands for. They will guard their company reputation as their own because they will implicitly understand the character of the organization. It is now the CEO’s job to arm them with the tools to understand how best to represent their brands no matter where they are or what time zone they are in. Shared beliefs, up and down the ladder, will create winning cultures and winning companies....
Corporate communications heads agree (82%) that discussions in social media and social networks can impact on a company’s overall reputation and licence to operate, but are split on how seriously it should be taken. Forty per cent said that criticism in social media channels was taken too seriously while 46% disagreed....
If you have employees who spend a lot of time on social media, don't just lecture about productivity. Think of their personal networks as your networks. If you have people at your company who spend a lot of time on social media, you might worry about the impact on your productivity or whether your social media policy needs tightening. But in the right circumstances, these LinkedIn luminaries and Google+ groupies can be real assets to your business. By tapping their personal networks, they can promote your content marketing activities and help you generate wonderful new content ideas. So if you have potential content champions on your payroll, here’s how you can get some real value out of them....
The best social media training effort is one that has been tailored to your organization’s requirements. Off-the-shelf training programs may cover the basics, but the basics will get you only so far. The payoff can be huge if you invest the time and effort to get the information you need to make sure your training addresses the unique circumstances of your company—and every company has unique circumstances! That’s why research is the most important phase of the training development process....
Is it easy for employees to comment or post information to your social intranet? If not, yours probably isn't boosting efficiency like it should. ...A new white paper from IGLOO Software (pdf) explains the benefits of a social intranet, as well as the four features every social intranet must have to make employees' lives easier. Does yours have all the components on this list?...
3 golden rules of employee engagement for corporate social responsibility... No business is too small to be sustainable, and no business (even a sole trader!) is too small to consider its supply chain. These rules should be adopted and promoted as best practice by all businesses across their supply chain....
A new multi-dimensional training program for all employees probably won’t excite most budget-conscious executives. One that on first glance focuses employee attention on Facebook and blogs is likely to inspire even less enthusiasm. How do you get past those initial objetions to build support for a social media training effort? There are three fundamental approaches to take in gaining buy-in: - Cite internal research
- Appeal to the leader’s interests
- Demonstrate the risks in not training employees....
Those of you familiar with what is happening with Goldman Sachs these days will recall the recent article published by a former Goldman Sachs employee who resigned from the company in a very public way while detailing some of the poor practices and culture of the firm. It’s now being estimated that this disengaged employee cost Goldman Sachs over $2 billion. As I’ve said many times, we have spent so much time talking about the voice of the customer that we forgot about the voice of the employee. Of course what happened to Goldman is perhaps on the extreme end of the spectrum but it certainly proves to be a valuable example of why engaged employees are so important and what can happen with disengaged employees. Consider some of the following statistics: The lost productivity of actively disengaged employees costs the US economy $370 BILLION annually. (Gallup)...
The humorous videos by a flight attendant parody the firm’s management and reveal the content of an internal memo sent to staff. A discussion is developing on ragan.com as to the appropriateness of American Airlines response to the issue and whether it has the right to “censor” its employees. Crisis management is always more challenging when an issue is internally generated rather than caused by an external event. To reduce the likelihood of such an incident and therefore minimise reputational harm, a strategy of prevention must be prioritised. The critical first step in this is the introduction and internal communication of a social media policy....
IS YOUR ENEMY ON THE INSIDE?Get on a Southwest flight to anywhere, buy shoes from Zappos.com, pants from Nordstom, groceries from Whole Foods, anything from Costco, a Starbucks espresso, or a Double-Double from In N’ Out and you’ll get a taste of these brands’ alive and vibrant cultures.... Culture, like brand, is misunderstood and often discounted as a touchy-feely component of business that belongs to HR. It’s not intangible or fluffy, it’s not a vibe or the office décor. It’s one of the most important drivers that has to be set or adjusted to push long-term, sustainable success....
Listening to and involving employees in company issues could save your company from a disaster. ...Internal stakeholders (read: employees) know what's going on in the company. They also care—a lot—because their sustenance depends on things going well at work. It is not only stupid, but organizationally suicidal to ignore what employees have to say. Don't punish them for constructively and appropriately trying to communicate information that can save the organization from itself....
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Forget trying to come up with motivational tools and "tricks." There's a better--and simpler--way to get more out of your staff. ..."I was sitting in front of my computer, trying to come up with something I could tell all these smart people in my company that would help them do their job better," Moorehead says, "and I realized that what I really should be doing is asking them what I should do."... [Inspiring advice for ALL managers - JD]
Great businesses evolve. Apple is now a phone company. Amazon is the Internet’s big box store. IBM is a global IT consulting operation. And Hewlett Packard is…Well, the once-great company that historically defined Silicon Valley itself is now a Layoff in Search of a Strategy. So where can it now look for that elusive strategy? Like any troubled company that makes wholesale job cuts in order to recover profitability or enhance market position, HP would do well to revisit how, in the early 1980s, Jack Welch, the legendary General Electric CEO, tailored a massive reduction-in-force to directly serve a growth agenda that veritably redefined one of the world’s top corporate brands....
With HP\'s announced layoffs of 27,000 workers, there will be a lot of explaining to do. Here are some tips to keep in mind when communicating a major change to your own team. With these significant layoffs, HP will have as much of a responsibility—or more—to engage its remaining employees as it does the public and shareholders. No doubt there are many HP workers who are saying to themselves, "Why now?" and "What's next?" That's why it's important to keep employees informed in times of transition, says Scott E. Rupp, senior manager of public relations for Vitera Healthcare Solutions. "They'll need information to make decisions about their and their family's future," he says.
Here are five tips from Rupp on how to effectively manage major transitions with employees....
Spencer Soper of the Allentown Morning Call exposed the working conditions at an Amazon.com warehouse last year, noting the intense heat and ambulances parked outside to treat employees who were unable to endure the heat. He writes: “An emergency room doctor in June called federal regulators to report an ‘unsafe environment’ after he treated several Amazon warehouse workers for heat-related problems. The doctor’s report was echoed by warehouse workers who also complained to regulators, including a security guard who reported seeing pregnant employees suffering in the heat....
Internal communications should be an important consideration for any PR company when conducting a PR campaign, particularly during such times when the economic environment is unstable and consumer confidence is low. Often during high profile and fast moving PR campaigns it is easy for public relations consultants to become blinkered by the need to secure positive media coverage and forget the importance of internal communications. The internal stakeholders, especially your employees, are a business's greatest asset; therefore it is important to ensure they are informed of good and bad news. This has become especially important with the rise of social media, which gives employees the chance to voice opinions and concerns in an open forum, which could ultimately damage a brands' reputation. There are a number of ways PR agencies and brands can ensure employee communication is a key part of any public relations campaign. Here are a few ideas...
When it comes to determining the primary audience for sustainability reports, is it investors, customers or another stakeholder group? A recent study by Ernst & Young and GreenBiz.com found employees to be the second most important audience for sustainability reports. That’s not surprising when you consider that the study also found employees to be second only to customers as drivers of sustainability initiatives. But consider this: the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer found that company communications are distrusted by workers at all levels. Only 29% of executives and 21% of employees trust such communication. That’s a wake-up call to leaders and communicators for less spin and more candid, meaningful narrative....
American Electric Power's head of internal communications says starting with a focus on what employees want will make everything else fall into place. ...Lots of intranet managers get wrapped up in messages or technology, but they need to remember that the intranet is a tool for employees, not communicators. Remembering that will lead to an intranet that's cleaner, clearer, and easier to use, Amurgis says. From that basic philosophy, he suggests three things that every internal communicator should do: inspire, inform, and involve....
There have been volumes written about how to create a “personal brand” including right here on Diva Marketing posted in 2009. However, social media and social networks have added an interesting dimension. What if .. your employer helped you develop your personal brand to the benefit of both you and them?
What if ..
then you both leveraged the credibility, visibilty and goodwill of each to create a an earned halo effect that supports and aligns your values and the company's brand promise?
Answer: You have an Employee Personal Branding Strategy....
The clothier gives its 134,000 employees a no-nonsense policy. Here are some highlights you might want to adopt. ...nowhere does it recommend to “just cinch it.” The policy is broken down into three categories, “Keep in mind,” “How to be the best,” and “Don’t even think about it.”...
Over the past few days the internet has been awash with the ‘What I do‘ meme. I looked for one which captured the role of Internal/Corporate Communicator and wasn’t able to find one, so I decided to create my own. Below is my tongue in cheek representation of ‘What people think I do’ and how I think the profession is seen by others....
Despite internal social networks gaining in popularity, few of them can be regarded as successes. That is at least the finding of a new report by Information Week. The report, called Rebooting the Antisocial Network found that just 13% of ITprofessionals believe their internal social networks have been a success....
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