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We talk a lot about good employee advocacy as a discernible benefit of effective internal communication. Whether its BP employees fielding questions about the oil spill, Google staff explaining Street View or bankers justifying their annual bonus, communicators want to ensure people receive the information they need to back the official line. But how well is the average employee equipped to handle more basic questions about the latest price plan, special offer or new product? Two recent experiences suggest ‘not very’.

First, one organisation I know will shortly ask the vast majority of its employees to leave their desks for the day, head out to the streets, cafes and shopping centres and interact directly with prospective customers. The case for doing so is compelling: the company has recently changed its name and has introduced some exciting, potentially game-changing new products that it wants to shout about. Many of its staff have never had any direct contact with a customer so what better time to bring employees and the customers who pay their wages closer together. The trouble is, a high percentage of those employees are very worried that they don’t understand the products well enough to make the most of the opportunity. Advocates yes, but salespeople, probably not.

Second, a chance conversation with a local teacher suggested that parents at his school know rather more about that schools stance on several key issues than the majority of staff. As a teacher, his role is in the classroom but as a member of the local community he is expected to know the school’s view on a wide range of issues. His honest assessment though is that he does not.   Willing advocate certainly but genuine salesman? Again, probably not.

It’s a fair assumption (though by no means a given) that product information is generally provided to those who most need it. But could and should organisations be doing more to equip all staff with the information they need to become genuine salespeople? After all, every employee comes in to contact with dozens of potential customers every week but I’d be prepared to bet that a majority of these people, however willing, would be more than a little uncomfortable about actively selling to them. Time perhaps to look more closely at what we really mean by advocacy.

Arguably the worst part of the professional communicator’s role is the need to communicate bad news, or more specifically redundancies. It’s a role many of us have had to fulfil in recent months and given the range of approaches taken, begs the question as to whether there is a ‘right way’.

To start with, let’s clarify precisely why the communication component of any announcement is important. First, with redundancy high on any list of stressful experiences, behaving and being seen to behave with common decency is important. After all, brand is what brand does. Second, a majority of staff will ‘survive’ and making sure we support and continue to engage this group is equally important. And third there is still a business to run and a brand identity to uphold so if nothing else the communication process must do all it can minimise the damage done to business as usual.

Moving to the debate, is there a right way to structure the overall process? Employee consultation is a legal requirement in the UK and across the EU which means an announcement stating intention to proceed followed by the consultation period itself is a mandatory component. So little room for manoeuvre here. (Go to http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employeeinformationandconsultation/DG_10028095 for more details). Choices though arise once the consultation is complete and the outcome known and this in my experience is where division of opinion is most likely.

One coherent argument is that once ‘the list’ of affected employees is finalised, we should simply notify those colleagues of their fate and not involve anyone unaffected. Assuming notification happens face to face (and thankfully in my experience no organisation has sought to do it any other way), the issue is efficiently dealt with and broadly speaking achieves each of the objectives set out above. There is though a very obvious counter-argument that such an approach pre-announces the news (face to face meetings need to be scheduled so if you have one, you know what’s coming) and makes the process much harder to implement. Much better therefore to give everyone a slot regardless of their fate and work it through properly. That way everyone has the chance to talk through what it means for them. So plenty of scope for discussion here!

Another area for debate is around the ‘who’. Whose voice should be heard at what stage in the process? There should be little dispute that the most senior voice should be heard at the beginning (any other trivialises the news) but what about the act of notification. The line manager is the obvious choice though s/he may lack the skills. HR is an alternative as it is their specialism though this absolves managers of their responsibilities. There is also the local senior manager/director though the numbers involved may make this logistically challenging.

Then there is the discussion about ownership. Is a redundancy announcement a communication process requiring HR input or the other way around? This is very likely to depend upon the complexity of the announcement and factors such as numbers involved, variation in redundancy terms being offered and union involvement. The more complex the situation, the more significant the role of HR becomes.

If isn’t already obvious, the answer is almost certainly that there is no ‘right way’. I’ve yet to be involved in two processes that were the same or where the post-announcement debrief didn’t identify things we would have done differently. Core principles yes, but rigid process absolutely not. All of which underlines the importance of giving the communication side of any redundancy announcement the attention it deserves so that those all important objectives can be achieved.

We recently uploaded case studies featuring internal communication reviews we undertook for two very different organisations. One was for British Airways and was based around an extensive survey questionnaire with a strong channel focus. The other was for a UN agency called UNRWA and was based around a series of focus groups and interviews, undertaken during two fascinating weeks in the Middle East. Two projects with a very similar purpose but with quite different approaches.

The output was also quite different. In the case of BA, our main focus was an extensive analysis of the answers we received from the survey which led to a series of conclusions and recommendations. With UNRWA, our output was focused less on what we’d learnt and more on the channels and supporting infrastructure needed if communication was to improve. A quite different challenge altogether.

But the two projects were similar in one very important way. Both were one-off exercises that need only happen every 2-3 years and both were undertaken on behalf of those directly responsible for communication. And both also included the recommendation to introduce an ongoing measurement programme which brings me to my main point.

Communication reviews and audits are great as diagnostic tools for understanding how communication is currently viewed and where improvement can be made. But they are essentially inward looking and designed to inform future planning. More a means to an end. A measurement programme is an ongoing assessment of performance against pre-agreed criteria. Its purpose is to summarise the impact of communication activity and provide the organisation with evidence that the investment is worthwhile. An end therefore in itself.

In my view, both are equally necessary and valid exercises. But the crucial point is not to confuse the two. Put very simply, review once and measure often!

Change as we all know is the one constant in any organisation. And the effective communication of change remains one of the core roles of any communicator. So as a new year, indeed decade begins and my focus set firmly on a couple of change projects, what better time to reflect on some of the main priorities when communicating change. What’s really interesting is how little the list has changed in 10 years.

• Clarify the objective. One area of change management I believe organisations have improved in is the clarification of programme goals and success factors. I absolutely believe communicators should follow this lead and be very clear about their objectives if only to demonstrate that their role on the project has been a success. And in an age when survey and polling tools sit on most Intranets, ongoing measurement is a must.
• Consult, consult, consult. How often have you heard people ask who exactly was consulted? It is of course code for this doesn’t work for me (or something like that) and is often a consequence of the late introduction of the professional communicator to the process. A key priority for any change communicator is to grab the ongoing consultation and testing so dialogue is constant, professionally managed and received in time to be of value.
• Experiential, peer to peer communication. This strictly is two points but between them, sum up by far the most effective way of getting change messages across. First, don’t just talk about it, show people how it works. There really is no substitute for demonstrating the new system or procedure in action. And second, enrol people whose opinion is valued by your audience to do the talking. Any other way simply smacks of unwanted imposition.
• Manage the whole brand experience. Change teams are often disparate combinations of contractors, subject matter specialists and enthusiastic in-housers. They are often transitory and have a tendency to ignore the truism that a brand communicates in many ways. Many people come into contact with a change brand long before it is introduced and ensuring that all interactions with that brand are everything they need to be (responsive, speedy etc) is for me another big priority.
• Get the product right. This one goes well beyond the compass of the communicator but it is fair to say that a bad product will undermine, if not totally negate the very best communication. Clearly it is our job to make the change owners aware of any potential issue and if we’ve done each of the four earlier steps, the chances of this happening are greatly reduced. But we must always be prepared to cope with a crisis and ensure that the damage is limited.

The list could of course go on. But there is a wealth of knowledge and experience to tap into out there. And a good place to start is probably http://www.melcrum.com/topics/change.shtml.  Good luck!

Email bites back

For a while now I’ve been of the view that a long term goal of any organisation is to reduce massively the volume of email it generates. My reasons are various and range from breeding a culture of communication dependency to swamping employees with unmanageable volumes of information to locking organisational knowledge in inaccessible places. Coincidentally, today’s Times carries a great article about this very subject and suggests that the heyday of email may well be passing.

But sifting through employee comments made in a recent communication survey, email was most certainly biting back. The client in question has put significant effort into developing and encouraging the use of various collaborative tools and whilst those are gaining traction, it has created a more complex environment that presents employees with a potentially bewildering array of communication choices. Consequently, a quiet but discernible voice requesting that the Inbox once again become the communication portal supreme was clearly audible.

It’s been a while since I heard anyone suggest that more email might lead to better communication so I’ve given some thought to how I (and my client) might respond and arrived at three thoughts.

• Change takes time. It’s a fact of life that people adopt at different rates, whatever the change. This means we have to handle any shift away from email in the same way we would any other; by managing the change curve, finding and exploiting early adopters and above all making the change meaningful and of benefit to people.
• Clarify channel roles. My colleague Alan Richardson is writing a series of posts about the roles for different channels so I’ll leave that to him. But what’s obvious to me is that we have to be very clear about the role of any new channel we introduce and ensure people engage with it. We also need to be ruthless about switching off channels we no longer require or whose purpose has changed.
• Transform the role of the Inbox. I think it highly unlikely that today’s workforce will abandon the Inbox as the portal supreme although their offspring might. So instead of looking at alternatives to it, what about seeking to change its role from repository (where my information is stored) to navigator (the compass which directs me to the information and interaction I want).

It’s not an exhaustive list and I’d love to extend it further. So let me know what you think and indeed, whether you agree!

The subject of my (newly) teenaged son’s homework came up the other day, a familiar if delicate subject for any parent. Is he getting enough? Is he doing enough? And what are his marks like? Partly in an attempt to move on (is October of Year 8 really the right time?), I suggested ‘worrying about outputs not inputs’ by which I think I meant ‘exam results’. It’s not the first time I’ve used those words, as anyone with whom I’ve ever done a comms survey will testify. But with a number of communication and engagement surveys currently on the go, it seems a good time to revisit the argument.

First, let me clarify my meaning. By outputs, I mean the wider organisational outcomes we are seeking to bring about which in the case of an internal communication function might include building staff engagement with strategy or boosting trust in leadership. By inputs, I mean the activities we undertake to make this happen which might include updating the Intranet or running CEO roadshows.  In other words, one is an end in itself and the other a means to an end.

But what if our outputs are not properly defined? What if our very best efforts to clarify the role of the function still mean multiple interpretations of our purpose? And what if we ‘own’ only part of the outcome (there’s only so much influence we can have over staff engagement with strategy or perception of leadership)? Under these circumstances, measuring output becomes difficult and focusing on inputs suddenly appears more attractive. After all, no one’s going to get fired for measuring hits on a website or reaction to the CEO roadshow, sharing the results (always important) and learning from the feedback.  

My big concern and the basis of my argument is that by focusing on the inputs, we overlook the organisational outcomes the IC function is really trying to bring about and then double the crime by failing to use the opportunity presented by a measurement exercise to define it. That said, this can be a long and tiring process and deflect from the primary function of any good IC function which is to facilitate better internal communication. 

I make no apology for beating the ‘outputs’ drum as I believe every IC function should be clear about the wider outcomes it is seeking to influence. But to not measure all those tangibles that the function is best known for is equally negligent. So a small but important revision to my favourite expression; internal comms measurement is about outputs and inputs. Better go and check on that homework then.

The September issue of the Harvard Business Review carries an article by Paul Hemp entitled Death by Information Overload.  As the editor notes, it’s an entertaining read in which Hemp articulates the problem and its consequences before identifying some possible solutions.

The thing that struck me was the apparent lack of control the author feels any of us actually has over the problem. We are all unwitting victims of the communication monster we’ve created and simply have to live with the consequences. Yes, new technology can help us cope better but essentially, it’s all about coping. 

To a large extent, current communication practice means this is true. Many of us do feel as if we have very little control (as we do about many other aspects of corporate life) and that it is really someone else’s problem. But what if we suddenly started to take back some control and use tools already widely available and culturally aligned? What if we used instant messaging for those brief exchanges that don’t require a lengthy and apparently endless email trail? What if project or topic related communication was confined to discussion threads, open to all and providing a lasting record of past discussion? And what if people were required to subscribe to the content they want rather than simply having it pushed at them?

Technology no longer presents the barrier to a more manageable communication environment. The new barrier is our willingness as employees to step up, kick the email habit and make better use of the alternatives. It’s certainly more effort in the short term but the long term prize is definitely worth fighting for.

There’s nothing quite like a recession to prompt some fairly heavy duty introspection and our world of internal communication is certainly no exception. IC functions everywhere are assessing and refining their role, mainly to operate within narrower financial constraints but also to take more control over their destiny. Introspection is also de rigueur amongst consultants and I’ve been fortunate enough to participate in some fascinating discussions of late about the next big thing.

Contrast this though with the reality of what those outside our world expect. Ask your average leader or employee and news and channel management, communication of key ‘top down messages’ and a bit of two way comms thrown in for good measure remain the priority. In other words, getting the basics right and not pushing new frontiers.

So what is next? More of the same to keep our customers happy or a new world in which IC embraces the communication revolution happening outside the organisation? The answer of course is both. There will always be news and channels to manage, a ‘top down message’ to communicate and feedback to obtain and IC will continue to do all those things. But like it or not, a new world is emerging, one in which everyone has a voice and, crucially, the platform to make that voice heard. I believe our challenge is to create, promote and manage that environment so that information can flow wherever it is needed.

This is a new blog, launched to coincide with our new look and feel. Our aim is to provide our own personal views and stimulate discussion about how this new world is shaping up by sharing insights from our clients and other organisations. Enjoy!