For Your Approval

A new addition to the C-suite?

Could it be that in the next few years we'll see a new acronym added to the already crowded "C-suite"?

We've already got CEOs, CIOs, CFOs, COOs, CMOs -- along with a rare number of chief communications officers (I think I've heard of one - remind me if there are more). Unfortunately, we'll probably never see a CECO (chief employee communications officer) but, in this new age in which the "war on talent" is escalating and retaining employees is one of the top business issues, could we see the emergence of a CRRO -- a chief recruitment and retention officer?

The CRRO would be responsible soley for attracting and keeping people. Human resources and employee communications would report to this executive, who would have sweeping powers to crush bureacracy, train leaders to care about their people, create a comfortable workplace, pay fair salaries and nurture a meaningful dialogue with employees. 

A boy can dream, can't he?

Watch your language

When you work in a corporate environment it's hard not to get sucked into the abstract and arcane language of the business elite. It's a world where you don't just do something, you initiate positive action. There are no problems, only opportunities -- and if things are really bad, they're called concerns or incidents. You don't have a management shuffle -- you realign the organization to a cross-functional model to optimize resources and better integrate systems and processes.

As employee communicators, we all know this kind of language is bad. It's hard to understand. It sounds elitist, placing an unneccesary barrier between leaders and front line people. It's a waste of time and space. And yet take a look at something you edited just yesterday and see if it is perfectly clear, free of jargon and acronyms, and would be easily understood by everyone it was intended for. 

I fall prey to this kind of nonsense, even in my personal life. When my wife wants to mock me, as she often does in that loving way of hers, she'll complain about the messy laundry room and say, "I know, you're going to tell me that our current approach to laundry management is not sustainable." Sheesh. Caught again.

Take a moment today to catch yourself. Prevent even one bad sentence from going out the door and you will have accomplished something.

The Red Pen Diaries #4

Wow. Time flies when you're completely out of control. Yesterday I counted, and I've put out 12 editions of Plant Site News since I started in late September. As I had predicted, it was a meatgrinder, an all-consuming job that gave little time for reflection, let alone proofreading. But soon, a new employee communications manager will be hired by Big Division and I will end my tenure as interim editor of the News.

But that's not the only reason I'll be out of a job. As of Feb. 1, the News will be no more. The esteemed rag, along with every other locally produced newsletter in every division of BigCo, will be replaced by one new company-wide publication. This move to consolidate all print communications is designed to fix what has become a fairly cumbersome situation with lots of overlap and duplication and not the best use of people and resources.

The new publication will be more efficient. The folks in corporate also hope it will help bring employees together as the decentralized company attempts to become more integrated.

It's a grand vision -- to produce one publication that will keep everyone at BigCo informed,  serve both the local needs of the divisions and the communication goals of corporate, and improve that ethereal yet profoundly important measure -- employee engagement.

Huge obstacles are in the way of the new pub. As with most decentralized companies, the operating divisions don't have a lot of patience or respect for the corporate centre. And, at Big Division, the Plant Site News has been published every week without fail for the last six years -- and the new publication will be a bi-weekly. Hard not to see that as a reduction in employee communication at a time when it is needed the most.

Editing the new publication will be a tough job, and launching it will be even tougher. And (gulp) I have just been tapped to be the first managing editor -- to help get the newsletter off the ground and see it through its first few issues. I'm excited and scared at the same time. And I'd better get to work!

But before I go, I have a question for you: do you know of other situations where companies have successfully integrated their print publications? Can it work? (I think it can.) What are the biggest risks? What needs to be done to make it work? I have my own ideas, but what are yours?

Good news for employee communicators

These days, every company wants a “fully engaged workforce.”

There are all kinds of ways of measuring engagement, from simple survey questions like “How committed are you to your company?” to more subtle measures like “Do you have a best friend at work?” And, in this Age of Disenchantment we’re living in, employees are increasingly unwilling to give themselves fully to their employer.

There are all kinds of reasons for this, as Charles Izzo and Pam Withers outline in their great book, Values Shift: the New Work Ethic and What it Means for Business. Some of those reasons are societal – changing parenting styles and family dynamics have created a generation of independent, autonomous adults with what Izzo and Withers call a “ferocious distaste for hierarchies and paternalism at work.”

Some of the reasons are economic. Some are technological. What it all adds up to is a workforce that expects much more from its employers than previous generations, and is often disappointed and even outraged by how their company treats them. This is a serious issue for today’s corporation. There is a growing shortage of skilled workers that is creating a seller’s market in which people are more than willing to jump from one employer to another if they’re not happy in their job.

I have often said that this worrisome trend is good news for employee communicators. We are going to be going through a renaissance in the next decade, as companies come to the grim realization that, if they don’t work really hard to reconnect with their disengaged workforces, they will continue to lose their best people -- and their competitive edge along with them. Executives who may have paid lip service to phrases like “employees are our most valuable assets” are going to start truly valuing internal communications as something that can increase employee engagement and help stop the spiritual hemorrhaging that’s weakening the heart of corporate America. 

Companies are going to be spending more on communicating with employees, and they’re also going to be more open to innovation. And we communicators are going to have some fun.