A new paradigm for employee communication

There’s been a lot of interesting talk in our corner of the blogosphere about a new definition of employee communication. One commentator recently suggested our role has changed from communicating information to employees to facilitating a conversation amongst employees – a model inspired by the social media revolution.

This is an interesting, if somewhat naïve notion. While it’s increasingly important for internal communicators to nurture two-way dialogue in their organizations and to introduce tools like blogs, podcasts, wikis and the like into the communication mix, this should be seen as an addition to our role rather than a replacement of it. Communicators will always be responsible for helping communicate many things directly to employees, from bringing management’s vision to life to reporting on changes to pensions and benefits.

The positive changes that social media will bring are still a bit fuzzy. What’s clear is that our role as communicators is expanding and becoming more complex. And I think it’s much bigger than communicating information or facilitating dialogue. Our role is evolving into something much broader, something that is profoundly important to the future of business in the modern world. The role of today’s communicator is to lead the creation and maintenance of a healthy, productive, fulfilling community in the workplace.

The key word, of course, is community. Our job today, and in the years ahead, is to help repair the deep wounds that most big organizations have suffered in the last two decades -- to undo the social disarray that’s been caused by merciless downsizings, Kafkaesque bureaucracy, ill-conceived attempts to digitize internal communications, profoundly shifting employee values, and just plain bad leadership.

We do not trust our employers any more. But we want to renew that trust. We crave good leadership. We want meaningful jobs. And we need to feel as if we are part of a community at work.

Companies that understand this -- and do something about it –- will regain their souls and stop bleeding people.  They will turn work environments into true communities that give employees the sense of purpose and belonging they crave. And those enlightened companies, with their happier, more loyal employees, will deliver more value to their customers, and they will kick the living daylights out of their competitors.

And we, as communicators, will be instrumental in bringing this new paradigm to life.

We have the skills, and the knowledge, and the tools to build great communities at work. We know how to humanize business. And we can help turn our companies into places where people want to be.

Yes, facilitating conversations will help, but so will a good old fashioned internal publication. Creating a sense of community is something that employee newsletters used to do really well, and there's no reason why they can't do it today.

We need to use everything we have in our arsenal, and more, to fulfill our destiny and turn the spiritual ghetto of today's corporation into a vibrant neighborhood.

Comments

[Barry Nelson]

Amen, brother.

One small way we can nurture this revolution is to include at least some content in our publication and intranet pages that reflects corporate empathy -- and if possible, help -- for the daily human challenges people face in the workplace. I'm talking about personal and social issues, like how to make the most of your relationship with the boss, how and why to forge good friendships with co-workers, why put your heart in your work, how to resolve and get past workplace conflicts, why care about the brand, and many others. These are cases in which workers must choose whether to take actions that may lie outside their comfort zones.

The point is, companies always hope their employees will take initiative, accept responsibility and solve problems that help achieve company goals. And they provide carrots and sticks to prod that behavior. But they rarely look at these desired actions from the standpoint of what, besides sanctions, would make a free-thinking human being want to take them -- or even whether employees feel able to comply.

It's my hope that communicators and our HR clients/partners might model a less manipulative form of leadership that employees can see as help, not pressure. We can do that with stories that approach these issues from the employee perspective more than the company's, that frame the questions in a context larger than any one employer's and offer the advice of outside experts on how other people are coping with the challenges they pose.

On intranets, there is, or should be, room for that "conversation" thing. We can invite employees to post their own stories, or questions, or criticisms and suggestions, and respond to each other's posts. But accompanying this dialogue, in the same visual space, should be links to whatever training and other resources the company is providing to genuinely help employees do the right thing.

The problem, of course, is that not enough senior management teams -- including heads of HR -- seem to actually view the plight of employees with this degree of emotional intelligence. So it won't be easy going. But perhaps we could at least make the case, float some story ideas and see what happens.

[Ron Shewchuk]

I agree, Barry, and what you're doing with the Story Board does just that. We need to rethink employee communication to make it much broader. The so-called "softer stuff" has been derided and discouraged for years, with the view being there's no room for bowling scores in a company newsletter because we need to focus on "supporting the company's business goals." I say there's room for both, and more.

Many years ago I had a journalism professor who said one role of the media is to "reflect the community back to itself," and the mirror metaphor remains a strong one for me. Today's workplace, which is a community, has much more to it than business imperatives. It has real people, with complex lives both at work and at home. Our job as communicators is to help make those lives more productive AND more satisfying -- and if that means printing self-help stories, or even bowling scores, I'm all for it.

[Mike Klein]

Overall, you're right on the money again, Ron. Indeed, I've always contended that the real communication is that which occurs between and among staff (and between customer-facing staff and customers as well), and to see lateral communication being discussed openly among mainstream practitioners is a huge step.

At the same time--I was a bite taken aback by your comment: "We do not trust our employers any more. But we want to renew that trust." We do trust our employers--we trust them to behave in what they perceive to be their own self interest. While we don't like how this manifests itself in many cases, we also don't want to "renew" an old model of "benevolent trust" that never really existed and doesn't exist in the current climate. I'd say we seek more honesty and openness and willingness to involve than the kind of "renewed" trust you seem to allude to.

For what it's worth, my US .02

Mike Klein
Washington, DC

[Ron Shewchuk]

Mike, thanks for your post. Good point. Employees are never going to give their employers the unquestioning, blind trust that some companies enjoyed in the past. But I would argue that there's a basic, collegial trust necessary for conducting good business that's been destroyed, and needs to be rebuilt.

Your description of the kind of trust required is just right -- we don't want to give our blind, unquestioning loyalty, but we're willing to give a bit more of ourselves if we see there's more openness and transparency.

We also want to know that what we think and say matters. To use the language of the day, we want to be a meaningful part of the ongoing conversation about the company.

You're right. I's more like forging a new relationship than trying to resurrect the old.

Thanks again for putting a finer point on this. I invite other readers to sharpen it further.

[Wojciech]

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[Chat]

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[Mieczyslaw]

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