For Your Approval

Motorola goes social

It's obvious that technology companies are going to be the early adopters when it comes to embracing the new tools of social media, and Motorola is going gangbusters with its internal 'Intranet 2.0' program. A report in the Sept. 17 edition of Information Week says the company, which has 69,000 employees in 70 countries, is providing its people with all kinds of tools to post and share information, including 5,400 internal blogs, 4,500 wikis, 65,000 social bookmarks and millions of shared documents.

According to the report 92% of Motorola employees are using the tools and 90,000 documents are added to the shared pool every day -- and it's all available through RSS feeds so people can subscribe to the kinds of information they're interested in.

Go for it, Motorola! Show us how it's done.

It drives me crazy

Time and time again I see companies sending out communications to their employees about the company's position on important issues -- with no attribution to anyone. Stuff along these lines:

"Bigco is embarking on a new customer service strategy designed to delight our customers by delivering our products more quickly and with fewer defects. The strategy is consistent with our values and will be rolled out in the coming weeks. The company is hopeful that it will improve our competitive position in the industry and it promises to improve our relationship with many customers and win new ones....blah blah blah."

It happens every day, and it drives me crazy. Companies wonder why employees don't trust them, and why they're skeptical about the contents of employee publications. And yet they continually put information out without anyone's name attached to it. If you're reporting on some simple facts, that's fine. Report the facts. But if you're making any value statement at all -- like whether something is good or bad, or why it's important, then quote an actual person. And, better yet, talk to that person and get a real quote from them!

If it's a story about a change in benefits, quote somebody in HR saying why the change is being made. If it's about a regulatory issue, quote the government relations person. If it's about the direction of the company, quote the CEO.  But don't - PLEASE don't - just throw together a bunch of mushy, positive sounding words together that say almost nothing, in a tone that's boring to read, attributed to no one.

This seems so bloody obvious to me, but I see senior communicators do it all the time just because that's the easiest, simplest way to do it, and because they're used to doing it that way.

I've had enough, and so has everyone else who reads employee publications. This practice must stop immediately.  Communicators who do it are making their companies look stupid, and eroding employee trust, whatever's left of it.

And you can quote me on that.

Social Networking at Work

There's been a lot of talk lately about the potential uses of social media within large organizations, at the same time as we're hearing about nervous companies shutting down access to blogs and sites like Facebook for fear this kind of activity compromises security, leads to drops in productivity and abuses network bandwidth.

Kind of reminds me about the old joke: Why don't Baptists have sex standing up? Because it might lead to dancing.

The point is that organizations that are too prudish about the new social media risk losing out on its potential benefits. This recent article from TechNewsWorld gives a great overview about how organizations are starting to figure out how to use the new tools, and that the corporate world is further along on this track than one might think.

Big outfits like IBM, Morgan Stanley and AAR (an aviation services company) are installing social networking software and customizing it to suit their business needs. I hear that the market for this kind of enterprise software is going to exceed $US 400 million this year and it promises to be a fast-growing segment.

The idea is that if companies put their own social networks in place, they can control them more. As IT guy Rich Lyons, president and founder of Lyons Consulting Group, puts it in the TNW article, "If it's the property of your company you can monitor the content...Its much harder to monitor what someone's doing on MySpace, but if your company has installed it, it's much easier. Plus, you can focus on how it's going to help your business. You can set up different forums for discussion and actually use it to foster communication but yet drive efficiency at the same time."

That's an IT consultant talking; it's pretty self-serving because Mr Lyons helps his clients get these kinds of internal social networks up and running. But also reflects the thinking of many businesses and it's a realistic, low-risk approach to entering the world of social media.

But I dunno. Like my friend Shel Holtz, I'm more of a libertarian when it comes to this kind of thing. It makes the most sense for companies to not only install their own social networking solutions, but to also give employees the freedom to surf where they want. This approach recognizes that people take work home all the time, so they should be able to do a little personal networking at work, and also that there are lots of good business reasons for being able to have unfettered access to the Web.

Because, you never know, it could lead to dancing.

Remembering Johnny Cash

I just watched a wonderful tribute to Johnny Cash on CMT, with Johnny's friends and family, including Steve Earle, Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, Willy Nelson and many others singing his songs at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. I'm a complete sucker for this kind of stuff and I was blubbering away as usual.

Thinking about Johnny and his huge influence on contemporary music and popular culture, I realized that his songs, and his spirit, represent an attitude that many employee communicators have. Like the Man in Black, we care about people who don't have a voice. We understand the many failings of humanity, and of ourselves. We sympathize. We build bridges between people. Sometimes we even thumb our noses at authority.

Johnny Cash is one of the best examples I know of someone who did something truly meaningful with his life. He continues to inspire me to try to make a difference.

Right now I'm trying to decide what my favorite Johnny Cash song is, and, although I love his latter-day interpretations of modern songwriters' work like "Hurt," I'm pretty old school. I'd have to go with Folsom Prison Blues, or maybe Get Rhythm.

What's yours, and why?

Employee greengagement

Online Recruitment magazine reports that a recent survey shows that employees who are satisfied with their employer's environmental policies and practices are more likely to take pride in their jobs.

Nick Starritt, managing director of research firm Sirota Survey Intelligence, which conducted the survey, says the research "demonstrates that companies can enhance a key component of employee engagement -- workers' pride in their employers -- by improving their environmental concern, and by better publicizing and communicating their environmental activities to increase all employees' awareness of them."

Well, duh. Sounds like a no-brainer, doesn't it? But how many companies actually take into account employee engagement when they're thinking about their environmental policies or taking actions to protect the environment?

When I was in Australia a few weeks ago I got a chance to chat with some of the PR students at Deakin University, where I delivered a guest lecture on career management. When I asked them where they wanted to work after graduation, several said they would rather take a lower paying job with a non-government organization like an environment group or social agency than sign on with a big corporation.

Companies that want to attract and keep the best people may want to take a second look at their stance on the environment and how they communicate it. And internal communicators should be thinking about this as we put together our employee communication plans for the year ahead.

A call for workplace journalism

Barry Nelson, creator of The Storyboard, a source of feature articles for internal publications, is one of the smartest guys in employee communications, and I've written about his unique service in a previous post. Barry believes that organizations have become too focused on strictly business-related internal communication, ignoring the real, on-the-ground interests and concerns of most employees. Read more about his take on the problem, and the solution -- something he calls "workplace journalism" -- in his article in the September issue of the Journal of Employee Communication Management. It's must-reading for anyone involved in internal communications.
 

Sobering statistics

On Labour Day, consulting firm Walker Information released its latest Walker Loyalty Report for the Workplace. The study looked at employee loyalty at organizations with at least 50 employees. Some key findings:

• The number of U.S. workers who are not committed to their organization and likely to leave their workplace in the next two years is at an all-time high.
• These "high-risk" employees, at 36%, actually outnumber those who are truly loyal (34%), leaving employers in a situation "where the number of employees causing a negative drain on the organization outweighs those who are working to positively support it," according to Walker senior consultant Chris Woolard.
• There's a strong connection between ethics and loyalty, with 91% of truly loyal employees indicating they believe their organization is highly ethical, compared to only 35% of employees in the high-risk category.

I think for the next few years these stats are going to continue to show a decline in loyalty as employers struggle to redefine their relationship with workers. It's a sobering reminder of the importance of our role as communicators in helping organizations make meaningful connections with their people.

A big anniversary

Today it's 25 years since my smart, funny, beautiful wife Kate and I were married. I can hardly believe that many years have gone by since we tied the knot. We have a great partnership and it's a big milestone that's worth a nice celebration (we're planning a trip to Jamaica in November).

I was thinking this morning whether there are any lessons from our marriage that might apply to employee communications. I know this is a really wonkish thing to think about on a day like this, but I'm an employee communications wonk, so what can you do?

Looking back, I think there are a few things that have helped with the longevity of our marriage. One of them is to have a short memory for the bad times and a long memory for the good. Like all couples, we've had huge fights over the years; fortunately, neither of us can remember what they were about. But we do remember the great times we've had together.

Another is our respect for each other's need for a healthy amount of independence. We have some great mutual friends, but we each have our own friends and interests (I've taken this to the extreme with my barbecue adventures, and Kate has been patient with me even though her eyes are sore from all the rolling). We like being together, but we don't need to be together every minute of every day.

Another factor is that each of us has enough invested enough in the other that we can put up with some B.S. There's a deep well of trust and respect to draw on that makes it easier to forgive each other for our various foibles and irritating habits (which brings me to another lesson -- you might be able to influence someone's behavior, but you can't change their character, so don't try).

The lessons for communicators are pretty basic: in all we do, we should respect people's differences; and we need to invest time and energy in relationships if we want them to be successful.

And, finally, we should always look for excuses to celebrate our life's accomplishments, as I am doing right now. Woo hoo!