Guru Ronnie on the year behind, and the year ahead

2007 was one of those seminal years in which technological changes, economic trends, generational shifts and business realities made employee communications people more nervous than usual about our place in the world.

We watched as the foofarah over social media came to a bubbly head, prompting those who were "in" to feel trendy and superior, and those who were "not in yet" to soften their skepticism and wonder if it's time to jump onto the bandwagon -- before it sinks, wheels spinning, into the mud of reality.

We worried that the continued globalization of the world economy would outsource all our jobs to Bangalore. (They can update Intranet sites from there, can't they?)

We felt puzzled and threatened by all those millennial kids coming into the workforce, with their goody-two-shoes Gen Y values and their canny ability to communicate with each other without the help of wizened, cynical intermediaries like us.

And we wondered how much longer we would be communicating about "employee engagement" before it gets replaced by another jargony term for the same vain attempts of large organizations to cope with the existential morass that is the modern workplace.

Well, it's pretty clear 2008 is going to be more of the same.

Woo hoo!

I say "Woo hoo!" because these anxiety-inducing trends are such gigantic, interesting challenges that there's truly no better time to be in internal communications. Never has what we do mattered so much. 

Before I decide what will happen in 2008, let me look back at what I saw coming in 2007. At the start of last year I made a bunch of pompous predictions, most of which were vague enough to keep me off the hook, 12 months later, as I freshly prognosticate again. The only prediction that I clearly blew was the most specific: that Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson would add another 50 episodes to the vast audio bank of their podcast, For Immediate Release. The prolific duo produced twice that, and Shel and Neville continue apace.

So, here are my predictions for 2008:

1. This will be the year that every Fortune 500 company, every government, every big NGO -- pretty much every organization with more than 200 employees -- will have a social media strategy, which will include an employee component. Some will dive in, others will dabble. But this trend will touch EVERYBODY in 2008. In February 2009 the Gold Quill Awards program will be swamped with social media entries, just as it was swamped with corporate Web sites in 1997.

2. Smart communicators will use this sweeping trend as an excuse to start a meaningful conversation with their CEOs about what it will take to connect with employees and build a strong internal community. Others will blindly do stuff just because it's trendy, wasting huge amounts of money and further alienating employees with needless information delivered in new ways.

3. Facebook will launch a sister network designed for business (along the lines of Linkedin, but better) that will become extremely popular, but will prompt many companies to install clunky internal social networks in a vain attempt to keep their "walled gardens" closed to the outside world. In a related trend, employees will start bringing their own wirelessly connected personal laptops to work so they can stay hooked up to their social networks during the day. Some will get fired for this, making headlines and inspiring others to follow.

4. There will be a global shortage of internal communicators. This will be driven by the rise of social media and the increasing desperation of corporate leaders as they try to figure out how to improve employee engagement. Salaries and job positions for employee comms professionals will finally begin to approach parity with external communications.

So, 2008, bring it on! I'm ready, and so are communicators everywhere. It's going to be one hell of a year.

 

Comments

[Les Potter]

Guru Ronnie, you are wise beyond your years. It must be reincarnation.

Regarding your prognostication on Linkedin, funny, but today I put in a status line on my Facebook page wondering who among my FB Friends were on Linkedin. A FB Friend responded, and when I wrote back with a link to Linkedin, Facebook automatically included a block of information on Linkedin with a URL. Are these two entities already, er, linked?

[Ron Shewchuk]

Hi, Les. Thanks for your post. I have found that Facebook is everywhere, to the point where it's kind of creepy. The other week I looked up a recipe on my favorite recipe search engine, Epicurious.com, and I shared it with someone via an e-mail link on the site. Soon after I hit the send button on the Epicurious site, a little window opened up saying that a notice about my action would be posted on my Facebook page, and, sure enough, minutes later it shows up on my profile page and in my news feed. Suddenly all my Facebook friends know I shared a recipe for beef short ribs. Pretty innocuous, but deeply disturbing at the same time. I didn't give permission to Facebook to give my information to Epicurious. Sheesh. What if the recipe I'd been looking for was for edible underwear?

So, I'm not surprised if Facebook has its privacy-invading nose deep into Linkedin. But I don't think there's any ownership connection -- they're rival social networks and there's been lots of speculation on the net about them, including this interesting post from the popular TechCrunch blog: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/13/facebook-has-linkedin-in-the-crosshairs/

In any case, Facebook seems intent on tapping the business networking audience, and it will be interesting to see how it all pans out in '08.

[Kristen]

Ron - I really, REALLY have my fingers crossed that your prediction #4 occurs as early as possible in the new year. Maybe I'll cross my toes too, just for insurance!

[Ron Shewchuk]

Kristen, it's already happening in Great Britain. Check out this post on myragantv.com: http://www.myragantv.com/video/?d=533
The only thing that might slow down the trend in North America is if the U.S. economy tanks, but even then employee communications people are going to be highly valued for their ability to help manage change.