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What communicators must do next

A recent article by Jennifer Robison in the latest Gallup Management Journal recognizes the consuming challenges facing corporate leaders these days, but reminds them of the need to stay focused on employee engagement. Gallup is in the employee engagement business, so the article is, of course, designed to prompt existing clients and prospects to pick up the phone and get some help. But I don't mind self-serving pieces like this when they ring true and have useful information and advice, and this one certainly does.

Here's a taste:

If businesses are to survive, leaders can't overlook opportunities to boost productivity and profitability -- and that means employee engagement is more critical than ever. "There's a tendency right now to freeze -- to avoid doing new things for fear of doing the wrong thing," says Denise McLain, Gallup principal. "Freezing is a mistake. You can always change tactics later if you need to and adapt when more information comes in. But the worst mistake is to overlook engaging your employees. When times are tough, leaders need all the engaged people they can get."

Gallup has a giant pile of data from years of surveying employees that shows a direct connection between high engagement and business success. Companies with engaged employees have more loyal customers, better productivity and higher profits than those who don't. And the flip side is also true. "bottom quartile" companies with highly disengaged employees "have 51% more inventory shrinkage, 31% to 51% more employee turnover, and 62% more accidents than business units in the top quartile."

So how do leaders get employees engaged, and keep them that way? Here's a summary of Gallop's advice:

• Remind everyone they're all in it together. This means communicating what's happening and why - and showing some empathy.

• Ask for employee input. People are more engaged when they know their employer cares about their opinion and responds to comments and suggestions.

• Create a focus. Having a common purpose brings a team together. This means getting out of "reaction mode" and communicating a long-term vision.

• Share the news -- good and bad -- with employees first. "No matter how bad the news is, people will always think of something worse unless they have accurate information from leadership." 

• Don't abandon front line managers, your primary conduit to employees. "They need support like never before because they may be feeling as uncertain about the future as the employees they manage."

• Demonstrate optimism by paying attention to people. "A good way to prove your optimism is to double down on people and products....show your people today that you believe in the future of the company--and that you're ready to meet it when it arrives."

This stuff all sounds like common sense, and you've heard most of this before. But in a time of crisis, common sense can be one of the first casualties. The Gallup article is directed at business leaders, but it might as well be a manifesto for corporate communicators. Here's how it ends:

Preserving or augmenting engagement isn't easy. It takes commitment from the top. But the return on engagement almost always outweighs the investment. "Worldwide, the best companies realize they can't afford to ignore employee engagement," says [Tom Rath, Gallup global practice leader and coauthor with Conchie of Strengths Based Leadership.] "But then, the best companies never did."

Communicators, take heed. If you're not currently giving your senior leaders advice like this, get on it.

Common sense does not always prevail on its own. What are YOU going to do next?

Why most transformations fail...and what it takes for them to succeed

A recent article in the McKinsey Quarterly, Corporate Transformation Under Pressure,  starts out reminding us that the success rate of major corporate transformation programs is less than 40 per cent.

That's not new. We know it's extremely hard to change a big organization. What's interesting is that "defensive transformations" -- those initiated to get a company out of trouble -- are less successful than "progressive" ones launched to generate growth or improve already good performance.

So much for the burning platform! It turns out that waiting until you have a crisis doesn't work as well as having a positive vision and seizing an opportunity to change things for the better.

The McKinsey article, based on a recent survey of executives around the world, also found that "companies under pressure do not make use of proven tactics for implementing change. Instead, they tend toward secrecy and may have small groups of troubleshooters plan the transformation rather than involve the whole organization and set clear, widely communicated aspirations and targets."

The good news is that companies that use proven tactics have a far higher success rate of 80 per cent.

The authors lay out those tactics, in all their elegant simplicity:

• Set clear aspirations and targets;
• Exercise strong leadership from the top;
• Create an unambiguous structure for the transformation; and
• Maintain energy and involvement throughout the organization.

Are you seeing what I'm seeing?

Every one of those tactics can be executed well, or screwed up badly, based on how well an organization communicates.

Communication makes a difference, especially when the stakes are high. And what's more, as the authors observe in their conclusion, "Taking shortcuts -- for instance, putting insufficient effort into communicating or focusing on small, short-term changes -- only deepens the problems."

There has never been a better time to make a business case for better internal communication.

Naaah...so where's your engagement now?

There was a nice piece in the Financial Times a couple days ago entitled Engaging a worried workforce, in which journalist Stephan Stern ponders the "lose-lose situation" faced by employers who must try to keep their workforces motivated at the same time as they are cutting bodies by the thousands. "Contracts – both physical and psychological – are being torn up. The engagement is off. Is there anything managers can do to reinstate it?"

Stern makes fun of employee engagement consultants, who he says tend to overengineer and mystify "what is at heart a pretty basic human response: the desire (or lack of it) to do a job well. The answer, he concludes, is to "try telling the unvarnished truth."

Last week, I met Archie Norman, the British businessman who famously led the hugely successful turnround of the Asda supermarket chain. How did he manage to get the buy-in of an anxious workforce? “We stated it as it was,” he told me. “You have to get people to face up to the reality. People will follow you...what they can’t stand is unrealistic, deluded leadership. When we said that the situation was very bad, that we were in survival mode, we got three cheers from the front line,” Mr Norman explained. “They said: ‘At last, somebody’s arrived who realises what it’s really like out there.’”

While I appreciate the sentiment and agree with the principle, in big organizations it's more complicated than that. I think times are so bad that most employers don't really have a choice these days but to level with their people. So what else can you do? Watson Wyatt issued a news release yesterday with some good advice, backed by compelling statistics, on what employers can do to increase engagement and productivity even in these tough times:

• Look for "engageable moments," which means taking advantage of things like orientation sessions for new employees, performance reviews and benefits enrollment to make meaningful connections that help keep people motivated.
• Demonstrate strong leadership and clear direction. "Employees want to know about their organization's specific plans and progress."
• Manage organizational change with effective communication, with an emphasis on customer satisfaction to avoid becoming too inwardly focused.
• Institute and communicate a system of equitable rewards.  If tough times mean "the deal" changes, make sure everyone understands why, and that the changes are fair and reasonable.
• Invest in the core. This is Watson Wyatt's version of the 80-20 rule but in this case it's 60-40. About 60 per cent of a typical workforce are what WW calls "core contributors," and focusing increasing their engagement will get the highest return.

No shortage of opportunities these days for communicators to do some meaningful work.

Things might be different this time

I was chatting with a former work colleague last week about the old days, when communicators pitched management on installing intranets during a period of corporate cutbacks.

"Back then, the only way we could make a business case for intranets was to stop doing print publications," she said. The long-term savings on printing and paper costs justified the big initial expense of establishing intranet portals. After the one-time technology investment, which could be booked as a capital cost, all you'd ever have to do was post new information at no additional expense. What a great solution! And so modern!

It was, of course, a Faustian pact, which ended up leading to the miserable state of affairs we have today, with a disenfranchised workforce, decaying employee engagement, and intranets that might as well have tumbleweeds blowing through them.

Fast forward to today. With recessionary forces at play, it looks like we're in for a major down cycle, which means cost-cutting will once again be in fashion. But with no print publications to chop, how will employee communications be affected? At times like this, big organizations throttle back. Which means that daring advances in employee communication will be put on hold, right?

I'm thinking, this time, maybe not. Towers Perrin survey results released today reveal that employers may pay a little more attention to the care and feeding of employees during the current downturn than they did in the past.

"The commitment to the retention of key talent is a significant shift from past national recessionary periods, when a slash-and-burn mentality reigned," said Ravin Jesuthasan, Managing Principal in Towers Perrin's Chicago office and a leader of the firm's Rewards and Performance Management practice globally. "Companies are entering this period with leaner workforces and the knowledge that across-the-board mass layoffs can create significant long-term problems."

This time, the more enlightened employers are going to see the current situation as an opportunity to hold on to their best people and strengthen their internal cultures -- to apply some extra glue to keep themselves together during this difficult period so they will be stronger when the come through the other side.

Employee communications can be that glue, that connective tissue. Smart leaders will understand that, and smart communicators will be able to sell what needs to be done in those terms instead of finding new ways to apply the hatchet.

As this crisis unfolds, let's not forget about employees

While the world goes to hell in a hand basket, Global consulting firm Watson Wyatt issued a news release today with some good advice for corporate leaders:

To maintain employee morale during times of financial crisis, senior leaders can allay employee fears by communicating clearly on topics such as pensions, 401(k) investments and even job security...

The release features a concise, hard-hitting list of "basic communication tenets" that leaders should keep in mind:

• Be a leader. Leaders don’t have to have all the answers. Tell employees what you know and what you don’t. Explain the steps the organization is taking to identify issues and resolve problems. Knowing senior executives are there to lead through uncertain economic times is crucial to your people.

• Show your strengths. Reinforce the core competencies and values that make your organization successful. Talk about how they will help the organization thrive in the future.

• Be visible. Credibility, conviction and passion are important messages that only actual presence can convey. Employees can benefit from seeing engaged and informed senior leaders through Webcasts or other interactive vehicles.

• Use your team. Make sure the management team knows how and what to communicate, and that no one is a bystander. Limit potential damage from leaders’ informal conversations that are overheard and ripple through every organization.

• Be coordinated. Coordinate your internal and external messages. Employees should hear company news from the company first.

• Share responsibility. Be clear about what you want your managers and your workforce to do. People want to help — tell them how. It’s never a bad time to reinforce customer focus.

• Give up the myth of message control. Find ways to listen to what is on employees’ minds. Monitor the press and social media for what is being said about your company and your industry. Have a process for quickly developing and distributing answers to rumors and for clarifying inaccurate statements, such as possible layoffs.

• Be humane. Some employees are experiencing personal trauma from falling 401(k) account balances and home prices. Acknowledge their pain and make them aware of the resources at their disposal, such as the company’s Employee Assistance Plan.

Usually these kinds of releases from consulting firms are ridiculously self-serving. Obviously Watson Wyatt issued the release in hopes that executives will read it and pick up the phone to ask for help, but in this case it's also some useful free advice that, whether anyone picks up the phone or not, amounts to damn good stakeholder relations.

If I were a CEO, I'd use this as a guide for a briefing with senior leaders. And if I were an internal communicator inside a big organization, I'd use it as a guide for briefing my CEO.

Who do you trust?

It's an old saw in the internal communications business that front line employees don't trust senior management and the most credible source of information for them is their immediate supervisor. UK site HR Zone recently reported on a self-serving study by HR consultancy BlessingWhite that confirms this workplace truth.  BlessingWhite's study found that, while about three quarters of workers trust their direct supervisors, less than half have the same confidence in senior management.

On top of that, the study revealed that half of middle managers are planning or seriously considering leaving their current thankless jobs this year. HR Zone quotes Tom Barry of BlessingWhite:

"Our research has revealed that many senior managers appear to be issuing strategies from an ivory tower. Their direction can't filter through middle managers that don't trust them....Business leaders must give middle managers the structure and tools they need to help staff establish a strong connection with, and commitment to, their work....But they must also find a genuine, authentic leadership voice themselves - one that inspires trust. The most successful companies make employee engagement an ongoing priority, not a once-a-year event. Without trust, engagement initiatives can seem hollow."

For most employee communicators reading that quote, the response would be "Well, duh." We all know that. We live with it every day. The big question is why a new paradigm isn't emerging in business today that turns this unfortunate reality into regrettable history.

The good news of the study: a much higher percentage (59%) of Millennials -- the folks born in the 80s who are relatively new to the workforce -- trust senior management. This means there's hope, but the window isn't going to be open forever. The story of Generation Y could turn into Generation Sigh: how business leaders missed an opportunity of a lifetime to engage the next wave of workers.

The solution is not rocket surgery. What's required is for corporate leaders to reach out to their employees and connect with them in ways that earn trust. Right now a lot of hopeful effort is being put into social media as a way of using technology to renew that broken connection and close the gap. But positive change won't happen unless CEOs take the problem seriously and devote the right amount of attention to it. And it's up to us to give them the business case, the right advice, and the right strategies to make it happen.

New media channels are indeed gaining traction

Erik Samdahl of the Seattle-based consulting firm, The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), saw my recent post listing my predictions for 2008 and responded with a thoughtfully targeted blog pitch.

My thanks to Erik for sending along a useful overview of recent research on the adoption of social media into the workplace, which comes in the form of a recent edition of i4cp's newsletter, Trendwatcher: Download trendwatcher_20071102_social_tools1.pdf

The evidence suggests that use of social media inside big organizations is trending upward, but isn't yet ubiquitous. We all kinda know that, but it's handy to have a roundup of statistical evidence to back up our instincts.

The i4cp was formerly known as Human Resource Institute (HRI). Eric tells me his firm "helps companies improve workforce productivity by providing a combination of research, peer communities, tools and technology to corporate executives and HR professionals." Good call on the name change. Human Resource Institute sounds like it might be run by Nurse Ratchet herself! Thanks again Erik!

More proof that employee communications matter

Yet another study from a big HR consulting firm came out this week. This one, from Watson Wyatt, demonstrates unequivocally that employee communications matter -- that doing it right is a measurable competitive advantage. The firm's annual Communication ROI Study outlines the six communication "secrets" of top employers in the U.S. (My favorite "secret": "Leveraging the talents of internal communicators to manage change effectively.")

A few weeks ago it was a global employee engagement study from Towers Perrin that revealed employee engagement is at an all-time low.

As self-serving as these studies are, I think they're great. Each one seems to hone in a little closer on a fundamental truth in business today: that connecting with employees is worth the trouble.

As I have said in this space before: well, duh. And yet. And yet so many organizations are losing the battle as they struggle to improve their broken relationships with their people. Part of the answer (as the self-serving news releases from the big consulting firms would like us to believe) is for companies to open up their pocketbooks and hire the good folks at WW and TP to develop and help implement big internal engagement programs. Part of it is for CEOs to wake up and take a hard look at whether they're paying enough attention to this critical part of their leadership responsibilities.

And part of the answer is in the hands of internal communicators. We need to stand up on our chairs and speak up about what really matters to us and to the organizations we serve. And, as we're wobbling and clearing our throat, having those self-serving studies in our back pocket ain't a bad thing.