Internal communications - it's not rocket science

It's about managers stupid!

I've just seen that the Chartered Management Institute is unveiling today its latest research about managers.

I understand that "47% of employees have left a job due to bad management, while 50% believe that they could do a better job than their current manager."

From a communications perspective it's especially interesting to hear that two in three bosses did not aspire to become a manager at the start of their careers, two in five admit to not wanting the responsibility of managing people at all, and 63% say they have had no management training.

As we all know, getting managers on-board is crucial to explaining just about everything important in most organisations.  If so many are either unwilling conscriptees or unsupported it does not bode well for the quality of communication in the workplace.

I've long argued that the secret of good line manager communication is to get five things right:

• make sure that they know communication is their job
• ensure that someone is communicating with them
• provide training
• provide the tools and materials that they value
• show them that someone is listening.

But perhaps it's time to add another... make being a manager a job that they'd want in the first place.

Liam

The challenge for communications managers is

Should we be giving staff personal finance education?

I'm glad I took the time to read HR Magazine this month as I came across this interesting article and the need to explain financial issues to staff.

They looked at the issue if how far an employer should go to discuss financial planning with workers.  There are clearly rules about giving 'advice' but when you think at the pension black hole many of us are facing perhaps there is an expectation that bosses should make sure that loyal workers are able to retire in security and comfort.

Liam

The end of week one

Well I think I survived it.

A week back working in an office and it was not quite as scary as I feared.

The IT worked (sort of - as long as you ignore the challenge of getting a Mac and a PC to play nice together) and I managed to get through most of the things I wanted to do.

My only gripe is the hassle of the commute from the suburbs.  Last week my working day began at around 7.30 when I got back from walking Sid and I sat down in the garden office and it ended at 6.30 when I'd ploughed through 10 hours of stuff.  This week things don't really kick off until 9 am and after finishing at 6pm I've still got an 90 minute trek home.

I'd forgotten how productive I am at home - but only on tasks that don't require much collaboration.

I'd also forgotten how many emails fly around about missing mugs, birthday cake and lost copies of the Financial Times! Just the act of stepping into a company of 1,000 people seems to add 25% more traffic to your email in-tray.

Biggest challenge of the week was deciding my new job title.  Biggest shock of the week - how long people stare at the tiny selection of sandwiches in Pret before making a choice. Missing the dog snoring in the corner of the office. 

Liam

Give them a stake...

Thanks to Human Resources magazine for the following:

A 2007 US survey found that 72% of firms with stock ownership plans saw better performance as a result.

Another long-term study found that companies with employee share ownership plans tended to have around 2.4% better sales per employee over a ten year period.

Finally, companies with an ESOP have a return on capital that is 2.7% better than peers without such schemes.

The magazine also quotes things like the impact on sickness and absence of a share ownership plan and the effect that a plan has on improving understanding of business performance.

Food for thought...

Liam

So...day three

Day three in the new job at Bell Pottinger and sitting in the office at home...(I've got meetings outside London this morning).

Day one probably doesn't count - I was at the CIPR all day so day two meant I had to do all of those first day things - find the toilets, fill 90 million forms for HR and come to terms with being a PC user after a year on the Mac.  It tool me all day to transfer my contacts book but along with deciding my new job title (Head of Practice Internal and Change Communications) I feel I had a productive day.

Oh yes - most importantly I bought a new cycle lock!  Which means that I can start taking the bike to work! 

Liam

How far do things need to trickle down?

I was running a course yesterday at the CIPR on line manager communications - as always these are really enjoyable.  Not least because we had a great mix of people there with shed loads of experience to share.

One thing that did come out particularly struck me.

We were talking about the amount of effort that senior teams seem willing to put into briefing the highest managers about new developments and general unwillingness to invest the same energy with lower level leaders.

Several people talked about fantastic programmes for the top people in their organisations which just didn't really cascade onwards.  It's almost as if the CEO and the executive team expend all of their energy thinking about the session for the inner circle and then run out of steam or budget to push the message into the deep of tissue of management.

My view is that there are five essential steps to great line management communication but that you get a real impact if you make sure that managers really understand the message that you are trying to share.  If you can do only one thing I would say concentrate on briefing managers - get them on-side and educated and you're half-way home.

But we seem to be missing the point.  Instead we often fail to develop an onward flow of information and get left wondering why junior leaders don't think communication is a priority...

Liam

Do conference brochures annoy you?

OK so I'm a grumpy old man - that's official!

But I have reached the point where flyers for conferences have driven me nuts.  Let me give you my hit list of conference flyer sins.

1) Giving your conference a ridiculously long title with lots of big words in it

For example "Integrate Appropriate Channels Into Your PR Strategy For Optimum Impact & ROI"

Is there some secret rule that says you have to make an event sound awfully grand or no one will want to come.  Or do conference organisers just employ undergraduates who have swallowed a dictionary?  Perhaps their writers get beaten if they write words like 'use' when they could say 'utilise'?

2) Including every possible piece of information on the front page of the A4 flyer...

I'm looking at one flyer here that has 69 different facts screaming at you from page one - all in different colours.  There's no gentle seduction going on here - it's full-on wham bam thank you mam marketing.

3) Inserting the words 'strategic' or 'ROI' at random in the title or copy

Here's a flyer about a podcasting seminar which promises to show me how I can use podcasting 'strategically'.  It's a tactic for goodness sake - a useful tactic, but a tactic none the less.

A variation on this one is to claim that your expensive conference will help 'impact your bottom line'.  Right, I go into my boss and say "can I have £600 to go to this conference?  If I go I predict a two point increase in our gross margin next year as a result..."  Come on!

4) Pretending that the event is educational or leads to a qualification.

Let's not kid ourselves... sitting for two days listening to speaker after speaker deliver 45 minute pitches for their company or their next job is hardly leading edge teaching is it?  Conferences are useful and you can pick up a lot of ideas but most people would position them at the basic end of the personal development scale if you had to make an educational claim.

And remember kids it's not a 'Qualiftion' (as one conference company says it - OK I know bad spelling is one particular glasshouse I shouldn't start throwing stones in) just because they give you a certificate.  If that were true I'd start mentioning my recent Dog Training accreditation on my business card alongside the award I got for hitting a punch bag really hard on Blackpool Pleasure Beach back in 1987.

Universities or professional bodies give out qualifications after you've done some sort of test and when their standards have been verified.  Conference organisers don't do that because it would mean failing some of their paying punters and actually doing something to assure the quality of the product.

And sticking a little logo on the brochure of some official sounding body doesn't count either.  If it did I'd start up the 'Lard for Heath Certification Body' or 'Snakebite sensible drinking accreditation council' to prove that Britain is making strides forward in reforming national habits.

5) Forgetting to mention that some of their speakers have paid for the privilege of pitching at you ..

Yep, it's a real shocker but organisers make money from delegate subscriptions and from 'sponsors' who will often negotiate a speaking slot as part of the deal.  I'm not saying that these paying speakers don't have anything interesting to say but shouldn't we know that they've paid?

I was looking at the programme of one two day conference and I can only imagine that four of the presenters were there because they'd paid and also happened to be exhibitors.

6) Pretending that booking early gets you a discount...

Try this sometime.  Call up a conference organiser two days before their conference and say you'd like to come but you want to pay the early bird price.  I wonder what will happen?

OK we all know that good sales practice means you have to give a punter a reason for buying today.  But can we be a bit more mature about it?

Look, I've probably been guilty of variations of these offences and I'm sure that a conference organiser could run up a charge sheet as long as your arm when it comes to my blog or my marketing practices.  But I'd also like to be treated as a grown-up professional and have marketing targeted at me that flatters my intelligence a little.  Can't they be a bit more John Lewis and a little less Poundland?

Liam

Feel the difference

For some reason I’ve been in a few conversations recently about what’s different about internal or employee communication compared to other communication disciplines.

After all, PR people are all involved in planning messages, working out the best way to deliver them and tracking results.  Surely IC just has to deal with a different set of audiences; the job is no different really?

Despite what IC people sometimes like to think there’s a lot of truth in this perspective.  When it comes down to it we’re all engaged in the process of translating messages between stakeholders and our professionalism is fundamentally about sharing meaning.

But I think where IC differs is in the scale of the audience’s experience.   Quite simply, employees are a challenging ‘public’ because they have so many more points of reference against which they can test your story.

Whilst a journalist might have to look for another single source to provide a balanced point of view, an employee can refer back to their union, their boss, what they see happening in the office up the corridor or the trusty old coffee machine gossip. 

I was involved with one memorable cost saving campaign once that was completely undermined by a director who continued to turn up in his chauffeur-driven car…the irony was lost on him.

And workers can normally call on years of legend or experience to help them judge the credibility of an official piece of news – I once had a focus group attendee get himself worked up about an injustice that had happened well before he’d even left school!

Which means internal communicators will often find themselves drawn into conversations about the behaviours of leaders or the wider experience that employees have.  There will always be times when things like HR policies or the way finance treat customers will be more telling than exhortations in company news papers.

Some years ago Roger D’Aprix talked about the Say/Do matrix – my version of which is appended. 

I think it behoves all of us to educate leaders that saying it doesn’t make it so!

Liam

Can we stop fretting about the value of Internal Communications?

Just saw this article which contains the claim that companies are hoping to retain talented staff through better internal communications. 

If there has been one good thing from the current recession I think it could be the realisation among the less forward thinking leaders that good internal communications is worth the investment.

The challenge now is to deliver on the faith...

Liam 

Meet Sidney

I have a new family member.  Sidney the whippet.  And the amazing thing is the number of people I have now met because of him.

I seriously can't believe how many total strangers come up to us in the street and say hi.  We (well I) have had some very in-depth conversations that have gone way beyond dog stuff.

What makes it astonishing is that we live in a smallish town next to London - not an environment noted for the friendliness of people.  We've lived here about 17 years and the bulk of our acquaintances have come through the kids and the one person I spoke to on the tube once.

Best of all - some of these people know my dog's name... one chap this weekend I'd never met before!

Funny isn't it how Brits need an animal in the equation before we'll start talking to each other properly?

Liam