In this 6-minute video, PRSA-NCC member Susan Rink (of Rink Strategic Communications) describes how communicators can measure their employee communications efforts and report the results to the company’s leadership.
Learn how to construct and use visual tools, such as a communications vehicles matrix.
For more information, please visit http://www.RinkComms.com, or contact RinkComms@Verizon.net.
Yesterday’s retrospectives on the life and legacy of Sen. Edward Kennedy reinforced his reputation as a passionate, eloquent speaker.
Throughout the day, news stories showed clips of interviews with and platform speeches delivered by an articulate, charismatic champion of civil rights and equality.
Yet one clip from his failed Presidential campaign in 1980 stood apart from the others.
In this clip, a reporter asked the late Senator why he wanted to be President. A fairly straightforward question for any candidate seeking that office, right?
The Senator’s response? “Ummm……ahhhh….”
No wonder Kennedy failed to gather support for his campaign. It’s hard to rally around a candidate who cannot tell you why you should vote for him.
Managing people is a lot like managing a political campaign – managers try to build support for their ideas and rally groups of people to accomplish a common goal. And like politicians, managers often find themselves having to support or defend a decision or action made by someone else.
Their employees expect them to know the answers, to be able to provide context for the action or decision. Unfortunately, in most cases managers are briefed on the “what”, but they don’t have the information they need to answer the “whys”.
So often when developing change communications plans, communications professionals overlook the role of the manager in reinforcing our messaging. We fail to equip our managers with anything beyond the most superficial talking points. As a result, we set our managers up for failure.
As any parent knows, “Because I said so” isn’t an effective answer. Likewise, “Because the CEO says we should” won’t motivate employees to embrace change.
Managers must be able to articulate, in plain terms, why the decision or change is a good one, what the consequences of inaction are, and what benefits the employees will see as a result. If they are unable to do so, your elaborate change management communications campaign has little chance of succeeding.
My advice to communicators: Don’t let your managers twist in the wind. Give them the information they need to address those tricky “whys” and win the support of their employees. In the end, everyone wins.
A few years ago, while waiting for a professional colleague in the lobby of her company’s headquarters, I leafed through a copy of the employee publication on display in the waiting area.
The company was at the center of an industry controversy, and I knew that much of colleague’s time – and her staff’s – over the past two months had been devoted to rebuilding the company’s reputation and employee morale.
So I was, admittedly, shocked when I saw that the “A” story on the front page was, “Laughing at Work.”
Diving deeper into the publication, I noted that more than half the content was devoted to employee transaction issues (a new password policy, extended hours for the Benefits line, etc.) and the remaining content was what I classify as “happy people” stories.
Not one sentence about the recent challenges, how management was addressing the issues, or the employee and teams who were working to rectify the problems.
Just “Laughing at Work.” And a “Guess Whose Baby Photo?” contest.
So what message does that send to employees? That management was trying to cover up the problems? That the employees shouldn’t worry their pretty little heads about the issue?
In fairness, I had no access to any of the prior publications or any other mass employee communications that the company might have issued during their crisis of confidence. But I suspect that the disconnect I saw in that publication was not a stand-alone issue.
The content of your employee publication, whether it is a printed monthly magazine (and I’m sure those have been slashed in the current economic environment), a bi-weekly email compendium, or a daily intranet homepage, reflects the role you expect your employees to play in the company’s success.
By limiting the content of your publication to “happy people” anecdotes and announcements of new employee discount programs, you miss the opportunity to speak openly to your staff about the challenges the company faces every day…and the important role your employees play in overcoming those challenges and driving success.
Susan C. Rink is principal of Rink Strategic Communications, which helps clients take their employee communications to the next level. Email her at rinkcomms@verizon.net.
There’s something going on at Home Depot.
During a visit to my local Home Depot this week – my first in several months — I immediately spotted some changes, the first being the four orange apron-clad employees who greeted me as I walked in the door and offered to help me locate the items on my list.
I admit it – my first thought was that I was singled out because of my gender, sort of a reverse profiling. But I quickly realized that every customer who entered was greeted in the same way.
I saw lots of other changes too, such as increased staff in the paint department (a source of much past frustration) and lots of stock on the shelves. As I engaged in some casual conversation with the cashier, he mentioned that Home Depot is making a number of changes, all designed to win back customers and build loyalty. That’s right, the cashier told me.
From an employee communications standpoint, that type of interaction is enough to send us into a happy trance. We face a daily struggle to ensure that, amidst all the other “white noise” generated by our organization, employees at every level of the organization are familiar with the company’s goals and know how their work supports those goals. Clearly, the folks at Home Depot are on the right track.
I did a little digging when I got home and found a BusinessWeek article from mid-May, “Putting Home Depot’s House in Order.” I was interested to read that, in addition to a number of operational changes implemented by the retailer’s newest executive vice president of U.S. stores, the communications team has implemented a new policy designed to tame the email beast. Instead of the 200 or so company emails and reports that a manager would typically receive on Mondays, the flood has been reduced to a single message. The remaining info is posted to the company’s intranet.
Having been on the frontlines of that battle at a former company, I have great respect for Home Depot’s communications team and their ability to change behaviors, both at the corporate level where “Information push” is the general rule of thumb and at the unit level, where lack of time is often cited as an obstacle to intranet adoption.
Apparently, the Home Depot employee communications team found an opportunity to integrate their change into the division’s overall business strategy, successfully linking streamlined communications with more time for the store manager to focus on customer service and satisfaction.
Like the best home remodel, that internal communications change should yield a significant return on their customer win-back efforts.
Susan C. Rink is principal of Rink Strategic Communications, which helps clients take their employee communications to the next level. Email her at rinkcomms@verizon.net.
The Metro rail collision in Washington, D.C. on Monday serves as a sober reminder that a crisis can occur anytime, anywhere. In a matter of seconds, a business can be plunged into crisis mode, with little time to strategize about how notify their employees and update them on recovery plans.
Communicators owe it to themselves — and to their employees — to prepare for a crisis before being confronted with one.
Say you don’t have a crisis communications plan and you need to pull one together. Where do you start? At minimum, a good communication plan, regardless of type or size of the business, includes four basic elements:
The checklist documents the top-line steps that need to be addressed when communicating to employees. Examples: When do you notify executives and employees? How will you announce the crisis to your employees (voicemail, PA announcement, email, intranet, text message, Twitter, etc.)? Will the switchboard/receptionist need to be notified and coached on how to handle calls? How frequently will you provide status updates to your employees?
Roles and responsibilities must be defined ahead of time, and redundancy built in just in case the person responsible for the task is unavailable. Examples: Who will serve as the key internal spokesperson? Who approves the content of the announcements? Who can send a text/email/voicemail to all employees? Who can post to the intranet? Who is responsible for updating the executive team?
Having an up-to-date list of available resources and phone numbers will save critical minutes during a crisis. The list should include: home and cell numbers for all executives and management team members; emergency contact info for all employees; home and cell numbers for key members of the IT support team; phone and fax numbers for all locations; Red Cross and other relief agencies, etc. In addition, I recommend that medium to large companies establish an inbound phone number for employees to call for status updates and building closure information.
Finally, it’s always a good idea to have a collection of samples and templates on hand. Examples: scripts for the operator/receptionist; internal holding statements and updates; voice mail and text messages; talking points for managers, etc. Depending on the emergency, you may find that you need to rely on communications novices to help work through your checklist. In that case, the templates will come in quite handy.
Don’t put off crisis communications planning because it seems like an insurmountable task. There are a variety of good crisis communications resources available online:
In addition, many trade associations have created crisis planning resources to help their members. Call their member services number or check out the Web site. Or, you can check with your local Chamber of Commerce; many of them offer this type of resource to their members.
Plan ahead. You’ll be glad you did.
Susan C. Rink is principal of Rink Strategic Communications, which helps clients take their employee communications to the next level. Email her at rinkcomms@verizon.net.
Thank goodness for Jiffy Lube. I drive up, they check a bunch of fluids and things like that, replace some other stuff (can you tell I’m not a mechanic?), and send me through the car wash. A mere 20 minutes later I drive off, secure in the knowledge that this mysterious machine I rely on to get me from Point A to Point B won’t break down on the way to a client meeting. Best of all, they slap a little sticker on my windshield to let me know when I need to come back.
We communicators can learn a lot from Jiffy Lube.
Seriously. When was the last time you gave your employee communications programs a check-up? I’m not talking about a full-scale audit, just a quick assessment of your messaging and vehicles.
Unless your organization has adopted a balanced scorecard system of quarterly metrics, it’s probably been a while. You can’t be sure which vehicle is operating at its full potential. And worse, you have no way of knowing whether that labor-intensive vehicle is worth the time and effort you put into it.
So here are some simple steps for giving your employee communications programs a check-up.
Step One: Inventory
You can’t measure something if you don’t know it exists. So I recommend that you pull together a comprehensive listing of all your communication vehicles. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy — a table or spreadsheet that lists each vehicle, the target audience, content, frequency, method of delivery, etc. Take advantage of this inventory process to collect any metrics associated with those vehicles (web traffic, readership and post-event surveys, program participation, etc.)
Step Two: Assess
Now that you have a snapshot of your communications efforts, you should be able to see where there are redundancies and vehicles with low ROE (return on effort). Take a look at any metrics collected in Step One and use that data to determine if the vehicle is meeting your expectations.
Step Three: Purge
Now is the time to take a hard look at those “pet projects” and eliminate those that don’t support your overall communication strategy. Be bold — if less than 30% of your target audience is actually reading that newsletter, it’s time to retire the publication and deliver that content via another vehicle.
Step Four: Launch
With the “deadweight” eliminated, this is your opportunity to introduce a new vehicle — or expand an existing vehicle — to fill that gap identified in Step One. Look for ways to maximize your effort and multipurpose content in as many vehicles as possible.
Step Five: Schedule
Make a point to do a quick check-up at least once a year. This information will be particularly useful when budget time rolls around — the valuable insight you’ve gained will help determine where to devote your resources in the year to come.
Susan
Susan C. Rink is principal of Rink Strategic Communications, which helps clients take their employee communications to the next level. Email her at rinkcomms@verizon.net.
As I listened to the financial news this afternoon, it occurred to me that — for the first time in months — I was hearing more positive stories about the economy than negative ones. Case in point, there was actually a quote from an economist who believes that the worst of the recession is behind us, and we are now on the long, slow uphill climb to recovery.
So after a brief mental celebration, I started to think about what this news would mean to corporations and their employees, and how internal communicators should be adjusting their employee communications activities to reflect this shift from recession to recovery.
Let’s face it — it’s been a tough year to be in employee communications.
I’m betting that most employee communications professionals have been working in crisis mode for the past six months or so — putting their CEOs and CFOs front and center to rally the troops around the corporate flag. That’s what I would be doing in their place.
So I have to wonder how many of these same communicators are already adjusting their approaches, shifting messaging from dire predictions to reflect a glimmer of hope on the horizon? How many are planning aggressive employee outreach to push out the new, more optimistic outlook?
I’m guessing most are just happy to go a few weeks without announcing “staff reductions” and “right-sizing”…
Sure, the economy may be turning the corner. But this is not the time to fall back into pre-recession patterns of reactive employee communications.
While your sales may be ticking upward this month, your employees are still feeling the effects of the economy: the value of their home has plummeted, their 401K balance has dried up, and their faith in their job security has evaporated during several rounds of layoffs.
Your employees have been tested on every level this year, and their long-term commitment to your company is shaky at best. Chances are, once the job market brightens up, a large percentage of your staff will be out the door and on to greener pastures.
But there is still time to win back the hearts and minds of your employees. To do so, during this period of recovery employees need to hear from their leaders on a consistent and predictable basis. They need straight talk from executives and access to unfiltered news about the company and its progress. And who better to provide that information than the very executive who has been front and center during the crisis — your CEO?
At some point in the future, your company will be back in growth mode, and you will be desperate for committed, engaged employees. So start taking steps now to rebuild that level of commitment and loyalty among your employees.
After all, isn’t that what a “recovery period” is all about?
Susan C. Rink is principal of Rink Strategic Communications, which helps clients take their employee communications to the next level. Email her at rinkcomms@verizon.net.
