Compassionate Communications

Over the past few months we have seen several colleagues downsized from their organizations and if their experience is the norm, many corporations are doing a dreadful job of handling this common occurrence in today’s work world. It may be Senior Management that makes these decisions, and it may be HR’s job to handle the paper work but shouldn’t the communications plan for this unfortunate task be seen as a priority by Internal Communications. After all it will be our job to clean up the mess after the downsizing and deal with an unmotivated and potentially disloyal employee base. And we know that there is no one as vocal as an employee who has been treated merely as an employee number rather than as a human during this devastating transition.

"Never, never, never burn internal or external bridges," says Lawrence Stuenkel, senior partner of outplacement firm Lawrence& Allen. " Friendly downsizing goes beyond your company policy book. It is the small things you do that let people know you care about their wellbeing. Let them know you will help as much as possible in the transition phase. This helps both those leaving and those staying with the company."

Senior Executives, Direct Managers and Supervisors may handle the front line communications but we all know that they can often use a little coaching when it comes to delivering key messages. Don’t they receive assistance from Internal Comm. when it comes to delivering organizational strategy? Perhaps the Communications Plan should include training on team building, workplace communications, coping with change, stress management, and effectively coaching and mentoring subordinates in a changing work environment. After hearing that one colleague was never contacted by her direct supervisor during or after the traumatic news was delivered, it would appear that they should also be taught how to handle the process with kindness and compassion.

As Internal Communicators in today’s corporate world our workload is already bordering on the impossible. We could and should insist though, that this critical and final interaction between employer and employee is communicated as effectively, strategically and compassionately as possible.

Links:
Building Employee Trust After Downsizing
Effective Downsizing

Managing Christmas Chaos (& A Whole Lot More)

As the holiday season descends upon us, it feels like our busy lives just get busier. Between end-of-year project deadlines, Christmas gatherings and kids’ hockey games, there’s just so much to keep track of. Sometimes it seems like “The Age of Information” is just a phrase designed to put a positive spin on complete overload. With so many responsibilities to juggle, who among us hasn’t missed a key appointment or frantically scanned through old emails to find a name, phone number or date? Isn’t there a better way? With a free web tool called Nexo, we think we just may have found one.

Nexo is a collaborative project tool that allows you to create highly customized group websites. With a Nexo group, you can post and update attached documents (including Word and Excel), create discussion threads, share photos / videos and even create an interactive calendar. By allowing you to share information quickly and efficiently, Nexo can save you both time and headaches. Much like Facebook or LinkedIn, all content lives in cyberspace, meaning Nexo requires no software downloads or unusual system requirements.

As you may already know, project management software similar to Nexo has existed for years. Two things make this discovery distinct. The first is that rather then offering you access to an online group, Nexo gives you a personal account that in turn permits you to set-up as many groups as you’d like. This means you can potentially have access to Book Club discussions, PowerPoint for a work project and your daughter’s latest soccer schedule… all on one website. The second key difference is that Nexo is completely free. As we’ve mentioned previously, Social Media tools are usually only successful if a large number of people are using them. By making Nexo completely free, the creators have made it easier for early adapters (like yourself!) to form groups and invite friends, teammates and coworkers to join them.

If you can’t find time right now, make it your New Year’s Resolution to give Nexo a try! We think you might just be amazed by how easy Nexo groups are to customize and much the program simplifies the information management tasks you do daily, both on the job and in your free time. If you’re interested in learning more, we encourage you to start by watching this great video, which explains the concept behind Nexo and how it works (it also includes a pretty ridiculous impression of Lindsay Lohan). If that looks good to you, sign up and give it a try!

Links:
Nexo
Facebook
LinkedIn
Project Management Software - Wikipedia Article
Put the Social Back In Networking - Around The WaterCooler
Nexo Demo Video

Honk If You're Engaged!

Before you read any further, we need you to watch this youtube video! Just in case you’re on dial-up (or your workplace blocks youtube, facebook and weather network stories that use the phrase ‘warm front’), we’ll briefly go over the details. Basically, the video follows two young artists, Vincent Fichard and Matthew Jones, as they create a series of custom road signs in Dubai and videotape the public response. What makes their project so captivating are the signs’ contents. Rather than offering up traditional traffic information, the signs ask a driver to “beep your horn if you’re in love”, or go around a roundabout “…twice if you’re happy”. To us, there’s something truly magical about the whole thing.

As you may have already guessed, we couldn’t help but see a connection to business communications in all of this. As communicators, we’ve continually stressed the importance of stakeholder engagement. Many organizations are trying to become more effective and engagement seems like it just might be the magic bullet they’ve been looking for. Communicators often see engagement as the simple means to an end... If employees are engaged in their careers, it will lead to higher performance and eventually positively impact business outcomes.

Watching the video, it occurred to us that engagement could potentially be an end in and of itself. Noticing that the drivers in the clip eagerly responded to the road signs (even to more downbeat messages, like “flash your lights if you’re broke”), we immediately thought of Abraham Maslow and his famous Hierarchy of Needs. When covering the universal desire for esteem, Maslow spoke about the need to be consulted, heard and respected by friends and colleagues. This is the very essence of a good stakeholder engagement policy. While engagement is certainly a big part of a larger strategy for business effectiveness, watching this video brought us back to a simpler truth. Stakeholder engagement should always be a priority for our organizations because, in the end, engagement satisfies a basic human need. Practically speaking, perhaps we all need to ask ourselves if our communications campaigns include two-way dialogue to ensure that stakeholders have been heard. As we learned from the Dubai experiment, we all need to occasionally honk our horns!

Links:
Go Around Twice If You're Happy - Youtube Video
Youtube
Facebook
No More Mr. Nice Guy - Around The WaterCooler
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - Wikipedia Article

See You On The Picket Line

Watching the Writers Guild of America start strike action this week drives home just how many people are affected by emerging new media. And while we are not a union shop, thank goodness, we can’t help but feel for the writers union and their demands. “There has to be a broader understanding that we're [striking] to ensure our ability to earn a living in the future. If New Media is not part of our compensation, we'll be unable to make a living" says Matt Lazarus, strike captain. Internal Communicators feel their pain. When you add a variety of new applications to the communications strategy, you need the budget and the talent to reflect the change.

As Internal Communicators our roles have recently expanded to include the development and management of a wealth of new tools: intranets, extranets, podcasts, wikis and blogs to name a few, in addition to the traditional mix. Progress is a great thing, and new media adds a great deal to the employee dialogue. That said, you can’t take content for a newsletter and force it into an intranet portal and you can’t necessarily expect a newsletter editor to know how to create a wiki. Each unique vehicle requires targeted content to engage its audience and the people to support it.

We support our friends in LA who are merely trying to negotiate a changing landscape and ensure that budgets fairly reflect the contribution required.

Links:
Wikipedia Entry on Writers Guild of America
You Tube Piece on Writers' Demands

Mirror, Mirror.

In August, WaterCooler Inc. held our always-boisterous offsite meeting in rural Ontario to discuss emerging communication trends and technology. While at “The Farm”, debate got heated, wine was consumed and sleep was somewhat overlooked. Still, it was at this meeting that we first discussed the Fly Pen, MMP and a number of ideas that have kept us energized since. While Around The WaterCooler has allowed us to share a few of these discoveries with you, there are still a number of topics we have yet to mention. Perhaps one of our favourites is a concept that we refer to as The Window and the Mirror.

In a nutshell, this theory proposes that in the electronic age of media personalization, we are losing meaningful perspective. With so much of our information streaming in via opinionated Blogs / RSS Feeds, surprisingly likeminded friends and TV channels like Fox News, biases that may have once been questioned now often remain unchallenged. Today’s technology gives us unparalleled access to information and the ability to understand issues from a number of perspectives. In practice however, too many of us are squandering this opportunity by instead seeking out information that reinforces the opinions we already have. Towards the end of the discussion, one participant nicely summarized the issue: “I see what you’re saying… We used to think of the media as a window, but these days, they’re really much more like a mirror”.

We couldn’t help but see a connection to Business Communications in this discussion. There is increasing chatter among communicators about the importance of Audience and Message Segmentation. This makes sense; not only will certain channels be more appropriate for specific stakeholder groups, but various segments within your organizations will also require differing degrees of information. Still, we think it’s important to apply the lesson learned in The Window and the Mirror. Where we do segment our audiences (or messages), we need to be sure that employees retain the ability to see the issues from another department’s perspective and that they also develop a line-of-sight understanding of why the issues are important to the Organization’s business objectives.

Links:
WaterCooler Inc. Website
Digital Stationery - Around The WaterCooler
Word Choice, Channel Standards and Ontario's "Big Decision" - Around the WaterCooler
The ABC's of RSS - Around the WaterCooler
Fox News Internal Memo - The Huffington Post
Mastering Audience Segmentation Report - Melcrum

Our Bad Decision (Or Their Bad Communication)?

Just as we predicted, it looks like the Government spent almost $7 million dollars and still got it wrong! It’s been about three weeks since Ontario’s Electoral Referendum and the overwhelming defeat of the MMP option. While some media have called this outcome ‘the will of the people’, we’re not sure we agree. According to a theory being espoused by both George Thomson, Government-appointed Chair of the Citizens Assembly as well as the Institute for Social Research at York University, poor communications may be the true reason for MMP’s defeat.

We’re strongly swayed by Mr. Thomson’s argument that the Government seemed almost afraid to educate voters on their choices. He points out that the Province did not adequately distribute available Referendum information, including a 27-page recommendation report that the Government itself had commissioned. Mr. Thomson also maintains that the Your Big Decision communications should have included a critical look at the alternatives, instead of forcing “…others to foster discussion about how the different elements would work in practice, and to debate the relative strengths and weaknesses of each system.”

The Institute’s scientific look at the Referendum is even more convincing. Studying voter attitudes, the Institute learned that most Ontarians oppose the “artificial” seat majorities that often form the Government in our current system and feel quite favorably about the idea of casting two votes. According to the Institute, this public sentiment did not translate to votes because Ontarians simply didn’t fully comprehend the MMP alternative and the role of the Citizens Assembly. To test this theory, the Institute simulated a new Referendum in which voters understood more about the Citizens Assembly and the pros / cons of the MMP option. Under these conditions, MMP would have won a dramatic victory, claiming an estimated 63% of the vote.

We hope that the Ontario Government is carefully assessing their Referendum communications strategy. In our original Blog entry, we took the Government to task on word choice and channel standards, but one cannot underestimate the importance of content. To us, it seems that in an effort to appear neutral, the Your Big Decision communications failed to give Ontarians the basic information they required to cast an educated vote.

Links:
Word Choice, Channel Standards and Ontario's "Big Decision" - Around the WaterCooler
Elections Ontario Website (Formerly Your Big Decision)
Ottawa Citizen Article on MMP Defeat
Toronto Star Commentary By George Thomson
Why Ontarians Said No To MMP - Liberals For Electoral Reform Blog

No More Mr. Nice Guy

One of the greatest challenges we encounter as internal communicators is to get leadership to take what we do seriously. When people hear what we do for a living they relegate us to the “nice” category… you know that place where child-care workers, music teachers and social workers dwell. Well enough already. Internal communications is finally coming into its own and study after study proves its merits. A recent article in the Careers section of the Globe and Mail by Sue Shellenbarger caught our attention with a sub head that read, Employers are seeing the light: engaged workers are good for the bottom line. Damn right they are and it’s time that more leadership did something about it.

Perhaps the ever-present chatter in the news about the looming shortage in the labour pool is getting through because slowly some are starting to pay some attention. Shellenbarger’s article speaks about several companies who saw the light and did something about it. Still according to a recent Towers Perrin study only 23% of Canadian workers are currently engaged at work. That number should scare more companies into action. When addressing the study, Canadian Business Magazine recently quoted a Towers Perrin principal “You can’t hire or buy an engaged workforce – only leadership can build it.” To be good internal communicators we need to help leadership do just that. Another study done by Hewitt Associates found that “increases in employee engagement clearly preceded improvements in financial performance. Even among companies with below-average profit, an upturn in employee attitudes tended to precede a profit turnaround.” Let’s stop being relegated to the “nice” category and show everybody that what we do is actually help businesses make money.

Links:
"Work-life balance? It's working" - The Globe and Mail
Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study
Article on Global Workforce Study - Canadian Business Magazine
Employee Engagement Study - Hewitt Associates