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By Paul Matalucci, ABC
Forming a Communications Council is the single most valuable step that a communicator can take without adding a penny of budget.
If your organization doesn’t already have one, don’t wait. You need the eyes and ears of your council to keep you current on the pulse of your organization.
Download our Communications Council Best Practices broadsheet, or read on.
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Communications Council Best Practices
Creating a Network of Communication Champions
A Communications Council is a group of employees nominated to act as communication champions and representatives for their fellow employees. Responsible for checking the pulse of the organization across business, function, and geography, the council meets regularly to discuss vital communication issues, disseminate critical messages, and offer feedback.
Goals
- Find out what employees are concerned about and their thoughts on current company issues.
- Get employee feedback on communication initiatives.
- Test communication plans and messages with employee representatives.
- Increase the visibility of the communications function.
Key Challenges
- Selecting the right people to fill the role.
- Equipping them to do the job.
- Keeping them involved and motivated.
- Getting candid feedback.
Setting Up a Council…
For full details, please download our broadsheet, Communications Council Best Practices.
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By Paul Matalucci, ABC, and Ed Kamrin
The following notes were collected on April 30, 2010, at the ninth meeting of senior communicators who met initially on June 10, 2009, at the close of IABC’s World Conference in San Francisco.
Past meetings have addressed Social Media tools, pandemic communications, strategic communications planning, Social Media policy, courage of the communicator, manager communications. and collaborative tools.
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Idea Sites
- When it comes to business operations or identifying pain points, “rank-and-file” employees are an ideal resource for insight and ideas. Who knows the company’s details and issues better?
- An “idea site” can serve as an idea generator and collector. Based on the idea of the wisdom of crowds, an Idea Site taps into the innovative potential of the community.
- Starbucks created an Idea Site that is model of the format. Customers provide feedback on the company’s stores and products. Visitors can browse through ideas or offer their own. They can also rate ideas, and the ranking moves good ideas to the top. The company later publicizes how the best ideas have been implemented.
- An internal Idea Site can do the same thing for and with employees that Starbucks does for and with customers. Some companies use Idea Sites to address common employee concerns, such as environmental sustainability.
- One company used an Idea Site for philanthropy by announcing a series of grants and asking employees to “vote” for recipients from a field of nominees.
- “Command-and-control” executives may feel threatened by Idea Sites and perceive them as a Pandora’s Box. This objection can be an opportunity to point out that employees are already sharing their opinions both around the water cooler and also in public online.
- To contain unproductive venting, Idea Sites can be configured to require employees to identify themselves before making a post, which creates a self-policing mechanism.
- Begin a discussion with leaders around generational differences. Gen Y and Millennials are accustomed to interactive, web-based communication, and expect the opportunity to provide feedback.
- Consider a phased introduction. For example, an idea site can be launched around a specific topic or department. During a trial period, document outcomes and issues. Measure the results and abandon, modify, or push forward based on the findings. As with all communications, not every solution is right for every organization, every time.
- Idea Sites usually require minimal maintenance, especially if the organization already has a social media policy.
Revisiting Collaborative Tools: Chatter, SharePoint
- Salesforce.com is introducing Chatter, which includes Facebook-like features: status updates, profiles, groups (private and public), the opportunity to follow other employees (a la Twitter). Unlike Facebook, however, Chatter resides behind the company firewall, containing all information within the security of internal discourse.
- Other companies are using SharePoint to implement “opt-in” communication strategies. Employees can opt-in to join a discussion thread or category, such as “going green” or health and fitness, and receive alerts on recent activity. When SharePoint’s “My Site” feature is used fully, employees can include profile and work history information. Among the many benefits of using My Site is the ability to immediately locate expertise within the organization.
Face-to-Face Communications
- Technology doesn’t replace face-to-face communications. And some of the best run companies in the world balance high-tech tools with low-tech meet and greets.
- One admired technology company, for example, holds monthly meetings between the CEO and employees, with attendance limited to employees who have birthdays during that month. The CEO arrives without an agenda and responds to employee questions for the duration. Other companies use the “lunch-and-learn” format.
- One underused meeting format is the “upside-down Town Hall” in which a leader arrives with questions for employees and no prepared remarks. This format builds trust and allows the leader to elicit employee ideas and insights. Nothing builds trust more quickly than an employee’s ability to ask a leader a question and get a real answer in real time.
- To make presentations, another company is using Pecha Kucha with selected executives. Presentations are limited to 20 slides and the executive has 20 seconds to cover each slide. The desired result: a more focused meeting and less extraneous detail.
- For some topics, there is no alternative but face-to-face: if a company is changing merit pay and bonus practices, or announcing layoffs or site closures.
- However, online tools can serve as a useful complement to face-to-face communications. For example, one company set up a SharePoint site for employees affected by the shutdown of two offices, with discussion boards and links to relevant resources. The company generally requires that all posts be signed, but suspended the policy during the period of site shutdowns to facilitate the candid venting of anxiety and frustrations.
Mobile/SMS Texting
- Text messaging can be challenging to implement, since employee phone numbers change frequently and HR may not have current information. However, companies are using messaging strategies. One application is Open Enrollment, with employees having the option to opting in and receiving messages about deadlines and necessary actions. Another possible application: emergency preparedness and crisis situations.
- Technology continues to change the ways we communicate, but also the role of communicators. Communicators who once hid comfortably behind emails and intranet portals may soon need to become the message source – not just the mechanism.
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By Betsy Pasley and Peggy Schoen
The following exchange between Betsy Pasley and Peggy Schoen took place by email following the March 26 Debrief Group meeting at which we discussed collaborative tools.
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From Betsy Pasley
Employees coming into companies today expect intranets to be more like the Internet – searchable info, user-generated content, collaboration, etc. In other words, none of the card-sorting exercises, less of the content controls and ix-nay on multi-year, multi-million-dollar complex HR portals. Unfortunately, I think SharePoint enables the old vs. the new style.
But SharePoint 2010 will fix it all, right?
From Peggy Schoen
Betsy – you’re amazing! How do you keep up with all of this? I agree about how things are developing, and you’re right about SharePoint as it is out-of-the-box.
What’s surprising me, though, is that as we’ve identified consultants who really understand how to apply SharePoint functions to business problems, it can do amazing stuff with relatively minor additions or modifications.
The key is finding those people. It seems like great SharePoint webparts are a lot like iPhone apps; the best ones are whipped up on the fly to solve a practical problem. It’s a shame that Microsoft isn’t as good as Apple at embracing other people’s creativity.
From Betsy Pasley
But then that creates the problem of porting your customizations over to the newer version of SharePoint – which is why our IT folks (legitimately) resist: because of the cost and time involved. I agree; can we just flip a switch and get away from these annoying platforms?
Personally, I’m excited about the fact that the landscape is changing. I think user-created content – while maybe not as buttoned-up – makes for a much more open and honest climate.
From Peggy Schoen
Important point, Betsy! Another lesson we learned this week is how valuable it is to have a highly skilled SharePoint architect working with your internal IT folks when you set up collections at the very beginning.
If your internal folks are learning SharePoint themselves, they may set up structures and styles in a way that solves an immediate problem but limits future flexibility and expandability.
And we learned that some of things we thought we didn’t like about SharePoint weren’t actually SharePoint’s fault. Our IT team had disabled some out-of-the-box functionality to make things conform to our old Intranet. Everyone should have a Dr. SharePoint to go to for a second opinion.
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By Paul Matalucci, ABC, and Ed Kamrin
The following notes were collected on March 26, 2010, at the eighth meeting of senior communicators who met initially on June 10, 2009, at the close of IABC’s World Conference in San Francisco.
Past meetings have addressed Social Media tools, pandemic communications, strategic communications planning, Social Media policy, courage of the communicator, and manager communications.
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A Brief History of SharePoint
- Microsoft SharePoint started as a collaboration tool that allowed employees to share files and calendars with one another. Microsoft originally offered the tool at no cost.
- Over time, it has evolved into a development platform. Although SharePoint was not built as a web content management tool, many organizations use it as a platform for content management and web publishing, often replacing legacy document management tools such as Hummingbird.
- While two uses of SharePoint – collaboration and web publishing – are distinct, many organizations don’t take the differences into account. This can create communication challenges and fundamental misunderstandings.
- Since it was designed as a collaboration tool, SharePoint is only intended to manage shallow structures of content. As a role-based tool, it allows for granular control of access rights.
Deploying SharePoint in the Organization
- Whether the purpose is collaboration or publishing, SharePoint should not be used out of the box. Above all, a SharePoint deployment must begin with an analysis of the business. Without planning, the organization won’t reap the full value of its investment in SharePoint.
- Most organizations will need consultants who are SharePoint specialists. For example, the designer needs to know web design – and how good web design works in SharePoint. Similarly, look for web developers with SharePoint expertise.
- Start by meeting with representatives of each function. Understand what the function does and then find out which tools work for them. What is their goal? Managing a project? Reaching a decision? Sharing information among team members? Enshrining institutional knowledge? By keeping the goal in mind, organizations can avoid common pitfalls like just removing documents from the content management site, and moving them wholesale into the collaboration site.
- Also distinguish between features that have value for only one function, and features that create value across functions. For example, locating contacts is usually important to all business units.
- Similarly, the function must articulate the difference between content that it provides for itself and content that it provides for the outside world. Make that distinction early on.
- Organizing content is a critical task. The deployment team needs to look carefully at naming conventions, since the goal is for people to find content and understand how it’s being organized for their benefit. This is an area where usability research is useful, and usability testing is the gold standard. In what terms do employees think? For example, the HR team may prefer to use “Human Resources” as the name of its team site, but employees are often more likely to look for “Benefits” or “Training” when they are searching.
- Without central planning, SharePoint can become a hodgepodge of team sites. Without an analysis of business needs, administrators are left to pick and choose among features like document libraries, calendars, wikis and discussion boards. It’s rather like handing someone a paint set and instructing them to be an artist.
Using SharePoint’s “My Site” Feature
- My Site is often neglected, but it adds enormous strategic value to SharePoint.
- During the SharePoint deployment, spend time to get the MySite template right. Some organizations have found it challenging to push out changes later.
- Look carefully at what functionality to use, and avoid being too conservative. For example, some organizations have been wary of the blogging feature, but it has worked beautifully in many cases. Blogging doesn’t have to mean news and commentary; it can also be way to capture the organization’s intellectual capital. Blogging can also help with employee onboarding and promote manager-employee communication. Note that SharePoint archives all blog posts.
- By using RSS feeds, My Site can also cut down on email. For example, teams can create project feeds with news on individual projects. Employees no longer need to create Outlook folders and manage the files.
What’s Ahead for SharePoint and Collaboration Tools
- Salesforce.com has an employee collaboration suite (Chatter) in beta testing. For now, however, SharePoint is the market leader, and all tools are expected to be compatible with SharePoint.
- Increasingly, organizations resist putting content in many places. For example, many organizations house employee data in both SharePoint and PeopleSoft. Expect to see PeopleSoft (and similar tools) become more integrated with SharePoint.
- Many organizations already track employee skills and areas of expertise. Look for this trend to continue. Knowledge management is not only about publishing information; it’s also about the tacit information that people have, and bringing people together to share their knowledge.
- At present, SharePoint is not as strong on alerts and pushing content to users. In the current version of SharePoint, using alerts is challenging and the interface is clunky. Increasingly, organizations are likely to use alerts to replace tools like e-mail.
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By Paul Matalucci, ABC, and Ed Kamrin
The following notes were collected on February 26, 2010, at the seventh meeting of senior communicators who met initially on June 10, 2009, at the close of IABC’s World Conference in San Francisco.
Past meetings have addressed Social Media tools, pandemic communications, strategic communications planning, Social Media policy, and courage of the communicator.
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Create a managers’ newsletter/news brief.
- Include no more than 4 items
- Optimal timing: every other week
- Keep it concise: headline, summary, action, deadline, whom to contact
- Hyperlink items to longer write-ups
- Always distribute from the same email address
Institute all-manager teleconferences.
- Orient managers to subjects they will discuss with their teams
- Capture a list of questions and answers from the meeting, since those questions will likely echo employee questions
- Use quick polls with employees to confirm that managers shared the content in meetings vs. simply forwarding the meeting slides/notes
- Send managers advance notice of company-wide communications (even a day or two ahead, if timing is tight).
- Put managers “in the know;” position them to be an information sources for their team(s)
- Give them time to raise (and answer) their own questions and objections
- Create an additional quality control step to catch issues that other reviews might miss
- Use them to earn managers’ trust, goodwill, and buy-in
Consider the role of manager training.
- Often includes external communication (e.g., speaker preparation) but frequently does not cover communicating with employees
- Managers may need basic training in interpersonal communications – career advancement is often based on technical competence rather than “soft” skills
- Help managers understand basic persuasion strategies, such as answering the “me” in employee questions before focusing on the “we”
- Managers should ask themselves: Am I telling you enough, and am I asking you enough?
Segment managers into audience types, similar to those used in benefits communications:
- Sherlock Holmes – a manager who looks into every detail
- Company Knows Best – doing whatever the company says
- Family Knows Best – doing whatever the family (unit, department) needs
Leverage technology.
- Consider a manager portal with tools, resources, and the opportunity to exchange ideas and perspectives
- Yammer and Salesforce.com Chatter (in pilot mode) can enhance communication and manage talent (i.e., where to find skills/knowledge among current employees)
- Blogs can offer an opportunity for interaction via the comments feature
- Internal discussion channels can help prevent problems from being aired externally
Beware of the potential pitfalls.
- Actions must match words – messaging will mean less if behavior doesn’t match
- Timeliness is critical or credibility will suffer (for both the manager and company)
- Hierarchy—where rank determines who can say what and where—can be an obstacle. One solution is to segment and schedule manager meetings according to grade level.
Be wary of managers who inappropriately bond with employees.
- The relationship should not undermine corporate objectives
- Departing managers may take their teams with them
- Use surveys to measure both the quality of the employee-manager relationship and whether employees know the company strategy – both are important.
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By Paul Matalucci, ABC, and Ed Kamrin
The following notes were collected on January 29, 2010, at the sixth meeting of senior communicators who met initially on June 10, 2009, at the close of IABC’s World Conference in San Francisco, and again on August 18, September 22, October 20, and December 11, 2009.
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How does a communicator demonstrate courage?
- By saying what senior leaders need to hear, instead of what they want to hear
- By advocating for the audience – whether employees, the press, or the general public. Communicators serve two masters: the executive team and the audience.
- By insisting on transparent communications, even when the news is bad
Courage often doesn’t require a bold feat of daring. Instead, it can be a process of moving the needle – taking small steps and building solid relationships.
What are the preconditions for courage?
- Confidence in our own capabilities as communicators
- Having a strategic approach/mindset and recognizing the value that we add (This allows us to influence and earn a seat at the table.)
- An understanding of executives’ agendas, so that we frame our advice within that context
- An understanding of the needs of our audience(s)
- A personal willingness to sacrifice psychological comfort to say what we believe is right
How do we create the conditions under which we can be courageous?
- Treat our executives as an audience and change our language accordingly. For example, “communications plan” may mean nothing to an audience, so consider the terms “rollout strategy” or “change management strategy.”
- Get some wins. Even small tactical victories can enhance our reputation and help build goodwill.
- Gather proof points. If we are to earn the trust and respect of senior leaders, we need measurement. Be sure to measure the right things: how much more consumers buy, how much longer employees stay at their jobs. Consider benchmarking and third-party validation, using research from trusted sources like Towers Watson.
- Define the future state for communications. This allows executives to understand our agenda as communicators and helps us gain buy-in.
- Prevent executives from making gaffes. No leader wants to be embarrassed, and even the most hierarchical, “top-down” leader will be grateful for a timely warning.
- Make sure that executives are aware of social media, which functions like a truth machine.
Courage flourishes in a safe environment.
What creates a safe environment?
- A culture that acknowledges “noble failure,” the belief that organizations learn more through failure than through success
- The willingness of leaders to accept blame
- Knowing leaders as people – and the willingness of leaders to share details of their lives
- A sense of belonging and community, which can be built though affinity groups, employee bulletin boards, and sometimes shared adversity.
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by Paul Matalucci, ABC
Some years ago, I bought a special dishwashing liquid dispenser that emitted a tiny glob of liquid with each squirt. I was pleased with this simple and painless way to limit our use of detergent.
Then, not long ago, I was standing near our office cleaning lady as she was preparing to wash cups. As she worked, I watched her reach for the dispenser, unscrew the top, and pour a tennis-ball-size glob of dishwashing liquid onto her sponge.
It reminded me that human nature is largely habit. Most of what people do, they do without thinking. Our cleaning lady was used to a sudsy wash, and she easily bypassed my best intentions.
In communications, we focus on changing behavior. We begin by asking, What do we want people to keep doing, do more of, or less of?
When we create strategic communication plans for managers, how much do we take into account the well worn habits to which managers will return by default?
If we’re launching an initiative, or changing a process, or introducing a new IT tool, have we gone far enough to explain the rationale and benefits to the manager?
Have we confirmed what managers are giving up by making the switch?
Is our description of the new behavior flawlessly clear?
Have we been sure to repeat the rationale beyond the introductory communications?
If we haven’t gone the extra step to call out and reinforce a new behavior or to explain and repeat the rationale, how likely are managers to adopt our suggestions?
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by Paul Matalucci, ABC
I just finished reading a news item that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has declared a national emergency because drought has reduced the output from hydroelectic dams. What grabbed me was this statement: “It’s a true emergency,” he said.
Is there another kind?
Unfortunately there is. When leaders and public figures exaggerate for rhetorical effect, they dilute the power of words. Emergency is no longer emergency; it’s that thing you say when you want to rile people up or grab attention. Now you need to say “true emergency.”
So what happens when “true emergency” becomes what you say to rile people up or grab attention?
We’ll need to come up with another word.
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By Paul Matalucci, ABC, and Ed Kamrin
The following notes were collected on December 11, 2009, at a fifth meeting of senior communicators who met initially on June 10, 2009, at the close of IABC’s World Conference in San Francisco, and again on August 18, 2009, September 22, 2009, and October 20, 2009.
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Social Media and the Communicator’s Toolkit
Developing a Social Media Policy
Training Executives on Social Media Tools
2009: The Year in Review
Looking Ahead to 2010
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- When the job market improves, employee attrition is likely to be widespread. Expect to see attrition of the best talent.
- Companies are likely to remain risk-averse. While many have projects on the table, they are gun-shy when it comes to committing resources. Nobody wants to be the first out of the gate.
- Companies that cut employees and programs will need to regroup. Many communicators are caught in a bind: if they continue to produce excellent work with smaller staffs, they may find it difficult to justify additional resources during the economic recovery.
- Though bad times often lead to isolationist thinking, the global economy is here to stay. Communicators will do well to think internationally, and hone their ability to communicate with employees around the world.
- Above all, communicators need to have the courage to step up and say what needs to be said – especially at a time when employees are concerned for their jobs and likely to keep their concerns private. One of our jobs is to break the bad news of what everyone else is thinking. That’s a risky task, but it’s fundamental to becoming a trusted advisor.
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