The holiday season brings an opportunity to let people know they are appreciated. But in the workplace, employee appreciation isn’t always top of mind. In addition to their own holiday planning, managers face pressing year-end demands like goal setting and performance reviews.

This season, consider these 5 tips when thinking about how to say “thank you” to those who deserve it most. A simple, timely and authentic gesture of appreciation can encourage and inspire your employees, and raise your bottom line.

1. Break with routine. If email is your typical way of communicating, use a different approach that employees will be sure to remember. It doesn’t have to involve writing their names in the sky. Just leave a brief voicemail message, or send flowers to a home address.

2. Be authentic and specific. To reinforce performance or commitment, let employees know the exact behavior or quality that merits recognition. Avoid the overly broad “Thanks for all your hard work,” and instead acknowledge specifics. Ideally you have previously recognized the employee on the spot, but even if you give an end-of-year acknowledgment, be sure to call out the highlights. “Thank you for bringing fresh ideas to our team this year, like the time you suggested we meet outside on the grass to brainstorm marketing approaches.”

3. Use your own words. Composing a heartfelt message can be difficult, especially under work pressures, but resist the urge to write as if Legal or HR will scrub your words. If you’re having a hard time coming up with a thank you that sounds meaningful, try recording a message on your phone and then transcribe your spoken words onto paper.

4. Write it by hand. Because everyone sends emails and texts, be revolutionary. Write with ink and paper. Writing by hand takes time, but because everyone is busy, taking that time can be the greatest sign of your appreciation.

5. Have your holiday party in January. Before the holidays, employees are preoccupied, so a December 20th holiday party might not always be welcome. Throwing a mid-January holiday celebration is a great way to start off the new year while also setting the tone for months to come.

God bless front-line managers.

They take heat from above and below: bosses pressure them to drive teams harder and deliver fast results while subordinates grumble, make mistakes, get sick, cut corners, and ask for raises.

In addition to their own work, line-managers have to write performance reviews, monitor timelines, give instructions, coordinate schedules, check quality, resolve conflicts, all while concealing their own doubts and anxieties. And in the end, they do all of this with less. And for less.

So why should communicators be surprised when we give managers our carefully crafted communication toolkits—our key messages, Q&As, presentation slides, and talking points—only to learn later that managers forwarded everything to their teams by email, and considered their job done?

Those rich manager-employee conversations that we had envisioned?
Never happened.

That well-informed post-meeting Q&A session?
Nope.

A glimmer of employee inspiration? Or engagement?
Nada. And zilch.

So are toolkits a waste of time?

Not by a long shot. Our mistake has been that we don’t properly prepare managers to serve as links in the chain that we envision.

For more than two years, Wordwright has been developing business in Asia through our office in Hong Kong. And here in Asia, there has been significant interest among our clients and prospects to train managers.

Specifically, we’re being asked to develop their communication skills. And not just presentation and writing skills. We’re teaching managers how to facilitate company-wide communications.

Seeing an opportunity, we have developed a curriculum that includes:

1. How to develop audience-centric key messages

2. How to find the right time and the best channels

3. How to conduct a successful meeting

4. How to check the team “pulse” afterward
(and what details are good to share with the Corp Comms team)

When a message is owned and personalized at the line-manager level, it sticks. Employees hear something relevant and specific to their work and interests. Messages flow through the organization without being distorted.

Remember that childhood game called “telephone”? It’s a great metaphor for what can happen to the message you intend as it moves from person to person.

With trained managers as part of your communication chain, it’s unlikely that when executives say the word change, employees hear the word chance.

Wordwright's Paul Matalucci, ABC, talks about layoff communications.

Read online story.
Full text below.

“Up Close and Impersonal”
by Luisa Tam
South China Morning Post
Saturday, July 2, 2011

Communication strategist Paul Matalucci says he doesn’t envy what actor George Clooney has to do as a corporate downsizer-for-hire in the movie Up In The Air. And neither is he like Donald Trump in The Apprentice.

Clooney, in his role as Ryan Bingham, has to tell employees they have been laid off, acting on behalf of employers who are unwilling to do the job themselves, while Trump is brutal when he fires apprentices on his reality TV show.

“We never use the words `You are fired’ like Trump does. We always say `Your position has been eliminated.’ It’s important not to attach any blame to it all,” Matalucci explains.

As president of US-based Wordwright Communications, Matalucci helps companies communicate with staff and deals with senior leadership of big corporations with 5,000 to 150,000 employees.

Wordwright opened its office in Hong Kong in March 2010 and got its first client two months later.

The company is all about assisting clients to articulate their message, vision and strategic directions in good times and in bad, Matalucci says.

“Communication is prerequisite and fundamental to staff management and long-term staff development,” he adds.

Communication, Matalucci continues, has to be up and down in order to connect people and various business units throughout organisations.

“When the economy is good, much of my job is about strengthening a company’s communication capability both externally to expand the scope of the business, and internally to boost staff morale and rally support. When the economy goes south, a lot of communication will be shifted internally to reinforce and stabilise staff to give them a better sense of belonging.”

In really bad times, that means notification meetings and staff losing their jobs, a situation that has become more prevalent in the United States over the past few years.

When it comes to lay-offs it’s not Matalucci and his staff who do the firing; they train managers and companies how to relay the bad news.

“My training helps companies not to lose sight of the importance of doing it well when it comes to laying off people. And very often, people tend to forget that it is also quite an emotional journey for the manager who has to break the bad news,” he says.

“It’s never easy to lay off someone. We tend to tell our clients to limit the entire process to just four minutes because we need to give the employee the personal space to let the news sink in. But before we close the notification meeting, the manager will have to keep reinforcing the message to ensure that the message has been clearly understood because a lot of times it takes some time for the bad news to sink in.”

One important rule, Matalucci says, is that affected staff should be told the lay-off is not personal and no blame is apportioned, and that it’s merely a business decision. “We should never sugar-coat it because there is no better way of laying off someone. We must treat staff with respect and dignity,” he adds.

Going about the process in a professional way is also important to the company’s long-term interests.

“People remember how badly you treat your staff when you let them go and they will spread the word so good people will not want to join your company when the economy improves. Treat staff well even in bad times and treat them with respect when you let them go,” he stresses.

RJ Asher, former head of human resources for Asia Pacific at Avon Products, agrees that communication is critical to a company’s long-term growth and its ability to attract and retain talent.

“No matter how big or small a company is or whether you are delivering good or bad news, the message has to be communicated the right way,” Asher says, adding that clear communication is imperative especially when a company is handing out bad news because it can eliminate misunderstanding.

“When it’s done correctly and in a humane way, people will not feel abused and the company is less likely to be challenged,” Asher says.

Matalucci points out that it is also vital to communicate properly with “survivors” to explain how their colleagues were treated and what the future plans are in order to move the company forward and stabilise staff morale. If there is any silver lining to notification meetings, Matalucci says they help in the career development of senior managers who can deal with such an emotional process in a professional setting and learn how to handle negative situations.

Exit strategy

• Treat them with respect
• Get to the point
• Stick to the facts and avoid sugar-coating your messages

By Paul Matalucci, ABC, and Patrick Castrenze

The following notes were collected on June 30, 2011, during a conference call with business communicators who attended the IABC World Conference 2011 in San Diego, California.

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Is your workplace a community that communicates?

Presenters and attendees of IABC’s 2011 World Conference offered insights into the challenges facing communicators, summarized here as a series of tips.

• Employee engagement through empowerment. As the effects of recession linger, many U.S. employees feel powerless in their search for job stability. Creating opportunities for dialogue gives them a chance to speak their mind and feel powerful. A discussion board, for example, is a great tool for employee empowerment that also creates an opportunity to listen to conversations, find the patterns, and address employee concerns proactively.

• Dialogue isn’t always about solving a problem. We often resort to dialogue when we want to solve a problem that has already happened. But dialogue can also be a great tool for talking about possibility, and for creating across-the-board opportunities. In Community: The Structure of Belonging, Peter Block refers to this as a transformative conversation, not the problem we simply want to correct.

• Don’t get hung-up on participation. Leaders often look for 100% participation rates from their employees during dialogue. But people interact differently, and true participation is voluntary, so be willing to hear different points of view or sometimes nothing at all.

• Successful communities are self-sustaining. Business communicator and IABC member Betsy Pasley compares employee-based community to the way flowers grow at home, and in the wild: A landscaped flowerbed is controlled and managed. It needs constant care and attention, but offers a predictable consistency. Wildflowers, on the other hand, are self-sustaining and self-nurturing, but they’re also less organized. While each environment has its strengths, it’s important to remember that wildflowers, like employees, can be trusted to take care of themselves and their communities.

• Think small for group conversations. There’s a time and a place for the town hall meeting, but keeping the conversation at the level of small groups is a critical element. This is a space where employees can work closely with each other to speak and to be heard.

• Ask Questions. Questions are more transforming than answers. When a senior leader asks employees a question, it demonstrates an interest in the employees’ well-being and demonstrates respect for the employees’ point of view.

• Consider the amount of control that is appropriate to your message. Maintaining control over your messages can be essential when you’re announcing lay-offs, but in other situations, like the roll-out of a new company policy, having less control can go a long way.

References:

Block, Peter (2008). Community: The Structure of Belonging

Bernoff, J., Charlene Li (2008). Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

As a communicator with new eyes to the complexity of reaching international employee audiences, one fact has been drilled into me: when considering the best program or channel, leave nothing off the table. Anything that employees touch (or that touches employees) is an opportunity to reinforce messages, encourage dialogue, or to inspire.

The topic of volunteerism as a communications tool is an excellent example. We often leave volunteer programs to Human Resources or Community Affairs. But they’re actually great opportunities to create dialogue with and among employees.

I have noted a few characteristics of how volunteerism can be used effectively.

1) Find a cause/organization appropriate to your Vision/Mission. One of Wordwright’s clients, a successful biotech company, researches, develops, and markets HIV and hepatitis drugs. Their annual participation in AIDS walks and blood drives is a perfect fit—clearly aligned with the company’s mission to provide lifesaving drugs for the patients who need them. The relationship, however, does not have to be so direct. Financial institutions, for example, distribute capital within the communities they serve. Picking a non-profit community arts program or sporting association makes good sense because they too unite a community and strengthen its cultural capital.

2) Make the connection visible, and then report back on the experience. The link between the activity and our company’s mission should be stated clearly (even obviously) in related communications: memos, press releases, intranets, etc.

And as a follow-up to the activity, be sure to have someone capture the event in photographs or video and include the stories in future company-wide employee communications. It’s particularly effective to capture first-person narratives or testimonials. Ask employees how they felt during their volunteering experience. Who did they meet? What did they learn? What did they contribute?

3) Select an activity that can deliver multiple benefits. Another Wordwright client has an employee-run Science Day on their campus in Fremont, California. They invite local high school students to present their projects to company scientists. Not only do the client’s employees derive huge satisfaction from interacting with students, they’re also indirectly boosting potential future recruits and generating goodwill with the local community. And parents love it.

4) Use volunteer activities to deepen co-worker relationships. Often the attention falls on the volunteer work itself without addressing the need for participants to socialize before and after the event. A kick-off gathering with drinks and food puts everyone at ease. If employees are socially introverted, incorporate an ice-breaker. If the event is particularly intense or long, perhaps a closing celebration is appropriate. Encourage employees to stay together during break times instead of letting them run away to check their Blackberries.

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A Curious Characteristic Noted

As I learn more about the practice of employee communications in Hong Kong and across Asia, I am struck by the frequency with which incentives are offered to encourage participation (weekends in Macau or digital cameras). I would love to discuss this with other Hong Kong communicators. I am struck by the inherent assumption that people won’t give their time and talents without a tangible reward. If our goal is enhanced teamwork, higher employee engagement, and stronger relationships between employees, what are we saying if we keep holding out other carrots?

I’m eager to hear your thoughts.

*accredited business communicator

By Paul Matalucci, ABC, and Ed Kamrin

The following notes were collected on June 18, 2010, at the tenth 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, collaborative tools, and new tools.

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Tips for Succeeding as a Communicator

2010 IABC World Conference presenters and attendees offered insights into the challenges facing communicators, summarized here as a series of tips.

• Coach and facilitate with authority, trusting in what you know. Fulfilling expectations is easy; moving the bar is more difficult, but essential. Courageous communicators take risks to get their message through; we won’t be valued assets if we always play it safe and deliver what’s expected of us.

• Talk to leaders in their own language. Mirror your communication style to your leader’s style. Explain how communication serves as a conduit to deliver business results.

• Talk to employees in their own language, too. Don’t talk to engineers in marketing-speak; don’t talk to nurses in investor relations terminology. Mirror the language and values of your constituents.

• Behave like an agency – even if you’re a department. Track your time and account for your hours. Make sure you’re spending time on the “billable” work and minimizing administrative tasks.

• Learn from failure. Guy Kawasaki uses the term bozosity to describe stupid corporate behavior, using his own life as an example: Guy summarily rejected a job offer from Yahoo! due to commuting concerns, later realizing he forfeited a king’s ransom in stock options. His experience reminds us to look at the big picture and not reject a prospect out of hand.

• Keep your data fresh. Audiences are constantly moving targets. Don’t rely too long on a single audience analyses; check in constantly to discover who your audience is.

• Rethink your meetings. The conference featured an “unconference”: attendees came into a room and pitched discussion ideas, all current problems they face in their work. The attendees broke into smaller breakout groups and reconvened to share their insights. Consider a similar approach to your meetings, or starting an “unconference” with colleagues.

• Don’t let leaders send a message by not communicating. Leaders often prefer to be fully informed of all the facts before they communicate with employees. They underestimate the power of the rumor mill and the risk of delaying communication. Communicators need to help executives connect with employees – even when information is imperfect and a situation is evolving. Everything—what’s said and unsaid, what’s done and not done—communicates, including what you don’t say.

• Don’t hide behind the corporate voice. With social media and the drive for dialogue, internal communicators find themselves becoming internal spokespeople rather than anonymous writers; it’s our turn to get out in front of the camera. It’s a new level of visibility for the many communicators who are more comfortable speaking in a corporate voice. With our visibility comes a pressing need to brand ourselves – lest our brand be built for us.

• Don’t be afraid of an emotional appeal. Employees want meaning and impact from their work. One large hospital launched a nurse recruitment campaign, chucking the usual photos of women with stethoscopes in favor of a riskier approach: video clips with nurses telling deeply personal stories about their work. The campaign got attention and led to measurable results. Communicate with passion.

Writing in the Age of Social Media

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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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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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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