Employee comms as a strategy – dead yet?

by Lee Hopkins on August 29, 2006 · 4 comments

Finally got some time to listen to FIR 166, with the Divine Miss H as co-compere.

Shel weighed in with a comment about the reported death of employee comms which is a recurrent theme around the comms part of the blogosphere.

I posted a comment to the show blog, but elaborated on it over at the IABC Employee Commons blog.

Technorati : employee communication, fir, for immediate release, heidi miller, iabc, neville hobson, shel holtz, strategy

Tagged as: internal communications

http://www.instituteforPR.org/ Sean Williams

I left this on the IABC commons, too:
The end of employee comms? Nonsense. Organizations will always have information that it “needs” employees to hear/see and understand. The “news” carried on the intranet is only one portion of (what one hopes is) an array of useful applications and other resources. Matter of fact, the productivity gains associated with moving formerly paper-based processes to intranet are augmented by effective use of the E-news channel.

What absolutely is ending is the type of employee comms that one saw 10 years ago — no more birthdays, babies and bowling scores. No more “nice to have” — no more cute puppies. Yes, you do need to learn what employees want to read, but it all has to go through the prism of strategy. The Business Strategy and the part employees need to play.

That’s our job. Take the business news inside our organization, add the industry or focus area that our organization plays in, find the means of demonstrating the strategy in action. Deliver all of it through the channel most likely to get employees to pay attention — and support our management’s efforts — all in a compelling, interesting, innovative and creative way. Tell the story. Sometimes many people will like our work, sometimes not.

But – we dare not think the technology will do the work for us. Podcasts are still rare — as are Ipods. Most people don’t want to watch TV on their cell phones, and if they do, they don’t want to watch corporate fluff. But, they will watch critical information that they cannot get elsewhere. Content is critical, and vehicle/channel/means are tools.

On our intranet at Goodyear, our traffic is up 350% in two years — 45% of subscribers to our email newsletter are from outside the US — our unique daily visitors are up 150% — more visitors, looking at more content. A few new applications — but a lot more news. And, Applications Drive Traffic! So, as we add apps, we’ll get even more eyeballs.

Oh, and by the way — 67% in a recent intranet poll said they know more about workplace safety now than a year ago — and we’ve trimmed safety incidents 20% since last year. The intranet was the one global vehicle in the mix — all else was local.

So, employee comms are far from dead.

Sean

P.s., social media will make our jobs even more important…and that’s another post…
http://www.instituteforPR.org Sean Williams

I left this on the IABC commons, too:
The end of employee comms? Nonsense. Organizations will always have information that it “needs” employees to hear/see and understand. The “news” carried on the intranet is only one portion of (what one hopes is) an array of useful applications and other resources. Matter of fact, the productivity gains associated with moving formerly paper-based processes to intranet are augmented by effective use of the E-news channel.

What absolutely is ending is the type of employee comms that one saw 10 years ago — no more birthdays, babies and bowling scores. No more “nice to have” — no more cute puppies. Yes, you do need to learn what employees want to read, but it all has to go through the prism of strategy. The Business Strategy and the part employees need to play.

That’s our job. Take the business news inside our organization, add the industry or focus area that our organization plays in, find the means of demonstrating the strategy in action. Deliver all of it through the channel most likely to get employees to pay attention — and support our management’s efforts — all in a compelling, interesting, innovative and creative way. Tell the story. Sometimes many people will like our work, sometimes not.

But – we dare not think the technology will do the work for us. Podcasts are still rare — as are Ipods. Most people don’t want to watch TV on their cell phones, and if they do, they don’t want to watch corporate fluff. But, they will watch critical information that they cannot get elsewhere. Content is critical, and vehicle/channel/means are tools.

On our intranet at Goodyear, our traffic is up 350% in two years — 45% of subscribers to our email newsletter are from outside the US — our unique daily visitors are up 150% — more visitors, looking at more content. A few new applications — but a lot more news. And, Applications Drive Traffic! So, as we add apps, we’ll get even more eyeballs.

Oh, and by the way — 67% in a recent intranet poll said they know more about workplace safety now than a year ago — and we’ve trimmed safety incidents 20% since last year. The intranet was the one global vehicle in the mix — all else was local.

So, employee comms are far from dead.

Sean

P.s., social media will make our jobs even more important…and that’s another post…
http://leehopkins.net/ Lee Hopkins

Thanks, Sean. I’ve scooted back to the IABC blog to continue the conversation there…
http://leehopkins.net Lee Hopkins

Thanks, Sean. I’ve scooted back to the IABC blog to continue the conversation there…