Talking Internal Communication...

Free Engaging Manager webinar exclusively for in-house practitioners

Join us for a free Gatehouse Academy webinar on 1 February 2010 and learn how to put line managers at the heart of your internal communications

To celebrate the launch of our Engaging Manager learning programme for line managers and aspiring leaders, Gatehouse Academy invites you to participate in a free 60 minute BiteSize webinar exclusively for in-house communicators.  

Available on a first come, first served basis, this special web-enabled learning session will make the case for increased investment in line manager communication and explain how to begin creating truly Engaging Managers within your organisation.

In this fast-paced interactive session, which I’ll be leading, you’ll learn:

• The business case for investing more of your budget in line managers
• The six traits of The Engaging Manager – what makes the great ones stand out from the average
• Fascinating evidence and case studies from a handful of organisations that have put line managers at the heart of their communications
• Our blueprint for improving line manager communication
• How to build managers’ communication skills and competencies
• How to hardwire employee communication and engagement excellence into line managers’ roles
• How to ensure you feed managers the right content and avoid overloading them

The session will take place from 0930-1030 GMT on Monday 1 February 2010.

Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/240330409 After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

System Requirements PC-based attendees Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista

Macintosh®-based attendees Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

Lee

The building blocks of a successful f2f strategy

Facilitating and improving face-to-face (f2f) communication is arguably the single most important aspect of what we do as internal communication professionals.

Study after study shows that face-to-face is the communication channel most preferred by employees for certain types of information. It is the key to unlocking engagement, to building internal trust and commitment and to creating a culture and climate for success.

To build a robust and effective face-to-face (f2f) communication strategy, you  need to focus your time and effort in three key areas:

1. Leadership

Senior leaders have a vital role to play in setting the tone within organisations and your face-to-face efforts will only succeed if they demonstrate their support through their words and actions.

Empower your leaders by creating opportunities for them to interact with employees, by playing to their own unique style and capabilities, by giving them feedback on their communication performance, and by challenging them if there’s an obvious mismatch between what they say and what they do.

2. Managers

Managers represent the front line in the battle to improve f2f communication. As communicators we rely heavily on them to provide context, to translate strategy into action, to build trust, to create ‘line of sight’, to communicate performance and to listen to and involve frontline employees.

Help managers by providing clarity about their roles as communicators and by explaining what they are accountable for. You can support them through coaching and skills development (though be careful not to patronise them by labelling it ‘training’). As with leaders, you can observe them in action and give them candid feedback on their performance.

3. Tools, resources, and techniques

The other big area to focus on is communication ‘stuff’ – content, materials, templates, formats, processes, resources and training. You will need to work hard to create the right briefing pack – one that captures the key messages succinctly, yet allows for local interpretation. Managers, in particular, will look to you to help them structure their team meetings and find unusual way to break the ice, capture feedback, bring the numbers to life or involve participants in business planning.

The good news is that, for the most part, you’ll be knocking on an open door. Many managers and leaders feel ill equipped in this area and welcome robust knowledge and practical suggestions that help them engage their people more effectively.

Lee, Gatehouse

Meat no cheese when it comes to employee events

Now that we at Gatehouse are officially in the events business (our live events arm Gasp! is now around six months old and growing nicely) I find myself pondering more and more the role of big set piece events as part of the employee comms mix - and questioning the tactics some organisations adopt in this vitally important area.

A friend of mine has recently returned from a two day management conference. The event follows a long and extremely painful period for the organisation (and the broader industry) and was, I imagine, intended to inspire and motivate the troops and to prepare them for a new, different and hopefully more successful 2010. 

Those sound like sensible objectives to me and I imagine the team behind the event explored lots of options around event content and style, before finally nailing their approach.

I bet they sat there and brainstormed lots of ideas and grilled lots of agencies in their search for an event that combined a fun team building exercise with something valuable and cathartic. Something that fused real fun with serious business. Something that would be both memorable and impactful. The holy grail.

From what I can gather they settled on some sort of music-based theme centred around an exercise that required participants to listen to some tunes as a group and use them to uncover and explore their emotions. You know the sort of thing – a bit of Mahler, Barber or maybe Girls Aloud to stimulate a discussion about your feelings relating to the past year. Cute. 

Jesting aside, I do see the logic – get them to identify and verbalise their negative emotions before symbolically parking them up at the door and marching on together as one. Indeed, I’m pretty sure I used a similar rationale myself during my in house days (though times were, admittedly, a little more buoyant back then).

My own personal favourite, rather appropriately given this post, was a management conference we developed themed around the book Who Moved My Cheese? Complete with rubberised cheddar desk drops, it was certainly different and memorable but, like this one, with hindsight I’m not convinced it actually hit the mark.

Back to the recent event, the problem is that my mate and her peers – the target audience in comms speak - thought all this was cheesy beyond belief. I think Stilton may have been mentioned at once stage. The intention was clear, but the execution somehow undermined the validity of those [very real] emotions and made light of them. Own goal.

I guess the lesson here is to be very sensitive to the emotions of the audience and the context in which an event is happening. Oh, and not to get too wrapped up in searching for that funky theme or super cool hands-on exercise.

It’s all about context.

Many organisations have experienced pain in the past year and, even for those that haven’t, the fact remains that most employees have family and friends who have lost their jobs.

Before rushing to the door of your nearest ‘motivational’ events company to book the very latest musical, theatrical or art-based exercise for your people, stop to think how it will play out. If you’re not careful it could, like this one, be rather counter productive.

Big events have a powerful role to play in engaging employees, but the fact that they are high profile also means they are high risk – get it wrong and you could spend the next 12 months trying to re-establish credibility.

As a rule of thumb, treat your employees as adults and, if there’s negative stuff to surface, address it head on. You know, sometimes just talking can work wonders…. 

Lee, Gatehouse

PS – if you do need help with your live events and want to ensure you deliver  something that really works without breaking the bank or destroying credibility, don’t hesitate to give the Gasp! team a buzz on 0207 033 8712.

MacLeod Review provides a timely reminder of the importance of employee engagement

Published today (16 July 2009), the MacLeod Review of employee engagement has recommended government support and more cooperation by UK businesses both large and small, to make sure the relationship between employees and employers is at the centre of successful business plans. 

Led by David MacLeod and Nita Clarke, the independent review was commissioned by the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills in September 2008 to make recommendations on promoting employee engagement.

The findings, which are published in this 157-page report, make very interesting reading. There’s nothing particularly new or groundbreaking in there, but the document does provide an excellent overview of the topic, the business case for engagement, the barriers and enables and makes some very sensible and welcome recommendations on the way forward. 

Commenting on the report, David MacLeod said: “This is about unleashing the potential of people at work and enabling them to be the best they can be. Whether we are in a downturn or in better economic times, engagement is a key to innovation and competitiveness.

“Engagement is increasingly recognised as vital by senior figures in the public sector, the private sector and trades unions. We are delighted that if our recommendations are accepted, a distinguished sponsor group has already agreed to work with us to raise awareness and understanding.

“Employers in all parts of the economy can make a success of employee engagement through culture change, rather than investing significant financial resources.”

My own view is that this is really useful stuff. First off, it’s a great primer on the subject – essential reading for anyone with an interest in employee engagement. Second, its contents can be used with sceptical leaders and managers to underline the importance of engaging employees and the benefits of doing so.

Importantly, it illustrates some of the links between engagement and performance – swiftly moving the discussion away from the ‘soft and fluffy’.  Amongst the hidden gems are some powerful research stats, e.g. Gallup in 2006-8 examined 23,910 business units and compared top quartile and bottom quartile financial performance with engagement scores. They found that:

• Those with engagement scores in the bottom quartile averaged 31 – 51 per cent more employee turnover, 51 per cent more inventory shrinkage and 62 per cent more accidents.
• Those with engagement scores in the top quartile averaged 12 per cent higher customer advocacy, 18 per cent higher productivity and 12 per cent higher profitability.

A second Gallup study of the same year of earnings per share (EPS) growth of 89 organisations found that the EPS growth rate of organisations with engagement scores in the top quartile was 2.6 times that of organisations with below-average engagement scores. 

These figures will make most CEOs and cynical finance directors sit up and listen. They are expanded upon in an excellent chapter looking at the business case evidence.

As you might expect, the enablers section is where the discussion turns more directly to organisational communication. Here the role of leaders and managers is scrutinised and the concept of ‘employee voice’ is explored. There is a wide ranging discussion about the role of senior leaders in providing a strong strategic narrative – a clear and compelling vision for the organisation. Executive visibility is highlighted too. 

The pivotal role of line managers is then explored – particularly how they create ‘line of sight’ (show the link between the big picture and what an employee does day in,day out) and address those burning ‘me’ questions, what’s my job? how am i doing? does anyone care? (source: Roger D’Aprix).

Note that this is internal communication in its broadest sense – process, not product.    

The report then looks at the role of values and, most importantly, the need for consistency between what managers and leaders say and do, whether they walk the talk. Like others before them, MacLeod and Clarke underline the critical importance of behavioural integrity.

The recommendations themselves centre on increasing awareness of the importance and value of engaging employees and providing additional support to organisations to make it happen. All very welcome.

All in all, this is a very timely report and one which should be applauded by those of us who work in this area. It puts engagement back under the spotlight at a time when many organisations are turning their back on it and eroding the psychological contract with their employees through their often short sighted, short term actions. If you’re struggling to convince leaders of the value of engagement and the need to invest in it (or at least not to cut their investment in it) then this should help. No, it’s not specifically about internal communication, but the topic is woven throughout and good IC underpins much of what is discussed here.

Lee

Lessons in Theo-logy

A short piece in yesterday's Sunday Times caught my eye. It featured an interview with multi millionaire entrepreneur and Dragon's Den star Theo Paphitis, on the subject of employee motivation. 

It's not a deep article, but there are some nice little lessons in there. Here's a few excerpts (I paraphrase):

• When it comes to keeping people happy and motivated you have a head start - people want to belong, it's an integral part of human nature.
• I ask store managers, 'who are the most important people in this business?' They always get the answer wrong by saying the customer.  It's the workforce.
• My job is to make the working environment as easy-to-understand, practical and stress free as possible. I want them to look forward to coming to work. I want them to feel valued and listened to. If I am able to achieve this then I guarantee the customer will get the best possible service.
• This is an important part of our group ethos — making the customer No 1 by virtue of appreciating your frontline foot soldiers. After all, it is they and not you who have direct contact with customers.

I don't know why I was surprised by it, but I was. I think it's because on TV Theo comes across as seriously hard-nosed and not particularly employee-friendly. I have no doubt Theo is very hard-nosed when it comes to business, but he also clearly appreciates the people dimension.  Most successful business leaders do.

It's a simple, compelling philosophy, which was captured well by one CEO I worked with. He would regularly quote his 'magic equation': 'happy people + happy customers = shit loads of money!'  Most leaders would soften the language a little, but it's hard to escape the simple truth of it. 

More evidence of our failure to engage

The findings of yet another survey published this month suggest that poor motivation is harming UK productivity and holding us back in the global economy.

The ‘What’s My Motivation?’ study, published by the Hay Group, found that just 15% of UK office workers consider themselves highly motivated, with one in four saying they are “coasting” and a dismal 8% admitting they are completely demotivated.

Less than half (48%) of UK employees consider themselves ambitious and just 21% believe they are “very effective” in their roles. On the flip side, a relatively healthy 39% of office employees say they love their jobs.

The survey points towards some interesting regional differences too. Respondents in the Midlands were most likely to be motivated by money (88% consider cash to be the most important factor in job satisfaction), with those in Scotland and the South least financially driven.  Those in the North West were most ambitious. Overall the Scots were found to be the most motivated at 29%.

Putting employees to sleep

Don't worry, I'm not advocating lethal injections for disengaged workers...

The Training and Development Agency for Schools has just surveyed over 2000 graduate employees and come up with its 'Workforce Boredom Index'. According to the study, administrative/secretarial employees are the most bored, followed closely by those in manufacturing and sales. Teachers were found to be the least bored profession (a rather useful finding for the TDA). The main reasons employees cited for feeling seriously bored were lack of challenge, a failure to use their skills and knowledge, and task repetition.

This survey is more fun PR than hard science, but it provides yet more evidence that we're failing to motivate, excite and inspire UK employees. Whilst some jobs are inherently boring, there's nearly always scope to 'spice up' the day-to-day work experience and engage and motivate employees. No matter what they do for a living, most people want to do a great job, have a good time and find fulfilment at work.

Communication that's focused on delivery not dialogue, low levels of involvement, zero consultation, invisible leadership and poor line management are all to blame for creating high levels of employee boredom. As internal communicators it's part of our mission to tackle these issues and, in doing so, to help stamp out workforce boredom.

Move over Mr Motivator!

I was pushed for time when I published my last blog post so I didn't even try to address the all-important  'so what?' question. That's why I was delighted to see fellow blogger Andrew Miller pick up the baton on his InsideWork blog. 

Employee motivation is a fascinating and complex subject and one that internal communicators should find inherently interesting.

I agree with Andrew's point that what motivates us changes as we mature and as our own circumstances (social, economic, phychological..) change.  And I agree with David Ferrabee that the classic rewards (money and stuff) aren't usually the answer. The popular theories of motivation provide evidence for both.

There's a big generational aspect to motivation.

Born in 1971, I'm a fully paid-up member of Generation X. Most of the senior business leaders I work with are Baby Boomers (born 1946-64). We generally get along okay.

But the twenty-somethings who started entering the workplace a few years ago - known as Generation Y (born after 1982) - are something else. Their world view is different. They appear to be more interested in work-life balance than in a long-term career. They've never known a world without computers. They're not particularly worried about job security. They love to travel. They're impatient. And they're more skeptical than us (they grew up in a low-trust world). All this makes motivating them much more challenging. Money is, it seems, less important than flexibility, time off, scope for self expression and learning opportunities.

One thing is certain - when it comes to motivating employees, one size definitely doesn't fit all.

For a quick guide to the main motivational theories, have a look at the following links:

• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
• Herzberg's Two Factor Theory
• Adam's Equity Theory
• Vroom's Expectancy Theory
• McClelland's Motivational Needs Theory