Talking Internal Communication...

A thought-provoking day at the 2009 CIPR Internal Comms conference

Earlier this week I spent the day in London at the annual CIPR internal comms conference.

The event was chaired by my CIPR Inside committee colleague, Hill & Knowlton’s Scott McKenzie, and was attended by around 60 communicators from a wide variety of sectors and organisations.

I ran a brief workshop on measurement and evaluation and a lunchtime clinic on change communication.

Having failed to have blogged about the event within a few days, I’m going to leave it to two of my faster and more agile committee colleagues to give you the low-down on the day…

• See what CIPR Inside chair Scott McKenzie had to say here
• See what CIPR Inside committee member Sean Trainor had to say here

I will be posting separately about some of the themes discussed during the measurement workshop – so watch this space.

The next big event in my diary is the SCM Summit on 14 & 15 October – a must-attend conference which always provides bucket loads of inspiration and good practice. If you haven’t already signed up for that, it’s not too late – check out the conference website now via the Summit logo on the right of this page.  

Lee

CommsFlashMob – what on earth is it?!

It all started with an innocent throw-away comment a few weeks back…

Anyone interested in social media and communications will know just how big Wikipedia is these days - a staggering 3 million entries and the seventh most popular website globally. But despite its huge reach and considerable influence it’s clear that the entries on some topics, like Internal Communications, are a little way off the mark.

Enter the CommsFlashMob.

The child of some idle Twitter-based banter between Rachel Allen, Abi Signorelli, David Ferrabee, Liam FitzPatrick, Wedge and myself, the idea is to get a bunch of passionate communicators together, lock them in a dark room with coffee and biscuits and try to “fix it” in one afternoon. 

That afternoon is tomorrow (Thursday 20 August) and, work commitments permitting, we’ll all be getting together in London – and online - from 3 pm to 5 pm BST (10 to 12 EST).

But we’re not trying to do it in isolation - we hope others will join us online and contribute from a distance.If you’re around at that time feel free to roll up your sleeves and join in – either way you can follow us live on Twitter at CommsFlashMob.

It may not work, but we’ll give it our best shot!

L

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

Watson Helsby’s verdict on IC: there’s more to deliver

Having sat in my ‘must read’ pile for the past month or so, today I finally got around to reading the latest report on internal communication from specialist headhunters Watson Helsby.

Entitled ‘Internal Communications – More to Deliver’ the report is the sequel to a similar research exercise undertaken way back in 2002, which was widely acclaimed at the time. A free summary report is available online via the above link (the full report is priced at £275) and, from my perspective, it’s recommended reading for anyone with an interest in IC.

Based on qualitative research with 75 senior in-house ‘movers and shakers’, the research was designed to assess the state of internal communication practice, to identify some broad themes and issues and, specifically, to provide some pointers on the best way forward for the profession and its practitioners. It was written by two seasoned IC commentators, Nick Helsby of Watson Helsby and Michael Croton of Comma Consulting.

Having sat here nodding my way through the report for the last 30 minutes or so, I find myself agreeing with the vast majority of what’s contained within – it’s  an excellent assessment of the state of our emerging profession in 2009.

To summarise, the big messages are:

• We’ve come a long way since 2002 - companies have invested heavily and are demanding more and better IC. However, the results IC has delivered have not always matched expectations.
• There is now broad consensus on the scope and remit of IC with most respondents saying they were accountable for developing and communicating the corporate story, developing channels, leadership comms, campaigns and programmes, internal news management, supporting engagement and employer branding efforts, crisis comms and measurement & evaluation.
• We’ve still got a long way to go to become a genuinely mature profession - there are many challenges ahead and numerous areas where we could and should be doing better to demonstrate our value to organisations.
• The best is yet to come – the future for IC is rosy, if we continue to professionalise the function, raise standards, build understanding and appreciation in the board room and get the talent right.

One of the most useful sections of the report is the discussion on obstacles to progress, where several themes emerge:

• Lack of coherence – an increasing focus on IC has resulted in an increase in noise and clutter. As business unit heads, functional leaders and others battle  to give their messages prominence this is creating a situation where there are simply too many badly coordinated messages bombarding employees. The result is a cacophony.   
• Poor governance – unlike PR/external comms there are few checks, balances, controls and protocols in place to guide internal comms. It is often informal and decentralised and, as a result, leaders cannot be confident that (a) communication is flowing through the organisation effectively (b) they have the ability to communicate quickly and consistently in a crisis situation.
• Employees’ ranking in the audience hierarchy –external stakeholders (shareholders, media, etc) are often viewed as more important than employees and, as a result, these audiences often receive more focus, attention and senior executive time. Put simply, IC still often plays second fiddle to external comms.
• Senior level support – to thrive inside an organisation IC needs to have a senior sponsor who really ‘gets it’ – someone who understands what good IC looks like and can deliver in its broadest sense (i.e. beyond simply pumping out messages). Likewise, it’s vital that there is someone at a senior level – someone with ‘clout’ – who is proactively championing the work of the IC team and helping push through organisation-wide initiatives. 
• Shortage of talent – IC is still not attracting, nurturing and growing sufficient talent.  As a result there is little in the way of a succession pipeline inside organisations, meaning that candidates have to be lured from elsewhere. Even then, there is a relatively small pool of good practitioners to fish from.  

The report also identifies a number of key areas where IC can add – and be seen to add – more value. This provides a useful checklist for any communicator who wants to develop themselves and/or their team.

The report concludes that, in order to realise its full potential, IC needs to focus on getting the right people in the right roles, developing that talent, winning support from senior leaders, beefing up the role, becoming more proactive when it comes to identifying and grabbing opportunities to demonstrate their value, and getting the operating model right.

If you haven’t already done so, read the summary report (at least) and take on board the findings – it’s wise counsel and provides an useful blueprint for doing IC really well.

Lee

The tragedy of poor communication

The tragic and horrific case of Baby Peter, the toddler who died in August 2007 after receiving sustained abuse from his mother, her boyfriend and their lodger, provides a stark reminder of the importance of communication at work and the potential consequences of getting it wrong.

The Care Quality Commission today released its report on the role of the NHS in this case. It is broad in its range and highlights a number of systemic failings, some of which relate specifically to communication.

Two of the six themes or topics investigated by the CQC jump out for me – lack of communication and lack of awareness of child protection procedures. These are covered in detail in the report, but the key deficiencies were described by the CQC as:

• Poor communication between health professionals and between agencies, leading to a lack of urgent action with regard to child protection arrangements, and no effective escalation of concerns.
• Lack of awareness among some staff about child protection procedures, and a lack of adherence, by some staff, to these procedures.

What lies behind this is a range of issues relating to ineffective organisational communication. These issues range from straight-forward communication breakdowns where groups who should be talking to each other aren’t, problems with the visibility and access of some of the key players (they were on the road, rather than on the ground), healthcare professionals failing to turn up to vitally important case conferences, basic processes that were either broken or inconsistently implemented (like writing up and circulating the minutes from case conferences and following-up a child protection referral), steering groups and boards that were described as ‘closed off’ and uncommunicative and patchy employee understanding of policy and procedure.   

These areas may be operational and therefore outside the typical remit of the internal communicator, but I believe these are precisely the sort of challenges we should be grappling with – ensuring managers and front line staff interact in the right way, taking the pulse of the organisation and providing an early warning of any issues, building awareness and understanding of key policies, making sure leaders are accessible and visible, engaging diverse stakeholder groups. Internal communication is not ‘soft and fluffy’ – it is at the very heart of the organisation, whatever its purpose, and is critical to its effective functioning.

These communication issues are, of course, not unique to the organisations involved here – they are pretty commonplace – but the consequences in this example were on a whole different level. A tragedy in so many ways, let’s hope the lessons really will be learned this time around.

Lee

Reflecting on my year as chair of CIPR Inside

The CIPR Inside Annual General Meeting took place in London last week and, as part of the proceedings, I gave the following brief address. It contains some of my thoughts on the challenges of the past 12 months and where we currently stand as a profession, as well as touching on some of the things the Group has been up to recently. I thought I’d share it with you…

“After a number of years of significant growth within our sector, it seems the world of internal communication now stands at a cross roads.

Without doubt the last 12 months have proved to be amongst the most turbulent and challenging times our young profession has ever faced. This is certainly the toughest environment I have experienced during my 19 years in this business.

Against a backdrop of a global economic meltdown, internal communicators have been under more pressure than ever before – to convey ever tougher messages to a dazed and confused workforce, to prove their worth, and to defend their own roles, contracts and budgets.

With the world in such turmoil, it is not surprising that as a profession we are currently experiencing a period of consolidation and soul-searching.

There are more out of work or ‘resting’ communicators today than there have been for as long as I can remember. This is particularly frustrating when you consider that organisations have never been more in need of good quality communication advice and support than they are right now.

Growing pains
As the recession bites, we are also continuing to experience the sort of growing pains that come with professional adolescence.

But, at long last, it feels like we are beginning to emerge from the insecurity of our youth. The quality and range of professional development options is improving rapidly. There is more of an appreciation of what we do inside Britain’s boardrooms. The professional community is stronger and more confident than it ever has been. Good practice abounds – and it can often prove its worth though meaningful research & evaluation.

These are all positive signs.

But we still have a long, long way to go to become a strong and mature discipline.

For every CEO who now gets what we do, there are a dozen others who treat IC as a luxury, bolt-on or a nice-to-do activity. The painful evidence of this is all around - comms budgets are being slashed, channels axed at the stroke of a Finance Director’s red pen and far too many communicators are being made redundant.

So it is clear that this recession will be a big test for internal communications.

But that is no bad thing and in my heart I believe internal communication will emerge from this period a leaner yet much stronger discipline.

Those practitioners who remain active in the sector will be stronger and more professional. They will combine great tactical implementation with delivering real, tangible business results – helping realise an organisation’s strategy by engaging employees in the right way.

CIPR Inside will be there too – helping to raise the professional bar, champion good practice and bring like-minded professionals together under the banner of the UK’s only Chartered institute for communicators.

A challenging year

As my year as chair has coincided with a global downturn of epic proportions, we – the CIPR Inside committee – chose to focus very much on a ‘back to basics’ agenda over the last 12 months. This has involved revisiting the role and purpose of the group, recruiting new committee members (a particular challenge in these turbulent times), developing and delivering a robust programme of events, gradually reinvigorating our dialogue with members, and clarifying our business model.

We have delivered a wide variety of events this year, from a successful one day internal podcasting workshop in Birmingham, to a London-based session focused on the challenges of leadership communication. We have piloted a new format – the CIPR Inside Book Club – which has featured sessions from some of Europe’s leading thinkers, including Bill Quirke and Damian Hughes. We also took the lead on the development of the CIPR’s annual one day internal communication conference, which attracted more than 100 delegates back in September.

The past year has also seen the CIPR launch an eagerly awaited internal communication certificate in conjunction with training provider the PR Academy – a development we have actively championed.

In the past practitioners who wanted to gain a formal qualification in internal comms had very few choices – there were a couple of specialist courses out there, but none of them were backed by the CIPR. 

This course is yet more evidence of the CIPR responding to the huge demand that exists amongst junior practitioners to ensure they have a sound professional knowledge built on robust theory and current good practice. The certificate is proving popular and I hope that this is merely the first step towards creating a more robust and comprehensive CIPR professional development framework for internal communicators, whatever stage they are at. 

Whilst we have made good progress in many areas and the Group is, I believe, in a stronger position now than we have been for some time, there is still considerable work to do. The areas I believe require further focus and attention are around our business model, enhancing our ability to successfully market and promote events, and making more of our Advisory Board as a way to predict future trends in our maturing profession and to ‘influence the influencers’. These are areas I intend to help drive forward during the remainder of this year.

As always I would like to take this opportunity to extend my personal thanks to my fellow committee members for their help and support over the past 12 months. As a voluntary group, CIPR Inside exists only because of the considerable effort and commitment of a small number of people who share one thing – a passion for internal communication and a desire to see it realise its full potential.”

If you want to give something back to the profession by getting more involved in CIPR Inside, please do get in touch with me– we are currently on the look out for new committee members to join our small but dedicated group of professionals.

Insecurity on the rise amongst communicators

Touching on the same theme as my last post, I was interested to read about some research carried out recently by Communicators in Business (CiB) which shows that internal communicators are feeling increasingly insecure about their jobs.

The poll, which ran on the CiB web site for two months, attracted 213 responses. Of those 28 people (13%) had actually lost their jobs. A further 39 (18%) said that they felt “very insecure” and 45 (21%) said they were “quite insecure” in their current roles.

Okay, so it's not a large scale or overly scientific piece of research and there are no big surprises in there, but it does provide a useful insight into the state of our profession right now. 

L

A welcome helping hand from Melcrum

I've been a bit slow off the mark on this one, but it's such a nice initiative I feel obliged to give it a plug here on the blog before too much time passes.

Those nice folk at Melcrum recently launched a new LinkedIn networking group for 'resting' communicators.  The group is aimed squarely at communicators who have been made redundant or who feel they may be at risk of losing their job.  It's a mutual support forum, but it's also a place for practical help, advice and tips. 

The group is free to join (this is a not-for-profit initiative from Melcrum) and, in just a few weeks, it has attracted around 250 communicators from the UK, US, Australia and elsewhere.

If you're one of the many people who have already been affected by the financial turmoil that's sweeping through almost every sector, make sure you sign up. You'll be in good company.

And well done to Robin Crumby and the rest of the Melcrum team for getting this timely and genuinely useful group off the ground. A great example of the profession pulling together when times are tough.

L

Make research your resolution for 2009

I remain appalled by the amount of research into the effectiveness (or otherwise) of internal communication that goes on inside most UK businesses. It's a real frustration for me and is, I believe, holding our profession back.

A recent study by The Engage Group and YouGov (see previous post) found that just 28 per cent of board members claim to use robust measures of employee engagement. I suspect the figure is even lower when it comes to researching the effectiveness of 'bread and butter' communication channels/tactics.

For years we've banged on about the importance of demonstrating our value to business leaders and proving our worth (indeed, some would argue we've obsessed about it), but in 2009 it's still obvious that only a small minority of mainly large organisations are willing to put their money where their mouth is in this respect.

Not that research has to cost the earth. There are plenty of cheap yet highly effective 'guerrilla' techniques practitioners can use - re-analysing the people survey results, conducting a basic online survey, interviewing leaders and managers, running a focus group, telephoning a cross section of your audience to test message penetration, carrying out a content analysis of the corporate magazine. 

Even specialist consultancies like Gatehouse can undertake a robust, scientifically sound piece of research - perhaps focused on a particular channel - for as little as £3-5k. We've done plenty of channel reviews - and larger scale IC audits - for our clients over the last 12 months. (Get in touch with me if you would like us to quote for doing this for you).

The problem is that, as recession begins to bite, we're already seeing the casualties of this professional shortsightedness. It appears that channels - particularly print-based ones - are now being axed as the people in finance target what they see as low hanging fruit. I'm hearing more and more stories about much-loved and potentially very effective channels being sacrificed as part of a wider cost-cutting drive.

What's more, if a recent thread on the Melcrum discussion forum is anything to go by, it seems that old chestnut that print should be replaced by online has raised its ugly head again. How many times do we have to explain that organisations need an appropriate mix of channels - face-to-face, print, electronic - to communicate effectively? Again, without hard evidence it's difficult to defend your professional pride and joy...

The same happened in the last recession, yet we don't appear to have learned the lesson. Clearly, without the research they need to show how effective and valuable a specific channel, wider strategy, or the function/team itself is, communicators face a losing battle.

The other problem, of course, is that the research budget itself - if there happens to be one - is also seen as easy prey for the cost-cutting vultures. Catch 22.

But it doesn't have to be this way. As you think about and plan for the year ahead, why not make a commitment to undertake some proper research to assess your internal communications?  You don't even have to call it research or single it out as a budget item - just ensure you earmark a percentage of each key project for research & evaluation.

Research is not a bolt-on, nice-to-have activity - it's something that is integral to effective internal communication planning. That stands in good times and in tough times. If you don't know where you are now, how can you possibly know where you're going or how you're going to get there? 

If budget is a problem, as I'm sure it will be for many, then make it your mission to identify some low cost or DIY research techniques. It doesn't have to be rocket science to be scientific...

It may be shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, but it's about time we all made research a priority.

I'll step down off my soapbox now...

L

Views from the SCM Summit - day two, part one

Another good, thought provoking day in Kensington today... Day two of Melcrum's SCM Summit was an interesting journey through the world of employee comms and engagement. During the nine hours between 0800 and 1700 we covered a host of hot topics, including communicating outsourcing, recession-proofing the iC function, line manager and leadership communications, working in partnership with HR, alignment of internal and external comms, and corporate reputation. It was one of those days where there are just so many ideas, theories, concepts and case studies that you come away with your head hurting (or maybe that's just because of my limited brain space?!)

Early bird delegates like me were greeted with a pre-conference session on communicating an IT outsourcing deal - not standard breakfast fodder granted, but interesting nevertheless. While we tucked into our bacon butties, Michael Nord showcased a change communication programme Fifth Business had developed to support the outsourcing of a client's data centre organisation to T-Systems. It was a nice example of how to design and orchestrate a complex, international, multi-channel change comms programme.

There are one or two communication practitioners who have an almost innate ability to cut through the bullshit and get straight to the heart of the matter. US practitioner-commentator Steve Crescenzo is one. Our very own Bill Quirke is another. And this session didn't disappoint. In his usual enigmatic yet straight-talking way Bill suggested how internal communicators might want to respond to the gathering economic storm clouds.

His premise was simple - if we don't hold a mirror up to ourselves pretty damn soon, someone else will do it for us - and we probably won't like what they find. He was talking about the dreaded cost and efficiency review or, worse still, the unilateral cost cutting that often accompanies increasing use of the "R" word. 

Paraphrasing John Lennon, he suggested that for many communicators "life is what happens when you're too busy planning - or looking at best practice". His remedy is to take action to ensure internal communication is focused on delivering the right business outcomes. Activity and value are not, he suggested, the same thing - you can be pumping out bucket loads of award winning content, but not making a blind bit of difference to the stuff that matters to the CEO. Sensible, compelling stuff  - it was a much needed wake-up call.

For those brave enough to glance in the mirror he suggested reviewing your iC function in four key areas - customers, channels, capability and capacity. The starting point is to identify the burning priorities of the business - just what is keeping the CEO awake at night?  Force the top team to be really selective about this - a potentially painful process as adding real value is likely to mean sacrificing some of those pet projects. Once agreed, align behind them and de-prioritise everything else. Decide who is important - who you're there to serve (CEO, COO, HRD, Facilities Manager, Chair of the Social Committee?)  Understand where your time and effort currently goes and then ensure you channel it in the right direction - in supporting and enabling the business priorities. Consider outsourcing the lower value activities. Define your offering - your value proposition - and ensure your internal clients understand what you do and don't do. Review channels for effectiveness. Up skill or, if they don't have the right competencies, replace team members. 

All this was music to my ears. Too many comms functions remain disconnected from the business of business - focused instead on what AstraZeneca's  Mary Lynn Carver described as 'vanity PR' the day before. Too many practitioners get seduced by fluffy and potentially ambiguous concepts like culture and engagement, forgetting that we exist for one reason - to drive the organisation forward and help deliver its vision.  Let's be honest, the sort of robust, comprehensive 'roots and branch' analysis Bill describes is long overdue for many iC functions.

More observations to follow tomorrow....

L

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