Talking Internal Communication...

Public sector engagement – useful US data

Stumbled upon this nice post from executive coach Scott Eblin in the US on leadership communication. What’s good about it is that it contains some interesting employee data from the bi-annual Best Places to Work in the Federal Government study – which will be of particular interest to those of you in Government and public sector comms.

L

Free CIPR Inside event – an evening with Viral Change author Leandro Herrero

Hot off the press… I’m delighted to announce the latest event from CIPR Inside – an audience with Leandro Herrero, who I rate one of the world’s leading thinkers on change.

The session will take place at GAM (20 King Street, SW1) in London at 1800-2000 on Tuesday 16 June.

During this special one-off session, Leandro will outline the key tenets of VIRAL CHANGE™ and answer your questions. This will be followed by networking drinks where you’ll get to meet, amongst others, Leandro and members of the new-look CIPR Inside Committee.

Even better, this is a FREE event – but you’ll have to move quickly to secure your place as numbers are strictly limited.  Email CIPRInside@googlemail.com today.

Here's the full spec:

Download Leandro Herrero discusses Viral Change - 16 June 2009

See you there!

L

Directory of Twitter tools for communicators

In line with my new found enthusiasm for Twitter (you can see my ramblings and follow me via the right hand column of this blog), here’s a really helpful post from Brian Solis in San Francisco - on the tool and the phenomenon. Better still, it’s written especially for comms people. Excellent, timely stuff. Enjoy! 

Lee

Tweet tweet: desperately seeking followers

I’m now on Twitter. Properly on it I mean. I’ve been on there for ages, but I haven’t really used it. But I’ve resolved to try harder. So now I’m desperately looking for followers. If you’re remotely interested in my movements, my mumblings or my mini-musings, please walk this way…

L

Diary date and special reader discount – Corporate Social Networking conference, London, 8 June 2009

Regular readers will know that I’m pretty passionate about the value of social networking inside organisations. So I’m delighted to be able to share details of an excellent forthcoming conference on the topic and, better still, to offer a whopping 25% discount on the standard conference fee for readers of Talking Internal Communication!

The Corporate Social Networking conference is coming up in London next month – it takes place at RIBA on Monday 8 June. A superb line up - including the internal comms chiefs at Adidas, British Airways, AXA, Dell and more, and leading thinkers like Euan Semple, Niall Cook and Headshift’s Lee Bryant – it promises to be a must-visit event for anyone interested in applying the power of social networking internally. What’s more, running alongside the conference is an exhibition including leading corporate social network providers, operators, media agencies and software and technology developers.

I’m gutted that I’ve chosen to head off on holiday at the same time – so I won’t be able to make it – but other members of the Gatehouse team will most definitely be there.

You can access full details on the line-up and speakers via the website and you can download the conference brochure here. 

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

Diary date: Pathways to Success, London, 3 June 2009

The next event from CIPR Inside takes place at HMRC, London on Wednesday 3 June (1545-1800 followed by networking drinks). 

Entitled ‘Pathways to Success: Developing your Career in Internal Communications"’ the session will focus on a topic that’s close to my heart – learning and development for internal communicators. This event will establish what employers are looking for, the path for career progression and how you can acquire the skills and qualifications to help you navigate your way to success.

Thanks to PR Academy, who are sponsoring the event, and HMRC, who are hosting it, the event is completely free to attend – but you’ll need to register early to avoid disappointment (simply email CIPRInside@ntlworld.com).

Key sessions:

1. Welcome Address: Simon MacDowall, Director of Communications and Marketing, HMRC

1. What are employers looking for: Charlotte Butler, Associate Director, VMA Selection and Cassandra Barker, Consultant, VMA Selection

1. Professionalising internal communications and how getting qualified can help your career: James Petre, Head of Qualifications, CIPR and Kevin Ruck, founding Director of PR Academy

1. How we are professionalising internal communications within HMRC and why it is important: Rachel Royall,  Head of Communication Network at HMRC

I won’t be at the session as I’m abroad at the time, but it promises to be an excellent event.

Lee

Crisis communication & social media

One of the areas I’m really interested in at the moment is the impact of social media on crisis communication. So I was delighted to stumble upon a great presentation given recently by the excellent Shel Holtz at the Society for New Communications Research New Communications Forum in the US.

The Powerpoint deck and an audio recording of the session are available below – and they’re well worth a listen/read.  Shel talks about the topic with real knowledge and passion –an excellent recap on the basics of good crisis comms and the impact of social media on it. Here’s the link:

• Powerpoint - http://www.slideshare.net/shelholtz/social-media-and-crisis-communications-revisited
• Audio recording - http://media.libsyn.com/media/fir/shel-sncr-crisis.mp3

I hope you find Shel’s session as interesting and thought-provoking as I did.

Lee

CIPR Inside - hanging up my boots

Yesterday saw me formally hand over my responsibilities as Chair of CIPR Inside to a worthy and strong successor in the form of Hill & Knowlton’s Scott McKenzie.

Having done a full 12 month stint as Chair of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations' specialist group, and a further five years as an active committee member, I felt now was the right time to pass on the baton to another member of the committee, hang up my running boots and rest my aching legs for a little while. Not that I’ll be chilling out for long – I’ve agreed to mentor and support Scott for the rest of this year, before stepping down from the committee in December. 

For those of you who don’t know him, Scott is a great guy and one of the most experienced, knowledgeable and thoughtful practitioners I know. He’s also extremely down-to-earth and pragmatic – qualities I applaud in fellow consultants. You can check out Scott’s new blog here.

Like me, he has a real burning passion for internal communication, a strong desire to contribute to the success of our profession and raise the bar for practitioners and an overriding belief that internal and external communication are two sides of the same coin. We’re very much on the same wavelength, so I’m really looking forward to seeing where Scott takes the group over the coming months – and to supporting him along the way. 

We had an excellent meeting yesterday and we’re planning a healthy programme of activity for the remainder of this year and next - watch this space for details. We’re also still on the look out for new committee members – particularly from large corporate organisations – so if you’re interested why not drop Scott a line?  He can be contacted via Scott.McKenzie@hillandknowlton.com.

L

Falling like Domino's - another social media wake up call

How many more corporate embarrassments will it take to convince organisations to prepare properly for an employee and social media-fuelled crisis? 

The global pizza company Domino's is the latest in a growing line of brands which have suffered serious reputation damage at the hands of employees who are either daft, dangerous or just plain demented. 

The latest online debacle features a YouTube video showing employees at one Domino's outlet in the US interfering with customer’s food in stomach-churning detail. Cheese up the nose, a sponge used to clean the kitchen squeezed between clenched buttocks – you get the gist…

Apparently Domino's knew about the video for at least a day before it responded – after being alerted by concerned bloggers.  It has since responded decisively, posting its own YouTube video featuring CEO Patrick Doyle, launching a Twitter site and beginning legal action against the two employees involved.  But is this all too little, too late?  I think so and I would argue that in this 24/7 global news era a day is simply too damn slow to get your act together.

So the lesson here is not only for organisations to prepare for such a crisis – to know how, in broad terms, they would respond in hours if not minutes if something damaging appeared on a blog, YouTube or elsewhere. That’s crisis management 101. No, it’s also to ensure they are monitoring the right web sites (most don’t), have in place a strong and clear social media policy (most don’t) and a workforce that knows and understands the ground rules (most don’t).

Ideally I think organisations should go much further by embracing social media and encouraging employees to contribute to these fast-emerging channels in the right (i.e positive and reputation-enhancing) way. There are some great examples of insightful corporations doing exactly that, from Deloitte with its film festival to Serena Software’s Facebook Fridays. Unfortunately blocking access and discouraging employees from using these sites will not work. Employees will post. Full stop.

As for Domino's, I think it’s a case of damage limitation now – before it was withdrawn today the video had already had more than one million hits and the story had been covered at length in the mainstream media.

L