Putting one's neck on the line

By Alex Manchester, Editor, KM Review & The Internal Comms Hub (Australia), Melcrum

I've seen Euan Semple talk a couple of times about his experience working at the BBC, where he and his team introduced such tools such as blogs, wikis and internal forums. In each case there's been something new or slightly different to take away.

This latest video, recorded at the Business Innovation Factory recently, has yet more insight.

Euan talks about what he saw as an inevitable shift towards more collaborative working, how this developed internally at the BBC, how the use of various social computing tools did more to create a "One BBC" than the actual "One BBC" internal initiative, plus the "terrifying" moments when he put his neck on the line to hammer home various points to BBC managers.

One message reinforced here is that, in many a business+social media/computing success story, regular thinking gets turned on its head. There's a recognition that people are people – not corporate drones.

In most cases there's also an acknowledgment somewhere that the traditional, hierarchical, closed shop business structure is worthless in a world where discovering the untapped skills, intellect, connections, emotions and personalities of your people is absolutely paramount to success.

See the video here.

Melcrum Podcast 24 October 2007: Shownotes

By Sona Hathi, Assistant Editor, Melcrum

The wait is over! The latest Melcrum podcast, with a focus on Comms Canada, is now ready to download.

This week's podcast introduces another Chicago-based co-presenter, Jason Blackwell, Melcrum's senior marketing executive. Jason and I present to you three great interviews in this week's edition.

First, Adwoa Buahene, one of the keynote speakers at the Comms Canada event talks to Annie Waite, global editor of the Internal Comms Hub website, about the "4-Gen" workforce - the 4 generations being: Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y. (Begins at 00:28)

Next, Annie catches up with Internal Comms Hub editorial board member David Grossman at the IABC conference in New Orleans, which took place earlier this year. David, who will also be speaking at the Comms Canada event, shares ideas on how managers can maintain a mix of new technology and traditional channels to communicate with employees. (Begins at 07:57)

And finally, part two of my interview with Job van Harmelen from TNT, who will be speaking at Melcrum's European Employee Engagement conference in November. Last week, Job described the various channels his team use to increase engagement and communication between the CEO and the global workforce. This week he speaks about the roll out of TNT's engagement survey and gives three top tips for communicating with a dispersed workforce. (Begins at 11:14)

I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast as much as we enjoyed making it!

Sona

Make a real difference with your communications

By Annie Waite, Global Editor of the Internal Comms Hub, Melcrum

There seems to be a surplus amount of "celebratory" days cropping up lately that, admittedly, we've helped to gain credibility by chatting about on online forums and blogs like this one...but of all these days, I most appreciate, and see most worth in, the sentiment behind one that's coming up this Saturday.

It's "Make a Difference Day". Before you start thinking it's all getting a bit "Bono", just think about how taking this simple formula, communicating it and then applying it within businesses could have numerous positive repercussions.

As Richard Ellis, vice president of communications at McDonald's USA explained at Melcrum's Strategic Communication Management conference in Chicago a month ago,  publicising employees' efforts within his organisation has had a major effect on the brand. He mentioned the "I-story" concept whereby real success stories from existing employees who've made a difference at McDonald's, for a raft of different reasons, are promoted around the organisation – and by building employee pride in the organisation, employees can become an even more valuable strategic business tool. 

So, how can you take the simple 'make a difference' concept to make an impact at your organisation? You might try doing a little external PR by rousing your troops to volunteer for a local charity (thus boosting your internal brand and the company's visibility in the local area, earning a bit of goodwill, and maybe even making your employees feel a little warm inside at the same time).

Or, as a communicator, you could encourage your managers to stop and think and try to make a difference themselves just by making them aware that such a "day" exists...(perhaps offer a little incentive to the team that makes the most effort in trying to make a difference to the company?)

Has anyone got any success stories of using this type of concept on a short-term 'bout' like the Make a Difference Day?

Soundtrack to the blog post: My Morning Jacket - It Makes No Difference

Common themes emerge at Melcrum's London Summit

By Mandy Thatcher, Head of Content, Melcrum

I was delighted to identify a few common themes at Melcrum's SCM Summit in London last week – as chair person you're always looking for themes to emerge, thus enabling a vaguely articulate "summary" at the end of the event! But there was so much great content covered over the two days and it was all quite diverse: internal branding, change, leadership, managers, professional development, etc.

Last year was slightly different as the social media frenzy was truly upon us. The strong theme was clear: What does this new world of social media mean for internal communicators?

Social media and its significance for organisational communication hasn't gone away. But as Melcrum's CEO Victoria Mellor pointed out in her welcome speech on day one of the Summit "Let's get the basics right before we introduce new tools to the mix."

For me personally, I felt there were two important themes that many of the presentations seemed to link to:

Involvement
How do you encourage your employees to feel involved in the business? Perhaps this is the same thing as "engagement" but the general consensus was that this term is in grave danger of being over-used to the point of becoming meaningless.

In his presentation on "Having conversations that matter" Jonathan Scott, group head of internal comms at Royal & Sun Alliance said the company never talks about launching an "engagement" campaign as this is likely to cause instant scepticism. But with the use of World Cafes they've still succeeded in making employees feel part of the company, encouraging them to put their ideas forward for changing and improving the business. And they're seeing results.

Nokia has also used the appreciative inquiry technique behind the World Cafe approach, which they shared in their presentation about communicating a new business strategy at Nokia. They're successfully using this to involve their 45,000-strong workforce in helping the company shift from a mobile technology company to an internet-based organisation.

Other presentations linking to this theme of involvement included B&Q (together with The Edge Picture Company) who did a great presentation on a comms campaign called "Stock Idol" built to help implement a new stock-management system. The subject matter (stock control) may have been dry, but their approach – an internal version of the popular reality TV program Pop Idol – was anything but.

Partnerships
Another strong theme in my opinion was the importance of developing good internal partnerships. Whether it's getting to understand the CEO better, working with managers to improve their leadership capabilities, or setting up a strategic partnership with organisational development, it was clear from many of the presentations that relationships such as these help communicators to gain influence and get things done.

In fact, some very pragmatic advice came from one speaker who urged internal communicators to work more closely with the marketing team when looking to develop the internal brand. Not only do marketers have great creative ideas, pointed out the speaker, they also tend to have loads of budget!

Smart practice indeed...

Get set for Black Belt Australia

By Alex Manchester, Editor, KM Review & The Internal Comms Hub (Australia), Melcrum

Next week sees the launch of the Internal Communication Black Belt program in Australia. While in Melbourne for the first of our social media workshops last week (more on those soon), I managed to catch up with the two Aussie Black Belt trainers, Melissa Dark and Adrian Cropley, for a brief interview that we recorded.

Black Belt starts in Sydney on the 1st November, with a Melbourne course set for February 2008. As Melissa and Adrian say in the interview, there's nothing like this in Australia yet and it's going to set precedents for communications training here.

Sue Dewhurst and Liam Fitzpatrick already run the original, UK Black Belt programme (and blog about it here) and to build on that with an Asia-Pacific version is something we're really looking forward to.

Click here to listen to the interview or right-click to download (you will need a media player on your computer). You can also get more info on the course over at the main Melcrum site.

Alex

Hands up who forgot "National Boss Day"?

Not us!

by Kelly Dyer, Editor of Strategic Communication Management, Melcrum

This week saw the occasion of “National Boss Day”. Initiated in 1958, this special day is for employees to mark the kindness and generosity of their employers by giving them something in return.

It was founded by a secretary for the State Farm Insurance Company, Illinois, Patricia Bays Haroski, who lodged with the US Chamber of Commerce a desire to celebrate her boss. The day she chose, quite sweetly, was her employer’s birthday.

Four years later, the Govenor of Illinois officially proclaimed the day and it's been celebrated ever since. What an incredible guy Haroski’s boss must have been to prompt that sort of action, I hear you cry! Well, her employer was also her father so that may explain it.

The day, however, has its critics who accuse it of being just another Hallmark holiday, although the card company is quick to assert that it didn’t offer a national boss day card until 1979 (although it's caught up quickly, now offering a grand total of 89).

I'm sure there are many who would question the point of such a day: “Why would I want to give something in return to my boss? I give them enough already…” and as for spending hard earned cash on cards and gifts, I can imagine what the response would be and the string of expletives that would no doubt be included mean I can’t write it here. Bosses are paid to be bosses after all. They don’t take on leadership as a voluntary activity. Why give them extra praise just for doing their job?

Bosses do have it tough, though. Remember the responsibility, the pressure and the stress. What harm can it do just once a year to says thanks? Jonathon Scott from Royal & SunAlliance speaking at yesterday’s Melcrum summit said that managers from the company had been sent on a two-day, intensive course that was essentially a time for soul searching.

The aim was for them to find within themselves qualities that they could use to inspire their employees. So, as well as all the pressures, problems and challenges faced by our leaders as par of the course, we also expect them to be inspirational. It’s not asking much is it? But if they do manage to inspire us on occasion and improve our working lives in a small way as a result, surely a small thank you is in order? Maybe a gift is going a bit far, but everyone likes to feel their efforts have been appreciated and a thank you and smile can make all the difference.

What are your thoughts? Did you celebrate this year by making it a special occasion for your boss or is that taking it just one step too far?

Communicators go Camp-ing – but it's no holiday

By Annie Waite, Global Editor of the Internal Comms Hub, Melcrum

Deborah Dunn-Roy (below, left), corporate director of internal communications at the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) in Vancouver, was in Chicago this week to take on the role of "General" at the Boot Camp training program.

Having spent part of yesterday watching the workshop activities (and the occasional look of surprise when homework was handed out!), I thought i'd share some of the points I overheard about the training program's topic - Developing a communication toolkit for managers.
 

“We believed managers at our organization would be the ones who would have the greatest influence and effect the most change in their employees, so we decided that we should develop a communication toolkit that would give them templates they could use, but at the same time would also take them through a communication process and build in a training component,” said Deborah of her experience compiling a manager communication toolkit at PHSA.

She also stressed, in order for it to stand a good chance of working effectively, it's important to get CEO approval for developing the manager toolkit. "We compiled a report at the research stage of developing the toolkit and fed the results back to the executive and kept them involved throughout the process."

Deborah’s final session of the two-day program looked at how communicators can begin to compile their toolkit - by answering the following questions:

    * How will you sell the idea and get approval?
    * How will you do the work?
    * What will you deliver?
    * How will you measure your results?

There'll be more from Deborah in one of the forthcoming Melcrum podcasts about how PHSA developed its comms toolkit for managers.

In the meantime, has anyone else developed a manager communication toolkit using a different approach? Perhaps you steered clear of the CEO altogether, or have a naturally innovative company culture so could avoid the signoff process?

 

Soundtrack to the blog: er, 'We're in the Army now' - Status Quo

What to say when you boss asks to be your friend on Facebook?

By Robin Crumby, Managing Director, Melcrum

What would you do if your boss asked to be your 'friend' on Facebook?

Can you say no without damaging your career prospects?

Dozens of readers of Lucy Kellaway's FT column 'Dear Lucy' responded to this thorny question. They offered a wide range of advice for this (ficticious?) 26 year-old female working in advertising. Her concern being that she had some rather revealing photos of herself on her profile and was uncomfortable about mixing work and pleasure, but didn't want to offend her 'cool' boss.

Should she:

1. Set up a new Facebook account just for work?
2. Change her privacy settings so that only her real friends can see her full profile?
3. Ignore the request altogether and hope he forgets all about it?
4. Be honest and say you like to keep friendship and work separate, so no thanks?
5. Leave Facebook altogether to avoid similar situations happening again?
6. Turn it into a joke and tell him to get a life!?

As comments to my post on this blog suggested (Facebook: for business, pleasure or both?), trying to keep work and play separate is artificial, unrealistic and even possibly 'in denial' (but I take comfort that I'm not alone here in wanting to preserve a space online that's 'just for friends'). As someone explained off-line, isn't it rather like having a separate e-mail address for friends, or a phone that's just for friends, and why would you do that, when online privacy settings exist just for this purpose.

As more brands embrace Facebook for customer and employee engagement, it seems time's running out for Facebook as a 'place for friends'. In the meantime the great Facebook debate will no doubt rage on.

But what do you think? Is Facebook really a place where your boss and best friend can co-exist happily ever after?

Melcrum Podcast 12 October 2007: Shownotes

By Sona Hathi, Assistant Editor, Melcrum

The latest edition of the Melcrum podcast is ready to download . The first item this week is an interview with Kay Winsper, head of internal communication and change at Siemens. Kay popped in to the Melcrum headquarters in London and braved all sorts of questions from the entire Melcrum team, but I managed to steal a few moments with her especially for the podcast. Kay tells me how her team managed to keep employees informed and engaged during a recent change of Siemens' headquarters and how the transition has brought about a new culture. (Begins at 00:47)

The next item is part one of an interview with Job Van Harmelen, senior communication consultant at TNT. Job describes the various channels they use to communicate key strategic messages to a gloally dispersed and hard-to-reach workforce (begins at 07:06). Part two of this interview can be heard in the next edition, where Job talks about measuring engagement at TNT.

Job will also be speaking at Melcrum's European Employee Engagement Conference in November this year.

I hope you enjoy this edition and as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Sona

Happy 2nd Birthday to the Hub!

By Annie Waite, Global Editor of the Internal Comms Hub, Melcrum

The Internal Comms Hub website reached its second birthday this week, so to celebrate, we've opened up access to a recently uploaded Q&A reply by the Hub's resident Strategy expert, Bill Quirke of Synopsis.

Read Bill's response to Hub member who asked "Do you have any advice when writing a three-year internal communication strategy for a diverse range of volunteers? (just click on the Q to access the article)

Got any other suggestions in response to this question? If so, add them as a comment to this blog.

Soundtrack to the blog: It has to be "Happy Birthday" by Altered Images