Are you adequately prepared for 2008's comms challenges?

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

As many of you who read this blog have no doubt been doing at your own organisations, yesterday Melcrum's US office held a thoroughly productive and worthwhile strategy planning and roll out meeting for 2008.

It really rammed home the difference it can make to a company to involve all employees in making suggestions, brainstorming ideas, analysing market changes and developments, providing feedback on what's working (and more importantly, what isn't) and giving all areas and participants in the business an opportunity for their opinions to be heard.

While Melcrum is, unfortunately, a few small leaps away from launching a new conference in outer space (as one group suggested as an option for a future roll out opportunity post global warming!), I think I can confidently say that I and the rest of my colleagues here left the planning session with the feeling that our suggestions had been heard and digested, and with a positive vision and a set of clear, reasonable, actionable goals for 2008.

Where organisations can stumble is rolling out an intricate plan for the year ahead, but without having consulted the employees who hold the company framework together in the first place. We can do as much number crunching, spreadsheet printing and strategising as we like but quite frankly, all that effort will amount to nought if we don't provide mechanisms for employees to provide feedback and act on that data once its in.

And another tip for employee engagement? The (adapted) saying goes "An organisation that drinks together, stays together"...so to wrap up the planning meeting, we headed out for a Bud-fuelled bowling session.

Prizes for guessing who achieved the highest score?

(l-r): JR Springman, Audra Rothermel, Robin Crumby, Meredith Weber, Victoria Mellor, Rick Spratley, Rich Riccio, Annie Waite, Lucas Breytung, Jason Blackwell...

...and the lowest? (ahem)

Soundtrack to the blog: Take the skinheads bowling by Camper Van Beethoven