Create communications harmony even during a strike

By Annie Waite, North American Editor of the Internal Comms Hub, Melcrum

Last Friday, we held a cracking first North American Hub/SCM networking event in Chicago.

Nearly 40 local communications professionals joined Melcrum's US team to hear Beth Miller, communications manager at Unilever Foodsolutions Americas, take time out from being the sole communicator for all its employees, to tell us about “Creating communications harmony when singing solo”.

She proposed that some green-minded practices can be applied to the communications function. How? By using "Reduce, reuse, recycle" as a mantra. “People have to hear something 17 times before it sinks in, so it’s fine to use the same language over again,” she said.

Did you attend the event - do you agree with the idea that it takes 17 mentions for something to "get through"? What about the employees who took it in the first time and get sick – and subsequently disengaged - with the message?

“Communications sage” speaks out
"Communications sage" and consultant, Ann Adams, a former VP of internal communication and marketing at Motorola, drew on her 25 years' communication experience and gave us her advice for management success. A good manager, Ann says:

    * recognizes that he or she has 2 ears but just 1 mouth (so listen twice as much as you talk);
    * has an open-door policy;
    * gives credit when and where it's due;
    * celebrates wins;
    * rewards appropriately;
    * coaches and mentors; and
    * serves as the quality monitor for the team's efforts.

What say you? Do managers and leaders at your organisations follow the above steps? If only.

Set the stage for strike   
Kyle Rose, manager of communications and Lisa Hartenberger, communications director for Navistar then gave us the lowdown about its 8-week union strike in 2007.

By holding contingency kick-off meetings, daily production meetings and handing out strike “survival kits,” among other things, Navistar generated high performance and high employee morale during the strike period.

How would you approach strike-action communication at your organisation? Have you got contingency plans at the ready?

Communication challenges for 2008
Before we broke out for roundtable discussions I also shared some key findings from the latest online Hub member survey, conducted earlier this year. Answering questions about their biggest communication challenges for 2008, Hub members voted the following issues most important:

    * Overhauling your intranet (46%)
    * Communicating with hard-to-reach and non-wired employees (45%)
    * Blending internal and external communications (43%)

Do these tally with the top challenges you're facing? If not, tell us about it. 

And why all this sudden focus on intranets? After all, haven't they been around in plenty of companies for a good 11 years - what is it that's recently spurred such a flurry of activity around them? Is it all because of the economic downturn, or just because "employees like Facebook so lets give them a work-based version"?

Comments

[Mariana Sarceda]

Very good article. Professional communicators usually work on a group of key messages that you need everybody to internalize. You may rephrase them or reword them in different ways so that they don't always look the same or you can also gather those people who got it at the first time as coachers or enthusiasts for your cause to get the others attracted.