Turning SharePoint stress into SharePoint success

By Nishwa Ashraf, Editorial Assistant, Melcrum

When the word “SharePoint” is uttered, what’s the first thing that pops into your head?

Is it: Collaboration? Microsoft? Content management?

Or how about: Confusing? Clunky? Lacks intuition?

Despite the fact that 40% of corporate intranets are now SharePoint based, and an increasing number of IT departments are keen to migrate to it as a communication platform for their company, it seems the same enthusiasm for the technology isn’t felt by many communicators.

For those who are new to SharePoint, simply wrapping your head around the prospect of how a new platform works, how it will be used, and the role you will play will certainly be amongst some of the questions on your mind. Then there’s the issue of what version to use, license fee bands and add-ons.

And for those already familiar with the platform, ending up with a multitude of team sites may be just one of the many challenges you have faced.

But if SharePoint does fail, it could be due to a governance issue, according to Sam Marshall, director of ClearBox Consulting and Melcrum’s trainer for the SharePoint for Internal Communicator’s course.

To ensure maximum value is derived, clarifying the business requirements, as well as the technical and functional needs is the first step towards successful execution of SharePoint.

Here are 10 questions you may want to address before diving headfirst into the implementation process:

1. What are the specific roles of the communication and IT departments?
2. Who “owns” the site?
3. Who will be administrator?
4. Who will manage content and how?
5. Has the balance between user-generated and corporate content been defined?
6. What are the metrics for content creation?
7. How will cross-functional content be managed and monitored?
8. Have policies on when to use and when not to use SharePoint been created?
9. What are the levels of moderation for different areas of the site?
10. Has a strategy been created to help employees adopt SharePoint?

These were just some of the many questions, Marshall covered at yesterday's SharePoint for Internal Communicator's course. If you’re cursing at the thought that you’ve missed out on an opportunity to know the ins and outs of the platform, worry not – we’ve still got a few places left for the next course on 9th September, so if you’re interested get booking!

So, is your company looking towards or using Sharepoint? I’d love to hear your stories.

Time we got back to basics?

By Nishwa Ashraf, Editorial Assistant, Melcrum

Facebook, instant messenger, intranets, mobile alerts, Twitter, MySpace and FaceSpace - these are just some of the channels businesses are using to reach employees. Okay, the last one  doesn’t exist.

With such a wide array of technology at our fingertips, you’d think communicating with employees and delivering key messages couldn’t be easier. But is it any surprise it can actually make things more complicated?

Don’t get me wrong, technology has many fantastic benefits: For disparate colleagues web meetings can bridge the geographical gap, internal microblog applications such as Yammer are useful for announcing low priority messages and keeping colleagues informed on day-to-day work-related issues, training videos and campaigns can reach a global workforce through the intranet, and let’s not forget that for Gen Y entering the workforce technology is second nature. 

But let’s be honest, is it really improving communications in your company or are you just jumping onto the latest bandwagon? 

You may be a social media maestro, but how skilled are you at delivering face-to face messages to frontline employees, without the safety of your computer screen shielding you?  In the same vein, you may be a seasoned face-to-face communicator but are you savvy enough to deal with the technology demands of a new generation of employees?

To be an effective communicator, lies in the title itself. Finding the right way to communicate is the most important thing, whether it’s through social media channels or town hall meetings, because you can roll out a marching band to drum through your message, but if it doesn’t produce results, then it doesn’t mean a thing. 

In some instances, using the best channels to achieve your aim and to suit the message does not always require a song and dance. For example, if your company wants to reduce waste by encouraging employees to switch off power points before they leave the office, then a roadshow is not required. Why not take a leaf out of Aggregate Industries “Green Dot project” and apply a green sticker on light switches as a reminder. Simple, cheap, and more importantly, more effective.

If any of this sounds familiar, then perhaps it’s time to equip yourself with the skills and core competencies needed to produce and deliver exceptional communications. With more than 1,000 graduates in its alumni, the Black Belt Programme builds on extensive research to equip communicators with the key skills and knowledge they need to excel in their roles and impact organizational performance. 

So, are you a technophobe or tech-junkie? And do you need to be a master of one or a jack of all trades to survive and succeed in today's cut throat business world? Let me know your thoughts.

Diary of an Internal Communicator: The final week

By Jenni Wheller, Internal Communications Manager, SSP UK 

Back by popular demand, over the next four weeks the Melcrum Blog will feature another series of diary entries by an internal communicator. Previously Rachel Allen gave us all a fascinating insight into her new role as head of communication at London Overground Rail Operations. Read it here if you missed it.

This time our guest blogger is Jenni Wheller (pictured, right) who has recently taken on a new in-house role at SSP UK. Jenni was previously business development manager at internal communications agency theblueballroom. We look forward to hearing how she tackles the many challenges she will undoubtedly face in the coming weeks at SSP UK... here's her fourth and final week.

As I write my final blog for this series following a month of entries, things are starting to take shape in my new role. The survey is now written and I’m exploring various options of samples or automated phone surveys (thanks to all those on Twitter and Linked In who answered) and in the second week of June I’m going to work in some stores, or “units”: as they’re known here, in and around London.

Following last week’s blog, the structure and content of the conference is still being debated – I’m hoping to have a clear steer by the end of May. I’ve also just returned from three days in Paris where the international HR forum was hosted. It was great to meet fellow HR professionals within SSP and, as an internal communicator who has previously sat within marketing, it was great to learn more about human resources. There was plenty of discussion about motivating, engaging and recruiting new people born between 1978 and 1996, dubbed “millennials”. As a millennial this was particularly interesting as a lot of what was said rang true, and also highlighted the importance of knowing your audience when communicating with them. The key theme was the work-life balance we expect – we’re happy to give a lot but in return we expect a flexible working environment.

For those internal communicators that have millennials in their midst – here’s some of the research:

What they need:

• Fun environment
• Rewards
• To be listened to
• Space Work/life balance
• Frequent Feedback
• Career development

What they provide:

• Energy
• Fresh perspective
• Technology expertise
• Honest opinions
• High productivity

I’m now looking at changing some of the ways we communicate in head office. Moving away from mass sporadic emails to a weekly communication process using our online platform more and the TV screens in the office.

Spending two months in the business, observing and networking has been the best decision I ever made. While it feels that I’ve sat quietly in a corner since I got here, I now feel that I have grasped how the business operates and an understanding of the culture at SSP.

No doubt I’ll continue updating this diary via Twitter – I may even continue this blog through another platform in order to share the outcome of the survey and what this means for the role of internal comms at SSP.

Employee engagement 2010: Day one highlights

By Nishwa Ashraf, Editorial Assistant, Melcrum

After six months in a new job, engagement levels rapidly drop for the majority of audiences, according to Wayne Clarke, managing partner at Best Companies Partnership and keynote speaker said on day one of Melcrum’s sixth annual employee engagement conference in London today.

Keeping that brand new, shiny, happy feeling that new employees have and the energy they bring with them, is a major challenge that almost every employer repeatedly faces.

But one business that’s well and truly bucked the trend is high street retailer Mothercare. Employee engagement has played a huge part in transforming the company’s fortunes and performance in the past six years, particularly in its profitability, international reach and through the successful acquisition of the Early Learning Centre. As a result it was rewarded as being one of the best big companies to work for in 2009 in the Sunday Times newspaper.

Rob Jones, head of learning and development at Mothercare and one of this morning’s conference presenters, gave delegates a great insight into how, through the use of collaboration, quality dialogue, and storytelling, the group saw its international revenue rise by 28.4 percent to £188.8 million compared to 2007 results of £87.1m, with a budget of precisely zero.

Yes, you heard right, rather like that clever Volkswagen Polo car advert on the London Underground that continually repeats the “low” price of its latest model, Jones and his team contributed to this rise in profits with zero budget. Not only that, the group has also managed to engage its employees and improve customer service.

It’s not possible I can hear you cry. Well, the figures speak for themselves and as Jones states, the groups’ engagement strategy “wasn’t exactly rocket science”. Forget social media, it did it simply through the power of collaboration, quality dialogue, and the intelligent use of storytelling. When the team hears a really positive story it’s passed on in the right way and by simply listening to its employees it’s kept that line of communication open.

Recognising employee efforts is also a big factor, proving financial gain isn’t the only way to thank employees. Mothercare has monthly awards for outstanding staff contributions, with staff receiving gifts, flowers, dinner or hotel vouchers, for example, for a job well done. In addition Ben Gordon, the company’s chief executive, and other senior leaders recognise exceptional effort at company meetings, road shows and in personal telephone calls.

The group’s elements – caring for parents, pulling together, getting it done and making the business stronger – define the culture or “company DNA” as Jones refers to it, which are set as annual objectives for all staff, with messages providing a clear line of sight and constantly being reinforced.

Jones’s best practice presentation was a real reminder that listening to your employees can make a huge difference to the way they feel about “their” organization, their belief in company values and how they align their work ethic to achieving company objectives.

So how are you engaging your employees? Have things changed in the last two years due the perilous state of the global economy? Is engagement still relevant? Let us know your stories at nishwa.ashraf@melcrum.com.

James Bennett, Melcrum’s head of content, will be covering day two tomorrow (Thursday 13th May) so please follow us on Twitter and come back to the blog for more highlights from Melcrum’s sixth annual employee engagement conference.

Has email passed its sell-by date?

By Nishwa Ashraf, Editorial Assistant, Melcrum

It’s personal and can reach a wide audience, both geographically and numerically.

For the best part of 40 years since its invention, email has provided a productive solution for communication.

But if you’re often finding yourself wasting time foraying through the junk and spam clogging up your inbox, rather then dealing with business that matters, you’re one of many employees seemingly shying away from using social media as a means of communication.

Employees are spending an average of six hours or more a week reading and sending internal emails, according to research from business consulting and technology services firm Concentra.

It’s the equivalent of 41 working days, or just over eight weeks, every year.

The study, which was completed by British employees in a range of industries including healthcare and the financial services, revealed that 33 percent of employees questioned admitted they spent six hours or more drafting and reading emails, every week. A further 28 percent said they take between three and five hours a week to keep on top of internal mail.

And for 85 percent of senior managers and 88 percent of HR teams, email is still the communication channel of choice, despite the growing number of social media channels available for business use over recent years.

Conversely, 50 percent of respondents believed that less than half of the internal emails they receive are useful.

And with the abundance of communication channels available today such as social media tools linked to intranets and portals, it begs the question: Why aren’t more communicators embracing social media tools when email has so many inherent flaws?

Plenty of business communication and workflow is centered around email, but for the time-conscious, the results are hard to ignore. It’s ridiculous to think that so much time (and money) is spent tunneling through a mountain of email, that’s mostly filled with junk.

Whether it’s web- or server-based, email for communicating and managing workflow has its limitations:

• Junk/Spam: Our mailboxes are brimming with junk mail that’s ever growing. Even the most intelligent email filters can’t prevent all spam sneaking through.

• Security: Business documents sent over email are not confidential.

• Viruses: There is no certification mechanism for email senders, which is why computer viruses are most commonly delivered through email.

• Delivery: There is no guarantee your email may reach the intended person; your filter may mark important documents as spam.

• Real-time: Delays in replying prevent immediacy in conversation.

• Ubiquitous access: For businesses that use server-based emails, it can be problematic for remote users to access their emails, hence the popularity of web-based email.

• File sharing: Both parties may not see identical file and directory structures, depending on the users email platform.

• Application framework: Email is primarily a message-orientated service.

Of course, I’m not dismissing email entirely – it has its place within a business environment. Many internal communicators maintain that email is the most effective channel for companywide corporate messages, but on a micro scale where messages are orientated toward smaller teams of employees, using internal email for communicating is akin to snail mail. Line managers, for example, would be better off using an instant messenger application or internal microblogging platform like Yammer to communicate with his or her team of employees. By simply embracing and encouraging the use of social media tools, communicators can quickly prevent delays and reduce the amount of junk email sent and received throughout the organization, saving both time and money.

Could social media channels be the long-term solution for communication and workflow processes?

What are your thoughts?

To hear more about how communicators are using social media in a way that makes a real difference to their business, look out for Melcrum's forthcoming Social Media for Internal Communications conference, in Belgium. See Melcrum.com for more details.

Are you guilty of crimes against the English language?

By Nishwa Ashraf, Editorial Assistant, Melcrum

“Wellderly”, “disbenefits”, “under-capacitated” – do any of these words mean anything to you? No, me neither.

Jargon – a fact of life in every business sector from accountancy to zoo keeping, and perhaps arguably more so within the world of communication. After all, language is the essence of communication.

Of course jargon has its place at work. It can provide useful shorthand to get across a specific meaning quickly, but at the same time can turn timesaving terminology into just plain gobbledygook. The Local Government Association (LGA) seems to think so clamping down on what it calls “impenetrable words” after a survey revealed that government departments, local authorities and quangos included redundant words and phrases within public information - words that mean everything to the organisations involved in the conversation but nothing to you and I.

No shock there, but at least the Association is doing something about it and has drafted a 250-word list outlawing meaningless and confusing terms including “trialogue”, “clienting” and “goldfish bowl facilitated conversation”.

Margaret Eaton, LGA chairman, said: “Why do we need to have a “webinar trialogue for the wellderly” when the public sector could just talk about caring for the elderly instead?” Why indeed Margaret? But I have to say, while I enjoy the odd webinar, the rest of the jargon I could happily do without. Jargon can’t be evaded every time, but there are occasions when dressing-up words can be to the detriment of the intended message and isolate your audience. As all communicators will know it rapidly becomes a problem when it prevents employees, or your peers, from understanding the intended meaning and can create barriers to getting crucial corporate messages out in the open.

Whatever your reason for juggling with jargon, if it’s out of place and the audience misunderstands it you can soon get into trouble. Not only will you fail to convey information to your audience, you may also succeed in suggesting a more subtle negative message – transmitting insincerity rather than honesty.

What’s worse, you may never know that your audience has not understood – people rarely admit to mistrust and fear appearing unintelligent. So, are you guilty of crimes against language? I’d love to hear your stories.

Vodafone Twitter account suffers internal breach

By James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

If internal communicators hadn’t realised the power, speed and significance of social media then all you need to do is look at the following photo a Twitter user posted only minutes ago responding to a rather nasty message on Vodafone’s official UK feed. I won’t repeat it within this blog as it’s offensive.

According to @VodafoneUK, that is now having to field thousands of customer tweets complaining about the offensive message, the telecoms company’s Twitter feed was not hacked but the offending message was instead down to, in its own words, “a severe breach of rules by staff”. The message then went on to say: “We're really sorry. Dealing with that internally. Please keep your faith in us.”

The tweet out to customers was at least swift and will have salvaged some pride. In fact many customers have thanked the company for its rapid response, but sadly the damage has been done, spread worldwide and all at the click of a mouse button within a matter of nanoseconds. The tweet may have been hurriedly deleted but hundreds of users chose to retweet the original message.

It is still unclear what exactly happened but this must serve as a warning to all internal communicators whose responsibility it is to carefully manage these channels whatever business they're in.

If you haven't already, sign up NOW to Melcrum's must-attend Social Media Conference for internal communications.

Six days away from largest gathering of internal communicators in Europe!

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

We’re now less than a week away from the largest gathering of internal communicators in Europe. A huge turn out of 187 of your peers, colleagues and competitors will be attending the Melcrum SCM Summit in London between 13th and 15th October 2009 listening to and debating with some of the brightest minds in the profession including Best Companies Partnership’s Wayne Clarke, Channel 4’s Undercover Boss Stephen Martin and a host of senior practitioners from some of Britain’s largest and most important companies, organisations and bodies such as HSBC, Vodafone and the Department for Business Innovation and Skills.

If you're not convinced listen to our exclusive pre-summit interviews with some of the events biggest names.

Despite the workshops on 13th October selling out faster than ever before, we have managed to persuade The Tower Hotel to increase its capacity to more than the 150 cap, so if you or one of the team still want to come along, all you need to call us now. You won’t be sorry.

Discussing how to rebuild trust, re-engage employees and increase performance has never been more important than today – an era where both budgets and resources have been slashed in greater quantity and numbers than ever before. And it is you, the internal communications profession, that has the responsibility to change that downwards spiral and bring the UK and the rest of the business world back ito prosperity once again. Never has your role been greater.

As our keynote speaker Wayne Clarke says: “Fifteen of the top 100 companies doubled their turnover and tripled their profit in five years.” And what seems to be consistent among these high-performing organisations? “They all make effective use of line managers to translate and communicate core company objectives, achieve high levels of employee engagement, and ultimately, impact the bottom line,” adds Clarke.

We look forward to seeing you next week. Don’t miss out, be there!

Diary of an internal communicator - Week 4

By Rachel Allen, Head of Communication, London Overground Rail Operations (LOROL)

Rachel Allen has just started in her new role as the first head of communications at London Overground Rail Operations Ltd (LOROL) a company launched in November 2007 and train service that links 20 of London’s 33 boroughs. Rachel is the first communications professional ever to be hired by LOROL. Previous to her joining the company did not have a communication plan.

Read her article on creating an internal communications strategy from scratch on the Internal Comms Hub.

Over the last four weeks Rachel written an exclusive diary for Melcrum revealing first hand what it’s like to create and implement an internal communication plan and strategy from scratch, the people and challenges she’s faced along the way and the highs and lows she’s come across on her exciting new journey. It's made for fascinating reading for any professional communicator out there.

Here is her fourth and final entry:

Tuesday 1 September

How did it get to be September already? I can’t believe I am now into my fourth week at LOROL. Today I wrote a guide on delivering effective team briefings and how to encourage people to take part in discussions. I finalised the content of the team briefing for this period and issued it along with the guide and a revised feedback form.

A few employees have already contacted me to say they think it is a ‘vast improvement’ and they think it should be easier to brief. I’m really pleased with their comments as I created the new format using their feedback from the past few weeks. I’ve been invited to go along to various meetings to see how people deliver it to their teams, so I’m putting dates in the diary to do that. The first one will be at Willesden depot on Monday which should be interesting. I’ve been promised a ‘proper tour’ of the facility there  so I'm looking forward to that.

Wednesday 2 September

My desk is full of logos today! I’ve got the proofs of all the colour variations to look through to decide which ones to use and where they should go and what the rules are. I’m really happy with the work that’s been done so far. I also met with another designer today who’s been doing some work for us, it was good to meet face-to-face and talk through our ideas together. I met up with a friend of mine last night for dinner and we ended up discussing social media and its impact on internal communications. I found myself looking up the dissertation I wrote earlier in the year to refresh my memory on some of the theory I had read. There are so many things I would like to implement here. I need to be patient and take it one step at a time!

Thursday 3 September

We had an HR team meeting yesterday afternoon and discussed our objectives. I'm starting to think about introducing long service awards and a recognition scheme. Many employees have worked on the railways for years and have a real pride in their work. I think it's important the company has a scheme in place that not only celebrates worthwhile contributions but also honours these long-serving employees. I'm researching other organisations at the moment to see what works well to help me decide what will be appropriate for us, based on information I've picked up over the past month and input from people in the organisation. I think it's important to get this initiative up and running as soon as possible so will be tying it into my overall communications strategy through consistent messaging. I'm planning to do this by sharpening up our values and aligning the recognition scheme to them. I think this is important and I hope it will engage employees because I will ask for their input to help me decide how best to recognise them.

Friday 4 September

So here it is - my final diary entry. I've found the past month has flown by and has been fascinating. I've been made to feel so welcome here, I've met some really interesting people and have also received lots of emails from readers of this blog offering me their advice, support and encouragement.

The past four weeks have seen me undertake a huge learning curve, with lots to take in - which is to be expected when you start any new role. While my diary ends here, the hard work certainly doesn't and I now have lots of ideas of how I would like communication to be at LOROL based on what I've discovered. I'll be intrigued to look back at this diary in a few months' time to see where I'm at and how many of my plans I've already managed to implement. More than anything I've come to realise the importance of having a good network of communications professionals. Knowing that there are people I am in touch with in the industry that I can bounce ideas off and brainstorm with is invaluable.

I'm looking forward to going to Melcrum's Strategic Communication Management summit in London next month to hear from the experts there, increase my knowledge further and add some new people to my network. Hopefully I'll get to meet many of you there!

Rachel

Email activism, laziness, informal networks, and a whole load more

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

Since I chimed in one of his blog posts way back in 2007, fellow Sydney resident and pom Matt Moore and I have chatted frequently about social media, enterprise 2.0 and knowledge management. Matt is a knowledge manager at ASIC, soon to be independent consultant, and formerly IBM and Oracle, also being internal comms manager at the latter.

Last week, Matt invited me, Patrick Lambe at Green Chameleon and IBM social media evangelist Luis Suarez onto a podcast interview, the focus of which was to be Luis's email detox program and the topic of email overload in general.

I don't think he calls himself one, but in my mind Luis is an "email activist". Someone taking the bull by the horns and shooting down unnecessary emails, demonstrating where and how you can defer conversations and host them on different channels - be it instant messenger, blogs, wikis and so on.

Luis has been on this detox for almost three months now, and by challenging each and every person who sends him one, he has managed to reduce the number of internal emails he receives by over a third. Pretty impressive. He's posted regularly on it, including charts (super organised!).

There are some notable points in the conversation:

• Luis works at IBM but email overload problems are just as apparent there. Luckily they have the software infrastructure to be able to change channels effectively.
• In reference to Gen Yers and other younger generations, email politics - the CC and BCC game - may become irrelevant. Luis says whenever people start playing that game with him he brings the conversation out into the open, saying there's no place for it in a professional environment, especially among your own team.
• Email is not appropriate for project development and collaboration. Not appropriate at all, yet we all do it.
• People are not lazy. Luis says in his detox experience, people think email is an easier option but when you look into it closely you're actually making more work for yourself. Again, I agree that people are not lazy in most instances. The laziness factor is surely symptomatic of a deeper problem, that is, we're just so damn used to working with email that digging out of this entrenched way of thinking is going to take some time - and concerted efforts by people such as Luis.

For me this conversation presented some clear examples of where social software tools can be of value to business:

• Improved, more fluid employee-to-employee communication.
• Easily searched and easily found project histories and conversations by way of using project blogs instead of chaotic email threads that branch off into dozens of fractured conversations.
• Rapidly developed project plans created and edited on wikis or simple shared, hosted documents, instead of sending round, and losing track of, endless word documents.

It's all pretty obvious, but when you hear about someone actively working to change the behaviours of a group of people, it's quite intriguing.

Also mentioned somewhere is IBM Atlas, a Lotus Notes-based software program that takes your IM conversations, blog posts etc. and analyzes the links and references to provide a social network analysis and determine topic experts and informal networks among employees. Identifying these networks is an increasingly important capability for businesses and the internal comms departments who, similar to marketers on the web, are looking to communicate by informal channels and determine influential people in an organization.

Much of the above comes down to improving, or better exploiting, communication and information - something Capgemini said last year could be worth £140 billion a year in the UK alone. I guess the hard part is finding more people like Luis.

Podcast files
Matt has listed the full index of the podcast and split it into three sections (originally planned for 30 minutes but went on for a fair bit longer). We spoke on Skype and the quality is not perfect in some places, but it's easy enough to keep up.

Part 1 (16:48, 4.0Mb)
01:00 - Luis describes his email detox moment in 2007.
03:10 - Luis challenges his email correspondents within IBM.
06:10 - How do you bring people round to the post-email world?
11:00 - Where is email appropriate?
13:00 - Instant messaging & social networking.

Part 2 (20:23, 4.8 Mb)
00:00 - Patrick raises the infrastructure question.
03:00 - Luis brings up wikis.
04:10 - Luis talks about discussing the detox with his team.
07:55 - The laziness issue.
09:00 - Do we love email?
10:00 - Alex mentions email overload.
11:00 - Generational issues.
13:00 - Patrick raises the politics question.
15:00 - Luis busts the whole thing wide open.

Part 3
00:00 - Alex agrees with Luis on email politics.
01:20 - Humans as political animals - in public or in private?
03:00 - Should we be selling tools or solutions?
06:00 - Applying social software to business problems.
08:00 - The email detox workout video.
10: 00 - Wrap up & next steps.