Productivity tool or a procrastinator’s best friend?

By Tanya Batra, Melcrum

In February last year, Thierry Breton, CEO and chairman of Atos Origin, an international IT services company employing staff across 42 countries, announced his mission to ban internal email, with the intention of becoming a "zero email" company by 2014.

Unsurprisingly his declaration caused a media stir and also received some backlash, but Breton defended his decision, saying:

"I didn’t do this for external reasons…I did it to enhance the quality of working conditions for Atos’ 80,000 employees…my first intention was to deal with this data deluge and to work with the tools the young generation are using. We are addressing a real issue of our time…we are no longer using email the way it was intended to be used"

  
His decision was also made in light of the revelation that employees were receiving over 100 emails a day, of which only 15% were useful, and also upon consideration of the fact that for the 10,000 new employees hired every year, internal email tools such as Outlook were completely unfamiliar, with Breton stating, "We have to adapt ourselves to this new generation that will become our business colleagues tomorrow."

As radical as the idea may sound...
...it perhaps isn’t when you fully consider that it’s a positive step towards what we’re all trying to achieve -  i.e. transforming the internal comms model and becoming a social business. And whether you realise it or not, most of us have already taken these steps in our implementation of digital tools.
What we haven’t done however, is fully allowed the potential of these tools to take hold and deliver the collaboration-driven business benefits they’re capable of.

So while we have the tools in place which hold the potential to increase efficiencies, reduce reliance on email and ultimately drive productivity – our failure to educate employees as to how it can be used,  failure to generate the required culture shift that encourages more "fluid" communication and a failure to engage leaders to lead by example and influence – are all pivotal reasons why "business-benefitting collaboration" is simply not happening.

 

IBM – where it all began?
While Breton’s decision was the most highly publicised, IBM’s BlueIQ team* - namely one member of the core team, Luis Suarez, knowledge manager, community builder & social software evangelist - could be considered as leading the charge, having decided back in 2008 to start living in a world without email.

 
"As a remote employee, I wanted to prove to everyone that I could keep working for the company without using email, relying almost exclusively on social software tools to communicate daily with my team members."

And in January 2011, just three years on, Suarez reported an impressive 95% reduction in inbox traffic.

Why live without email?

"Around two and a half years ago in my role of software evangelism, one of the main hurdles we were hearing from people is … they perceive this software as another set of tools on top of what they were already using…they had this feeling that, you’re asking me to spend more time online with Twitter, Facebook and whatever the internal social software applications were."

As well as wanting to demonstrate to coworkers just how dependent they were on email (despite its loss of productivity as a channel), Suarez’ decision was also triggered in 2008 when IBM’s Blue IQ team were faced with the challenge of educating an overwhelmed and reluctant salesforce to use the social tools that were available to them to provide "answers" rather than "problems" (with the potential to benefit them in completing daily tasks and increase efficiencies). The initiative was a success and transformed IBM’s salesforce into fellow social software evangelists. Not only that, the Blue IQ team continues to expand with the ultimate aim of enterprise-wide social collaboration inside and outside of IBM that drives real business results.

Enabling crucial conversations
Suarez will be sharing his story at our first-ever Digital Communication Summit in London on 27-28 March, 2012, where we’ll be addressing the role of technology in enabling crucial conversations to build an engaged and collaborative workforce, and the fundamental role communicators play in leading the transformation across culture and leadership to create a truly social business that reaps the benefits of outcome-driven collaboration.  

Joining him will be thought leaders such as Paul Miller, CEO and founder of the Intranet Benchmarking Forum and Digital Workplace Forum and Laurie Hibbs, HR director at LexisNexis UK as well as business leaders from companies including BT Conferencing, Nokia, Bupa and the adidas Group who will be sharing their powerful case studies. 

Check out the full event programme online: http://bit.ly/yipJEj

*IBM’S BlueIQ Ambassador Programme - A worldwide community of social software evangelists with a mission to energize and enable every IBM employee to use social software, both internally and externally. The BlueIQ ambassadors support the BlueIQ program’s mission to transform IBM into a showcase for the business benefits of social software adoption.

Sources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16055310

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/01/luis-suarez/

http://mashable.com/2010/09/03/world-without-email/

http://www.elsua.net/2012/01/13/blueiq-at-ibm-finally-goes-external/

https://www-304.ibm.com/wikis/home/wiki/BlueIQ?lang=en_US

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/offer/adoptioncouncil/

 

SharePoint: Creating the connection

By Tanya Batra, Melcrum

Investing time and money in intranet tools and features without creating a connection as to how this investment can help employees do their job better, rarely amounts to little more than an expensive bill for a poorly used portal.

And for communicators, the frustration often stems from a poor connection with the IT function. Communicators often complain that much of the intranet functionality created by IT is done so with little understanding of what the day-to-day internal communication requirements may be.

Across our portfolio of case studies, we’ve repeatedly seen that the most successful intranets are those that:

1. evolve in response to a comprehensive understanding of end-user requirements and experiences;
2. are managed effectively and;
3. are the result of a partnership between the IT and internal comms function.

At our upcoming User Forum: SharePoint for internal communicators, Didier Thomas, change & communication manager at Siemens will be sharing his SharePoint challenge.

Having previously worked in internal communication before moving to IT, and now acting as an interface between the two, Thomas is particularly well placed as a presenter. He’ll discuss how his team managed the imposition of a decrease in corporate travel by successfully positioning SharePoint as a solution to 28,000 employees, and encouraging them to use “virtual workspaces” as an alternative.  

Also on hand will be Greg Kerchhoff, SharePoint project manager, who will cover the practical steps taken by the BBC towards generating better SharePoint launch and adoption strategies. He will explain how this led to the creation of SharePoint collaboration tools that were right for the organization, and team sites that were successfully adopted by business units. 

Our keynote speaker, Richard Dennison, principal business partner at BT plc, will be discussing how the social media features of SharePoint are driving a transformation program in this global firm. Other case studies on the day will come from organizations including Standard Chartered Bank, Aviva plc and Maersk Line.
 
In the meantime, take a look back at how BT first implemented a range of social media functionality, such as BTpedia wiki, resulting in real organizational benefits. This feature-length case study, “How social media fits into BT's business”, by Mark Morrell, intranet manager, BT, is available for download, for the next five days. To download your free article and view the full event program, visit the website. 

   
We hope to see you in London on 8th February!

Guess who's back...

By Tanya Batra, Melcrum
  
In 2008, Bill Quirke received the highest-ever speaker score to date
(4.7 out of 5) and unanimously positive feedback from delegates.

For this reason, we’re pleased that Bill is back for our 9th Annual SCM Summit!

No matter how big or small your organisation, leaders must be able to effectively communicate with employees in order to retain talented and engaged staff. But before leaders can achieve that, they themselves must first be engaged.

This year, Bill will lead an interactive workshop around the key topic of leadership communication, with a specific focus on four key areas where leaders need to raise their game, and the practical tools and resources which communicators can use to help them do so.

Continuing the leadership communication theme into day one is Brian Bannister, Director of Communications and James Chalmers, Head of Strategy & Talent, both from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, who will co-present What leaders want and value from internal communication: an insight into a successful collaboration. They’ll discuss exactly what senior leaders want from the internal communication function, and how both teams can collaborate to share vision and strategy more effectively with employees to build a robust culture of engagement.

Rosie Mowatt, Head of Internal Communication at RWE npower, will also discuss how, through working with senior leaders, a new level of communication leadership has been introduced into the organisation.

With the arrival of a new CEO in January 2010, Rosie led her team on a mission that seized this as an opportunity to increase leadership visibility for employees, achieve CEO buy-in for their internal comms efforts and raise the profile of the communication function.

It's going to be a great few days. See you next week!

Highlights from Melcrum's SCM Summit Australia

Katrina Andrews, Director, Melcrum Asia-Pacific

This year’s 7th Annual Strategic Communication Management Summit in Sydney, drew together a crowd of over 120 communicators, based throughout Australia and Asia, including Japan and China. Compared to last year, in the midst of the global financial crisis, there was an air of optimism in the room. If I was to sum up in one sentence the general attitude of the audience it would be: "We’re through the worst of it. Let’s reignite, reinvent and most importantly re-engage."

There were case studies of communication triumph against adversity, with Andrew Huckel, group internal communications manager, Bankwest, coaching us through the internal comms challenges faced when a parent company collapses (HBOS) and a subsequent acquisition takes place (by Commonwealth Bank of Australia).

Most interesting was to hear how their senior leadership played an integral part in keeping their employees informed and internal brand consistent. Huckel told the audience that in the midst of the crisis, he was having twice daily meetings with the MD.

Olivia Wirth, head of corporate communications, Qantas, delivered an outstanding presentation on how she and her team harnessed and learned from Qantas' 13 individual unions – a communication prospect that would make most of us shudder.

Communicating within such an iconic Australian brand like Qantas brought up a whole set of challenges, including the mainstream media being named the primary source for organizational information for employees. Quite simply, Qantas “hadn’t invested in internal communication” -  a challenge both Wirth and the executive team set out to change by introducing "we will tell you first" –  a new governing internal communication principle.

Spurred on by the belief that if you haven’t got your top 100 engaged, you're not going to get the rest of the business engaged, the team set out to develop a new senior leadership communication project. Plus, executed a brand review process targeting individual staff across the organization with a set of questions focused on:

• What do you think our values are?
• How do you think that relates to your behavior?
• And reflecting the nature of the Qantas brand: What is the "Australian way"?

At the completion of Olivia’s presentation, I really was left convinced that this was a company  on its way to delivering world-class communications.

Some of the other key takeaways from the Summit included

• Melcrum’s Rebecca Richmond’s presentation on moving from a cascade to a dialogue approach to communication. When thinking about manager communication, help them to set the scene i.e. create the infrastructure. Bill Quirke’s model for structuring a meeting is a great tool to help manager’s foster dialogue within your organization
  
  
• Athena Wiliams-Atwood, AMP New Zealand, encouraged all communicators to adapt a sales approach to convince senior leaders of the importance of engagement, perhaps by reading Spin Selling – a book on how to pitch your ideas, or – even more radical – attending a sales training course!
  
  
• Insights and learnings from one of the year's biggest stories: the multiple outages that hit Telecom's XT mobile network. Also, a great example of how to harness a charismatic CEO can be seen through their use of video.
  

Plus, great further presentations from Ericsson, IBM & ABT, Luxottica, Raytheon, AMP Australia and Integral Energy. All up, great speakers with great networking – I’m already looking forward to 2011!

Are your employees suffering in silence?

By Sona Hathi, Online Editor, Melcrum

Some people would rather die than confide in their bosses. Literally.

Recent research from Aviva UK Health found that only 4% of employees would speak to their managers about health concerns. It's hard to believe at first, but if you imagine yourself in a similar situation, can you honestly say that you wouldn't hesitate before opening up?  

In today's business climate, competition within the workplace is tough. There's a worry that even the slightest suggestion you might be anything less than superhero-like at work can put your job in jeopardy. According to Aviva's study, 21 percent of employees think that admitting to health concerns could affect their work prospects and 11% simply don't trust their bosses with personal information.

To overcome this, communicators are doing more than ever before to equip managers with the skills to effectively communicate business messages to their teams. But do they need to shift the focus towards helping managers be more approachable?

The employee-manager relationship is a delicate one, and two-way communication is central to strengthening it. If health is a concern for employees, they need to be confident that their manager will offer them support and respect their privacy, not strike them off as being incapable of doing their jobs.

So what's stopping managers from communicating well? Here are some common barriers to effective dialogue between line managers and their staff:

• Leader has "no time".
• Communication is a "check-the-box"activity.
• Leader's not engaged and doesn't value communication.
• The leader has a "closed" personality.

Have you come across any of these barriers at your organization? How did you combat them? Are there any others?  

Confronting negativity in the workplace

By Nishwa Ashraf, Editorial Assistant, Melcrum

Moaners, groaners and whiners.

We’ve all had the misfortune of working with them. The cynic who shoots down an idea before it’s even thought, the complainer who scoffs at the mention of the word “team” – team meetings, team lunches, team efforts - the critic who, despite the best intentions of the company remains permanently unsatisfied.

Moaning employees might seem like a minor inconvenience, but nothing affects employee morale more insidiously than persistent workplace negativity. Not only does it sap energy out of your organization, but it also diverts critical attention from work, performance and productivity.

We all face problems and frustrations at work from time to time, but complaining endlessly doesn't lead to solutions, but rather perpetuates and magnifies the problem, creating a contagion of bad feeling, and ultimately a disengaged workforce.

As an internal communications professional, keeping your finger on the pulse of the organization enables you to establish and heed early warning signals that all is not well in the workplace.

In some cases it could simply be that the person doesn’t enjoy their job, and doesn’t want to be there.

But perhaps it’s more than that.

Perhaps the organization made a decision that adversely affected staff. It could be that rumors are circulating of an impending layoff. Perhaps an influential leader held a meeting and was perceived to ignore staff asking legitimate questions. Maybe some feel that they give more than they receive in the organization.

Whatever the cause of workplace negativity, the issue must be dealt with head on.

Start by identifying the exact employee groups experiencing this negativity and the nature of the issues that sparked the gloominess. Monitor discussions on employee intranets, coach managers in appropriate employee treatment and manage the appraisal and 360 feedback process. This knowledge will aid you in identifying symptoms of negativity before its morale busting consequences further damage your workplace environment.

How does your organization battle negativity within the workplace? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Quad aims for slice of collaboration software market

By James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

Bringing social networking into the enterprise, as technology suppliers so often like to call it, has long been the Holy Grail of companies such as Microsoft, particularly with its widely used SharePoint collaboration platform.

In the last five years SharePoint has become the de facto software platform of choice. In the case of internal communications, however, this hasn’t always been a question of choice. As many of you will know, and some of you may have experienced first hand, SharePoint has often been foisted upon the function by those pesky geeks in IT . The geeks have either come to some sort of partnership agreement with Microsoft or simply gone behind everyone's backs, signed on the dotted line and gone with the only brand they know. Funnily enough, the general feedback I get from the large majority communicators is how difficult SharePoint is to deploy, use and customise.

Help or rather choice, however, appears to be on the horizon with Google’s collaboration and communications tool, Wave, now being slowly taken up by a small number of companies. But another player has recently joined the game. The latest vendor to attempt to capitalise on the desire of many organizations for secure, internal, corporate social networking, or “enterprise collaboration”, is Cisco with its new platform Quad.

One analyst called Cisco’s approach to bringing social networking into the enterprise “interesting and different” and "more than just having an internal Facebook-like mechanism”.

Cisco’s aim is to integrate enterprise applications into the internal communications mix, effectively melding various tools into one platform to give social networking more business functionality. There are already plenty of platforms that do this but it has some interesting features, while commentators online suggest it is very simple to use.

For example, Quad is designed to let users microblog within the platform, with posts going out to colleagues who follow them, while in-house microblogs can also be posted on Twitter effectively crossing the dreaded internal/external divide – something that may scare some communicators off. But there's no need to panic. For those of you who have recurring nightmares of employees posting updates about certain topics outside the firewall, Quad also enables you to set rules that limit users’ ability to post externally on certain topics or even on certain days.

Quad also includes a calendar application, along with voicemail integration, a “Facebook-like” feed of updates from colleagues that users have "befriended", work group communities, and a place where documents can be stored and made available for collaborative purposes. The platform also includes live video, recorded video storage, instant messaging and e-mail.

The home screen for Quad is the first thing employees see when they start work in the morning, the place they go to find out what’s happening in their company as well as their business tasks for the day, month or year. The top of the screen might show a companywide video message from the CEO, for example, while the side columns might highlight the status of the employee's key contacts and links to their communities within the organization, and a lower part of the screen might be taken up by an interface to the major applications they use.

With many companies being forced to do more with less and, at the same time, increase productivity and profits, implementing an enterprise social networking platform is becoming increasingly popular and has already proven a success in several organisations. Employees now not only demand rich (social media) communication in their own personal lives but equally in their everyday working lives and careers. Harnessing this demand to improve organizational productivity is a logical step.

For some great examples, advice, information, research and best practice case studies, register your interest for Melcrum’s social media report 2010 available soon.

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.

Happy 40th IABC! 40 things I learned at World Congress 2010

By James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

1. The breakdown of trust in leaders is at its lowest ever point and will deteriorate further. But now’s the time to swap dancing partners. Research has shown that middle and line managers are the most trusted people within organizations and it up to us to get on their side and work with them as effectively as possible to leverage that trust.
2. Social media was discussed in almost every conversation and session I had and attended. But talking simply isn’t enough. The feeling from the profession is that communicators are using the tools, but they don’t seem to be using them to reach a constructive end goal and with the overall company strategy in mind.
3. Employee volunteering works. Fact. It improves communication, morale and motivation, personal fulfillment and those companies that actively engage in volunteering are more profitable, experience reduced absenteeism and are winning the war for talent. Two-thirds of Gen Y employees at Deloitte, for example, said they would rather work for a company that encourages volunteering.
4. In the post-recession age we live and work in, always plan for the unthinkable.
5. Communication is a company’s most powerful ally in a crisis… just ask BP.
6. Empower your employees by allowing them to become product ambassadors. Let them get their hands dirty.
7. Accept the risks of allowing employees to express themselves freely and instead focus on the end goal and the rewards.
8. Have courage part one – don’t be afraid to get fired.
9. Have courage part two – don’t be afraid to tell the CEO he’s a terrible presenter and he “lip smacks” when on video.
10. Leaders are like tofu: clearly part of the meal, perhaps even the main source of nutrition, but the spice is provided by everyone around them.
11. Make it a habit – make engagement part of employees' everyday routines for it to pay dividends.
12. Follow the example of the Me to We philosophy and movement and create a culture of empathy, community, meaning and legacy.
13. Memorise and use this quote: “We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”
    Mother Theresa
14. Content in context is king and data is his queen.
15. Successful leaders should always lead with their ace and play the communication card.
16. Every leader has his blind spot – and it’s up to you to spot them.
17. All communicators are sales people.
18. Information is useless – your audience wants knowledge.
19. Get stuck in traffic – find opportunities to do nothing and when you do, do nothing but think.
20. Read your writing aloud – strive to thrill yourself with what you write.
21. Writing is like a window – it should allow your readers to see what would otherwise be invisible.
22. Make your writing transparent – help your readers see your ideas, not your words.
23. Outsource the gaps in your skill set.
24. Communication can release the best potent asset, the human asset.
25. Communication is the path to survival, recovery and growth and a company’s constant companion.
26. Communication is a leader’s lifeline to results.
27. Communicate the future – write a fake news article showing your employees what the future looks like and how you can all work together to achieve greatness.
28. Only 19% of global employees are looking to leave their current roles, but the engagement gap is widening – Towers Watson 2010 Workforce Study.
29. Employees don’t know where to turn in 2010. In a global study when Towers Watson asked people whether they would like a job for life with one company, follow their opportunities as they come along or only work for two or three employers during their careers, the data was split exactly three ways.
30. Employees are reliant on their managers and leaders but not confident in what they are doing for them.
31. Embrace uncertainty.
32. The recession has ended the “deal” between employer and employee.
33. The “new deal” is about knowing and enabling your workforce, customising their experience and planning for the future.
34. The “new deal” will take courage, innovation and discipline – leaders will play a vital role.
35. The Art of Innovation – Polarize people over issues they care about.
36. Never stop learning and continuously seek knowledge.
37. Act like an agency – make your "clients", a.k.a your employees, the stars.
38. Always seek to add value.
39. As a conference organizer always provide a reliable Wi-Fi connection… although IABC never fear, even Steve Jobs had issues at the launch of the iPhone 4.
40. Canadians say “eh”. Rather a lot.

Thanks to the CIPR

By James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

Just a quick note to thank the CIPR for inviting me as Melcrum's head of content, to be the external judge for its internal communication category which took place this morning.

Six very strong shortlisted companies presented their case to myself and two senior internal communication judges and we deliberated for a long time before making a very tough call on which one should be the worthy winner.

Watch this space when I'll be blogging live from the London awards ceremony when the CIPR announces the winning entry on June 16.