The Melcrum Blog

Join 200 internal communicators on April 21st

By Kelly Dyer, Senior Editor, Melcrum

This must be a Melcrum record – we launched our next member event only yesterday and already 125 people have signed up! It's now Friday morning and there are only 75 places left.

Wow, it must be good then. So, what’s all the fuss about?
“Fresh Ideas for Internal Comms” is a one-day event designed to bring together internal communication leaders from across Europe to hear the latest ideas and developments in the industry. This will take place at the Bloomsbury Hotel in London on April 21st.

Well that’ll save me time having to research all those developments myself.
Exactly, that’s the point. Busy practitioners tell us that it’s often a challenge to find the time to research what’s available in the market. Our speakers will share lessons learned and give you an overview of what they can do for you in a convenient format that minimizes time spent away from the office.

Who’ll be there? Anyone I know?
Ever heard of a small, low-key organization called GE? The keynote speaker will be Richard Bloomfield, Communications Leader at GE Healthcare Life Sciences. Richard will be sharing his tips and advice for getting the most from consultants and suppliers. And by the way, if you’re interested in this topic, take a look at this article on the Internal Comms Hub.

And with around 200 of your fellow communicators expected, the networking opportunities will be second to none!

So what’s the cost?
There’s no cost. It’s a free event as long as you’re a Melcrum member. The last Melcrum member event in September sold out early. This time, we have 200 places up for grabs on a strictly first come, first served basis – so book your place today! Just email membership@melcrum.com now.

What if I’m not a member but still want to come?
You can become a Melcrum member and come along to the event, as well as getting all the benefits that Melcrum membership involves. Contact Rebecca for more information at Rebecca.lacey@melcrum.com

It all sounds pretty good.
It is. What are you waiting for? Sign up now!

Are caring CEOs a thing of the past?

By James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

“Though I've never worked at Sun, this is the kind of CEO I'd like to work for.” This is just one of many hundreds of similar tweets posted by people around the world following an all-staff memo sent by Scott McNealy, the co-founder and long time chairman of California-based tech giant Sun Microsystems as he prepares to hand over the reigns to Oracle – a $7.4 billion deal that was initially done in April last year but that has only just been approved by the European Commission this week.

The memo, sent this Tuesday under the subject line “Thanks for a great 28 years”, was described by one US blogger, as having “more genuine emotion than you’ll see in a year's worth of official communications from most corporate leaders”. I’d be very interested to hear from you to see if, as internal communicators, you agree. Is your organisation’s CEO or managing director like McNealy or is he/she someone who hides away from staff in his/her ivory tower who communicating and engaging with employees about as often as Halley’s Comet orbits the earth? Email me at james.bennett@melcrum.com and let me know. I'd love to hear your stories.

McNealy, however, was clearly a man manager, a people person and a boss who understood that without great employees he wouldn’t have got as far up the corporate ladder as he had and, more importantly, the business wouldn’t have been so well respected. Just take the language in the memo. It’s full of ‘we’s’ and rarely about ‘I’s’, it's full of gratitude for “the Sun community” and how they made working at the company, as McNealy says, “really cool”, and above all, it's honest, something every employee yearns for in an organisation. Here’s are some of the highlilghts form his memo:

On innovation

“First and foremost, Sun innovated like crazy. We took it to the limit. And though we did not monetize our inventions as well as we could have, few companies have the track record in R&D that we had over the last 28 years. This made working at Sun really cool. Thanks to all of you inventors and risk takers who changed how we live."

On customer care

“Sun cared about its customers. Even more than we cared about our own company at times. We looked at our customer's mission as more important than ours. Maybe we should have asked for more revenue in return, but our employees were always ready to help first. I love this about Sun, which I guess makes me a good capitalist, if not a great capitalist."

On having fun at Sun

“Sun employees had way more fun than any other company. By far. From our dress code (“You must!”) to beer busts to our April Fools’ pranks to SunRise to our quiet enjoyment at night of a long, hard, well-done day of work, no company enjoyed “work” more than Sun. Thanks to all of our employees past and present for making Sun such a blast.”

Rather ironically and like the majority of CEOs, however, McNealy is also an admirer of the market economy and couldn’t resist Oracle’s multi-billion dollar offer. “To be honest, this is not a note this founder wants to write,” he said. “Sun, in my mind, should have been the great and surviving consolidator. But I love the market economy and capitalism more than I love my company.”

He may have been a great boss, but what we as communicators should also bear in mind when dealing with a chief exec, is that leaders may often say and act as though they care about their staff but they are ultimately there to make money. It’s only then that genuine emotion is rapidly and often rightly, as in McNealy's case, replaced by hard economic reality.

* It’s also interesting to also see that a couple of key new chief executives have been announced in the UK in the last 48 hours. Adam Crozier has moved from one troubled business to another leaving the Royal Mail to go to terrestrial television channel ITV. His appointment brings to an end a saga lasting almost eight months since shareholder unhappiness persuaded Michael Grade to quit as executive chairman. He was replaced on January 1st by Archie Norman, the former chairman of Asda. Even more interestingly, accordingf to the Financial Times, he also beat internal candidates including John Cresswell, the acting chief executive, who will now leave the company.

Meanwhile, UK supermarket Morrisons, that has recently undergone a successful re-brand, has hired Dalton Philips, a relative unknown CEO from Canadian retailer Loblaw. At 41 years of age, he’s also one of the youngest chief executives to lead a FTSE 100 company.

Let’s see how they get on, and if they last as long as Mr McNealy.

Research reveals widespread adoption of social media inside the firewall

By James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

Melcrum has embarked on a global study on large organizations’ use of social media to engage employees, deliver strategy and drive business results.

Preliminary findings from the Use of Social Media in Internal Communications 2010 survey sent to 50,000 global communicators, has revealed widespread adoption, a clear business case and visible return on investment for communicators.

Highlights of the survey findings will be presented at Melcrum’s Social Media for Internal Communication  conference in London on February 9th to 10th, 2010, while the full results of the survey will be published in a comprehensive Melcrum report on sale in March this year.

Internal communicators are increasingly turning to Web 2.0 tools, such as employee and executive blogs, online video, and internal Twitter-style forums, to deliver key strategic messages, stimulate collaboration and knowledge sharing and boost productivity.

A recent Melcrum member survey at the end of last year found that 40% of respondents said the business case for social media within internal communication was clear and that there is visible return on investment, while 53% of the 2,212 senior communicators who responded said they were planning to increase investment in their organization’s intranet in 2010.

When asked about channels used for internal communication, online video and webcasts were cited as of increasing importance, with the intranet ranked as the most effective channel by 73% of senior communicators worldwide.

The business benefits of investment in social media highlighted included improved levels of employee engagement (21%), better communication with remote workers (16%), knowledge management and collaboration (25%), improving employee feedback (20%) and making business leaders more visible and accessible (14%).

Melcrum’s forthcoming report will concentrate on the role communicators perform in getting the most from social media, how they monitor and measure results, how they make the business case for additional investment, how they protect their organizations against misuse by employees, and social media’s impact on other channels such as email.

If you are interested in contributing to or finding out more information about the forthcoming Social Media Report 2010 please contact me, James Bennett, Head of Content at Melcrum at james.bennett@melcrum.com or Alex Manchester, senior consultant, Step Two Designs at alex@steptwo.com.au.

For the full press release click here.

Melcrum is also carrying out a series of interviews ahead of next month's social media in internal communications conference in conjunction with ipadio. Check out Abi Signorelli, social media consultant's great blog post and ipadio intrerviews now!

The internal communicator: The must have for 2010

By James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

It’s a new decade and a time for a new perspective, so what does 2010 hold for communicators?

The noughties started where the nineties left off. Blair and New Labour continued to drag a kicking and screaming Cool Britannia down the corridors of power with them until everyone realised just how uncool they all were, the age of spin was born but soon came to an embarrassing end when the media discovered politicians were using taxpayers money to buy moats and fund their husband’s adult entertainment habits, and to top it all off, no one managed to predict the swift collapse of global financial markets leading to worldwide recession, riots and mass redundancies. However, all these events have something in common: they’ve served to put communications and in particular internal communications, on the map.

Faddish public relations, misleading messages and messaging, and unethical leaders and the fraudulent and mismanaged companies they helped to run and ultimately ruin, along with Cool Britannia, spin, and corrupt corporate fat cats are over. The public, employees and shareholders are demanding results not just when it comes to a return on their own cash investments, but also when it comes to how they are being invested in themselves; in their votes, their careers and their livelihoods.

If you, as a company, don’t invest in your people and fail to maintain adequate levels of engagement, then you yourself will fail. This is something even the present Government has recognised in the MacLeod report that suggests that business and organizations function best when they make their employees’ “commitment, potential, creativity and capability central to their operation”. Having enough cash, and a sensible strategy, are clearly vital it adds, but “how people behave at work can make the crucial difference between business and operational success or failure”

A report by executive search company Watson Helsby out in the first week of the New Year that polled 250 corporate communications directors from some of the UK’s largest organizations, uncovered a series of key trends for 2010, the most evident of which found that two-thirds of respondents expect budgets to be cut back even further. This is hardly surprising following the downturn of the last 18 months, but as companies decide to shelve projects and/or cut back on agency spend, this will inevitably mean a return to investing internally both in companywide and internal communication talent. In leaner times when we, regardless of status or seniority, are demanding more efficiency for less outlay, turning to those existing internal stars who can drive engagement levels and at the same time show a direct correlation to rising profit levels will be a must have in 2010.

Never has the role of internal communicators been more important. Whose role is it to eliminate the charlatans from the profession; whose role is it to create honest, thought provoking, informative and ultimately engaging messages, branding and campaigns across organizations to ensure the well-being, happiness and longevity of millions of workers; and whose role - one of the most crucial areas in business in the next 10 years – is it to train, coach and advise leaders as firms enter one of the biggest make or break years since the second World War? I think you can guess the answer.

If you haven’t got a star individual or team in place already then go out and get one. But remember you won’t find them in the January sales.

A new breed of communication focused CEOs

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

I often ask myself how seriously high-profile executives take communications. On one side of the mahogany boardroom table there are those business owners whose complete lack of awareness and communication skills has brought their company to the verge of collapse. Take Gerald Ratner, former chief executive of the now renamed British jewellery company Ratners Group who achieved fame after making a speech in which he jokingly referred to his company’s profits as “c***” and remarked that some of the earrings he then sold were “cheaper than an M&S prawn sandwich but probably wouldn't last as long”. Immediately following his gaff Ratner watched as his business’s value plummeted by £500 million.

Read the latest article on the Internal Comms Hub on how to review your communication capabilities - five of the worst communication offenses and how to avoid them.

Fortunately, however on the opposite side of the table sit those execs that have learned from his and the mistakes of others and that have the foresight and vision to realise that a breakdown in internal communication can lead to disastrous consequences. Stephen Martin, CEO of UK construction company Clugstons and guest speaker at the recent SCM summit in October, for example, knew that he had to take evasive action to stop his business from declining. Employee morale was at rock bottom, management simply weren’t listening and, as a result, contracts were not being won and the money wasn’t coming in. So he put his professional reputation on the line and decided to go undercover and find out what the real issues were, all of which was documented on the recent Channel 4 series the Undercover Boss.

I met another of this new breed of comms savvy execs at the launch of the new Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 business phone last night. A device exclusively available at Vodafone, my friends tell me. And she, along with Martin assured me that communication is “the most important element there is in business”.

“Always being the last to know and not being guided or communicated to when there are huge changes going on can be one of the worst things to happen if you’re an employee,” says Karen Brady, the recently departed managing director of Birmingham City Football Club and now non-executive director of Sport England and the England 2018 World Cup bid, Mothercare and, ironically Channel 4 television. “On some occasions my staff were the last to know at Birmingham City,” she added.

From her early career at advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, Brady moved to the London Broadcasting Company (LBC) where she managed an account for publisher and now ex Birmingham City owner David Sullivan, who following encouragement by Brady, spent more than £2m on advertising in just six months. At the age of just 23 Bra then famously spotted an advert for the sale of the football club and persuaded Sullivan to buy it and let her run it. Her business acumen has made her a wealthy woman, however she says it has been her belief in “talking and communicating openly and honestly” that has got her to where she is today.

“It’s very important to always talk with your staff. To manage a team effectively you have to keep an open dialogue, an open means of communication. What you communicate internally should be the same and you communicate externally and I’ve always believed that.”

Her communication mantra as well as her skills will soon be put to the public test in the forthcoming sixth series of the BBC’s Apprentice where she has recently replaced the stern and steadfast Margaret Mountford as one of Sir Alan Sugar’s two chief advisors.

But will the next series of The Apprentice be as “backstabbing” as the last where, in my view, communication often broke down between contestants as they threw barrage upon barrage of insults and personal attacks on one another in order to survive another week on the show and become Sir Alan’s new protégé?

“We’re still filming so I can’t say that much but we are really trying to get across to the contestants that communication between the two sub teams is crucial in learning how to manage and become a good manager,” she says.

I’m sure there are more executives like Brady and Martin out there. Now all I have to do is find them.

Leadership 2.0: 10 ways a CEO should communicate to employees

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

Stephen Martin, CEO of Clugston Group and star of hit Channel four television program 'Undercover Boss', delivered an inspirational speech at last week's Melcrum Strategic Communication Management Summit in London, Europe’s largest annual gathering of senior communication professionals.

"The tough times are far from over and we must react now by communicating far more effectively with our employees,” said Martin. Now is the time for leadership 2.0!

Here are his 10 tips on how CEO’s should communicate to employees during and after a recession:

1. Communicate, communicate, communicate: Communicate more regularly then ever before.
2. Always be seen by employees – leave your ivory tower and listen to what frontline employees have to say.
3. Inform widely and get large-scale opinion form employees.
4. Eliminate the culture of executives in suits and workers in overalls/uniform – this puts employees off and communication is immediately lost.
5. Brown bag lunches – my door is always open and I regularly have lunch with my employees but only when it suits them.
6. Refresh your communications as often as possible.
7. Ask and consult your employees at all times – go around the office/construction site/shop floor and ask all of them what they think.
8. Demonstrate you have listened and stick to your promises.
9. Talk to them at a time that suits them.
10. Invest in training of frontline supervisors and managers – if you don’t nothing will change.

SCM summit London 2009: The 10 communication commandments

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

Vivienne Huybrecht, general manager group communication at KBC Group gave a fascinating insight into her tumultuous year at one of Belgium’s largest financial institutions at this morning's 8th annual Melcrum Strategic Communication Management Summit at London’s Tower Hotel.

Vivienne wasn’t just in charge of internal communications, when the financial crisis hit KBC faster and harder than anyone could ever have predicted she was also charged with looking after every aspect of external communications and media relations – a huge task for anyone but somehow she managed it and survived. Mainly, she told me, because of her sporty nature and her motto of never giving up. Look out for a quick video interview in the next few days.

At the height of the storm she was receiving more than 100 phone calls from journalists day and night, saw KBC’s share price plummet and to top it all off her chief executive had a heart attack in May and had to stand down. It was sobering stuff and one of the best internal communication stories I have ever heard.

One of the best elements of the presentation was her 10 communication commandments during a crisis. Here they are:

1. Visible leadership – staff should be able to see the whites of their eyes
2. Be honest and open at all times
3. Tell it like it is
4. Be confident!
5. New CEO mantra – overperform and under promise
6. Be clear and keep it simple
7. Move fast and decisively
8. Make no promises about the future unless you can achieve them with absolute certainty
9. Use face-to-face communications as much as possible
10. Never give up

Living in the clouds: Is this the future of comms?

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

As business and the world around us continues to evolve and speed up we constantly need to adapt to our surroundings, more so now of course as companies across the globe cut back, trim budgets and get used to life in a long-term recession.

So what should they do? I’m sure if everyone knew the answer they’d have done it by now. But it only takes one and the rest will follow. The one in this case being global services firm Rentokill that is switching all its 35,000 employees in 50 countries from 180 different email domains and 40 mail systems to ‘cloud based email’ (email that sits within a virtual online server and that is managed by a cloud service provider such as Google or Yahoo) provider Google Apps by 2010 savings them millions in costs and at the same time encouraging all of its employees to use a far simpler, more integrated and collaborative set of tools with which I’m sure the majority are already familiar. We all know how to use Google effectively; we don’t all know how to use Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook.

Google Apps is a service from our friends at Google that allows you to use custom domain names with several Google products featuring various Web applications with similar functionality to traditional office suites, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Talk, and Docs. The standard edition is free and offers the same amount of storage as regular Gmail accounts. The Premier Edition, which offers 25 GB of email storage, is around US$50 or $33 per year, per account.

This could well turn out to be an internal communication masterstroke both in terms of cost but also by bringing every employee closer together onto one system allowing them to share calendar information, chat live to one another, and have access to email translation and video.

Not only that the system will also provide email access to 20,000 regular PC users, as well as 15,000 on-the-road staff. The remote workers, who did not originally have a company email account, will now be able to access Google mail from any internet-connected device such as a PDA, iPhone or home computer.

Are any of the businesses you work for/with considering this or have they already switched over? Let me know either on email: james.bennett@melcrum.com, on Melcrum Communicators' network on Linked In that has 2,500 active users or tweet us on Twitter. We’d love to hear from you!

US firms favour internal comms as no.1 retention tool

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

Retaining key staff is the Holy Grail of maintaining productivity and profitability during an economic downturn, however retention often involves boosting salaries to keep- employees sweet – something that very much against the culture of almost every business that has suffered at the hands of the worst recession in 60 years.

That said a recent survey out today by workforce productivity improvement group i4cp found that 18% of high-performing organizations have already taken the step of increasing compensation levels to reduce turnover, compared to 7% of lower performers, while the same ratio of high performers (18%) and 24% of lower performers plan to implement pay raises in the next six to 12 months.

The highlight, however is that this doesn’t necessarily have an effect on staff retention, internal communications does, with the majority of US respondents (81%) naming the function as their favored method. Among higher market performers, a massive 91% pointed to communication as their top method of staunching turnover, compared to 71% of lower performers. An increased focus on talent management (77%) was the second-highest choice, with succession planning (59%) third.

Looking to the future and the eventual recovery that is slowly materializing, 70% of higher-performing companies said they were planning to stem the number of staff departures by increasing their focus on succession planning and talent management with leadership training being planned by 66% of higher-performing firms. Lower performers said they planned to focus first on talent management issues (71%), followed by 62% who plan to increase internal communication.

The study showed that higher performers are more likely to involve employees in the process, however an incredible 21% admitted they had never surveyed their employees about engagement issues, compared to a more credible 36% of lower performers. Both higher and lower-performing companies that conduct surveys are  most likely to survey their workers annually. More reassuringly, and based on the results of their most recent surveys, 49% of higher performers reported an increase in engagement, compared to a quarter (26%) of lower market performing organizations.

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!