Focus on measurement at Melcrum's Member Event

by Luke Dodd, Features Editor, Melcrum

Hi everyone,

Our latest UK Member Event was held at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel & Conference Centre in London on 23rd November and focused on the ever-relevant topic of measurement.

The event, exclusive to members as part of their annual membership, featured delegates from various top companies such as Aviva, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Diageo and Unilever.

Melcrum's head of content, Mike Berry, opened proceedings with an introduction to the day and overview of the agenda. Ann McDonagh, head of employee communications and Robert Fox, HR comms manager, Heineken UK (SCM Awards winner – Business Impact) then took to the stage. The presentation: "How the IC team at Heineken UK used engaging, proactive and measurable communication to radically transform a much valued employee benefit", looked at the stages the beer business took to ensure that a planned change to its pension scheme went smoothly. Before they began a program to communicate the proposed plans to the workforce, McDonagh said that internal communication had to analyze and consider several different points such as audience groupings (segmentation), likely audience impacts, key pension concepts to be communicated, likely understanding issues, likely decision paths and viable delivery channels. The duo then presented a plot graph to the assembled delegates that showed how they performed their channel selection analysis. After detailing how they communicated the new pensions, they presented some strong metrics. They had targeted 60% of employees to join the new pension scheme, in reality they hit 94% - a resounding hit!

Following Heineken UK, Melcrum hosted an interactive session facilitated by Sona Hathi, research analyst. During the slot, each table of delegates had to come up with two questions to be included in their "perfect" employee engagement survey. All these questions were collated and delegates could vote on their favourites during the breaks.

After a short coffee break, we all gathered back in the conference for Top Banana's presentation: "Using measurement to focus the attention of business leaders". Nick Terry, managing director - commercial and Richard Bridge, managing director - operations, jointly discussed how to to become your company's trusted advisor, referencing our very own Nishwa Ashraf's article: "The Trusted Advisor: How to become your company's hero". During an interactive session with the delegates, they rated the qualities that were needed to be a trusted advisor. These included being knowledgeable, leading by example and being impartial. Terry and Bridge also provided tips on how to use metrics to focus event design and how to use research as a tool to help improve ROI.

Following lunch, Andrew Hillary, communication consultant, Speakeasy, provided a colourful address referencing his own past as an aspiring rock star (with photographic evidence supplied!) to highlight how beliefs contribute to employee behavior and that it should also be measured alongside opinion and attitude. "Going beyond the standard measure of staff performance" also emphasized the point that we interpret reality through the lens of our beliefs, so understanding employees belief systems is key to getting deeper insight.

Sophie Sheppard, European research and training delivery manager, Melcrum outlined the importance of measurement stating that it was a basis for improvement, a driver of engagement and helped to educate the business. Focusing on change communication, she said that, to measure it, you need to analyze each stage of implementation thoroughly. She added that communicators need to keep their measurement focused on desired outcomes and also to be consistent in their measures. The need to balance hard metrics with soft metrics was also mentioned.

The final presentation of the day was a joint case study provided by Charlotte Kensett, senior channel manager for internal and change communications, Nationwide Building Society and Gareth Dearden, director of customer success EMEA, Kontiki. "Measuring video success at Nationwide Building Society" looked at how they worked with Kontiki to deploy a new video platform. Kensett said that the hurdles to the desktop streaming project included cost, technology reservations, bandwidth and getting the subject on the agenda. However it proved a success, with the internal communication team uploading three to four videos a week with 15,000 unique viewers for each video. In conclusion, she believed that in the future Nationwide needs to look at mobile usage when it comes to its videos.

Melcrum plans to hold more exclusive events in 2012, which are free to attend for practitioners that are members. For more details on the benefits of membership, visit www.melcrum.com/membership_levels/membership-uk.html

Until next time,

Luke

 

 

 

 

The Times They Are A-Changin’

by Roz Topolski

“The only constant is change” has never been truer for Communicators, at least according to Melcrum’s recent survey.

In fact, 32% of Communicators said they spend most of their time on change communication, according to our Key Benchmarking Data for Communicators 2011 survey for organizations with 1,000 or more employees.

Rather than focusing on proactive strategies that will help their organizations thrive, these communicators are spending more time just keeping up with all the change in their organizations.

I’d like to invite those Communicators – and others who find themselves dedicating most of their resources to change communication – to attend the SCM Summit in Washington D.C They’ll discover tactics to help them navigate the complex change communication channels, such as how to:

• Become a trust communication advisor and ask powerful questions from Melcrum’s Black Belt Trainers.
• Turn front-line managers into authentic communicators, while building trust and driving adoption, from Susan Dorflinger of GE Real Estate.
• Align and engage a globally dispersed and demographically diverse workforce with corporate change from Sona Hathi of Melcrum.
• Lay the groundwork for a positive future from Leslie Cifelli of National Grid.

Join us for a unique opportunity to join communication leaders from across the US for fresh insight, thought leadership, guidance, and best practices in internal communication.

To view the full program for this year’s SCM Summit, taking place on October 4-6, visit the website and download the brochure.

Melcrum Podcast Shownotes: May 2011

This month on the Melcrum Podcast - National Grid, Looking Eastwards and the all new SCM Awards!

Melcrum's head of content, Mike Berry, shares key points from his SCM interview with National Grid's global head of employee communication and brand, Sarah Larvor. She talks about the future of communication, and encouraging dialogue within the organization. (00:35)

Why are industry awards so important today? Mike Berry tells listeners how they can enter the SCM awards, what the categories are and and why the time is now. (03:37)

Finally Melcrum's Online Editor, Sona Hathi, and Key Account Manager, Laura Hassan, discuss communication challenges in the East. They've each had a real life glimpse into companies in India and the UAE respectively and share their understanding of what's happening in these emerging markets from an engagement and communication perspective. (6:17)

Listen to the podcast now! (To save it, right click on the link and choose Save Link As).

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?  

It's time to extinguish the firewall

By Sona Hathi, Online Editor, Melcrum

Last week, the following statistics from research by OneNewsPage.com dropped into my inbox:

• Almost four in ten people (39%) use social media networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter while at work.
• Over a quarter (26%) admitted that they were spending more than an hour a day on social networking sites, but on matters that had no relation to their jobs.
• Some 45% of respondents called for their bosses to monitor other employees’ online habits more closely.

It's a concern that's been going round and round the block and doesn't look like it's going to settle down any time soon. Are social networks a distraction in the workplace or not? It's high-time we come to a conclusion, because with Facebook users reaching 500 million, it's clear that social networks are here to stay.

We've all heard the usual comparisons such as Facebook being an online alternative to water cooler conversations. But let's face it, it's much easier to look like you're working on something highly strategic while sitting behind a computer screen.

The catch 22 for bosses is that if they crack down on employees and monitor their internet usage, it has a massive impact on trust, morale, engagement and potentially, productivity. 

Research shows that more and more employees are responding to emails outside of the office and during holidays using Blackberries and iPhones. So, if an employee wishes to spend an hour on Facebook each day, but is willing to make up that time outside of office hours in order to meet their deadlines on time and to a sufficient standard, surely that's okay.

It's time to stop worrying about how much time employees are spending on social networks each day and start worrying about what they're achieving. And if an organization cannot trust their employees to manage their own time, they're simply recruiting the wrong people. 

Social media has had a revolutionary impact on the way we communicate and collaborate, but it is, after all just another channel and can't be a scapegoat for poor time management. By enforcing a blanket ban on social media, employers are not only showing that they don't trust the very employees that they've chosen to hire, they're also demonstrating a reluctance to change, progress and innovate.

Keen to hear your thoughts.

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!

What a well-engaged organization looks like...

By Sona Hathi, Editor, Melcrum

...from the man who co-compiles the Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For list - Wayne Clarke, Managing Partner at Best Companies LLP.

"What do we mean when we say a well-engaged organization? We mean excellence in leadership. Organizations that simply have good leaders and managers. A good led and managed business would - we all agree - outperform a badly led and managed business," he says.

Wayne will be talking more about this, as well as how the internal communication function can directly impact a company's employee engagement levels, in his keynote session at Melcrum's Strategic Communication Management Summit UK next week, (13th-15th October). 

Here's a preview interview:

What's next for journalism?

By Sona Hathi, Assistant Editor, Melcrum

Google’s Director of Communication and International Affairs and former Newsnight Editor, Peter Barron was one of three panelists at a debate this week on the future of journalism, hosted by reputation management firm Fishburn Hedges, in their London office. Barron was joined by Paul Murphy, founding editor of the FT’s financial blog FT Alphaville and former financial editor of UK newspaper The Guardian, along with “probably the most London-obsessed person in the world”, Matt Brown, editor of Londonist.com and a prolific science blogger.

Having been a newspaper journalist for over 20 years, Murphy’s in a good place to make comparisons between the industry’s “traditional” processes and it’s new, faster, internet reliant way of working, and guess what? He says he’d never go back. He recalls his old working routine; to paraphrase: a late start, coffee, daily morning conference, a bit of politicking, a long lunch till 3pm, write his daily 800 word column, a bit more poiliticking and then leave for the pub at around 5pm. Today, he says, by lunchtime he has usually produced three times more than he used to in a whole day. “Young journalists don’t think that’s unusual,” he says. “Blogging and online publishing is light weight, fast, simple and straightforward, the freedom that you get with it is most fun. I’d never go back to the old ways!”

Interesting, as I sit among the audience wishing I’d been a journalist back when – as Peter Barron put it – “they were an elite group with huge amounts of money”.

All panelists agreed that the relationship between bloggers and journalists was an interesting, but unclear one – a sort of love-hate, can’t-live-with-can’t-live-without-each-other relationship. Newspapers do feel threatened by bloggers, they’re breaking news and uncovering truths sooner and for free, and when newspapers get something wrong, bloggers are quick to correct and criticize – potentially damaging the paper’s credibility. But journalists need bloggers. They’ve long looked to the man on the street for news, and bloggers are precisely that, the men (and women) on the street, only more web savvy and perhaps a little more conscious of accuracy. For the best bloggers pride themselves on being credible. We all know that one mistake can prompt a flood of negative comments which means a blog may never again appear in the URL history of a browser again, not so much of a big deal, a blog can be created again, for free, under a new alias, whereas a newspaper’s damaged credibility can lead to a loss of readers – not ideal in today’s economic climate. So who’s actually got more power? Bloggers or journalists?

The discussion went on to the monetization models of online content. Newspapers shouldn’t have to give away free content, but many have already had a negative experience of putting up pay walls on previously free articles, causing an uproar among readers. In order to justify charging for online content, it must be desirable and distinctive. Brown pointed out that if newspapers started charging for their online content it would, in fact, kill off a lot of bloggers as they rely so heavily on free content from the daily national’s websites to produce their content. And even if blogs are breaking stories sooner, do people really notice before it’s out on the front page of the dailies? He predicted that things may "balance out" in the long run.

The panelists predicted polarization of content. Murphy envisages a handful of global media groups that will produce everything for free, but will have international hold of all news, he sees these groups being the BBC, CNN, Reuters of the media world. The next group down will be the specialists, people/publications who provide specialist information for specific topic areas. And finally, we’ll have business publishers who will produce tailor made, paid for content to corporations.

Although Barron believes the future’s still bright for journalism, both in the traditional sense, (take for example The Telegraph’s MP expenses scoop), and the new age, citizen journalism sense, (like the coverage of the Iranian elections on Twitter), there are still concerns about the future. According to Murphy, newspapers are only seeing the very beginning of the structural change that is to come.

Communication professionals have already experienced a shift in the way employees want to receive business messages, as a result of a change in how they access mainstream news. Even more worryingly, employees are talking more and more about their companies on the internet, in the blogosphere, and leaving comments on mainstream news sites, to the extent that corporate communicators are having to devise strategies specifically to ensure that business messages are heard inside the organization first, forcing leaders to become more transparent. Matt Brown said PRs are less in demand. They're just not used in the way they were before. "We might call a press office out of courtesy to say that we've published a story, but gone are the days of calling the press office before anyone else for vital information."

With all this in mind, the question for us is, what's next for communicators? Will we, like our friends in PR, become less in demand as the curtain falls, transparency is everywhere and employees deem information that comes from their peers more trustworthy than that which comes from corporate communications and senior leaders?

Top video interview tips from Melcrum's Social Media workshop

By Sona Hathi, Assistant Editor, Melcrum

Earlier, I managed to sneak into Melcrum's Social Media workshop, taking place as I blog, in our London office. I timed my entrance well as the group of about 25 communication professionals were just about to hear expert advice on creating video for use inside companies.

Former TV producer and private investigator Debbie Davies shared the following top tips for producing top quality video:

1. Take your time.
2. Give the interviewee an overview of what you're going to ask.
3. Be encouraging.
4. Know your equipment.
5. Tell them where the video will be published.
6. Think about the different ways to do an interview. Will the subject look straight into the camera or at an angle? Do you want questions to be heard or do you want the interviewee to build the question in their answer?
7. Remember to leave gaps in between questions and answers - you'll need them when editing later.
8. Think about lighting, background scenery and noise - even things like air conditioning can be disturbing. Put up a do not disturb sign if necessary.
9. Avoid fancy shots - zooming in and out can be distracting and also waste battery power.
10. Remember to get permission! Look on the internet for downloadable contracts of agreement. As a last minute option, get the interviewee to say on camera "My name is xxx and I am being interviewed by xxx about xxx and am aware that this will be broadcast on xxx," and then keep this as a record.

We're experimenting with video ourselves here at Melcrum and have become big fans of the Flip camera. It's very easy to use, great quality and it fits in your pocket. It's perfect for getting employees to do video diaries like Pfizer did, or informal interviews that are easy to publish on You Tube, like we did in this quick interview below, with Abi Signorelli, Director of Internal Communication at Virgin Media - who was also one of the trainers at the social media workshop today.

Raising your professional profile

This is a call for communication professionals interested in speaking at one of Melcrum's industry-leading events. We're looking for seasoned communication practitioners with solid experience in leading their organisation¹s communication efforts.

An upcoming Melcrum conference in London will feature best practices for communication covering the full spectrum of topics such as change communication, employee engagement, crisis comms, supporting leaders and managers, measurement, internal branding and more. If you have a story to tell and you're interested in sharing, please get in touch with Roz Topolski at roz.topolski@melcrum.com as soon as possible.