When will internal comms finally make a TV appearance?

By James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

Just like the viewing patterns of the majority of people who watched BBC 2's 'Inside John Lewis' documentary last night I'll keep it brief.

Now that internal communicators and the value of the function is finally being recognised by global executive boards, surely now is the time for us all to step up and step out of our shells and into the public eye? Rather than the head of PR or a shaky-handed cameraman (it may work for Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker but not when you're touring the homeware section discussing how many bathmats have been sold in the last hour) and his documentary team guiding us round Lewis's British stores, it should have been the retailer's head of internal comms. They could have highlighted how well the comms team coaches the CEO, explain the work they've done to engage employees during the toughest year in the company's history or perhaps guided viewers through the ins and outs of the its change comms strategy?

The BBC described it as a "television first" going behind the scenes of "one Britain's biggest and best known department stores - as it tackles changing tastes, tougher competition and the worst recession for 80 years". And that's exactly why I watched it. But no. Opportunity missed. Instead it was simply an exercise in self-promotion.

John Spedan Lewis, the Partnership's founder, pioneered the commercial co-operative making every staff member a partner and handing out a share of the profits - a unique selling point to any employee current or prospective. We saw none of that in yesterday's episode. Sure, the majority of employees seemed happy to be there. No wonder, each one received a 13% bonus last year. Even the robotic wedding list sellers, who walk innocent newly-engaged couples through which brand of bread bin they should allocate to their guests (on average £60 per head and £1,000 per wedding) seemed engaged enough but it always felt as if the real story lay elsewhere.

A preview for next week's instalment showed a group of disengaged employees complaining that being part of John Lewis wasn't what it once was. Good enough TV fodder perhaps, but again, why didn't the internal comms team step up to the plate and explain what they're doing to turn this situation around?

Judging from Penny Lawson's comments, head of internal communications at British Airways, at this week's Melcrum third annual Change Communication conference - who took time away from an incredibly stressful situation dealing with a severely disrupted workforce - (search #changecomms on Twitter for some of the highlights) I'd much rather be a fly on the wall inside BA. Now there's a story.

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.

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?

The portable plinth: the answer to invisible execs

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

Just over three hours ago sculptor Anthony Gormley’s One and Other “human statue” project got underway in London’s Trafalgar Square.

The premise of the live art experiment is simple. The fourth plinth, built in 1841 was originally intended for an equestrian statue but has lain empty over the years with only a collection of sporadic exhibits adorning the northern most corner of the square.

Gormley’s project, however has given the public their opportunity to populate the plinth, quite literally, and, in London mayor Boris Johnson’s words, to “democratise art”. Every hour, on the hour, a different person will stand high on the large stone slab and demonstrate their ‘art’. Rachel Wardell, 35, was the first "living statue" to take part at 9am this morning.

Wardell was followed at 10am by Jason Clark, a 41-year-old nurse from Brighton. Other people to take to the stage include Heather Pringle who will be celebrating her 20th birthday on the plinth, while the oldest among July's 615 participants is pensioner Gwynneth Pedler, 83, from Oxford, who plans to signal with semaphore flags. Luckily the river Thames is no longer used by large cargo carrying vessels so Gwynneth can safely wave in peace at the crowd of three watching, rather than directing a cruise liner into the London Eye.

But this got me thinking about how this could work in the corporate world. My first instinct was that the plinth would be the ideal platform for a modern day version of the stocks where disgraced or perhaps invisible executives would be individually winched onto the plinth and paraded in front of a jeering, salivating, recession-riddled public. Free packs of sharpened darts would be handed out 25 feet from a trembling, pinstriped pariah (to give him a fighting chance) and a dance of the darts would then ensue. His only protection would be a moth eaten annual report, while the only escape route would be to leap off the plinth onto the solid concrete below, risking severe injury and potentially crawling away into the distance only to be hit by an on coming red double decker London bus.

The other, far less gladiatorial option, would be for internal communicators to use this idea at company meetings or workshops where a portable replica plinth would be transported around the country for various internal events. This would then be used by executives to stand on for a minimum of an hour, giving passing employees the opportunity to ask their superiors questions. No darts or sharp objects allowed. There would naturally be no hiding place or thankfully no buses. The plinth would be too high to jump from, there would be no ladders to help you clamber down, the only thing you can do is to face the music and be give an honest answer. Don’t get me wrong. This would not a form of punishment or some kind of corporate copycat David Blaine type stunt, it would merely act as an open air forum where you would give an influential company figure the opportunity to literally stand up and be counted. It would take a brave man or woman to do it but, as with Gormley’s One and Other project, it would instantly democratise your business and give employees and employers the chance to get to know each other better.

If you are listening Mr Gormley, once the project is over, please give me a call so we can patent the idea. Give it six months and trust me, there will be plinths in company car parks across Britain. No darts I promise.

Best job in the world campaign signs up for Oz SCM

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

It’s what many of us strive for all our working lives, need to fulfill our ambitions, and hope to secure so that one day we can tell our children that we were there. No, not a change to dress up as a clown and compete on Deal or No Deal, I’m talking about getting the job of your dreams.

It happened to one British man last month, who from a pool of 34,000 hopeful global applicants, won the opportunity of a lifetime. Branded and marketed as ‘the best job in the world’, Ben Southall, a 34 year-old charity fundraiser from Petersfield in Hampshire, became the new caretaker of an Australian tropical island. Sound idyllic? Well it gets even better. His six-month £73,500 (AUS$110,000) contract includes a three-bedroom beach home, a swimming pool and golf cart, while his job description is to simply explore the islands of the Great Barrier Reef, swim, snorkel, make friends with the locals and generally enjoy the tropical Queensland climate and lifestyle. He will, however be expected to do some work, and in the true spirit of the Web 2.0 age we live in, will report back to Tourism Queensland (TQ) and the world via blogs, a photo diary, video updates and interviews. And this is where the business brains at TQ have come into their own.

Amid the worldwide recession tourism in Oz has fallen downhill faster than a jet propelled Koala on roller skates but this campaign has already generated massive amounts of publicity, PR and interest all around the world, and all for very little expenditure. And from an internal communications point of view it has served as a vital tool to boost employee engagement within the organisation.

More importantly, Tourism Queensland has agreed to speak about its great success story at our SCM Summit Australia on 15th to 17th September 2009 in Sydney.

In the session later in the year you’ll hear about:

• How the campaign spawned around 200,000 blogs, 43,000 news stories and over AUS$120 million worth of publicity.
• How the campaign was developed.
• How social media channels were used to spark global interest.
• How external interest was used to create engagement and enthusiasm inside the organisation.
• How Tourism Queensland has re-energised its culture and brand.
• How to harness successful brand initiatives to drive employee engagement.
• How to make the most of social media tools and channels.
• How to equip senior leaders to manage intense media interest and act as brand ambassadors.

Are you working on a groundbreaking campaign, if so we want to know? And what, in your opinion have been the best employee engagement campaigns of recent years? Let me know by either replying to this post, by emailing me at james.bennett@melcrum.com or by Twittering to @Melcrum