A resolution we can help you keep

By Tanya Batra, Melcrum

Refreshing our skills, acquiring new ones and keeping up to-date with best practice are all items that commonly feature on our professional agendas. However another common pattern is the fact that they rarely make it to the "completed" pile as you find yourself distracted by more "urgent" matters that demand your immediate attention.  

But before you let your professional development slip to the bottom of the pile, here’s a solid reason why it really should be your priority…

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) yesterday revealed that UK unemployment is set to keep rising in 2012, hitting 8.8 percent (2.85 million) by the end of the year and making it the highest number of people unemployed since 1994 and the highest unemployment rate since 1995. What’s more, this trend is predicted to continue into 2013 with unemployment forecast to rise even further, to a peak of 2.9 million in the first half of 2013.*

In response, organisations will continue to focus on streamlining, while simultaneously striving for productivity and innovation. It’s the talent of their people that’s key to achieving these goals and ensuring competitor differentiation.

Now more than ever before is the time to raise your game, prove your worth and reinforce your value-adding ability to ensure you stand out from the crowd. How? One way is by future-proofing your skill-set.

Whether you need a comprehensive overview of the IC function, want to discover how to maximise the role of video in your IC strategy,  succeed with SharePoint, or advance your writing skills – our extensive portfolio of executive education will keep you at the cutting edge of your function.

Not only that, but our courses also give you the chance to benchmark with like-minded communicators and build up your professional network to ensure you remain up-to-date with industry best-practice. 

However, if time out of the office just isn’t an option for you at the moment, kickstart your new year with this article by Sue Dewhurst on eight resolutions that can help you make a bigger difference in 2012 and beyond.

Happy New Year!

* Source: HR Magazine, Employment figures could drop by 120,000 this year, CIPD's chief economic adviser predicts, David Woods, 3 Jan 2012. Accessed 4 January, 2012.

Are your employees helping to put a man on the moon?

By Tanya Batra, Melcrum

I recently attended a UK Black Belt 1 course where I met a diverse group of communicators from various backgrounds and sectors, and had the opportunity to hear first-hand about the challenges they’re facing.

What was most inspiring for me over the four days, and something I was perhaps unprepared for, was the dramatic difference in the conversations I had with delegates at the beginning of the course compared with the second half of the course. In fact, these conversations, coupled with the written feedback I later read, were proof enough for me that no matter what level of experience these delegates had initially walked into the course with - they most definitely walked out as more confident, competent communicators.

While the course left me with plenty of food for thought, there was one thing in particular that course trainer Sue Dewhurst shared with the group, which I believe encapsulates the true value of a high performing internal comms function to its business.

I’ve no doubt many of you will have heard this story before, but for those who haven’t, here it is. The story goes that back in 1961, when former President John F. Kennedy visited NASA’s headquarters, he came across a cleaner with whom he stopped to have a chat. When the president asked the man what he did at NASA, he is said to have replied: “Sir, I’m helping to put a man on the moon”.

It’s fair to draw the conclusion from this story that the cleaner had a firm and genuine understanding of his role in contributing to the wider strategic aims of NASA and felt a direct connection to them, regardless of how large or visible his contribution was.

And while the establishment of a line of sight that extends to all levels within an organisation is a notable achievement - to what extent can you say the same about your employees? Is there a clear sense of collective person and emotional commitment to the organisation in every individual, regardless of how big or small their role is?

There’s no question that achieving this is most definitely not straightforward, but Black Belt 1 is the first step in this process. It equips you with an understanding of the necessary framework, tools and competencies to get you a seat at the top table, taking you from being a tactical to strategic communicator. The course covers all angles by mastering the basics such as; setting objectives, choosing channels, making your strategy measurable, audiences and segmentation and message development. 

We run our Black Belt courses across the globe and have over 1,500 graduates worldwide – for dates in your region, visit our website. 

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!

Lack of jobs for communication graduates

by Harriet Thomlinson, Intern

Since the recession, we’re constantly hearing how internal communication is becoming an increasingly recognized function – with practitioners being called upon for everything from layoffs, pay freezes to restructures. Strange then, that for such a valued profession, 14 percent of last year’s communication graduates are still unemployed.

The research, carried out by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, revealed that the chances of students finding work post-graduation depend on their choice of subject, with zero unemployment rate for medicine and education (5%) to be the lowest, while communication has the second highest unemployment level, trailing not far behind computer science (17%).

There clearly aren’t enough comms jobs out there, but perhaps if businesses took the profession more seriously, communication students wouldn’t be in such a predicament and the future of communications would seem a little more optimistic.

Not only is this research particularly negative for the communication industry, but as a prospective university student it makes one wonder, “If highly skilled communication graduates can only manage to find jobs in places that don’t require their trained skills, eg. bartending, waitressing, working in a factory, then what’s the point of studying communications at university?”

So, what’s the cause for such statistics? Is it a case of supply over demand? Is it due to a decrease in the number of communication teams, or the scrapping of them all together as a result of the recession?

And if communication is a temporary casualty of the credit crunch, will these statistics potentially dissuade students choosing communication as a vocation, resulting in a lack of future communicators?

After all, let’s not forget that even the fields with the lowest unemployment figures require the help of both internal and external communications for many different aspects of their function. Take a look at how the World Café concept helped employees re-engage during the recession.

If you’re struggling to find a job in communications, check out Melcrum’s jobsite.

Do you think there aren't enough communication roles out there? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Turning SharePoint stress into SharePoint success

By Nishwa Ashraf, Editorial Assistant, Melcrum

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

Is it: Collaboration? Microsoft? Content management?

Or how about: Confusing? Clunky? Lacks intuition?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time we got back to basics?

By Nishwa Ashraf, Editorial Assistant, Melcrum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everybody in this company can read and write, right?

By Belinda Evans, Communications Content Manager, Melcrum

In my former role as a communications practitioner I spent many a happy (and often not-so-happy) hour crafting the perfect message, hoping to both engage and inform with my paragraph-perfect constructions. I may not have always achieved the desired effect, but I always took my ability to construct a sentence and the ability of my audience to read and comprehend that sentence for granted.

With around 40 percent of the Australian workforce not reaching the minimum literacy level needed to meet the demands of everyday life*, it appears that I should have worried less that people wouldn’t bother to read my carefully-crafted messages, and more that they actually couldn’t.

In a report published by the Australian Industry Group yesterday, more than 75 per cent of Australian companies reported that their business was affected by low levels of literacy and numeracy among their employees. The report is based on the results of a survey completed by 338 Australian organizations representing 56,000 employees in total.

Employers reported that the impact of low levels of literacy was broad, affecting productivity; workplace communications and relationships; workforce planning and training; and safety and compliance. Although labourers and process workers were the occupational groups most affected, the report indicated that poor literacy affected relationships at all levels in the workplace, from management to the shop floor. Unsurprisingly, employers also identified communication difficulties between different occupational groups, such as between engineers and customer service departments.

Of the employers surveyed, 38 percent believe they have a role to play in improving workplace literacy and numeracy skills among their workers, however, only eight percent of employers reported they had the capacity to assist their employees to improve these skills.

So, how best to connect with and support a workforce lacking in literacy? Should organizations invest in programs to improve their employees' literacy and numeracy skills, or concentrate on creating an internal communications strategy and channels that meet the challenges of communicating with employees struggling with literacy?

Have you created internal communication channels designed specifically to commuicate with employees with limited literacy skills, or has your organization run any programs to assist employees to improve their skills? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Email me at Belinda.evans@melcrum.com

* In a 2006 Australian Bureau of Statistics survey 40 percent of employed Australians achieved prose literacy scores at level one or level two of a five-point level scale, with level three regarded as the minimum level required to meet the demands of everyday life.

Employee engagement Day 2: Y'all feelin' engaged now?

By James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

Melcrum 6th annual employee engagement conference – Day 2

I’m rich I tell you, rich! I’ve discovered the way to convince every internal communicator this earth has living on its soil that putting communication at the forefront of engagement and performance can make a massive difference to the bottom line of every organisation there is: Chocolate, oh and not forgetting everlasting gobstoppers (courtesy of WMW’s sweet emporium).

On a more serious note, today’s second and last day featured a fantastic keynote presentation from Jennifer Shulte, global engagement director at Mars. The small bribe of a miniature sachet of M&Ms on each table aside, Shulte described how the global food giant had calculated that actively disengaged employees, or “associates” as they’re known (all 68,000 of them across 60 countries), were costing Mars $500 million with eight out of 10 of the poorest performing plants in North America.

Shulte said that disengaged employees used to feel like “trapped prisoners” and that Mars had a certain section of staff that felt "stuck". This, however, was before it introduced Gallup’s Q12 survey tool in 2004 – a series of 12 questions aimed at every team of no less than five “associates” that simply asked: “What do we need to do to drive engagement forward?” In 2004 Mars had a scorecard ratio of engaged to disengaged employees of almost 1:1, in 2007 it rose to 1:5, while today this target has been smashed (this wasn't disclosed but I will of course find out) thanks to Shulte’s team’s work on employee engagement. So how did she do it?

Firstly, the executive team had to take notice. Shulte even heard the CEO suggest that his employees were “not engageable” and “unless we pay them more nothing will change." She took this as a personal challenge and soon convinced the leadership team as soon as Shulte presented the cost disengaged employees were having on Mars’s bottom line.

Shulte had to take evasive action and knew she had to investigate one of the worst performing factories in the States in Cleveland, Tennessee. Unfortunately this was where the majority of employees were long serving, had become disenfranchised with their jobs and their working environment and were all southern, gun carrying Americans. The car park, she said, contained nothing but pick-up trucks with gun racks.

Shulte, a colleague and interestingly, a graphic reporter, parked up and proceeded to interview 24 random employees. They then sat and drew the results of each conversation with each disengaged employee. If there was an award for bravest internal communication piece I don’t think she would have much opposition.

“We went there, spent two days off site with the graphic reporter, and just asked simply, ‘tell us, in your own words, what is and isn't working’, and we heard back exactly what they hated about their jobs, and then moved on to the next person,” she said earlier today.

“We spent some time asking them what the ‘good old days’ were like, capturing all of this information on a big blank piece of paper and then we worked with series of photos, asking them to choose two pictures of what their ideal workplace looked like and what they would like to see in the future. And this was big guys with guns!” she added.

But her efforts paid off, in a big way. “One of angriest guys we had met said: “At last I feel better going home to my family because I finally feel something is going to change around here.”

Today, the company’s vision of what good engagement looks like in Mars has completely changed. Everyone now has their say, there are action planning groups where staff can leave their day jobs for 24 hours and discuss various issues as well as mingle with managers who present to employees and employees present to managers, with the critical step being they work together to implement their ideas. As Shulte summarised: “There is now a real commitment to making the actions happen.”

Today engagement is on every business document, while every associate within a local team is expected to take the Q12 and discuss it in-depth with one another.

Look out for a full summary of both days on Melcrum’s website tomorrow.

Sometimes the best way to get started is to stop....

With rising expectations for corporate intranet functionality comes a rising tide of anxiety about losing ownership and control. Not all, but many of us fear that emerging social technologies will wipe away the policies and systems that we’ve worked so hard to establish and maintain in our organizations.

The good news is that if we’re worried, then it means we care. The bad news is that anxiety can lead to fuzzy decision-making. The business needs come second, and our fears take the driving seat.

So what should you do?

Take time to think it through, says Nielson Norman Group’s Amy Schade, featured in our latest issue of Strategic Communication Management. She talked to our team about the Group’s latest report – the widely respected Intranet Design Annual – and gave insight into what makes a standout intranet.

She said the winners carefully considered how to integrate social technologies into existing intranets – they didn’t just grab for the latest tool or widget. Even better, they introduced features for solid business reasons, not in reaction to hype or fear or pressure.

It seems simple, but great thinking is a lot tougher than it looks. It takes collaboration and dialogue. Knowing what all the options are and being able to take a step back to consider all of them. It takes conviction and strength, and perhaps most importantly, insight into what your business needs.

Attend Melcrum’s new masterclass - Intranets with Impact - and you’ll get insights into all of these core skills and competencies. You'll leave with an appreciation of your intranet as a business tool rather than "just another channel" and an actionable plan that will really make a difference to your organization.

Intranets with Impact

May 18th–19th 2010,

Orlando, Florida

www.melcrum.com/intranetswithimpact

Melcrum's SharePoint course is a sell-out!

By Nishwa Ashraf, Editorial Assistant, Melcrum

It’s just under a month before Melcrum’s SharePoint for Communicators course makes its debut in London, and it seems to have captured the intrigue of many - it’s already sold out!

Around 40% of corporate intranets are now SharePoint based. And if your company is using other Microsoft technologies, then it’s likely your IT department is keen to migrate to it as a communications platform (and has probably installed it as a “trial” already). It’s no wonder SharePoint has quickly become a hot topic for Internal Communicators.

Often seen as an enabler, It can be used to host intranet sites that access shared workspace, information stores and documents, as well as host-defined applications such as wikis and blogs. Simply put, SharePoint is actually two things that Microsoft group under a single product name - a collaboration tool and a portal platform.

It all sounds very good, but SharePoint can also be a potential block for internal communicators who may not always be well versed on how it works.

Sam Marshall, Melcrum’s SharePoint course trainer and director of ClearBox Consulting, said: “Whilst there are many courses and books available on SharePoint, they have a strong bias towards people in a technology or administrator role. A successful SharePoint deployment depends on internal communicators taking a clear lead for the site strategy and content, as well as knowing what governance to have in place.

“What I mostly hear from communicators using the portal platform as the basis for their corporate intranet is that it’s ‘good enough’ for most things but doesn’t excel in any area. Certainly if you just want to publish news it’s less straightforward than a typical web content management system. In organizations where the collaboration side of SharePoint has taken off, this can create headaches for internal communications, if the right governance is not in place you can end up with hundreds of poorly made sites competing with the corporate intranet.”

This prompted Melcrum to hold four one-day courses: SharePoint for Internal Communicators (London, UK) and Intranets with Impact (Orlando, US), aimed at mid- to senior-level communicators, focusing on how SharePoint can support communication strategy for organizations, and in turn their goals.

Taking a business-led rather than technology-led approach, the course aims to cover various topics, including:

• Key components and case studies
• How to build an effective relationship with IT
• Blending corporate communications with user generated content
• The role of internal communications in governing, shaping and promoting use.

Robin Crumby, managing director of Melcrum, said: “The decision to buy SharePoint is often taken by the IT department. So internal comms teams find themselves in at the deep end tasked with populating SharePoint with news and encouraging collaboration and a sense of community without a thorough understanding of how SharePoint works. This new course will address this gap and make sure that internal communicators are equipped with the knowledge and skills to get the best out of SharePoint first time.”

We’ve still got a few places left for the 9th June 2010 course, so if you’re interested get booking.

In the meantime, what’s your stance on SharePoint?