The Melcrum Blog

End of the huddle: Are we in danger of losing face-to-face comms?

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

Every morning at 10am without fail, the group heads at Melcrum will have a huddle. And considering many people here either run, cycle or commute to work on the London underground and that medical experts are warning of a widespread outbreak of swine flu as the winter months draw in, this may all sound rather unhygienic, but unless you’ve tried it, that’s where you’d be wrong. When better to set the tone for the working day than first thing in the morning, a time when everyone’s fresh (minded) and raring to go.

The first rule of the huddle is to, well, huddle. In simple terms this entails gathering in a small circle with one member of the team leading the way. Whether he or she is called the ‘huddler’ is neither here nor there, call them whatever you like, but above all the leader must always maintain control and ensure brevity. The huddle must not last more than 10 minutes. That would be more muddle than huddle.

It is also key to remember that a huddle is not a discussion but a series of statements mentioned and listened to attentively by the key members of the company, something many CEOs could perhaps adopt in order to have a better understanding of what their line managers do on a daily basis. If they had embraced this form of communication it may well have saved the jobs, careers and foundations of many of the world’s workers, executives and iconic businesses that have now crumpled into a sorry, recessionary heap.

Putting the recession to one side, the huddle leader then goes round each member of the group asking each individual what he or she is working on that day. The group leader may then ask for a short daily sales report or any outstanding achievements, events, or queries to be announced but this is also done strictly in turn and in the same order. This is finally followed by the leader then questioning each huddle member on whether or not they are facing any potential ‘blocks’, or problems that could prevent them from carrying out their daily duties. Anything else is then taken offline and worked on separately.

Social networking

The explosion of social networking and platforms such as Yammer, however, got me thinking about whether or not we need huddles any more? Having access to the internet, 3G mobile phones, endless iPhone applications, email, Twitter, instant messaging, texting, voicemail, video on demand, and even the now prehistoric but still essential conference call allows us to communicate whenever we want, from wherever we want and with whoever we want. Not only that, we can use whatever method we choose because the majority of professionals have access to all this technology for virtually no cost whatsoever.

But unlike the blinkered 1990s vision of a paperless office (he says printing this off), essentially doing business and communicating with someone without ever meeting them during your working career could eventually happen. Just ask yourself how many times someone has said to you, “it’s great to finally meet you after all those emails”, or “I never realised you looked like that in real life?” Real life? People have forgotten what it’s like to meet and simply don’t have as much face time as they used to. And, year after year, this trend is increasing.

On the flipside, however this can have its advantages. Take Yammer for instance, a closed corporate network that allows you to connect with all your colleagues via a website, pop-up desktop application and/or mobile phone app and to continually share with your colleagues what work or even social activities you are doing that day, week or month. You could be in IT fixing the server that runs the entire operation, or in sales and in need of volunteers for a cross-country charity cycle ride or perhaps in HR carrying out a series of interviews for a key senior of the team who has just left. The point is that everyone in your network has real-time access to the events and actions of their colleagues day in, day out. At Melcrum we’re using it as an experiment and the amount of knowledge sharing, ideas and information you learn about the business and each other is invaluable. Using a tool like Yammer allows you to communicate to your colleagues simply, cost-free and with messages targeted specifically to them and their network. I’ll be sharing this blog link with my colleagues the instant it goes online.

Yammer serves the same purpose as a huddle but in this case is arguably more transparent and messaging is not restricted to a small number of senior leaders. However, face-to-face contact and that instant sharing of crucial first thing in the morning, targeted information is immediately lost. Many communicators have faced or are facing huge budget cuts and being told that face-to-face communication is the most effective form of comms during a recession, but is it really? Surely in this tech-savvy day and age real-time online conversations then lead to an increase in information sharing and eventually personal contact? I’d be very keen to see any research on how effective online conversations are compared to face-to-face meetings.

There is, however, no instant solution. Each company has its own culture, needs, and Web 2.0 experience levels. The common answer to a successful internal communications strategy is to use a combination of communication channels. Many companies now use a blend of blogs, conference calls, live question and answer video streaming with the executive board as well as face-to-face meetings, but despite this leap forwards one still has to question, how effective this all is, where this is all heading and how we will be communicating within our organizations in the future.

Now that I’ve blogged and not physically spoken to any of you before I’d better get on with the rest of my day.

Please email me with any thoughts to: james.bennett@melcrum.com, find me on Twitter or log onto Melcrum's Twitter feed.

Social Media Workshop buzz hots up

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

The one-day Melcrum Social Media Workshop on June 24th is getting closer and closer. Not, admittedly as close as my face has been to several dozen commuters' armpits on a number of London’s buses in the last 48 hours thanks to the Underground strike, but very close nevertheless. 14 days to be precise. And we’ve got a great day for those clamouring to join us here in Hammersmith at Melcrum’s training centre.

In fact our trainer for the day Benjamin Ellis, director of Redcatco and social media expert extraordinaire, and Abi Signorelli, director of internal communications at Virgin Media, got together this morning to finalise the agenda for the event. Not only that, they also produced an AudioBoo - a 3 minute recording via a special application on the Apple iPhone. Abi also joined myself and Melcrum founders Victoria Mellor and Robin Crumby on Wednesday afternoon Boo’d us, so to speak and then I turned the camera back onto Abi to ask her what delegates can expect from the day and how she has used social media to great effect at Virgin Media. She’s the kind of person that if she hasn’t downloaded the latest ‘app’ onto her iPhone within 30 minutes of being developed and added to Apple’s gigantic library of applications she gets upset. You can’t blame her, social media is fascinating and I’m as caught up the excitement as her and many other internal communicators.

So what can you expect on June 24?

• The day is designed to be a very practical and hands-on series of interactive sessions complete with a number of exercises specifically created for internal communicators.
• It will set the context and go from where you, as communicators using social media, are today to using the technology, and gaining the necessary skills and knowledge for you to take it back to your teams and improve communications within your business.
• It will examine the great places in which to use social media and the areas where you shouldn’t using real-life examples and case studies, including the huge successes Virgin Media’s internal communications team has had using a variety of technologies and social media platforms.
• It will dispel the myths and fears that some internal communicators may have about social media and show you how, with the right tools, knowledge, skills, business culture and technology, it can open up a whole host of new opportunities to communicate with your stakeholders.
• It will show you how the technology behind social media is among the most user-friendly and interactive we, as professionals and internal communicators, have ever seen and used allowing you to tap into possibilities you never knew existed.

I hope you can join us in 14 days. I look forward to seeing you then. Meanwhile, please follow me on Twitter via iether @Geskey or @Melcrum.

US internal comms ahead on use of social media

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

By now I’m sure you all know what a big fan of social media I am. I can Tweet and blog until the cows come home, only virtually mind you. But I’m not alone using social media for business purposes, so it seems are US internal communicators.

Consulting firm Watson Wyatt, well know for its study on making the link between an organisation’s financial performance and communication, has discovered that despite their relative youth, US businesses are increasingly embracing Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking tools, blogs and webcasts for internal communications and as part of their overall technology mix.

The firm’s 2009 HR Technology Trends survey that questioned a total of 181 and 14,000 US employees covering more than a dozen industries, found that since the economic downturn began, 72% of employers have increased their use of the intranet and 61% have increased their use of email to communicate with employees. Employers are also using new communications tools with close to a third (32%) increasing their use of webcasts; 13% increasing their use of social networking tools; and 12% increasing their use of blogs.

Large HR and internal communications budget cutbacks were cited as the reason behind this increase in accessible and principally free social media tools. Interestingly, however, despite a rise in intranet usage, the survey discovered that the adoption of generic intranets has almost ground to a halt. While 86% of companies currently have intranets, only 2% plan to implement them in the next two years.Instead they are turning to various social media tools to plan for future HR and internal comms strategies with 13% of US respondents saying they plan to introduce and implement blogs, wikis (13%) and podcasts (10%) in the same timeframe.

“Web 2.0 technologies work well, in most instances, for targeting specific employee and manager groups, and companies are using them in appropriate situations,” said Jon Osborne, senior technology consultant at Watson Wyatt. “Using tools such as role-based portals, internal blogs and webcasts ensures that both managers and employees can send and receive tailored messages in an engaging format. This is useful for improving productivity and maintaining employee morale and engagement, particularly in this difficult economic time,” he added.

Key Findings:

• The economy has taken a toll on HR budgets. More than 70% of participants reported a budget decrease, with an average decrease of 1%.
• Most companies stayed true to their sourcing strategy in the past 24 months. The majority of companies that did make a move opted for more outsourcing.
• Companies have increased their use of the intranet, e-mail and webcasts for communications during the economic crisis.
• Satisfaction is high for those that have deployed or are piloting Web 2.0 technologies, but planning for future deployments is surprisingly low. Social networking, while extremely new, is already being used more than most other Web 2.0 tools.
• Talent management has become a higher priority for one-third of companies due to the economic crisis.
• More than half of companies are planning more talent management technology in the next 24 months, with an emphasis on integration. Forty-six percent will integrate their existing applications or leverage their enterprise resource planning (ERP), and 27 percent will move to an integrated suite.

What are you finding in your respective countries? Are similar increases happening in your organisations? Are you using Twitter within your employee network? Let me know either by emailing me directly at james.bennett@melcrum.com, or tweet me on Twitter by going to Twitter.com and searching for @Geskey or @Melcrum.

PS: Melcrum is holding its first (of many I'm sure) social media workshop on June 24th here at Melcrum HQ in Hammersmith, London. If you haven't already thought about using social media as part of your internal comms strategy perhaps now's the time?

Is Facebook dead as an internal comms tool?

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

Opinions on social media are constantly divided within the internal comms profession, and as communicators fall into two very distinct dinner parties.

We are either tank top wearing old schoolers, who haven’t ventured musically further than The Everly Brothers and stoically maintain that by overly focusing on Facebook, for example, we are ignoring the core values of comms. Or we fall into the new generation of 1980s retro dressed twentysomethings who, when they’re not Tweeting on their iPhones or downloading a Ricky Gervais podcast, tell their more traditional peers that they are in fact missing out on the biggest evolution in communications since Sir Tim Berners Lee decided to turn the Filofax into the World Wide Web.

I questioned our loyal audience on our Linked In Melcrum Communicators Network as to whether they thought Facebook was dead as an internal comms tool? Naturally I realise I was preaching to the converted. If you responded online then you were already in some way gripped by some form of social media and had signed up to Linked In, which is, in my opinion, as good a professional-to-professional comms tool there is online.

We as communicators, however, rather predictably and equally healthily have mixed views. It seems that most of us have considered, or even used, Facebook as a comms tool but with wildly varying degrees of success. We have never been afraid to test it out as a means of communicating with colleagues, but following a short period of experimentation perhaps realised there were either better tools already in place or that we would rather use other social media sites. Or, as some of you mentioned, even wait for the next big online buzz to hit our screens.

Haroon Bijli, an online marketing and communications professional at Tata Consultancy Services, says Facebook still remains a “useful means to keep in touch with employees who are not on the internal network, work from client or home locations, or who are always on the move.” He has a point. It is extremely tough to constantly communicate and get those key messages to remote workers. Of course, you could use Instant Messenger or Blackberry Chat, for example, but it’s difficult to argue against your workforce using a resource that has 200 million users, many of which belong to your organisation. The again, unless they are connected to the internet 24/7, you have no way of reaching them other than simply giving them a simple phone call, which defeats, or rather obliterates the purpose of communicating with someone.

Bijli and others, however, argue that FB will not replace the corporate intranet and that it serves as more of an add-on, a bonus that can complement the internal resource whenever necessary. Again this can often be true. Facebook has done wonders for social media, and opened our eyes to its possibilities. But corporate it is not. The only time it can perhaps swivel its zombie biting, strawberry throwing head towards anything resembling professionalism is when people from the same company organise events, or create common groups, be they sporting, charitable or simply after work clubs where employees can get together and constructively socialise.

Mark K Curtis, an internal communications practitioner, backs this up and explains that Facebook would never truly work as an effective internal comms tool because its main mandate is to connect people socially and that any messages from employers to employees would almost act as an intrusion of privacy. It would be a bit like the boss coming round uninvited to your birthday barbeque dressed in his favourite Bermuda shorts and string vest.

“Facebook discourages multiple accounts. Therefore a user would need to give an employer the ability to post messages to their personal Facebook page. This may not be appropriate or something people would be happy to do with a social mesh. And employees have a right to keep their personal lives private. “They may be happy to subscribe to one-way channels though such as RSS – widely available on mobile phones and PDAs these days. This is certainly a question we shouldn't be afraid to ask,” he adds.

Karen Drury, the owner of fe3 Management Consulting says FB was never a corporate tool in the first place suggesting that it is took “lacking in control” for the majority of senior managers and was and still is time consuming to sort and search for the right information. Michele Egan, senior communications officer at The World Bank goes so far as to say that Facebook has “never” and “never should be” been a tool for internal communications. “What would be more interesting to find out,” she says, “is whether the features that make FB such an effective social networking tool are being adopted inside the organisation in any way”.

Curtis adds that one of the main challenges of social media is not the technology or its place at the heart of internal comms, but finding management and IT personnel that have the passion to support these new and often exciting channels. “In my experience the implementation of social media – even strictly internally – can be slow and the politics heavy. This is short sighted because, not long from now, employees are going to look at the management of email as cumbersome and ineffective – which many studies already suggest that it is.”

I tend to agree. Whether Facebook is or isn’t an effective tool to use within internal comms teams, is perhaps not the question. As Curtis concludes, the tools that Facebook, Linked In and Twitter employ can be extremely effective communication methods.

“The scalability and popularity of social media suggests that internal communications professionals must recognise its potential, particularity if they intend to be effective business communicators with the employees of the future. No one likes to be left behind.”

Then again, I’ve just received an email in my inbox informing me that Dr Twitty is now ‘following me” on Twitter. Some things are better off being left behind.

Wise words on reducing information overload

A recent message to the Editorial Board of Strategic Communication Management sparked an engaging discussion about how to deal with the problem of information overload, so we thought we'd share some wise words from Per Zetterquiest, one of the board Members and a consultant with Occurro Strategy & Communication in Sweden, in this week's Source Comms.

Per's first suggestion is: "Information overload is to a large degree the result of overcomplicating things. I think the main challenge for communicators is to take a fight for 'simplicity'." He offers many more ways to maintain a steady flow of information in the full article...

Avoiding the pitfalls of social networking

Thanks to all those who volunteered to run special interest and regional groups on The Communicators' Network site, launching in June. You'll be the first to know when the site soft-launches in the next few weeks. If you are still interested but have not got in touch, please contact me as soon as possible.

And thanks also for the off-line comments and suggestions about what people like/dislike about existing social networking sites out there, we are trying our best to incorporate as many as possible into the site.

1. Protecting your privacy: you tell us that you don't want to be bombarded by 'requests to be friends' from people you don't know. Not only will the Communicators' Network allow you to change your privacy settings at any time so you stay in control, but we are making the site invitation-only but still free to join. So the door-policy will help ensure the quality of the membership. Every little helps.

2. Search: if you are looking for someone or something, you expect to find it quickly. We specifically chose SmallWorldLabs because of their search technology which finds anything anywhere very quickly.

3. Networking is nice but not the be all and end all: you told us that networking with others is fun but not enough to keep you coming back. You are busy. We understand. So there has to be more. And The Communicators' Network will be much more. It will be a constantly evolving directory of useful resources as rated and reviewed by YOU, saving you the time and effort of scouring the web for the answer. That means the best blogs, books, articles, events, service providers, you name it, you can rate it.

But it's not too late, if there is anything we can build to make sure the Communicators' Network is not just "useful" or "fun" but "indispensable" and "helping me make better business decisions", then tell us now.

But you better hurry, beta-testing proper starts next week.

Robin Crumby.

The Melcrum Podcast 11th April 2007: Shownotes

We've just published the first edition of the all-new Melcrum Podcast.

You can download the show here (13.7Mb) in mp3 format.

The show is focused on Melcrum's recent Social Media Forum event, and begins with Melcrum editorial assistant, Sona Hathi, interviewing various forum delegates (starting at 0:57) to find out what they're doing with social media at moment, and what they're planning for the future (starting at 4:29).

She also asks them what they'd call themselves if they had avatars in the virtual world of Second Life, and gets some unexpected replies (starts at 5:50)!

In the second half (starts at 7:29), we go on to talk to some of our expert speaker line-up to get their insights into social media.

First, I spoke to David Ferrabee, MD of change & internal comms for Hill & Knowlton (starts at 7:39) about how to persuade companies that blogging can benefit them, and then with social media guru and FIR podcaster Neville Hobson (starts at 9:52) about what he thinks is around the corner.

Then we finish off by speaking to IBM's European new media team leader, Philippe Borremans, about just how it's developing its own social media strategy (11:59).

The whole podcast is about 16 minutes long, so it should fit snuggly into your journey to work.

Once you've had a listen why not come back here and post a comment on this blog entry to let us know what you think of the podcast.

A very social survey

This week's Source for Comms focuses on our recent Social Media Survey, which revealed that many internal communicators now view the technology as the future of their profession.

But won't the traditional internal comms tools like the company meeting and the staff newsletter have a place in this brave new world?  In the end, isn't good old fashioned face-to-face contact still the way to make people feel wanted and give them a better understanding of what they're doing?

Day 2 at the social media forum: Anybody got a cluetrain.com?

Annie, day two of the Social Media Forum turned out to have two major themes, online video and blogging, and just how easy and effective, the two can be.

Both blogging consultant, Debbie Weil, and Microsoft blogging evangelist, Steve Clayton (he's also the firm's UK Partner Group CTO), showed how easy it is to do amazing stuff with blogs.

Steve also has one of the coolest business cards ever, which I couldn't resist scanning, so all you folks can see it:

The monster, BTW, is a metaphor for the big bad Microsoft that we all used to know and dislike.

Steve's presentation focussed on how this has changed, at least in part because the company has developed an effective policy to get its employees  blogging and show the monster is in fact full of nice, normal people who really want to make good software, not take over the world.

If you want to know more have a look at Geek in Disguise, Steve's blog.

So its not the Bill and Steve (Ballmer) show any longer.

The best bit of Debbie's presentation was where she showed how, using youtube, its really, really easy to put video content into your blog as well. And since its a Friday, I thought I'd have a go (an oldie, but a goodie, I think you'll agree):

I also need to give a quick mention to Richard Dennison and Ross Chestney, respectively the internal programme manager and the head of communication services for BT. Like Steve Clayton, Ross and Richard have their own story of breaking down institutional barriers to the way it communicates.

Emphasizing the benefits of starting out small, they talked about introducing innovations like the BTpedia. As they say, if the experiment doesn't require much investment to start, no-one's going to shout at you if it fails. So why not give it a try?

PS. And cluetrain? Ross mentioned the site during his presentation, with a heavy recomendation that anyone who thinks they're anyone in social media should go and have a read. So here a link, www.cluetrain.com, go read.

PPS. My version was ' Sports champ vicar's drink-drive shame after wife's death.'

What's happening so far at the Social Media Forum?

So, here I am, half way through the first day of Melcrum's Social Media Forum. And the hot topics getting tongues wagging so far? In the first session of the day, Philippe Borremans - the European Leader of IBM's Global New Media Team - discussed IBM's use of social media tools so far. Something interesting the company's been experimenting with is an internal video contest which asked for entries on the subject of innovation. It's apparently helped to increase employee engagement at IBM and some of the videos have been uploaded to YouTube.

One of Philippe's main messages for encouraging the successful take-up of social media tools, was to start small and educate internally - set clear blogging guidelines, for example, and there can be little room for error, or harm to your company's reputation (finger's crossed!).

In Neville Hobson's session 'How to create and launch a social media strategy for your organisation', we heard about all the latest social media tools currently worrying the CEOs of companies all over the land. From Twitter to Flickr, TechMe to Facebook, the shows of hands and delegate discussions indicated the biggest reason companies haven't embraced blogging (in particular) so far, is fear. Fear that an employee will inadvertently, or otherwise, harm the company's reputation.

One delegate mentioned that at her organisation employees were reluctant to contribute to a wiki because of worries that their postings would be edited to the point of misrepresentation/misinterpretation. And Neville left with the advice that we should all be aware of the business opportunities that Second Life can offer...

...more from the Social Media Forum later.