Miri McDonald

"Don't trust the cascade" - 7 internal communications challenges and trends

A few weeks ago I attended the Marcus Evans 6th Annual Employee Engagement and Internal Communications Conference in Orlando on behalf of Smartbrief. I covered many of the speakers' presentations (see below) individually but thought it might be interesting to those of you in internal communications to get my take on the issues and trends that seem to be emerging these days. 

1. Managers need more information to be effective communicators. There was a consensus that this level in the organization is a make or break to your messaging. The solutions of late seem to be moving towards tools that provide quick summaries and detailed information for managers to use with staff.
2. Don’t trust the cascade. There were a few related issues here. Leaders don't always get messages down the management chain and even when they do, they don't provide much information. Managers are not all created equal - some are good communicators and some don't at all. There is a trend moving away from the cascade all together and instead getting direct communications to managers and employees using intranet articles, videos and other vehicles like social media tools.
3. Use a conversational tone. With transparency and engagement being the all the rage, organizations are finding that employees enjoy a more informal tone in communications. It helps to cut through the jargon and get to the heart of the matter.
4. Get on the social media bandwagon. Internal social media is becoming a powerful tool for employees to feel they a voice and connect w/each other. The companies that are getting it right are not afraid of employees expressing their opinions on internal AND external social media venues (Facebook, Twitter, Yammer). They are also experimenting with engagement using videos, online employee contests, and tools like salesforce.com's ideas product.
5. Employees are customers. Branding is becoming more important as a tool for selling the company's values and vision to employees and engaging them in the mission. Internal communications  are being bundled as part of an overall brand/package versus a single email/article.
6. What? You don't use a computer? More and more companies seem challenged by employees NOT using computers (since e-communications is more the norm now). There is a trend towards finding solutions to engage with retail floor staff and factory/warehouse employees.
7. Where is the best home for internal communications? This function lives in different places in the organization (HR, Marketing, PR). However, when internal communications is part of HR, seems to easier to implement engagement programs and surveys. Seems like this is a place for further study to determine where internal communications can be most effective.

Do these trends ring true for you? What else are you experiencing?

Other articles in the Marcus Evans 6th Annual Employee Engagement and Internal Communications Conference series:

• Discovery Communications: Lessons in Crisis Communications
• How Discovery made its 25th anniversary more than a party
• How Molson Coors brewed up stronger engagement
• How Best Buy strives for transparency
• UBS communicating during times of difficult change
• Falling in love at work: Macy’s Lisa Gick on employee engagement
• Live from Orlando: Frito lay gets creative communicating with frontline employees

 

Discovery Communications: Lessons in crisis communications

This posting is part of a series of pieces I wrote while attending the Marcus Evans 6th Annual Employee Engagement and Internal Communications Conference last week in Orlando on behalf of Smartbrief. Read the companion piece about Discovery's 25th Anniversary in the Smartbrief on Workforce blog.

Discovery Communications celebrated its 25^th anniversary this year. The company thought that would be their most significant event this year. However, on September 1, a man armed with guns and explosives entered Discovery’s HQ building and took three individuals hostage for several hours. Thankfully no employees were hurt or killed; the gunman was shot by police during their work to rescue the hostages safely.

This experience taught their internal communications team some invaluable lessons for communicating to their employees during a crisis. We all hope we never have to experience a situation like this one but if we do, it is best to be prepared and communicate in a way that keeps everyone safe and sound.

Tim Redd, Manager of Discovery’s Internal Communications said that nothing could have prepared them for this event but already being a cohesive team really helped them quickly jump into action. In a crisis, humans instinctually go into auto-pilot so it’s useful to have a frame of reference for what that might look like in a crisis situation. Redd shared some tips for successful crisis communications that could benefit any organization:

• Have back-up communications methods in case one system fails.
• Use specific and serious words in messaging (for example, “gunman”) to ensure people take the situation seriously and understand what is happening.
• Consider setting up a phone bridge to allow executives to be informed of the developing situation in real time.
• Don’t forget about employees in other offices. They may see news reports or get calls from a customer. They are also concerned about their friends and co-workers.
• Assign an official out-of-office meeting place where you can store grab-n-go bags with spare computers, chargers and supplies.
• Essential team members should not also be assigned “floor captains.”
• Keep checklists and contact lists ready in your wallet, badge sleeve or on a jump drive.
• Assign the role of “head checker” to a team member who is further removed or not experiencing the crisis first-hand.
• Monitor colleagues’ behavior and relieve them of duties if necessary.
• Extend counseling resources.

Redd also discussed how and when to respond to press phone calls. He said that for Discovery, the first priority was employee safety and well-being. They felt it was their number one concern was to do whatever was needed for employees first. They tracked press inquiries and returned press calls immediately after the situation was resolved.

Other articles in the Marcus Evans 6th Annual Employee Engagement and Internal Communications Conference series:

• How Discovery made its 25th anniversary more than a party
• How Molson Coors brewed up stronger engagement
• How Best Buy strives for transparency
• UBS communicating during times of difficult change
• Falling in love at work: Macy’s Lisa Gick on employee engagement
• Live from Orlando: Frito lay gets creative communicating with frontline employees

 

 

Live from Orlando: Frito Lay gets creative communicating with frontline employees

Katherine Ritchey is Frito Lay’s director for internal communications. Today she talked about how Frito Lay has improved frontline employee communications at the Marcus Evans 6th Annual Employee Engagement and Internal Communications Conference in Orlando, FL.

Some challenges that Frito Lay faces are the employee’s inability to prioritize the many messages across the company including parent company messages from PepsiCo. In addition, so many employees have limited connectivity. Specifically, 15,000 of Frito Lay’s 50,000 employees are on a computer. Some of those have dial-up meaning large files and videos don’t really work for them.

Frito Lay’s manufacturing employees in plants, factories, and long haul drivers don’t use computers on a daily basis. They are spread out over about 35 sites, across multiple shifts, with no common meeting place, and very little face-to-face communications. Frito Lay wanted to make a concerted effort to improve communications to these field employees. After researching best practices and gathering information from employees regarding their communications needs, they implemented the following solutions for the field:

• Operations leader communications portal housed on the corporate intranet site including training and education so leaders know how to use the site and what is available to them.
• Videos from senior leaders talking about priorities including those that were conducted in the field to show leaders visiting various locations
• Slides and scripts managers can use for site meetings
• Newsletter templates and content that can be customized for each site
• Posters and photos for bulletin boards and local flat screens
• Customized mailings of meetings in a box with locally-relevant content such as competitor data
• Podcast stations to listen to leader messages
• Company-wide sharing of field news and best practices to connect field accomplishments back to the organization and instill pride in the field.

These methods were highly successful and as a result Frito Lay is using an employee engagement taskforce to continue to move forward with this initiative. For example, through this group they learned that the field wanted a more prompt notification of new content so alerts were created.

It’s interesting to note that although these employees don’t have computers they do use mobile tools like iPhones. As such, the future plans include mobile applications, video and photo sharing tools and an online ambassador program.

Get the skinny on employee engagement and internal communications!

Next Monday and Tuesday (Nov 8-9) I'll be live blogging and tweeting from the Marcus Evans 6th Annual Employee Engagement and Internal Communications conference in Orlando, FL. Here's the skinny on how to follow my blog posts and tweets:

• Blog posts: I'll be blogging for Smartbrief on Workforce. You can find my postings on http://smartblogs.com/workforce/
• Tweets: I'll tweet from my twitter account: @miri_orgchange

You can also follow @sbworkforce to get the latest updates.

Please tweet with me and post comments and questions! 

Here's the agenda with a list of the speakers! Feel free to post comments here with questions you'd like me to ask the speakers. Download ME_EEIC

 

Meeting design in action: Tranquil Space retreat

I’ve talked about my passion for designing an effective meeting on this blog before. Therefore, I thought it might be useful to share a real meeting design to help people with their own future meetings.

In September I co-facilitated the team retreat for Tranquil Space Yoga. Kimberly Wilson, the owner and founder of tranquil space, charged us with designing a retreat that would allow the team to create the ideal tranquil space experience for their customers. The retreat was scheduled on a Sunday afternoon and we had 2.5 hours for the session.

Meeting design key factors: 

• Leader interviews: Before any meeting I like to get leaders to weigh in on what they think should happen at the retreat. Their feedback helped determine priorities and make exercises meaningful for participants.
• Audience: I’ve talked about knowing your audience before but I think it’s really worth repeating. If we came in with very ‘corporate’ activities we would have alienated the yoga studio staff. At the same time, they hired us to bring some structure in so we needed to find a balance.
• Timeframe:  Depending on your involvement with the corporate world, 2.5 hours may seem like an eternity or you may think it’s a tight timeframe. A yoga studio is definitely in the former camp so maximizing the 2.5 hours was important. 
• Space: Although it was tight, it was important for the group to stay together in one big room versus dividing them into separate rooms. This goes back to knowing the audience and maximizing time. This group is big on community so it was important for them to feel their collective vibe in the room. Also, going back to maximizing the time, sending people off and then asking them to come back quickly is difficult. 
• Feedback from other retreats: We heard that previous retreats touched on lots of topics at a high level and the staff wanted to get deeper this time and have more tangible outcomes.

The exercises

We conducted two exercises with the staff. These were tailored to be relevant and meaninful for the group.

1)       “Through the Eyes of a Yoga Student” asked participants to think about an ideal version of the Tranquil Space experience from a student’s perspective, using the five senses to help them describe the experiences in a more tangible way. We used numbers to mix staff up and get diverse perspectives in the small group conversations.

We broke the TS experience down into 5 major areas: 

1.  
   1. The check-in process
   2. Participating in a class/workshop/teaching training
   3. A stop in the boutique before or after class
   4. Getting a spa treatment
   5. What they tell their friends about their TS experience at Whole Foods at the end of the day

2)      “Our contribution” allowed the groups to develop specific strategies for making the Tranquil Space experience amazing every time for their customers. This time we asked people to get with their peer groups (for example all teachers together or all managers together) so they could strategize about what their group as a whole could do to improve the TS experience.

We finished off the retreat by asking people to get in small groups and make one commitment to something they can do differently to improve the tranquil space experience. We also handed out index cards and asked staff to write their commitment down and bring it to their next meeting with their manager. This would allow TS to incorporate the outcome of the retreat into the performance management process. The leaders shared their commitments out loud with the entire group. The session closed with a short meditation.

This design really worked for Tranquil Space and we got great feedback about the use of time. I think the main reason it worked was because we listened to what they wanted and tailored it specifically for them.

What kinds of cool meetings have you designed for specific audiences?