I’ve long been a fan of integration and collaboration across the engagement disciplines of internal and external communication in the interests of developing healthier, sustainable brands. So I’m pleased to see what the PR industry has been up to in Stockholm recently and the publication of the Stockholm Accords.

Notable PR professionals have recently gathered at the World Public Relations Forum where they have been produced a “call to action” for what they call Public Relations Professionals.

The Accords are a rallying call for the global PR community to commit to work to some code of practice.  The aim is to “administer its principles on a sustained basis and to affirm them throughout the profession, as well as to management and other relevant stakeholder groups”.

In short, those who have gathered have created a model suggesting that if we coordinate all communication, then we have a sound basis for management, the basis for communicating internally, which gives us the basis for communicating externally which then provides the basis for governance and social responsibility. All sweet music to my ears.

They also suggest that by doing all of these things correctly, we will achieve organizational sustainability. In short, public relations, through holistic stakeholder management, can ensure that organizations adapt and endure, largely through listening and responding.

Interestingly, the Accords give prominence to internal communication and communication from the inside out and outside in. Surprisingly perhaps, 2 of the 7 Accords are about Internal Communication.

Now I’ve been a longstanding critic of what I have referred to as a plague of short termism within organizations.

I have also pointed to lack of authenticity as a largely unrecognized catalyst behind the recent global recession, creating flawed notions of performance culture development and a boom and bust approach to management:

 As a result, I’m likely to support anything which has the vision of sustainability at its core and the song of authenticity in its heart. I applaud initiatives that look to bring the communication and engagement disciplines closer together to reverse the negative perceptions associating PR with the 90s phenomenon of spin and lack of authenticity. I’ll certainly celebrate anything that raises the profile of the power of joined up communication in the interests of developing organizations fit for the medium to long term purpose.

But the words need to be accompanied by actions. Apparently around 1,000 international communications professionals contributed to the Accords. The fact that they have devoted so much time and effort at such trying times speaks volumes. There really aren’t any excuses left for failing to take an integrated approach to managing brands.

The Peter Principle states that “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” It was formulated by Dr Lawrence Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book by the same name.

I call them “the brand dead” or “brand spectators” who fur up the organisation’s arteries. Most MDs tolerate a Peter or two. But when conditions change, Peter and pals can very quickly poison your brand from within. When the big battalions are mobilised and change is demanded, the Peter’s, not the market conditions, are your worst enemy.

Consider the impact a Peter can have on your recruitment drive.

“Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it . . . ; Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.” The late David Ogilvy, advertising executive

“If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings—and put compensation as a carrier behind it—you almost don’t have to manage them.” Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric

Ogilvy and Welch point the way towards recruitment nirvana – making the most of the fact that it’s an employer’s market to recruit experienced; challenging; maverick; game changers who will stimulate the innovation you need.

But the Peters will desperately cling onto the status quo, recruit in their own image and reinforce the employer brand which failed to spot the issues which have since marched all the way around the corner and into your boardroom.

And if you’ve encouraged Peter-style behaviour within your intermediaries and recruitment agents, you’re in deep trouble as they will doubtless perpetuate a protectionist culture.

When you get a moment, just take a look at the various recruitment and blogging forums and consider how many really good people are out there at the moment. Listen to what they’re saying about the recruitment practices of the Peters. Ask yourself whether you know who your Peters are and whether Peter can be motivated to change?

But most of all question whether your recruitment strategy is paying Peter by robbing Paul and the impact this is having and will have on the performance of your brand.

In the UK we’ve become obsessed with the notion of the Employer Brand.  There are a number of definitions but, in short, this is essentially the brand (in its physical and behavioural forms), the employer presents to existing, potential and new employees. 

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with positioning brand as a concept as applicable to the internal audience and employee audience as the customer audience. And it’s a welcome change to perceive employees and potential employees as customers of the internal support functions.  However, it’s an equation without balance.

I believe our HR functions can and should take a step further towards embracing the role of brand management in the motivation, development, recruitment and management of employees (see Brand Engagement ). That extra step means moving beyond Employer Branding and embracing the notion of the Employment Brand. It calls for a lot more than a simple shift in semantics.

We can lure employees to our employer shop window with silvery-tongued promises, clearly differentiated package, glitzy brochures featuring models airbrushed offices and slick recruitment processes, with a seamless link between the core business and linked suppliers like recruitment companies and marketing organisations.  But how do we keep them people once they step through the doors and complete the induction programme? How do we prevent potential brand ambassadors from becoming brand saboteurs if they become disenchanted with the difference between what they were promised and what they experience?

Just as a brand, from a customer perspective, isn’t the promise made but the promise delivered, the Employment Brand is the result of the Employer Brand minus the Employee Brand (i.e. what the people processes promise minus what they actually deliver). 

It’s a simple twist but by focusing on the notion of Employment Brand it keeps the minds of those responsible for managing the people processes firmly focused on constantly ensuring they understand what they’re promising new as well as existing employees and that they are delivering against that promise. 

This approach calls for close collaboration between recruiters; inductors; measurers; people developers; communicators and brand managers. It’s a massive and positive opportunity for HR departments to step confidently into the brand breach with their marketing colleagues:

-         to develop one compelling story about the brand

-         to work to a consistent set of values

As recruitment markets gradually move back in favour of the talent pool, this shift in emphasis may just be a genuine brand differentiator.

 Brands are built from within.  Brands are not about promises made by marketing. They’re about promises met by employees.

When staff choose industrial action; walk out; strike it signals a fundamental disconnect between your employees and your brand. Employee engagement has broken down.  It’s rebuildable, but only if everyone involved remembers that communication is more about listening than it is about pushing and managing messages.

Strikes tend to be synonymous with the public sector – like the Winter of Discontent in the 70s or miner’s strikes a decade later.  They are usually simplified in the press as clashes of intransigent polar extremes; management vs workers; greed vs survival. But they’re a lot more complicated than the caricatures of greasy pinstripes vs blue collar table bashers suggest.

Consider the Royal Mail dispute. On the face of it this can be seen as the death throes of the once irresistible force of New Labour’s spin doctors meeting the formerly immovable object of trade unionism. But talk to the ordinary postie or even customer in the street (or behind the letterbox) and this dispute is about so much more. 

It’s about a fight for identity by employees who are emotionally connected with a brand which they, and their customers, see as a national institution (see Buckingham; Brand Engagement http://www.by2w.co.uk/new.html ).

It’s about culture, “the way things get done around here” and workers resisting the march of automation which experience tells us may slash cost off the bottom line but does not guarantee better customer service or an improved quality of life (anyone remember the days of second post and trustworthy postal staff?).  In short, it’s a brand battleground that reflects a range of hot social issues topics including culture, values and identity.

As someone who specialises in helping organisations manage brands from within I’ve been called upon to help avert three high profile strikes in the last five years. Two were in the retail sector during the run up to Christmas and the most recent was a college where the staff were actively dissuading students from enrolling.

In each case the core issue wasn’t about pay and rations but fundamental communication issues like listening; consultation and disengaged staff who felt their managers were no longer connected with the values they believed their brand represented. In all three cases, catastrophe was averted through re-opening communication channels; fostering respect and active listening

People care more about the brands they work for than you may think.  Culture, the way people do things within the organisations that support those brands, is probably the most important determinant of brand performance.

It’s worth spending some time understanding the true dna of your brand. If you don’t know what brand engagement is worth, especially in these lean times, can you risk your employees deserting their posts? Or even worse, disengaged staff continuing to represent your brand?

WASP males don’t tend to get too many invitations to be involved in the promotion of diversity management; which is a shame really.  I’m a firm believer in the notion that the promotion of diversity should embrace the full range of stakeholders; it should truly practice inclusiveness in the way stakeholders are engaged with the philosophy or it runs the risk of being seen as a marginal activity aimed at an exclusive audience.  A “push” communication approach may be one of the reasons why the diversity flag bearers within organisations sometimes find themselves struggling for real influence at the top table.

But this thought piece isn’t to critique the notion of diversity or challenge its increasing relevance to the organisation development and employee engagement agenda. I would like to share a rare moment of Belgian enlightenment.

Picture the scene.  The wonderful and irrepressibly inspirational Myrtha Casanova of the The European Institute for Managing Diversity had enlisted my help to co-facilitate a workshop she was running with the senior executives of a global producer of cereal crops and foodstuffs.  They had been embroiled in a PR war with NGOs and pressure groups worldwide because of controversial growing techniques and what was perceived as an arrogant communication stance.

The workshops were intended to develop diversity strategies across their global businesses.  Most of their senior executives were gathered in Belgium to that end – and they weren’t very pleased about it.

It was soon clear that their beleaguered HR Director had been forced into developing a diversity strategy by the board who were in turn responding to US legislation.  The executive cadre encamped in Belgium were 90% male, mostly of Anglo Saxon origin and frankly, felt they had much more pressing priorities.  In short, the workshops quickly regressed into trench warfare.

The turning point came, however, shortly after lunch on day one when, rather than push more and more statistics, facts and process at the group, we adopted a less evangelical approach and asked them to explore their brand from the customer’s perspective. 

They had traditionally seen themselves as a business to business organisation but it took one of the more junior managers, who also happened to have the largest team and who also happened to be a woman, to point out that housewives could make or break their company.  By drawing a simple supply chain model she was able to quickly illustrate the route their product ultimately followed to market and how it was immaterial that they weren’t putting the bread on the shelves themselves. Women still make the vast majority of purchasing decisions per household and the retailers were reliant upon their suppliers to provide raw materials in tune with the ethics and values of the consumer.  An epiphany!

This simple, jaw-dropping moment proves to be a revelation for her cynical peers who had clearly spent years developing competencies and promoting values appropriate for managing their equally macho purchasing managers in the businesses they were selling to.  Suddenly the link between organisational culture and their PR problems was put into stark relief. More importantly, they realised that, without a more representative management structure they would make similar mistakes.  The business case for diversity had become clear and the rest of the session was put to productive use developing a central and local diversity policy, strategy and engagement approach which owed much to a loaf of bread!

If you want to find out more about the EIMD (a not for profit organisation founded in 1996, with headquarters in Barcelona and which operates across the European Union), take a look at their website http://www.iegd.org/englishok/who.htm

Or feel free to drop me a line and I’ll tell you more about this and similar stories.

Ian@by2w.co.uk

Legacy is a loaded term. If you’re the glass half empty type it smacks of “ old fashioned, out of date, redundant”. If you favour the glass half full approach you’ll make associations like “firm foundations; proven track record and relationship equity” when you hear this term.

As a brand and engagement specialist, I’m acutely aware that one of the strongest but often most underappreciated assets many Old World brands have is their legacy. In times of crisis and change it can be comforting to employees to know that this organisation has withstood worse in the past.

As individuals, we seem to be increasingly interested in notions of legacy, family heritage – where we come from. The Haka, the famous tribal dance of the feared New Zealand rugby team literally attempts to summon up the spirits of the ancestors of the combatants to provide strength and courage as they face a new challenge. Perhaps this was what organisations like Walmart have tried to replicate with their company songs or may explain the communal song and dance rituals at employee conferences?

Now this overt attempt to conjure up corporate spirit isn’t to everyone’s taste. It illustrates the point that employee engagement has to be fit for purpose within local employee markets. But by mentioning what some may consider to be “naff” engagement initiatives that are puzzlingly powerful mutu for others does beg the question “what are you doing to engage your employees during the downturn”?

It comes as little surprise to me that I’ve seen a rise in the number of complaints from employees across sectors about the availability of their line managers.  There has also been a decline in face to face communication like Team Briefings and a rise in what I term e-mail management. When they can’t come up with answers to tricky issues many line managers are choosing to lie low.

In these dark days, leaders need to call upon all of their resources to speed up the recovery process. If your brand has a legacy, what initiatives are you undertaking to make the most of that heritage to provide confidence, assurance and a sense of stability?  Most importantly, how are your most important communicators, your line managers, being recognised and utilised as the eyes, ears and voice of the business?

The Renaissance of the Mighty Mutuals

There was a time, not so very long ago, when the mutual societies were seen as deeply unfashionable and treated with the same disdain as a flat cap at Royal Ascot.

Well, the day of the mutual has dawned once again.

In 19^th century England, the Industrial Revolution erupted into massive social change and, as a by-product of the rive for prosperity it threatened to tear village communities apart as generations headed into towns and cities to service heavy industry.

Building societies emerged as financial mutual help organizations for workers who had been uprooted from village communities. They offered a way for workers to pool resources and fund and build their own housing in spite of the sometimes scandalous and always difficult economic conditions of the new cities.

Mutual societies, of which the Yorkshire Building Society and Nationwide and, of course, Co-Operative Finance are examples can trace their roots back a couple of hundred years and several generations. Unlike most financial services organisations, they are run for the benefit of members rather than shareholders and take their foundation values very seriously. To this day they are one of the few types of organisation where several generations of the same family are happy to till work hand in hand.

As I very much respect this link between values, communication and brand I wrote about the YBS in Brand Engagement and will be featuring a major case study on the Co-Operative Financial Services in the sequel Brand Champions, not least because, despite these dark days, they are not only surviving but are thriving.

While their competitors resort to lawyers and due process to defend their much depleted positions from the wolf packs at the gate, which sadly includes a growing mob of disgruntled employees who are increasingly joining with shareholders baying for the blood of the board; Nationwide has announced further expansion plans, as has CFS and most mutuals are experiencing a flood of deposits and new accounts.

Cynics may claim that this simply represents a triumph of inertia over innovation and, yes, it’s true the mutuals have taken care with depositor’s money, but they have also been significant innovators in their own right. 

Did you know that there are more Co-op outlets than McDonalds stores in the UK? Were you aware that CFS was one of the most significant investors in Employer Branding and Brand Engagement across sectors and that their state of the art brand engagement experience regularly attracts international visitors desperate to transfer best practices into their own organisations?

This all goes to show that we shouldn’t blindly lust for Disney’s magic dust when seeking the employee engagement nirvana. 

The time has come to re-consider the humble mutual, organisations in the truest sense who treasure their legacy and who position their values at the very forefront of their brand. After all, what is a brand if it isn’t about keeping the promises you make to the market? What wouldn’t shareholders, both internal and external, give for that kind of authenticity right now?

It’s easy to dwell on examples of negative customer service. But how often do we stop and think about the people behind a positive interaction with an organisation or a brand? On the occasions when we do receive exceptional customer service, however, chances are we will have met an Engaged Employee.

Engaged Employees are:

1.     Obvious – it may be an elusive quality, difficult to describe but an engaged employee is more likely to be exhilarated by their role.  Different cultures show this in different ways but most of us can spot and will be drawn to a genuine smile and welcoming, inclusive attitude.

2.     Authentic – our recent survey of almost 4000 communicators listed “being yourself” as one of the key motivators for employees.  It also proves that employees who are themselves in the workplace are more effective. Employees who are clear enough about what their organisation stands for and are at ease with the culture are more likely to bring themselves to work and to share stories about their family lives, hobbies, likes and dislikes.

3.     Receptive – we all know that if we’re engaged, we’re far more open to opportunities to be involved with new initiatives and share new experiences.  Engaged employees listen actively and offer support and challenge, largely because they care about the outcomes.

4.     Involved - they are part of the programme not recipients of it.   They feel they can influence their personal fate through influencing the fate of the organisation. Involvement leads to a greater sense of ownership. It’s also the way most of us learn best.

5.     Proactive – engaged employees understand the goals, culture and values of the organisation so they make suggestions or take initiative, even innovate for the greater good, without being asked. Their primary focus is on adding value to the organisation rather than obsessing about what the organisation gives them.

6.     Energised – engaged employees have correspondingly high energy levels.  They do things and maintain appropriate momentum. They are the heartbeat, rather than their managers, and they set the pace.

7.     Achievers – because of enhanced levels of understanding, clear goals and boundaries, an appropriate mix of support and challenge (and in light of the characteristics above), they tend to be focused and, therefore, more productive. The things they do tend to get results.

8.     Advocates – whether at conferences or recruitment fairs even dinner parties or sitting next to you on a plane , engaged employees are proud and happy to recommend the organisation and to represent the brand. Want to know how engaged your employees are?  As a starting point, find out how many buy/use your products.

9.     Ceos - they are chief engagement officers. They inspire others by example. They are communication role models in all stakeholder engagements whether with customers, fellow employees, competitors or even shareholders.

10.  In demand - take care, engaged employees are a precious commodity. The war for talent rages irrespective of market conditions. Who and where are your ceos?  What measures are you taking to clarify your employer brand and to engage and manage your talent?

Yes, we’re in the middle of  global recession. Yes, this is an employer’s market.  But remember, your brand is the sum of your customer’s interactions with your people and in a downturn this simple truth becomes all the more salient. So what are you doing to engage your employees and are you valuing your brand engagement role models as highly as you should be?

Ian

I was in the City, London’s financial district, for a meeting the other day and found myself in Pudding Lane.  For those who don’t know, this modest little street is infamous for being the source of the great fire of London, heralded by historians as the most tragic event to have befallen London as well as its saviour.

But “how can this contradiction hold true?” I hear you cry.  Well London had been in the grip of another epic threat at the time of the fire, namely the plague or black death. Many believe this cataclysmic malaise to have been caused by rats. In truth it wasn’t the rats, but the fleas that lived on the rats that caused the spread of the infection.

Ironically it was the catastrophic great fire that finally purged the City of the disease.

Now what has this trip through London’s history books got to do with matters in CEO land?

As we all know, the corridors of CEO land are populated by a nodding, bowing and scraping populace doffing their caps to the demi gods. Yet it’s increasingly the ceos or chief engagement officers i.e. the line managers, who do the real work.

It also can’t have escaped anyone’s notice that the financial districts are being targeted by the worldwide press as the source of the current economic disease that is infecting world markets.  Indeed the high profile figureheads, the CEOs of a select number of those organisations within those financial districts are being demonised for seemingly single handedly bringing about the collapse of those institutions and indeed, spreading this economic plague to related markets and economies.

This is where history and imagination collide.  But if we allow ourselves to believe tabloid caricatures of “Fred the shred” and his peer group we undermine the core philosophy on which this column is based.  While I do subscribe to the notion that the CEO can wield exceptional power, he doesn’t do it alone. The iniquity of the CEOs themselves and problems the City faces are just the symptoms of a much, much more insidious infection.  The disease of selfishness, short termism and winning at all costs has become a plague which has arguably spread throughout Western commerce. Simply getting rid of the CEOs isn’t going to cure the problem.

Would anyone reading this column deny that they feel uncomfortable about the way many of their customer service interactions, regardless of industry, are handled these days? From the volumes of unsolicited cold calls we receive, the cost cutting off-shoring of our intimate data, the proliferation of mistakes or the relentless emails can anyone claim that customer service has improved in the last decade? Can you picture the last time you received excellent service which exuded empathy, humility and pride?  I bet you can think of several examples when a frontline employee called you “mate” instead of by your name, was clearly following a pre-determined script or appeared to have had an authenticity bi-pass, however.

The risk we currently face is that in a desperate attempt to fight the current economic disease, the focus is going to be exclusively on the high profile figures, forgetting that the disease has already spread and infected the culture of the organisations they headed up. 

Unless we can whip up a firestorm of people centred change that will:

-         reinvent HR

-         proactively manage employer brand

-         professionalize communications

-         respect and prioritise organisation development

-         focus on the development of line managers as a priority

-         forge more effective relationships between the external manifestation of brand and the link to the organisation’s values and the employees who keep the promises

this disease is going to spread and spread.

Food for thought, but lean times are quite possibly causing you to consider postponing that employee survey; to cut back on your training budget; to force through more “push communication” or prioritise that pile of  impressive looking resumes of former “big hitters” who seem to hop from company to company every two years above appraisals of existing employees. 

If you’re considering “re-sizing”, pause for a second before you reach for the axe, and consider your existing employees once again.  What more can you do to re-connect them with the brand they’ve been loyal to for so long? How can you re-focus them on the next phase in the evolution of the company, to re-energise them?

Now look again at those cvs. 

You may think you know who the rats are…. but remember the humble flea!

Still struggling to make the business case for employer branding? 

Ian@by2w.co.uk

Available now: Brand Engagement - How Employees Make or Break Brands (Buckingham, Palgrave/Macmillan 2007)