Never in everyday pursuit of corporate endeavour have so many been force fed by so few.

The proliferation of communication channels given the rise of social and technological media means your average employee claims to be nearing communication saturation point. But are they? I would suggest that the appetite for effective communication has never been more keen, yet effective communication is still in very short supply.

Lest we forget, communication is essentially an outcome, not an input. As I had to make a point of reminding a group of senior civil servants while running Team Briefing workshops recently, “success isn’t measured by volume, pace or quantity. Good communication is a product of whether the message has been received, understood and has resulted in the necessary action”.

For a number of years now, when I’ve conducted communication audits for clients, employees across sectors have complained about being bombarded. Despite the rather trendy discussions about the difference between internal communication and employee engagement, message management and push communication appears to be increasing.The biggest culprit is the dreaded email.

The Evils of email Management

Having just carried out an audit of internal communication channels for another public sector client currently undergoing major change, I’ve been struck, once again, by a bizarre, and frequently seen contradiction.

In answer to the question “How would you prefer to be informed of changes”, a whopping 76% of respondents voted for face to face communication.  Of those 76%, some 68% wanted that communication to come from their immediate line managers.

The second preference was for some form of internal social media allowing them the opportunity to provide feedback and debate in an interactive, real time environment.

However, when we looked into the Communication Department’s communication method of choice, they prioritised:

1. Lunch Meetings with the CEO and senior team
2. email bulletins
3. voicemail
4. publications

In fact, as the change programme gathered pace and brought with it “right sizing” and major structure changes, the top two methods fast became the only “official” channels.  Sadly team briefings led by line managers, once a norm, had faded to sporadic bursts.

It’s perhaps understandable that a number of line managers and supervisors had taken a backward step when faced with extremely difficult message management.  But in this case, it was soon very clear that abdication on this scale reflected deep-seated leadership issues.  Their CEO, in Hero Leader guise, although well intended, was clearly undermining his leaders. They had also lost faith in their communication function which, disempowered, was simply stepping aside by pressing the forward and cc buttons. 

But what’s the problem with push communication?

There clearly isn’t a single answer to this question but a glance at this famous learning effectiveness pyramid illustrates the power of face to face interaction with warm-blooded peers. 

The simple fact is that top down, cascade bombardments, usually delivered by email these days, are synonymous with lecturing.  They allow the originator to tick an activity box but are largely ineffective and simply reinforce one-way messaging. Cascades create a wider push communication culture as the approach is seen to be sanctioned from the very top.

As employee engagement requires:

-         interaction

-         involvement

-         feedback

-         opportunities to check understanding

-         emotional connection

by cascading swarms of messages the organisation promises one thing yet delivers another. It’s disingenuous and creates deep seated resentment.

Most of us learn much more effectively in interpersonal environments, when we’re involved and can interact with others. This is one of the reasons why line managers and immediate supervisors are increasingly important communicators. When they have the opportunity and take the time to commit to Facetime rather than Facebook, employees are enlightened and reassured by the example being set as well as the opportunity for face-to-face discussion, debate and reflection.

We all appreciate the merits of electronic communication. But despite the simple temptation of “compose, click and send” and the sophisticated charms of new-wave social media tools and techniques there really is no replacement for good, old fashioned, face to face, eyeball- to- eyeball communication. This is especially true during testing times when people lose what appetite they may have had for Foie Gras and deeply resent the fact that there’s no comfort food on the menu.

Ian Buckingham (ian@by2w.co.uk) is the founder of the Bring Yourself 2 Work Engagement Fellowship www.by2w.co.uk.  He is the author of Brand Engagement – How Employees Make or Break Brands  http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=281268. and Brand Champions (due Oct 2010)

Last week I was working at the HQ of a large corporate when one of the secretaries came up to me and asked me if I would help her interpret her benefits statement. She had worked for the organisation all her career and had prudently taken all bonuses in share options. She intended to gift the proceeds to her grand children as her legacy.

She was clearly puzzled by the latest figures and couldn’t understand the corporate “double speak” in the benefits package narrative which was supposed to be explaining them to her. It was left to me, someone she barely knew, to break the news to this loyal member of staff that her share portfolio, which was worth £35k according to the figures last financial year, was now worth £7.3k. You can imagine the look on her face when reality dawned.

The arguments about dealer’s bonuses in big banks may be making the front pages, but they are very much the side issue here! How many people are out there right now receiving the same sort of message delivered by a similarly dispassionate route I wonder?

Bullying in the workplace is defined as an abuse of power. Information, it is often said, is power. How is it being used where you work?  Bullying may not always be overt. It may not even be intentional at times. Failing to understand the importance of internal communication and the link between employee engagement and brand performance, however, is tantamount to bullying when it has such devastating results as in this simple cameo.

Employee engagement should be a fundamental focal point for anyone with responsibilities for people within any organisation. It can’t all be driven from the centre and face to face communication, especially in tough times, should be given top priority. So, how are line managers shaping up to the challenge where you work or is everything being left to faceless names at the centre to cascade the weekly news, whether it’s life changing or not?

 These are complex corporate times but as the finger of blame for the global economic downturn is pointed at various external stakeholders like the regulators and even the customers themselves, it’s interesting to hear the term “corporate culture” finally surfacing in banking post mortems.

The term performance culture has been increasingly abused within performance management parlance.  It has become inextricably linked with the drive for delivering shareholder value in quarterly increments and the “up or out” mentality which has spilled over from investment banking.

But now that almost every investment banking super-tanker has holed itself on the reefs of greed, selfishness, arrogance and some fairly suspect practice it’s time to reclaim the phrase. This is why leaders like RBS’s Stephen Hester are now having to open internal moratoriums in an attempt to bridge the obvious and growing employee engagement gap that has opened up within some of our high profile financial services names.

Ironically, despite this being an employer’s market, employee engagement; employer brand and corporate culture have never been so important. But it’s time for a fundamental re-think about how internal stakeholders (employees) are managed. The infrastructure underpinning many employment brands is clearly in need of a dramatic overhaul. And this is no job for the marketing function or advertising types.

Clearly characteristics like sustainability, network building and relationship development are the bedfellows of integrity, accountability, security and trust (the values, ironically, most popularly used to market the wares of financial services companies). But how can these values flourish when FS employees have seen HR functions replaced by processes and help lines; when average employee tenure (and loyalty) has fallen so dramatically and when  effective performance management and feedback loops have been replaced by grievance processes and whistle blowing – the corporate equivalent of “ratting on your colleagues”

I’m certainly not calling for a complete return to the cosy old hierarchies; glass ceilings and command and control regimes. But it’s clear that there’s going to have to be a large dose of mature, “back to the future” relationship based thinking if the nirvana of an appropriate and authentic performance culture is ever going to be achieved by arguably our most influential businesses and brands. And if the last 18 months has taught us anything it’s that none of us can afford for our financial services brands to continue to fail their employees by making promises to customers and the market that they simply can’t keep.

Ian

It’s a while since the ancient art of “tug o’ war” featured in the Olympics, but it’s alive and well in a boardroom near you.  Internal communication, that golden thread between employees and customers, is starting to take the strain!

According to a Melcrum study back in 2006 which compared the generic site of the internal communication function between 2003 and 2006, there’s a very real “heave ho” taking place between HR and Corporate Communication to control the internal communication strings. 

During the period in question, 44% of corporate communication functions across the multi-sector survey claimed to include internal communication among their reporting lines.  This was a 14% increase in three years. The HR figures were roughly half that amount, but increased by 10% over the same period.  It is also evident that, in that time, a number of HR functions were attempting to sweep internal communication into the employee engagement and industrial relations pot.

The growth in the demand for control over internal communication within HR and Corporate Comms was apparently at the expense of functions like the office of the CEO, Organisation Development and Marketing. I believe that’s a worrying trend.

These figures become most interesting, however, when seen in the context of a 2005 study by the same organisation (see Buckingham, Brand Engagement, Palgrave/Macmillan 2007 )* which reports that where organisations claim to have a formal employee engagement programme, 67% claim that this falls within HR, 55% attribute engagement to Internal Communication as a distinct function and 27% claim it is the responsibility of their Organisation Development function.  There’s no mention of Corporate Comms which is worrying when you consider that employee engagement is, in effect, the highly evolved form of internal communication at the opposite end of the spectrum from tactical “push” communication campaigns.

Now the more statistically astute of you will have detected that the figures in the last paragraph don’t add up to 100%.  And that’s the crux of this argument. Internal communication is not simple message management controlled by the HR or Corporate Comms function.  Truly evolved internal communication requires partnerships across the business functions and professional collaboration which is why so many departments believe that employee engagement, its most glamorous manifestation, falls within their remit.

Unfortunately, take a look at the recruitment press and it becomes clear that the internal communication profession is still dominated by message managers.  Where’s the glamour in owning the intranet and newsletters? 

The cream of the profession, however, are skilled engagement specialists with solid, credible business pedigree who are as comfortable in the newsroom as they are in the boardroom. They have the respect of their executive peers given that the best internal communication role models a partnership mentality. 

Internal communication should bring together the key people disciplines to ensure a clear and consistent representation of the vision, strategy, goals and employment brand.  That’s why any formal engagement programme needs to evolve out of what I call an engagement axis!  If too closely aligned to any 1 department it becomes subjugated to and inevitably falls foul of issue cherry-picking and internal politics (creatives vs pragmatists vs authenticity vs budget hunters etc).

It’s time we all afforded Internal Communication and the respect it deserves and credible practitioners similar kudos.  It’s vital to the management of the brand, employee motivation and retention, innovation and ultimately customer service, needs to be led by specialist practitioners and must be properly funded by budgeted not discretionary spend. 

Come to think of it, that just might be why so many of the internal generals are bracing their backs and tugging at that rope!

I’m intrigued to hear about the fun and games where you work.

It’s unfortunate that most of the growing army of critics weighing down the creaking

employee engagement bandwagon come from the camp of the bleeding heart.  They’re the

ones with the “staff are our greatest asset” t-shirts who trot out unsubstantiated clichés about obligations, rights and respect. Sadly they damage rather than help their cause by undermining the credibility of the people-focused functions through failing to work with the prevailing culture in order to influence that culture for the better.

The fact is that there’s a far more compelling case for employee engagement and culture development than empathy and magnanimousness.  Finance directors seldom liberate budgets without a compelling business case. It’s also a fact that, unlike much external investment, the majority of culture development and internal brand engagement activity is reliant upon discretionary spend. We all know how hard it is to loosen the discretionary purse strings in the good times let alone in a downturn.

So how do you build a business case for employee engagement? I believe it’s important to keep things as simple as possible.  David Bolchover, for example, in his book The Living Dead*, states that in the UK alone, doctor’s receive over 9 million “suspect” requests for sick notes per year (equivalent to the entire population of Sweden).  In addition one in three midweek visitors to a major theme park are pulling a sickie from work.  Do the maths for your organisation and you’ll soon have the makings of your own business case for engaging employees in the business by engaging them with the brand.

If this is still too abstract, you could adopt the en vogue concept of employer brand as your starting point.  Employer brand is shorthand for the brand projected to employees and recruits. It is reliant upon the close management of key people processes like recruitment, induction, performance management and internal communication. Employee engagement and employer brand are very close bedfellows and the business case for investing in either should be built on a platform that includes:

-          The true cost of recruitment and retention (including agency fees, salaries, advertising, induction and orientation etc)

-          The cost of non-conformance (This is the impact of failing to fulfil brand promises to employees and new recruits.  It is not just whether recruitment partners in the supply chain perform but whether your recruitment professionals are recruiting to a model based upon the desired future culture rather than fit with the existing culture. In the UK alone around approximately 365 million pounds is wasted on ineffective graduate hires**)

-          The impact of creeping brand death and deadweight (What percentage of your employees turn up but have switched off or worse still, have switched allegiance? If you have employee surveys do they role model your brand values in the way they are implemented? How do they feed back into strategy and are you even bothering to measure employee engagement properly?)

As Steve McKevitt illustrates in City Slackers***, spotting the brand dead is a tricky task to implement from the heady heights of the C suite. But if I tell you that a group of disengaged public sector employees recently brought down their own CEO by leaking their version of the stories their Communications Director had carefully spoonfed the press you’ll get the idea about how important it is. Now picture how long and how widely these disaffected individuals had been bad mouthing the organisation and the impact on internal morale as well as public opinion. Time to start dusting down those surveys or reprioritising that engagement research?

 Ian