Capitalising on Effective Communications

 Posted by at 12:07 pm  Social Media  Tagged with: , , ,
Jul 142010
 

According to the 2010 Towers Watson report, Capitalizing on Effective Communication, those companies that communicate with courage, innovation and discipline, especially during times of economic challenge and change, are more effective at engaging their employees and achieving their desired business results.

Companies that are highly effective communicators delivered 47% higher returns to their shareholders over the last 5 years than those least effective at communicating.

Have courage –  communicate to your employees about what matters to them – and tell it like it is. Especially during times of change, make sure your employees understand what they can expect from the company and what the company expects from them.

Innovate - we are all being asked to do more with less. Try new communication tools to reach your employees in real time, but take the time to explain to employees how they will make a difference to the business.

Highly effective communicators are making greater use of social media than their less effective peers. However, usage is often outpacing effectiveness. To get a better return on any investment in social media companies need to – build knowledge and understanding of the benefits of social media; establish a social media policy; develop appropriate tools to measure success; and build executive support.

Be disciplined – plan to succeed. High-performing organisations are 2-3 times more likely to have a documented communication strategy than low-performing organisations. They are also more likely to have performance metrics in place to measure performance against business objectives and budgeted spend.

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Communication – The Key to Employee Engagement

 Posted by at 1:23 pm  Social Media  Tagged with: , , ,
Mar 262010
 

The MacLoed Report, ‘Engaging for Success: enhancing performance through employee engagement’, published in July 2009 was intended to start a nationwide discussion about developing greater employee engagement. The aim was to generate responses during early 2010 but it seems the difficult economic conditions and the election may have slowed down progress.

The inital report was a wide-ranging review of the nature and impact of employee engagement and not an attempt to provide answers. However, it was surprising and a little disappointing that a search of the whole report, one about the future of business, could find not one mention of either ‘social media’ or ‘social networking’. And, indeed, there seems to have been little debate since about how new technologies can contribute

The report identified four ‘broad enablers/drivers’ which were often cited as being critical to employee engagement, all of which could clearly benefit from the improvements in communication, conversation and collaboration that new ‘social’ tools and techniques can offer…

Leadership that “provides a strong strategic narrative which has widespread ownership and commitment from managers and employees at all levels. The narrative is a clearly expressed story about what the purpose of an organisation is, why it has the broad vision it has, and how an individual contributes to that purpose. Employees have a clear line of sight between their job and the narrative, and understand where their work fits in. These aims and values are reflected in a strong, transparent and explicit organisational culture and way of working.”

Engaging Managers, “at the heart of this organisational culture– they facilitate and empower rather than control or restrict their staff; they treat their staff with appreciation and respect and show commitment to developing, increasing and rewarding the capabilities of those they manage.”

Voice, “An effective and empowered employee voice – employees’ views are sought out; they are listened to and see that their opinions count and make a difference. They speak out and challenge when appropriate. A strong sense of listening and of responsiveness permeates the organisation, enabled by effective communication.”

Integrity, “Behaviour throughout the organisation [that] is consistent with stated values, leading to trust and a sense of integrity.”

A focus on these four areas, and some thought as to how improved communication techniques can deliver greater returns, sounds like a great place to start for any communications professional looking to make a difference to their organisation.

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A Special Report on Social Networking

 Posted by at 11:55 am  Social Media  Tagged with: , , ,
Feb 262010
 

There are currently two very different views on social media, especially concerning its value to business.

Some will tell you that it’s just too big to ignore, the whole world is using it and it’s not going away; if you’re not at least considering making it work for you then you’re already way behind.

Others say it’s just the latest over-hyped big thing, a distraction for the workforce and, as nobody can make a convincing case for the ROI, a potential black hole for investment.

The truth lies somewhere in-between. The new technologies do offer enormous potential benefits for business but only the best have worked out how to realise them. Whilst some companies have struggled however, there are plenty of developers, consultants and evangelists out there to help them make sense of it all. The applications and their uses are improving all the time and the variety and choice is growing too; all of which suggests a prosperous on-going future for these new mediums.

Whatever the long term prospects, it’s clear that businesses today can’t afford to just ignore social media. Even if the decision is ‘not for us’ they must at least consider the potential impacts, positive and negative, on both their external and internal communications and relationships. And, as with anything as fast moving as new technologies, they need to keep revisiting their analysis.

One indicator of the growing importance to business of social media is the fact that The Economist recently produced a special report ‘A world of connections’. It’s well worth a look, especially the article on the challenges, issues and benefits facing those trying to the deploy the new technologies within their businesses.

The Economist argues, and we agree

‘…social-networking technologies are creating considerable benefits for the businesses that embrace them, whatever their size…this is just the beginning of an exciting new era of interconnectedness that will spread ideas and innovations around the world faster than ever before.’

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Intranet Trends for 2010

 Posted by at 2:00 pm  Social Media  Tagged with: , , ,
Jan 292010
 

The release of the 10th Intranet Design Annual identifies a number of key trends for intranet development and internal communications for 2010.

Growing Intranet Teams – not only are more companies developing their own internal web presence, it seems that companies of  all sizes are giving intranets higher priority, more resources and bigger teams.

Mobile Intranet Sites – the rising demand for accessing online content from mobile devices applies to internal content too, although for now at least it would seem that intranet development is lagging behind the rest of the digital world. As devices, especially smart phones, become cheaper and easier to use, mobile access will grow and so intranet developers will need to consider and cater for the specific needs and demands of their mobile audience.

Social Features on Intranets – these take the form of two different but connected streams -

  • individual features including profiles, discussions, comments and ratings, bookmarking and employee generated content
  • work-group features that help with knowledge sharing, collaboration, search and locating experts and answers.

Breaking Down Barriers with ‘Boss Blogs’ – whilst many companies have used ‘boss blogs’ to improve communications, more and more are adding discussions and comment features to develop more open, two-way conversations and make senior management teams more accessible and approachable.

Research, Testing and Promotion – the best organisations are realising that in order to get the most from their intranets and internal communications programmes, they need to spend time understanding what their audience needs and wants, testing and developing their solutions and promoting and encouraging trial of the results.

Crisis Management – as the intranet becomes a greater focal point for communications so organisations are realising its value as a vehicle both to prepare for potential emergencies and as a way of responding quickly to a  crisis – sharing up to the minute information and guidance on what’s happening and how everyone in the organisation can contribute.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, is the commitment to  Continuous Quality Improvement. Whether driven by new technology developments or feedback from users, the best intranets are continually being refined and developed. Many organisations are also developing usability and ROI metrics to ensure that this continuous development is adding real value to their business. This sort of long-term thinking reinforces the growing perception that effective on-line communications are now becoming a fundamental part of all good internal communications strategies and programmes.

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How Social Media is Changing Business Culture

 Posted by at 5:50 pm  Social Media  Tagged with: , , ,
Jan 122010
 

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Collaboration – the Bad…

 Posted by at 3:16 pm  Social Media  Tagged with: , ,
Dec 142009
 

The second of 3 posts looking at different aspects of the development of greater collaboration within businesses. The Good highlights the importance of putting users at the heart of any initiative.

the Bad…

On the face of it, any increase in the levels of internal collaboration ought to be a good thing. However, greater collaboration isn’t really a goal in itself, rather it should be the means to achieving clearly defined, costed and planned business objectives.

Morten T. Hansen’s Harvard Business Review article ‘When Internal Collaboration is Bad for your company‘ provides valuable evidence that greater collaboration is no guarantee of business success and highlights the importance of making informed decisions about collaboration projects.

Whilst successful collaborations generate increased returns for the business, they don’t come without their costs. It is inevitable that asking teams or individuals to work together more closely will mean changes to their current working practices; new goals, new ways of working, different resource requirements, as well as the need to overcome the common personnel issues that come with the creation of any new team or working group. All of this has associated costs, especially in the early stages where things are likely to take longer, be less effective and cost more; until the new ways of working are bedded in and the benefits of the collaboration start to emerge.

Hansen’s article proposes that the evaluation of any collaboration initiative should include careful analysis of the investment involved – the expected returns, associated costs and alternative uses. He suggests a formula for calculating the net value to the business of a particular collaboration project:

Collaboration Premium = Projected return (cash-flow generated by the project) - Opportunity cost (cash flow that could be generated by investing money elsewhere)  - Collaboration costs (cash flow lost as a result of collaboration difficulties).

Informed decisions about when, who and how to collaborate will also benefit from a strategic look at

  • the skills and strengths of the different elements of the business,
  • the goals and opportunities of both individual groups and the organisation as a whole
  • an honest evaluation of the challenges presented by bringing new groups together work on challenging projects.

As organisations get better at selecting collaboration opportunities and implementing the tools and practices to make them work, they will start to develop a naturally more collaborative culture. As teams and individuals become more comfortable and skilled at forming and contributing to new working groups, the potential returns from such  projects will begin to grow and the associated costs will fall.  It is at this point that organisations will truly be in a position to realise the benefits of greater collaboration.

p

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Collaboration – The Good…

 Posted by at 5:19 pm  Social Media  Tagged with: , , ,
Nov 282009
 

Increasing collaboration between employees can bring huge benefits to any organisation. And it’s an area in which social media can make a major contribution  – connecting internal experts through networks and communities; aggregating an organisation’s expertise through wikis and forums; or providing interactive work-spaces, enabling faster responses to market opportunities.

As with any business initiative however, getting the most from increased  collaboration needs proper planning, resourcing and implementation.

Over a series of posts The Good, the Bad and the IT looks at three important aspects of collaboration that any initiative should consider;

  • make it about the users (The ‘Good’…)
  • understand the costs (the ‘Bad’…)
  • tailor the technology to the opportunity (and the ‘IT’).

So, first off…

p

The Good…thetube

A recent article in Wired magazine featured Gentry Underwood, head of knowledge sharing for IDEO, discussing how the global design agency has developed their award winning intranet, ‘The Tube’, as a means for sharing information.

IDEO’s success highlights the importance of putting the users before the technology when planning any social media initiative and demonstrates five key principles for developing collaborative working online -

  1. Build pointers to people – instead of just putting everything everyone knows into a database, focus on identifying people’s experience, expertise and interests then make it easy for others to find them and get in touch.
  2. Build rewarding systems – users won’t make a system work just to be helpful, they need to see the value in using it, both for the organisation and, more importantly, for themselves.
  3. Create intuitive interfaces – the more difficult something is to use the quicker it will be abandoned, the software needs to be straightforward for all the users not just the techno gurus.
  4. Go to your audience, don’t make them come to you - don’t take people out of their everyday routine to use the new system, make it a useful addition to their working day and they will use it more.
  5. Iterate early and often – the best social tools, like collaboration, grow and improve through responding to user feedback; make this sort of development part of the plan.

p

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