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The demand for creativity from employees is rising in this age of rapid technological advancement.... Some of you may think that creativity is an inborn trait rather than something that can be learned and developed. This may be so, but without aconducive environment for creativity to be expressed, how can we expect to see ideas arising from creative employees? This is precisely what this article is about, to show you ways which you can adopt in the workplace to encourage employees to seek innovation in their work....
Like many communications professionals, I am sure I’m not alone in wondering what internal communication activities have been taking place at supermarket giant Tesco in the wake of the horsemeat story. What have they told store colleagues? Are the internal and external messages aligned? How are employees feeling about the headlines?
Organizational core values are a primary determinant of culture, employee satisfaction and business performance. This article addresses six core value topics that CEOs and business executives should know about. The Six Topics Below is the core value list: Core values are the building blocks of organizational culture.The process of defining, measuring, and improving core values can be an excellent vehicle for improving organizational culture.Core values provide a common language to address unacceptable behaviors in a less threatening way.Core values guide decisions and emphasize what is important to the business as the organization continues to change and improve.Core values influence business performance.If core values have not yet been established, a step-by-step process described in this article can be followed to discover them....
As much as the media felt that public relations was a barrier between the organization and the media, many employees felt the opposite was true. Public relations professionals were the barrier between employees and the media (and sometimes the organization), especially when they asked all media calls be diverted to their department. Otherwise, the only time public relations might be in contact was when the pro needed a briefed subject matter expert for an interview or someone to sign off on a quote. With some public relations professionals including social media within their sphere too, some people say the same thing about social media. Employees on social networks ought to refrain from writing, speaking, or talking about work. Really?...
Shel Holtz examines the challenge of communicating layoffs to employees and its impact on company reputation and other key audiences. the social media era makes it even more difficult to manage information..
...The research found that global best-in-class companies share four principal qualities in the way they communicate with their employees: - They have an employee-centric focus that drives communication strategy - They set benchmarks and goals that align with corporate goals - They measure performance and success toward goals, while tracking employee attitude - There is a deep-rooted desire to always improve communication with employees and build upon current success....
Leaders have to be clear and consistent. As a leader, what do you want to accomplish? Do your employees know what needs to be done to reach that objective? Do they know how you expect them to behave? And — once they know the "what" and "how" — do you provide them with enough autonomy to get the job done in an effective and timely way? These are pragmatic business issues that all leaders encounter. Here are a few thoughts on how you can more effectively address these issues and reach your goals in an authentic and enduring way.
Collaboratively Develop The "What" And The "How" Before anything else, you engage stakeholders in a conversation about where you are, where you want to go, and how to get there. By seeking and valuing their perceptions, you increase their commitment, confidence, and the likelihood of getting traction when it is time to execute. This collective perspective helps define what needs to be done (the what) and the behaviors needed to deliver (the how)....
Feeling connected emotionally is intrinsically rewarding to the brain. Have you noticed that in dangerous jobs, good bosses tend to have deep bonds with their workers? Whether it's a captain and crew on a crab fishing boat in the Bering Sea, a platoon commander and his troops in Afghanistan, or a tree-cutting foreman and his team in the forest — people in dangerous working conditions sense they need to trust each other and their boss to survive. As a manager, you may not be working on a fishing boat or in armed combat. But you need to motivate your people to get things done. Do you have that kind of bond? Or have you been taught to manage by objectives and metrics to monitor performance, and that bonding with your team members will be seen as a distraction at best or weakness at worst? Many have. Perhaps that's why a recent survey found that more workers would trust a total stranger more than their own boss. At the Neuroleadership Summit in New York City this October we jointly presented research and findings explaining why leaders should develop the capacity to build secure attachments and personal relationships. The productive manager in a complex, global workplace should be less like a football coach with a whistle around his neck and more like a belayer helping climbers reach the next goal. While it is true that companies with abundant resources can afford to use fear as a motivator and absorb the cost of more frequent hirings and firings, this approach frequently ends up being memorialized in case studies of failed leaders and shuttered businesses....
Why Employees and Customers Will Be Calling the Shots... Civilizations have clashed in an unexpected way this year, as ordinary people using Facebook and Twitter knocked down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya—and are threatening absolute rule in Syria. A so-called Arab spring brought waves of liberation to a long-oppressed region. Something similar is happening in more democratic countries. In Spain throngs of young people, known as “the indignant ones,” occupied public plazas nationwide, protesting unemployment and exclusionary politics. In Israel ordinary citizens from both right and left united in massive demonstrations against high housing prices. And in India one man’s campaign against corruption went viral, bringing thousands to the streets in support. This social might is now moving toward your company. We have entered the age of empowered individuals, who use potent new technologies and harness social media to organize themselves. A few have joined cause with WikiLeaks and its terrifying stepchild dren, upending the once secure corridors of the U.S. State Department and Pentagon. But most are ordinary people with new tools to force you to listen to what they care about and to demand respect. Both your customers and your employees have started marching in this burgeoning social media multitude, and you'd better get out of their way--or learn to embrace them....
Communication must be leadership driven, credible and carried out by everyone. Within business communications, the newest buzzwords of "strategic communication" continue to leave some asking, "What exactly is this stuff?" Practiced and honed within the U.S. government for several years now, the plainest definition of strategic communication (or StratComm) is: "A series of words, actions and images designed to achieve a desired effect." As an overall strategy, everything should flow from your company's strategic communications plan: marketing, advertising, public relations and internal communications....
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The obstacles to being creative inside an organization are many, varied and tough to overcome … but it all starts with taming the approval process.
Writing for organizations is hard. Being creative inside organizations isn’t easy. Sometimes, it seems as if everything is set up to prevent us from creating the kind of content that people will actually read and pay attention to. A recent informal survey of communicators at one of my writing seminars revealed six common barriers that people face as they labor to create better content. In no particular order, here they are:...
Nearly half of all U.S. companies still ban workers from using social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn while on the job. However, the 100 Best Companies to Work For embrace social media, going so far as to allow their employees to represent their brand online, resolve customers issues, and create online content. Even highly regulated organizations like Mayo Clinic, Deloitte and USAA are able to reap the benefits of social media while many of their peers are still fretting over IT challenges, security concerns and productivity loss. If your organization isn't using social media for employee communication, here are 10 reasons to reconsider...
The director of the Nielsen Norman Group said the top 10 intranets of the year did more than just streamline and pretty up. They pulled people together. To have a top 10 intranet, you've got to think about more than just a website, Amy Schade, director at Nielsen Norman Group told the hosts of the Intranet Benchmarking Forum's monthly IBF Live program. "We're looking for what's usable, but also what's inspirational," she said. Schade said many of this year's winners made significant usability changes. For example, faceted searches—which enable users to search within categories rather than in one big chunk—were big this year. Making major changes to content was another thing the top 10 shared....
Electronics retailer Best Buy prides itself on its low prices and customer service. Unfortunately, that care didn’t extend to its employees with the closure of 15 stores and 900 employee layoffs in Canada. Like many consumers, I wasn’t surprised to see Best Buy and Future Shop store closures. Analysts expect Best Buy to close another 200 to 250 of its 1,056 US stores in 2013....
Often companies “roll out the new re-branding” to employees. and the marketing team then quickly puts a check mark in the done box and they’re on to the next. Often brand managers focus only on the communications deliverables and not the holistic reality of creating passionate brand ambassadors from within the company. B2B, midsized companies, and especially tech companies are notorious for this painful disconnect. Not many companies are deeper tech than Xilinx. They design and supply programmable electronic systems. For simplicity just think semiconductors. Yet, they are a well branded company, which is unusual for their industry....
When Shane Atchison took the job of CEO at Possible Worldwide in April, he needed a way to get in sync with 1,100 people across 32 offices. ...How do you build a sense of community when you’ve got people from Poland and Budapest and Moscow connecting with people in Cincinnati or Seattle? “You can’t fly everyone around and say, let’s be friends," says Atchison....
The corporate intranet was okay for sharing templates and forms but terrible for sharing knowledge. Atchison figured he could kill both problems with a social network. Not Facebook, not LinkedIn, not Tumblr or National Field, but a brand new one, built specifically for them.... CoLab's Four Main Features The three main parts--library, people directory, and social--wound up becoming four, with the “social” component comprising two separate features. Now, the four main features of CoLab look like this: Pulse (a curated home page featuring internal posts and status updates)Perspectives (a full social feed of posts and status updates)People (a company directory complete with social profiles)Library (a knowledge sharing network)...
TweetWhen CEO’s make an ass ofthemselves and the company they represent, does that set the tone for a potential crisis? Denny’s, Wal-Mart and Papa Johns have expressed their displeasure... with President Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act. Some companies are threatening lay-offs, other’s are rattling the saber and reducing employee hours — all to avoid providing health insurance under the new act.... Here’s the problem. When CEO’s make stupid statement like this, it sets the stage for a massive crisis for the company. Imagine if, after workers discovered their CEO said such a thing, they organized and walked out. Imagine if long-time patrons of the carry-out pizza giant got pissy too? What if they organized to stage a nationwide boycott? What if these two events happened in conjunction? Could Schnatter’s business survive? CEO’s are people, and they sometimes say dumb-ass shit. Schnatter did. How would you approach him to mitigate the fallout? [Leadership or lost leaders? ~ Jeff]
Nokia Siemens Networks would like you to know that it "puts mobile broadband and services at the heart of its strategy", and to demonstrate this they plan to fire roughly 17,000 people worldwide before the end of 2013 as part of 'an extensive... [Must see the full news release to see how bad it is! - JD]
Keith Zakheim is the president of Beckerman PR, a multimillion-dollar public relations firm in New Jersey. Keith Zakheim is also a big fan of milk. Don't test him! Below is a real email that Keith Zakheim sent his lazy, selfish, milk-sucking staff yesterday.... PR leadership? Not so much!
All CEOs should speak this way.... ...In an era in which communications professionals, attorneys, and brand consultants scrub everything many CEOs say, this was admirable and refreshing. More CEOs should speak like people. It makes them more approachable and likable. It reminds everyone that they are people doing jobs. And it makes everyone actually listen to what they have to say. In any event, when Carol Bartz got canned as Yahoo's CEO, she went out exactly the way she came in: With a short note to the staff...
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"Some of you may think that creativity is an inborn trait rather than something that can be learned and developed. This may be so, but without aconducive environment for creativity to be expressed, how can we expect to see ideas arising from creative employees?"