Showcasing forums to avoid office politics

By Tarun Gill on March 14, 2013 • ( 0 )

ARE YOU A VICTIM OF OFFICE POLITICS

Whatever you do never gets appreciated; even if it does someone else walks away with the credit and kudos. You feel being manipulated and being dragged into things where you have no role to play. This scenario is not very uncommon. It has or may be happening to most of us. In a traditional scenario an employee would give up, quit the organization and move on to another hoping and wishing not to be confronted with the same situation again.

This scenario can repeat itself

After all we can’t be switching jobs every now and then.

Tips for Communication professionals to avoid such employee scenarios

We as communications experts can play a role in this scenario taking place let alone being repeated. Here is what you should do

Showcase – highlight employee grievance forums via campaigns- it’s not about sending emails to employees and then waiting for things to happen, rather an integrated approach activating all communication enablers to get the message across. Most of the employees don’t even know the available platforms to talk to the company.

Intranet- the general perception of the intranet is that it’s very boring, loaded with corporate jargons and little relevance to employees.

Effective ways to drive the intranet

Treat intranet like an interactive and dynamic website
Brand your office intranet, give it a name which resonates with the voice of your company
Run a UVA rule on it, which is making the intranet Usable, Visible and Accessible.
You can make the intranet Usable by adding employee-centric content which impact employee life cycle such as important forms, payroll links, reimbursements and opinion polls.
Next step would be to drive the content by making your intranet more visible running email campaigns. Once it gains traction you would realize the dependency on emails would considerably come down.
What’s the point of doing so much on the intranet if the links only work on your computer? Do regular User Access testing (UAT) to ensure all links work?

These are basics which can boost intranet usability and invariable employee morale preventing them to attrite or leave the organization.