Don’t kill a kid within

We all have a small kid within ourselves which is very active in the heydays of our professional careers. This kid makes us want to question the status quo, the policies and procedures, the defined set of rules which ties everyone down to think out of the box.

We are always told to be average

But as we evolve, we are often told to mellow down and be like the rest of them.  Once we become like the rest, it may appear we are maturing as an individual, doing all the right things, but little do we know that we are surrendering our thinking ability to the already established bureaucratic system which forces us to be average.

Who wants to be average?

If you wish to remain average all your life trying to secure and safeguard your job, this post is not for you, but do come back to it once you have been laid off which may not be too farfetched.

Wake up- this is not the world of average anymore, it is also not the world of thinkers anymore, it’s about doers,

• Who are not afraid to tread unchartered territories?
• Who are constantly trying new things to change the existing way of doing things.
• Who are not afraid of failing
• Who are go- getters

In other words, the world of kids! How close are you to these kids?

• This kid could be a junior employee reporting to you
• This kid could be the college intern serving his/her internship in your company
• This kid could be your rebellious son/daughter constantly giving you feedback and inputs on the things you are not doing right 

Time you take these kids seriously- don’t be surprised if this kid becomes your boss someday, which is inevitable and giving you back the same shit which you did as a boss.

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It worked well then but now, this may just work against you. How, it is simple, if you think you know something what others don’t, you may be wrong, because everyone knows what you know, rather you may be the last one to know. Thank you social media!

What works now is the reverse approach, how soon you share information.

There has been a fundamental shift on how we consume information

• From being just told to be the first one to be told
• From being a mere recipient to now being an active participant.

Don’t you see this paradigm shift; if not here is my question to you

• How would you consume a week old news update, chances are you may not want to see it simply because it is dated and irrelevant.
• How would you react on finding out your dear colleague had resigned two months ago, only you were late to figure out?

I urge all of you to feel the change and keep up with this change. If you don’t you would end up being irrelevant and redundant too, in an ever changing organizational environment.

Tips for communication professionals  

• Showcase communication platforms where employees can contribute ideas and best practices.
• Encourage participation- Don’t just initiate a monologue pushing content to employees hoping they would read and react.
• Use social media- have said this in the past, social media can be your best friend or your biggest enemy, it’s not weather you use social media it’s how do you use social media.
• Email war is old school- email war is and will always be a waste of time. Add value to other productive things. Remember the end result of an email war is compromise, you decide when do you want to compromise at the start of it or when you embarrass yourself amongst others with fifty exchange emails.

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The leaders/dictators of yester years

The management style which was all about taking control of people, is now passe. This may give  you an insight into the leader of the past

• Payback time, the leader life mantra- I was treated like shit, so I will ensure I give the same back to my team members now
• Take the credit- Always on the move to take credit even for things they haven’t done
• Monologue- Leader having a last and rather the only say in a dialogue which we now call a monologue.
• I am the management- Leaders constantly finding creative ways to differentiate themselves from employees in the name of company policies.
• Please call me Sir- Leaders getting offended on not being referred as “Sir”
• Mail me – I will approve- Obsessed with approval mechanism and need for control. Even employee leaves and expense approval
• Technologically challenged.

Don’t do anything- they will become redundant within weeks

If your company has such leaders, which I am pretty sure you would, word of wisdom- don’t do anything, and very soon,they will become redundant.

Some may just as I write this post. But what you as communication professionals need to do is learn-

Not to become like one of them- Be today’s leader

• Collaborate - As communication professionals, learn to tap into others competencies. Remember you cant do everything on your own
• Engage and interact- Engage with your employees, Direct reports, have team outings, and please for god sakes do not at any cost let your employees refer to you as Sir or madam
• Share credit- it’s the people who help you do your job, so give them that due credit. Remember your role is only ofa facilitator – an enabler, you eventually have to get it done from someone else
• Empower- let your team manage leaves, learn to trust them.
• Transparent- even if you like some of the team members, don’t make it too obvious give everyone a chance to prove their metal.

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Recently I had the privilege of attending a townhall of one of Fortune top 100 companies. That’s the reason I could not post anything for few days.

Back to the townhall, the event had participation from more than 700 employees across locations and countries. And when you have such number to boast as your company headcount, we would expect an event to be a cracker.

Things have not changed 

But unfortunately that wasn’t the case. The townhall appeared to be staged with management taking turns to update employees on business and growth plans. To make things worse, the leaders were not even great facilitators, boring the audience with numbers which were not visible on the powerpoint presentations. The event was so predictable that even employees knew what’s coming their way.

My worry is if global brands are positioning their events in such non-engaging manner, wonder what they would do to on employee engagement initiatives.

If you happen to work for such organizations, here are some tips, which would come in handy.

Say no to long Powerpoint presentations

Lets face it, even an interesting movie gets boring after 45 minutes, here you have boring leaders talking about boring numbers. Something you want to think about.

Show more visuals

Imagine a movie with no music only hard crunching numbers for you to understand. You would not want to see that movie even it has your favorite actor. So replace the content with visuals and talk through your audience.

Be a storyteller

How would you like a movie with a plain message, and no storyboard, well that’s called a documentary not every one likes documentary movies? Add a tinge of humor and some interesting anecdotes for employees to relate. Don’t let your leaders read out from the script.

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Here are the steps to figure out the transparency quotient

• Employee policies are for everyone to see viz information is accessible and for everyone to share
• The management acknowledges the gaps in the business
• Leaders  have an opinion but are very open to new ideas
• The management recognizes hard work and rewards it appropriately by giving credit to others.
• Everyone gets to know about employee promotions
• Employees or leaders don’t fake knowledge and are not afraid to say I don’t know the answer to this question
• The employee grievance system is accessible to everyone with fast traction

Traditional company construct is the exact opposite of transparency which operates on

• Leaders know it all and they are not meant to be questioned
• Leaders are closed minded set of experienced lot who hates the idea of changing things around them.
• Promotions is a closed affair and no one gets to know who gets promoted and when. You only get to know this through their email signatures.
• 90% of employee grievances are ignored, and not discussed or even closed. Because the Management feels employees will always have concerns, just ignore!
• Management is working to please the CEO, kiss up and kick down.

Here is what communication professionals can do to bring in transparency

Introduce Social networking enterprise tool – platforms such as Yammer or social cast are readily available on an annual based plan .Introducing this tool can not only bring in everyone together on a common platform but also provides employees another platform to raise their concern or share feedback

Cost Effective- Social networking enterprise tools doesn’t cost much and company doesn’t even need to invest in technology or infrastructure. Not only they are cost effective but also very user friendly facebook like user interface

Enable employee helpline- As communication professionals, technology will help you achieve your business goal. Enable a toll-free employee helpline number or a e-ticketing tool for employees which they can access for their query based resolution.Having your management open up to social networking will be quite a task, considering most of them are from a traditional school of thought. But if you are convinced as a business user, social networking will only work for the benefit of the organization.So go make that change

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Don’t ignore the induction process

It’s no surprise that many companies in their bid to hire the best talent often ignore the on boarding process of the new recruit. Even though companies claim to have the best onboarding approach but that the ground reality may differ.

Don’t you come across employees in your daily interaction not even knowing the business model of the organization?  This employee ignorance has direct bearing on your new hire induction process.

Induction and attrition

Do you have a strong company orientation program as part of the new hire induction program? It is a fact that the employee induction experience is somewhat correlated to early attrition. People may choose to leave the second day if they don’t like your induction program, given they always have options to choose from.

Also a robust, engaging on-boarding program is a backbone of the organization which also is a great differentiating tool for companies. You don’t get a second chance to create a first impression. Even though it’s a cliché but not many organizations follow this rule.

Use Induction as a differentiator 

Communication professionals should leverage induction as a differentiator, by giving new hires the WOW experience. This wow experience should not be a drag, companies in their quest to cascade messages end up over-communicating. A three full day induction program is a testimony to that.

Three days of induction is a big NO NO. A good effective program should not be more than a day covering company update from a business leader, business model and most importantly the organization value system. Rest all could be a subset of this.

Its not what you comunicate but how you communicate

Remember it’s not what you communicate but how you communicate what differentiates the wow from the good experience. That’s why it is important to have an effective and lively facilitator who after every 2 hours engages new hires in games and simulations.

You as communication professionals have a key role in working on the induction content. What tools you use, powerpoint, or videos will help organizations creating that wow factor.

My recommendation is go beyond powerpoints, and use infographics or videos for storytelling.

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This is where intranet comes into action and here is how you should use

 Intranet is your company internal website- keep it dynamic!

Content is king we all know that, but companies only apply this methodology on their external websites not with their employee intranet. Focus on content and update it every day, it could be just pictures or interesting stories, the idea is to keep employees guessing.

Mix of both business and employee centric content

Intranet should be your one stop shop for all company and employee information. Though leaders at times will push you to host more business content, but we as communication professionals we have to find a way to strike a balance.

Make it usable

Adding employee functionalities can have a drastic effect on the intranet usage. This may include, salary slips, and reimbursement forms, policies, attendance management etc. remember the only way to make it usable is to put content which effects employee life cycle in the organization

Make it visible

What’s the point of hosting content when employees don’t even know what’s there on the intranet? Run campaigns to ensure employees know on new intranet functionalities. This may be as simple as an email or an elevator conversation with a colleague, let them all know.

Make it accessible

In almost all organizations, the Communications team is the business owner of the intranet. Hence it is our responsibility to do User Access Testing (UAT) of all the intranet links. Don’t wait for IT team to do it for you rather leverage IT to find solutions for you if the intranet links are working.

Use it as a voice of employee

Intranet is one of the most apt places to run employee opinion polls. Conduct opinion polls every day on questions related to employees and the company. Remember, the opinion poll feedback is as important as the opinion poll itself. Share the employee feedback with everyone. This will position the organization as a transparent company.

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Types of recognition programs

There are various kinds of recognition program but for our discussion we would stick only to two viz formal and informal.

Formal recognition

Formal recognition program is a platform for the organization to encourage and reward performance in an annual/quarterly event (townhall meetings) The periodicity is company specific; some organizations have a monthly event as well. The idea is to showcase employees who have made exceptional contribution to company business goals.

Tips for communication specialists 

• We have an opportunity to brand the recognition program
• The brand should resonate with the intent of the recognition program.
• Some the brand names, which you can think of, are: Accolades, R&R- rewards and recognitions.
• Such formal events has great scope for physical branding, use branding collaterals to create that connect.

Informal recognition

Its not a great sign if your company doesn’t have a recognition program, but you can initiate the informal recognition program. Don’t wait for a formal initiative. Informal recognition program may include a small thank you note form someone, or just a pat on the back, which drives informal recognition.

Tips for communication specialists

• Initiate a platform on the intranet where employees can informally appreciate each other.
• Again brand this informal platform.
• Promote the platform internally, this will position the organization which rewards hard work
• Encourage leadership to leverage this informal program, remember a pat on the back goes a long way

Categories of rewards

Its important you figure out what kinds of employee contribution do we want to reward. We will discuss some of the generic categories of rewards

• Living company values- This award is a must in every recognition program, which promotes employees who have displayed company values in achieving business goals.
• Emerging leader- As an organization we should make every effort to develop talent and leaders internally. Rewarding employees who have displayed leadership skills in meeting team goals directly impacting the business, is worth rewarding.

Tips for communication specialists

• There is great scope to brand the certificates
• Recommend a company merchandize or a give away for all the recipients other than the reward.
• Choose a trophy carefully, with more focus on the category of the award.

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Making the message interesting

We as professionals have to consistently find creative ways to cascade the boring org- messages which some of them are every transactional and mundane in nature. For example Code of Conduct company policies sensitizing employee on the appropriate dress code. Chances are 99% of the communication experts will draft an email message and send the policy link as an attachment.

Selling a campaign

If policy was a product and you are a salesperson, would you still sell this product via email link? You won’t. You would probably initiate a campaign, use various communications enablers to get to your customers and ensure your policy is being read. Why not apply the same rule internally for employees.

Add value

That’s why the company has hired us to add value not just execute tasks. Some of the communication leads have taken the policy campaign to another creative level and are using humor to get the message across.

Use humor

Humor is just one approach; there are many other ways to make such important policies more relevant and user friendly, which I would leave that to your creative imagination.

Treat employees as humans

Don’t just treat your internal stakeholders as employees treat them as customers and offer them solutions which will help you create your own strong internal brand. It is very easy to push back which you should exercise as and when but not at the cost of your customer experience.

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I have news for you.

This approach has worked for many companies in the past, but with growing social media footprints across the globe, this approach may just add a big dent to your corporate reputation. Why, because earlier the employee conversations were either one to one or in a closed company environment now it is one to many.

Your boss knows much before you do

Don’t be surprised if your peers and management gets to know about the team issues much before you do with a two line status update on social media describing your unfair practices to promote people in your team.

Though the employee would still end up leaving the company, but what that employee will make you go through may just be irreparable. And this scenario can often repeat itself.

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.

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