Many senior communicators report to business leaders who may not be familiar with our profession. As a result, many companies have opportunities to improve the way they hire communicators. If you are getting ready to recruit for a senior communications professional and have not done so before, here are my tips to make sure that you hire someone who can make a real difference at your company.
Searching for the best way to engage employees? Look below the surface to find motivators specific to your company. Image © 2009 photosbymaureen.com
If you’ve been in communications for a little while or are an experienced leader, you likely already already know a bit about employee engagement. (If you don’t, you might want to check out an article defining employee engagement, or this recent brief article in Business Week). What you might not know is exactly what drives employee engagement in your company. Now is a great time to find out.
Employee engagement is a great focal point for a leader communications strategy in difficult times. Now more than ever, higher levels of engagement might just be critical to your company’s survival.
When employee engagement works, the results can be dramatic. Studies by Gallup, Towers Perrin, The Conference Board and others have reported revenue gains in highly engaged companies of forty percent or more. Engagement starts with effective leadership, is fostered by authentic communication, and is maintained in environments where employees feel that managers can be trusted to ‘walk the talk’ when it comes to mission, vision, and valuing employees’ contributions.
Those are the basics. how does employee engagement work in your company? Let’s look below the surface…
Communicators and IT. Oil and water, right? Maybe not.
There has been a lot of historic tension between these two parts of large organizations. Communicators want more collaboration and free flow of information, and get frustrated with restrictive IT policies – even to the point of taking the issue to the web. In return, IT has its own axe to grind with communicators, from recent very public disdain for PR practices by IT luminaries to constant battles with the technologies of Web 2.0 being introduced by non-IT practitioners, bypassing careful controls and adding to support, maintenance and ongoing management headaches.
Wherever you stand on the issues found at the links above, I would think few would disagree that there is value to a closer, more collaborative relationship between communications and information technology functions. The technology analyst firms certainly believe there is value in stronger MarComm / IT connections.
Here are some of my suggestions based upon my experience working at the interface between technology and communications on how communicators can contribute to a closer, more collaborative relationship.
Many of us are on board with operational governance: Editorial advisory boards and intranet steering committees are great to help you deliver what your stakeholders want to see in their favored communication channels. What they can’t do is ensure that your communication function as a whole stays aligned with – and relevant to – your organization’s needs. For that you need to take governance to the strategic level. Just like your colleagues in IT.
A friend of mine recently sent me this post by Seth Godin to get my thoughts from a professional slimeball communicator’s point of view. 
The post reflects on the “sugar-coated corporate speak” employed by a direct marketing team in order to spin its web-based information gathering as a consumer benefit.
Seth’s brief plea for authenticity had an unexpected impact on me – It reminded me of my father.
From Robert Scoble’s rant against bad public relations practices to the targeting of ’spin doctors’ for layoffs by State Services in New Zealand, the perception of the professional communicator’s value seems to be dropping faster than the Dow Jones Index after a major bank failure. International Association of Business Communicators Chair Barb Gibson recently brought the New Zealand action to the attention of IABC members in her blog. Her call to action was to have each of us start “speaking up for our profession.”
I agree that the State Services action does not seem like a good idea. I have no idea how well their PR professionals performed, but the choice of language (”spin doctors”) that made its way to the media was not exactly complementary. (Without better knowledge of their situation who can say if the firings were justified or not?) What I disagree with is that communicators should just be “speaking up” for their profession. That’s not enough.
We should be stepping up.
If your CEO walked up to you tomorrow and asked, “Why are you here?”, how would you answer?
Think about your potential response for a moment. There are a lot of choices. If you’ve ever gotten into the concept of personal branding, you might have already prepared a quick ‘elevator pitch’ for just such an occasion. You could talk about your ability to deliver results, change and influence the organization, and rattle off a half dozen key communication tools that you know how to leverage on your leader’s behalf. Or take any number of other approaches to demonstrating your value. If you’re like my colleague Tom (see comments to my previous post), you have seen the value of turning yourself into a “walking mission statement.” And that’s a good thing.
Now, let’s ask an even tougher question: “Why is your department here?”
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Whether you are a ‘one person show’ or lead a small army of communication specialists, you’ve probably felt some frustrations with the perceived value of your services from time to time. Are you looking for more credibility with the C-suite to get that strategic ’seat at the table?’ Take your communication function to the next level by developing a mandate, strategy and governance structure for your team. Read more »
Now that the social media revolution is well under way, I don’t feel especially inspired to evangelize adopting Web 2.0 in this blog. If you are here, odds are you’ve already drunk that particular Kool-aid, as my friend Bob would say. Besides, there are much better evangelists out there. You might even be one of them.
But the flurry of activity around social media and my participation in it has prompted me to start a new conversation online. Or “Comm”-versation. (Insert groan here).
I’ve seen a lot of words published about the need for social media. What I have not seen much of is candid explorations of how the communication function needs to evolve. Where is the conversation about what new practices, strategies, and competencies communicators need to have today beyond knowing how to use social media tools to be effective? In short, how do corporate communicators remain strategic and relevant in the social media era? Read more »