Imagine that you’re a physician, ready to work with your patients and help them thrive. Your patients come in, and you try taking a family history, doing a complete physical and ordering appropriate lab work before diagnosing the problem — and suggesting an approach. But alas. Your patients aren’t interested because they already know that all they need is a new bottle of…

Oh, I feel your pain, frustrated physician. Employee communications often suffers from this same syndrome — capabilities misunderstood, value uncertain, leading to less-than-optimal results.

And frankly, it’s understandable. As a profession, we’ve gone through a huge amount of change over the past 10 years. Go on, tell me what comes to mind when you think about employee communications:

• Writer
• Researcher
• Benefits communicator
• Newsletter editor
• Speech writer

And you’d be right. We do all of that, and we have to do it well. But while that’s necessary, it is not sufficient. Because employee communications should be so much more. Here’s what comes to my mind when I think about employee communications:

• Influencer
• Coach
• Advisor
• Risk manager
• Engagement expert
• Change agent
• Truth teller

Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re thinking that I have a rather grandiose view of my profession. And I do. But only because I’ve lived it and have seen the difference it can make to the culture and success of a company. Let’s look at an example that is very fresh to all of us — a high tech company which made an important announcement.

Yahoo

The story is well known by now. High tech company struggling to rebuild its products, culture and reputation announces a new “work only from the office” policy. Proverbial you-know-what hits the fan. Howls of protest from employees. “They don’t get it” criticism from the media. Defenders of the decision, pointing out the advantage of in-person teamwork in an innovation company.

Here’s the email from Human Resources that started it all:

YAHOO! PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION — DO NOT FORWARD

Yahoos,

Over the past few months, we have introduced a number of great benefits and tools to make us more productive, efficient and fun. With the introduction of initiatives like FYI, Goals and PB&J, we want everyone to participate in our culture and contribute to the positive momentum. From Sunnyvale to Santa Monica, Bangalore to Beijing — I think we can all feel the energy and buzz in our offices.

To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together. Beginning in June, we’re asking all employees with work-from-home arrangements to work in Yahoo! offices. If this impacts you, your management has already been in touch with next steps. And, for the rest of us who occasionally have to stay home for the cable guy, please use your best judgment in the spirit of collaboration. Being a Yahoo isn’t just about your day-to-day job, it is about the interactions and experiences that are only possible in our offices.

Thanks to all of you, we’ve already made remarkable progress as a company — and the best is yet to come.
Jackie

Was the email well written? Why yes, it was. Was the messaging clear? Yep, it was crystal clear. Was it obvious that this was for internal purposes only and wasn’t to be shared? Uh huh.

There was clearly a good writer at work. A lot of thought went into the messaging. From a tactical standpoint, it’s hard to criticize this communication.

Except it failed spectacularly.

Because this was far more than a tactical communication issue — it was a strategic communication issue, involving change management, leadership and cross-department collaboration.

Instead of sending an HR memo out to employees, suppose this had happened:

1. The business researched the impact of work-at-home employees and has decided that the best way to maximize innovation and grow a healthy, productive culture is to have all employees work from the office.

2. A meeting is called with internal communications, external communications and human resources. Actions prior to communication are identified.

3. A change management plan is put into place, analyzing stakeholders, potential risks and opportunities, and putting great clarity around communication objectives of knowledge, attitude and action.

4. With the results of the change management plan in place, it’s clear that highly personal, sensitive and strong leadership is an imperative for success. The CEO is set up as the champion of the change, and the main spokesperson for it. Key stakeholders are informed of what is happening and why in advance of the communication.

5. On announcement day, the CEO holds a global town hall. With use of technology, she acknowledges that this was a difficult decision to make, because it does impact employees so strongly. She then sets out the business case for it, clearly explaining what’s in it for the company and for employees. Her comments are followed by 45 minutes of questions and answers.

6. Managers are given support materials to explain the change in the context of their own departments.

Will Yahoos be happy employees after this announcement? No. It’s bad news for them no matter how you paint it. But at least they’ll understand the reason for the change, and they’ll respect their leadership for having the guts to personally talk about it and openly answer questions in an adult, straightforward way.

So what do employee communicators who are at the top of their game do? I repeat:

• → We’re risk managers, protecting our companies from rash actions.
• → We’re coaches and advisors, helping our executives communicate in a way that enhances their reputations and ensures communication success.
• → We’re change agents, leading the change management effort to make sure the communication, when it happens, occurs in the optimal environment.
• → We’re influencers, using our knowledge of employee perspectives and business needs to shape the discussion.
• → We’re truth tellers, willing to talk about the ugly truth, even when that’s painful.

Writers? You bet. Deck creators? Of course. But the very best communicators do so much more. And your company is healthier and stronger for it.

A member of the Baker Network
Terry McKenzie brings over 25 years of experience in change management, internal communication, strategic communication planning, and implementation for corporations and agencies. In addition to applying her knowledge and skills to building informed, engaged and aligned workforces, Terry is a trainer for Melcrum’s prestigious Black Belt communication courses. You can follow her thoughts on life and work at tmacwords.wordpress.com.

Turning compliance into an opportunity to build culture and engage employees in a fresh and meaningful way.

Today companies face similar brand and culture challenges, which limit their potential.

We’ve seen it with our own clients. Case in point: We are currently helping several companies transform their businesses and evolve their cultures and brands to better reflect their potential today and their vision for tomorrow.

These companies are in different industries. They range from 20 to 98 years in business, and have revenues ranging from $200 million to $6 billion. Despite the differences in industry, size and age, they all face similar challenges: They lack a clear vision, purpose and set of values. They have poor internal communications. And their brand stories and differentiators have not kept pace with how the world has changed over the past decade.

The factors that are holding these companies back fall into two categories: culture and brand. Both are mission critical to any company’s success — and when not handled properly, can even threaten an organization’s future growth and sustainability.

Cultures need leadership, purpose and alignment.

Many leaders have excellent backgrounds and track records in operations or engineering or finance. However, they lack a clear and consistent vision and do not possess the communication skills to effectively reach their people. For employees, that translates into the feeling that the company’s leadership is either weak or confused — or both.

In addition, the demands of downsizing, right sizing and every one doing double and triple what they once did is also taking its toll — translating into lackluster earnings and employee performance. It’s commonplace for employees today to be burned out, apathetic and ineffective — issues that all come to light in the Towers Watson 2012 Global Workforce Study which highlights issues such as employees’ stress and anxiety about the future and job security, and doubts about the level of interest and support from upper management.

Having a cultural common purpose does impact a company’s bottom line. In IBM’s recent CEO study, Leadership Through Connections, three imperatives were found essential for outperformance: empowering employees through values, engaging customers as individuals and amplifying innovations with partnerships. CEOs see greater organizational openness ahead. As rules are redefined and collaboration explodes, having a strong sense of sense of purpose and shared beliefs to guide decision-making will be key to avoiding chaos, protecting a business’ future, and delivering stellar results.

Companies need to practice brand basics.

For a variety of reasons, many companies have not invested the time, resources and money into developing effective brand fundamentals such as platform tools, consistent and aligned touch points, and internal methods for disciplined brand stewardship over time.

We often encounter companies that have not adapted or evolved their brands, even though the world and the marketplaces in which they compete have changed significantly. As a result, their brands look dated and their messaging and positioning are no longer appropriate or relevant.

A good brand positioning is a differentiated market position that no other company can legitimately claim, captured in a powerful brand idea. It should be simply worded and function as a totem pole around which actions, behaviors and communications are aligned. The brand idea must be used internally as an affirmation of a distinctive and dedicated culture and externally as a competitive advantage.

Another frequently missed opportunity is the lack of emotional connection to a brand. Companies need to make a connection with their audiences with compelling messaging and a riveting, authentic brand story. The story helps people connect on an ethical, logical and emotional level to capture hearts and minds.

It is also imperative to have the right touch points for your audiences to receive your messages. Today corporate communications is a two-way street. All audiences expect to receive it the way they want — when and where they want. Only by knowing your audiences intimately will the right delivery channels become apparent — social, digital as well as traditional.

In conclusion

So, what will help you become the market leader your company has the potential to be? It’s simple. Make an investment in integrated brand tools and acquire the discipline to execute your brand across company silos, as well as media channels.

Manage for your long-term success and sustainability. Brand development is not inventing what you should be. It’s uncovering the potential of what you are. Help your company develop a distinctive culture and strong brand that’s unique. Then, reinforce the connection between your brand and your audiences — both internally and externally. In doing so, you’ll create employees and customers that will be ambassadors and advocates for life.

Read more of our thoughts on our website here!

Calls to action are nothing new. Whether you’re aware of them or not, you hear them every day. Companies fly banners and shout rallying cries constantly to get you to march in line with them; “Just do it.” “Think different.” Why do they have these? Because they work. They speak to the core of what it is to be human. They tap into our personal beliefs—both about ourselves and the world at large.

Consumer facing brands have long understood the power of a rallying cry to encourage people to buy their products. Companies have the same opportunity to attract and retain employees with internal branding. They can use the rallying cry tool to allure the type of talent they want, engage their employees and create loyalty within their ranks. As mentioned before, calls to action are effective because they’re simple and speak to our emotional core—our “gut” as it were. Finding this core, this “gut instinct,” within your company’s values is the secret ingredient to developing an effective call to action. Simon Sinek asks, “Why do you do what you do?” Surprisingly, this is a challenging question for many organizations. He then goes on to state “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” If you can accurately and simply express what it is you believe, you’ll attract like-minded people who align with your purpose and vision. They will be your fiercely engaged employees, your brand advocates and ambassadors. Your call to action is simply the expression of your company’s core belief and the rallying cry you use can garner the culture and talent you desire.

Follow this link to find tips on creating your call to action and see how other companies are utilizing their rallying cries

While the tangibles are important, today employees seek the intangibles for motivation and inspiration. Sounds obvious, right? Most companies have scattered the “rediscovery” of their culture across multiple departments, but it is our belief that it should exist in the CR efforts of the organization. An employee needs to know what the company stands for. All of this is communicated through your corporate culture and, by their very essence, CR efforts express values and ethos beyond money.

In our recent newsletter, our article on workplace trends outlines three stages for building CR that inspires.

Stage 1: Build social capital through employee engagement
Stage 2: Evolve employee engagement into employee integration
Stage 3: Crowdsource corporate culture

The true success will come from the engagement of everyone in your organization. Learn about these steps and get going on LIVING your corporate values. Read the article and subscribe to our newsletter for more.

In our interview with Tamar Elkeles, Chief Learning Officer of Qualcomm, she explains how the museum, we partnered with them to build, has provided their employees with high-touch, experiential way to tell their corporate story. Within a more meaningful context, the museum has given employees an opportunity to learn, see and feel the history of Qualcomm. “Employee engagement needs to be built” says Tamar, and we at Baker are proud to have been a part of the foundation. Check out the interview here: http://www.bakerbrand.com/insights/experiential_engagement.html

Everyday we’re inundated with more reasons why companies need to communicate corporate responsibility. We hear about mistakes (Apple’s supply chain, McDonalds’ ties with inhumane egg farmers), and we applaud the good (Coca-Cola’s PlantBottle and Chipotle’s commitment to local and humane farming).

Individuals are willing to go further than ever to do good; from buying locally to hiring personal eco-concierges. Increasingly, consumers want to buy from companies that care about the triple bottom line—so much so that we’ll research brands and their parent companies to know who’s behind them. “People aren’t fooled by sustainable sub-brands” such as Kashi or Odwalla Juice. Moreover, employees want to work for companies whose corporate responsibility is up to par. They’ll seek out those that practice a “fundamental human value that is authentic to the brand.”

That information isn’t hard to find either. We live in an age of unprecedented transparency. Lists like Co.Exist’s “25 Companies that Practice Good Corporate Citizenship and Still Make Lots of Money,” Sustainable Brand’s “50 Fastest Growing Brands That Serve a ‘Higher Purpose’” as well as articles about the corporations that aren’t doing it  make it easy to spot heroes and villains. Through email blasts and social networks, this news spreads far and fast, making it harder than ever to get away with what consumers dub greenwashing.

With more eyes on accountable corporate responsibility, the way to do business is actually becoming the right way to do business. Customers and consumers know that information is power, and they arm themselves to and make decisions and a difference on every level. This is something to applaud, to step up to and engage.

In the 1990s, CR was downplayed as a “nice to do” or a mere marketing tactic. But in the past decade, the business case has been made: CR done right contributes to bottomline business success. The CR effort is not just something to bolt on to a company but can be a means to change the entire business. CR is a lens through which companies must see their business futures. Strategies and tactics that don’t consider impact on people and the planet, as well as profits, are already a step behind and living on borrowed time. But fear not. Consumers and employees alike know that CR is a process, and change takes time. For established businesses, the first step is commitment and accountability. Progress, as in life, is more important than perfection. So try!

Currently best practices circle around concepts of consumer and employee engagement.
Yet, with the over saturation of products and information we encounter daily, engaging the consumer and employee has become exponentially more challenging. Experiential design offers a new opportunity to immerse, engage, and educate your multiple audiences.

Recently Jessica Melnick, an account planner and strategist at Baker, wrote a compelling insight on using a corporate museum to tell your story. Jessica describes how a physical space offers an interactive, highly-engaging, non-traditional way to have audiences understand the core essence of a company, its corporate character, achievements and the values that drive it. By story telling on walls, through kiosks, with objects and videos you can uniquely bundle the past, present and future of an organization and its industry. Every visitor — whether customer, business partner, current or perspective employee — who invests in a 15-minute tour will walk away with a different level of comprehension and sense of your company and brand. In years gone by, corporate museums were used to simply document a company’s history. Today, they can contribute to charting its business success.

Read Jessica’s article “The corporate museum — your living story”