Making It Easier To Hear That Whistle Blow
June 30, 2011
I invited Kenneth Kendrick, who has experience of whistle-blowing, for his views on how companies should communicate their openness to such reporting on their corporate websites. Kenneth is looking for work at the moment: he’s open to various types of work, but is looking for quality assurance or advocacy work. If you can help, you can contact him by email.
How to get employees to report unethical practices before your business suffers
Known as the ‘Whistleblower’ for Peanut Corp on Texas I have had extensive discussions with others in the same predicament. Reporting an ethical, or any, violation can destroy both your career and personal life, as it did mine.
Most people I have talked to—and I agree with them—say that having a company policy and procedure in place will make it more likely that your front line employees will keep you abreast of what is happening.
Most whistleblowers affirm that a third party company handling the complaints makes it easier for them to make a report, especially for a smaller business where employees would have a stronger fear of their reports coming back to haunt them. In a larger organization, where the call is likely to go to someone who has no idea of who an employee may be, this can still be effective.
Employees must also understand that they may be one of only a few people who know about a violation, and thus they will be suspected no matter what mode of reporting they use. Any good company policy will have a contact name to report retaliation at the top levels of the organization.
When it comes to your company’s website, this information should be easily accessible, with both an email format and phone number for reporting violations, and for reporting retaliation. Some people are more comfortable speaking, and some writing.
Giving each report a number or code, so that an employee can follow up is essential to making your workers feel that these reports are not being ignored.
Above all else, as we all too often hear, it is the company culture that will dictate open communication. If someone can speak freely about such concerns with immediate supervisors without fear, problems can be solved quickly, but having a hotline on your website still shows that the organization means what it says.
Policies and procedures should strongly emphasize your commitment to open communication without fear of retaliation. Any link on your site that shows how an employee can report a violation, should also have a link to the companies policy and procedure on these issues.
Thanks Kenneth!
Communicating From the Top
April 4, 2011
I invited Mariana Ashley to write a guest post for us this week on internal communication. Mariana is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges.
Over to you, Mariana…
Quality Internal Communication Leads to More Satisfied Workers
Corporations of all sizes are in the habit these days of asking their employees to complete job satisfaction surveys. The purpose of these surveys is to shine a light on the company’s workplace strengths and weaknesses so the company can develop strategies to help retain talent and lower turnover rates by improving both the work environment and the work experience in any way they can.
In these surveys, a key area where many corporations fall short is in internal communications from the top down. In other words, employees want to know what decisions are being made by top executives and the management team and why. All too often these employees don’t get the answers or transparency they’re looking for.
Corporate communications specialists are often responsible for writing the content for internal communications, and bear the burden of sharing the decisions made by executives with everyone in the company. Everything they write must be vetted by their higher-ups so that only the most pertinent information gets through. That being said, what if more were communicated internally about what’s happening in a company?
Communicating well when top-level decisions affect all employees
One way this is done is by always thoroughly communicating decisions made at the top that affect all employees. For instance, if the management team determines that all employees will only receive a 1 percent raise at their annual review, when they are accustomed to receiving a higher percentage raise, this needs to be explained adequately in internal corporate communications. If the reasons behind the decision aren’t clearly articulated, then the employees may assume that the decision was made merely to boost the company’s bottom line, leading to job dissatisfaction because they don’t believe those in charge have their best interests at heart. Employees may wish to know that the decision to cut back on annual raises was made in an attempt to avoid employee layoffs or cuts in benefits at all costs. These are the finer details that are often left out when a stagnant internal memo is sent out announcing an update on diminished future raises.
Communicating when employees move up in the company
This sort of internal communication may seem mundane, but announcing the promotion of employees is important to worker satisfaction because it helps them clearly see that there is a path upward in the company for high-producing employees who demonstrate leadership skills. This sort of update can be provided monthly or quarterly and included in internal company newsletters. When employees are promoted, the announcement shouldn’t just be a couple of sentences. It should detail why those employees were promoted, point to their history with the company and express gratitude for the talent the promoted employees have brought to the company. This contributes to having a work environment where employees’ achievements are celebrated and boosts job satisfaction.
Communicating when an outsider is brought in to fill a coveted position
If a company hires someone outside the company for a leadership position that employees believe should have been filled internally, it can lead to job dissatisfaction. Therefore, any time this happens, it’s important to not only announce the new arrival through internal communications, but to explain in detail why the outsider stood out from the crowd and was chosen for a position that so many in the company had applied for and were denied.
These are only a few areas where quality internal communication can contribute to a more positive work environment, improved transparency and more job satisfaction. What do you think should be communicated more clearly from the top down in internal corporate communications?
Thanks, Mariana!
Mariana loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031@gmail.com. And we’d like to know your views too – do let us know what you think in the comments below.
Would Your Employees Nominate Your Company for a Best Place to Work Award?
February 24, 2011
I’ve written about the importance of internal brand advocates and branding from within your organization before on the Corporate Eye blog, and today, I’m going to revisit the topic by asking a question.
Would your employees nominate your company for a best place to work award?
Each year, various organizations hold “best companies to work for” awards programs. Advertising Age published a call for nominees for its own Best Places to Work award earlier this month. Do your employees believe in your company and your brand promise enough to nominate your company for such an award? If your answer to that question is no, then you need to invest more time into building internal brand advocates.
If your employees don’t feel good about your company and believe your brand promise, then why should customers? The answer is simple. Customers won’t believe.
Your employees should be your first source for positive word-of-mouth marketing. They can be your strongest brand advocates and most vocal brand guardians.
Not sure what internal brand advocates look like? Spend some time on the Zappos corporate site. Watch the videos, read about the Zappos culture and core values. You’ll learn very quickly what people who believe in their company and brand promise look like, sound like, and are capable of in terms of brand advocacy.
The next question is whether or not you can do it in your organization, too. Remember, internal brand advocacy comes from the top. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh walks the walk and talks the talk when it comes to the Zappos brand promise, and Zappos employees believe. If your leaders don’t buy it, then your employees won’t buy it. And that means customers won’t buy it either.
Image: stock.xchng
Stop Trying To Hold Back The Ocean
October 12, 2009
Ever wondered if you’re truly making the most of the resources available to you?
I recently invited Zack Grossbart, who is expert in telecommuting and works with high-tech companies to help them create strong teams that span continents (see The One Minute Commute) to write a post for us.
Zack has been working with and coaching remote teams at organizations like JP Morgan, 3M, Nortel, Hewlett Packard, and the United States Navy since 2001. He has served as a consultant to numerous Fortune 500 companies and is a consulting engineer for the Novell Compliance Management Platform.
Zack began loading DOS from a floppy disk when he was five years old. He began working professionally with computers when he was 15 and started his first software company when he was 16. He has also been an IT administrator and a member of an advertising firm. Zack lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, about a mile from Harvard University.
Over to you Zack…
Stop Trying To Hold Back The Ocean: Harness The Writing Talent In Your Company
In the old days the marketing department was the public face of your company. Your sales team talked to customers, your channel team talked to partners, and your marketing department talked to everyone. Marketing departments were judged by their ability to control the message and stop leaks.
The perfect example of the old way is Apple’s marketing department. They released what they wanted when they wanted and not before. When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPod reporters had been lured into the room with only the knowledge that Apple was releasing something and it wasn’t a computer. Today even Apple is springing leaks.
Companies all over are trying to plug up the little leaks in their corporate messaging while the roaring ocean of Twitter, Facebook, and personal blogs overwhelms them. They need to stop holding back the leaks and start seeing the world differently.
A few facts
Fact 1. You have writers in places you’ve never looked. Bob from Accounting has a blog about model trains. Sherry from Engineering manages a community of scrap-bookers. Your company is full of writers.
Fact 2. Bob and Sherry are scared to write about your company. There have been too many bad stories about employees who were sacked for complaining about their jobs online. Most blogging tutorials advise you to never mention your company and most companies have strict rules about it.
Fact 3. Bob and Sherry are passionate about their jobs. They work hard, know your products inside and out, and like them enough to keep working to make them better.
Put these three facts together and you have people who want to write about your company and can’t do it.
Stop plugging the leaks and build a dam
You can’t stop the ocean. Your people will keep writing so direct them. Your marketing department must change from being the sole providers of content to mentoring other writers. Focus the power of those writers like water through a dam.
Step 1. Find your writers. Ask around the office and see who has a blog. Use Google to search for your employees and see what they’re saying online. Look for the ones who write consistently and well.
Step 2. Create a place for them to write. You might create a single corporate blog, an employee blog section, or just organize their existing blogs.
Step 3. Guide your writers. Pair them up with someone from your marketing department who can guide them about what content you want and help them review and edit their work.
Step 4. Enable them. Google famously gave everyone 10 percent of their time to work on special projects. Give your writers four hours a week to write.
Step 5. Incent them. By the word, by the article, or on a bonus plan, pay your writers for doing the extra work.
Step 6. Get out of the way. Move roadblocks out of your writers’ way. If the legal department needs to review everything then take care of it for your writers. Make it easy for them to write.
Harness your ocean of writers to generate market power for your company. Let them talk about you, show your customers what an exciting company you are and where you need to improve. Your people really are passionate about your company, and passion sells.
Thanks Zack!
Employees know URLs better than their CEOs name?
September 23, 2009
44% of receptionists on the main switchboard of the FTSE 100 companies don’t know the name of their CEO?
I find the results of a recent survey of FTSE 100 companies carried out by MoneyPenny really quite astonishing (via Brand Strategy Guru).
Researchers went mystery shopping across the biggest companies in the country, calling the main UK switchboards of the FTSE 100 to ask each company 10 questions over 4 weeks. They evaluated time to answer, friendliness of answer, clarity of information, welcome received, whether it was a human or automated response, how knowledgeable the respondent was, and overall satisfaction with the call.
Now some of these criteria are quite subjective, but over the course of many calls, you’d soon be able to compare companies. And for the most part, the responses were fine; most companies came out as pretty average (the full results are available and an opportunity to compare your own business performance with the FTSE100). But some of the detail is very curious; the poor performance of the retail sector overall, for example – though a few individual companies put in an excellent performance.
I think it is particularly interesting that more people could provide the web address of the corporate site (87%) than could name the CEO (56%) or provide the postal address (86%).
It was peak holiday season, but surely it can’t be that the switchboards were all staffed by temps (and even if they were, the temps could have been given a crib sheet), or that there had been a mass upheaval in the personnel at the top of the organisation? Chief Executives don’t come and go that fast…
We’ve discussed employees as spokespeople before; these front-line staff really are brand ambassadors, and deserve to be given training and resources to provide the answers to some of the most likely questions that they’ll have to field.
We’ve also pointed out that the most common reason to visit the corporate website is to check contact details. Having a visitor-friendly, welcoming website with easy-to-find phone numbers is great, but if the welcome received when the visitor does make contact doesn’t match, then the difference will be starkly apparent.
And it is exactly this kind of mismatch that makes people see the corporate website as spin and marketing.
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