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October 26, 2005

On Halloween and holidays

My firm once had a young employee who was bright, creative and energetic —unfortunately, except when it came to her work. There was no doubt that she was in the wrong profession (she should have been a party planner), because this young woman came to life around holidays. She’d spend every lunch hour looking for the right stuff to fill Easter baskets. She’d search tirelessly for the ideal Halloween costume for her son. She’d start Christmas shopping in July.

I was reminded of this former employee by the annual NPF Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch. Consumers expect to spend $3.29 billion on Halloween this year, up 5.4% from 2004, with much of the increase expected to come from young adults. (Halloween is the #2 holiday for spending on decorations.)

Here’s the point: Holidays matter to people. We welcome celebrations, even if we have to work to make them happen. We crave fun.

Communicators often say they don’t want to be relegated to a party-planning role, and certainly our value to the organization is not dependent upon our aptitude for ordering balloons. But these days, with all the turmoil our organizations are going through, most employees could use a little celebrating. (They could use a lot of recognition, too, but that’s a subject for a different weblog.)

Here’s evidence: About a year ago, one of our client companies was celebrating a significant anniversary: 25 years since the company was founded. The president, to his credit (many senior executives are really bad at understanding the importance of celebration), thought there should be a modest but fun celebration—the company was doing okay financially, but not great, so the anniversary “party” needed to be in line with performance.

The company presented logistical challenges: it had offices spread out across the world, and a significant percentage of employees “lived” at a client or worked at home. And there was a lot of discussion about a cultural challenge: This was a service firm, with many high-IQ professionals who tended to be skeptical. Would they react to an attempt at “fun” with cynicism?

After much thought, we helped our client develop a simple celebration: Everybody got a very nice commemorative coffee mug. Offices were decorated with balloons and posters. Every location had a little cupcake celebration in the afternoon. Folks who worked remotely could “join in” the celebration on the intranet, which had a special site devoted to the anniversary, including animated balloons, a message from the (retired) founder, another message from the president, and the opportunity to post photos and messages.

Doesn’t sound too creative, does it? But employees—even the brainy ones—loved it. The anniversary celebration hit just the right note—it honored the occasion, with a mix of seriousness and fun, but wasn’t too extravagant or overblown. For one day, employees had their very own holiday. They were very happy.

This Halloween, as you covertly eat Milky Way minis and consider whether your co-worker’s Jennifer Lopez costume is a terrible mistake, remember that celebration is an important part of communication. We communicators need to be taken seriously, but we also have an opportunity to make employees smile.

Happy Halloween!

Posted by Alison Davis at 09:22 AM

October 14, 2005

Communicating with the call center

I spent some time this week with a bunch of folks who staff the HR service center for employees at a major corporation. These phone reps need to be knowledgeable about every aspect of the company’s policies and benefits, so when employees call with questions they can get immediate and accurate answers.

Here’s the rub: The whole operation is outsourced. Not a single person in the call center is an employee of the corporation, yet reps have to know as much as the most experienced HR manager. All the reps are hourly workers who make a modest wage; as far as I know, none is a college graduate. And because HR is a strangely seasonal business (think: open enrollment), some of the reps are temporary, with a new group coming on board every fall.

Communicators, meet your future audience. As companies get more “innovative” about how they get work done (offshoring, outsourcing, contractors, etc.), we communicators will need to broaden our scope beyond people who fit the exact definition of “employee.”

Coincidentally, this week my colleague David Pitre and I had a conversation about the best term to describe what we do. I have long preferred “employee communication” because the focus is on our customer: the employee. David has been hearing lately from professionals who prefer “internal communication” because it describes the universe in which we operate.

But after hanging out in the call center, I’m sure that either term describes the future state. The call center reps aren’t employees; they’re not internal, either (Geographically, they’re hundreds of miles away from the nearest company office.) The reps strongly identify with the client company and with the employees they “meet” on the phone, but they get their paycheck from a different company, their employer. And the reps know they need to be informed—through training and communication—about the client company in order to do their jobs.

I spoke about this conundrum with another colleague, Joe DeLuccia, who pointed out that we have another client who provides healthcare companies with contract sales representatives. Some of these reps are “captive,” working only for one healthcare company, sometimes only on one product. Our client company looks at the challenge of communicating with its reps from a different angle: The reps so identify with their customer that they forget they work for their own company.

Complicated, isn’t it? And pretending that this isn’t our problem—we only have to worry about our real employees—isn’t going to work over the long term.

“Internal communication?” “Employee communication?” Maybe we need a new way to describe what we do.

What do you think?

Posted by Alison Davis at 05:21 PM

October 07, 2005

Me-me-me media

Here I go, talking about media again, in the context of employee communication. That’s because, although we communicators make a distinction between external and internal communication, employees don’t experience a definitive separation between the two. The world of information is transparent to them. An article about the company appears in the newspaper, a message from the CEO appears in their e-mail in-box—it’s all the same to employees.

I thought of this again when I came across an essay by MediaPost columnist Cory Treffiletti from last January, which I discovered when cleaning out some old electronic files. (You can view the entire article at “Online Spin,”. You have to register, which is free, but it’s worth the step—great content!)

I had saved the column not only because I’m an information packrat, but because I thought Mr. Treffiletti was right on target when he coined the term, “MEdia.” As he wrote, “Successful media . . . is all about what the consumer wants, when they want it, and how they want it.

“The current decline in traditional broadcast and the rise of the new wave of broadcast proves this to be true,” he explained. “Video on demand, TiVo, and other DVRs allow the consumer to watch their television when they want. The Internet has always been about personalization via bookmarks and opt-in e-mail, but now we see the development of new browsers such as Firefox, which allows the consumer to further personalize their Internet experience by customizing the interface and the method of interaction to make them comfortable.”

Why do I share all this with you? Because it all speaks to expectations. Employees are getting used to consuming (external) information the way they want it. If internal communication offers no choices, other than what senior management dictates or the lawyers permit, communication seems static, one-size-fits-all, irrelevant.

As we’ll discuss at my web workshop on Tuesday, October 18, this is the biggest challenge facing communicators because of new technologies: Employees expect customization. They expect choice. They expect to participate and create content as well as read it.

The conflict lies in the fact that communicators’ entire existence has been based on the opposite of all of these: We’ve been in the business of mass marketing (one message for everybody). And in the habit of control (review by layers of lawyers). And proud of how polished communication is—perfectly crafted, beautifully rendered, ideal, without flaws.

The next decade is going to be difficult, as we communicators (and the senior managers who pay our salaries) have to learn that it’s a brave new world inside our organizations, as well as out there in media land. As Cory Treffiletti puts it, “’What about me? What do I want? . . . are the two statements” that will drive communication in the future.

Are you ready?

Posted by Alison Davis at 10:00 AM