Melcrum Summit: Re-engineering Internal Communication for Agility, Productivity and Impact

Tuesday, August 7, 2012 by Franklin Bros

 

   One of the conferences that I’ll be attending in person for the first time, though I’ve been a regular virtual tweeter at for several years now, is Melcrum’s annual UK Summit, titled for 2012 as ‘Competing on the Curve: Re-engineering Internal Communication for agility, productivity and impact’.

The Summit addresses five key areas which are also being focused on by IC functions which are successfully reinventing their role, moving from craft experts to strategic partners to organisational connectors:

  • Redefining the role of Internal Communication
  • Enhancing the leader-manager-employee relationship
  • Supporting business transformation
  • Building a collaborative organisation
  • Making measurement more transparent and compelling.

 

Of course these are all areas that I write about here quite regularly, emphasising the connection between Internal Communication and (the rest of) Human Capital Management, which is why I’ve long been meaning to attend this event, particularly as it’s already the main event in IC practitioners’ calendars.

The summit take place in London on 10 to 11 October and it’d be great to see you there. If not, I’ll be blogging on some of the following sessions (let me know if there’s a particular speaker / topic you’d like to see me post on):

  • Global Vision 2020: Redefining organisational communication in a new era of transparency, mobility and digital fluency, Anne-Lise Kjaer, Futurist & Founder, Kjaer Global

 

  • Using data to empower IC function to shift from outputs to outcomes, David Harrington, Vice President Internal Communications, Shell

 

  • How to have an honest conversation about strategic change, Flemming Norrgren, Professor of Management, Chalmers University, Sweden

 

  • Shifting the role of IC from messenger to change agent, Antje Burbach, Director Communications, Europe Speciality Care, Pfizer

 

  • Establishing IC as a disruptive force to drive cultural change, Benedikt Benenati, Group Internal Communications Director, Kingfisher

 

  • Building employee engagement and managing change to deliver sustainable business goals, Mike Barry, Head of Sustainable Business and Clair Foster, Head of Internal Communications, Marks & Spencer plc.

 

  • Channeling the energy: The critical link between engagement and internal communications, Oliver Strong, Group Director of Internal Communications & Engagement, RSA

 

  • Refocusing the IC function to support a new era of communication, Julie Langford, Academy Manager, RBS Communications

 

  • Three steps to engagement through organisational collaboration, Andy Brown, CEO and Nick Crawford, Senior Consultant, Engage Group

 

If you do want to book for the Summit, the link you’ll need is here.

 

 

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Talent Management in Management Thinking

by Franklin Bros

 

    I thought you might be interested in this post from me on the Economist’s Management Thinking blog, referring back to their Talent Management Summit this Summer which I spoke at and blogged on as one of their official media attendees (and the sole social media one).

It’s great to be involved in the Economist’s great conferences (I’ll also be attending the High Growth Markets Summit in September and the Diversity Summit in December) and now to be featured on their great Management Thinking blog as well!

 

 

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More on Social Media in HR Summit

Wednesday, August 1, 2012 by Franklin Bros

 

   I’ve received an update on the programme for Fleming Europe’s Social Media in HR Summit taking place on 27th and 28th September in the ‘internet capital of Europe’: Dublin, Ireland (base for international headquarters of companies such as Google, Facebook,LinkedIn, eBay, Zynga, Twitter and Gala Networks).

Confirmed sessions / speakers now include:

 

  • From Traditional Recruitment to Web 2.0 Recruitment..., Alfredo Donati, HR Partner and Recruiter,  Lufthansa, Ireland

 

  • Philosophy of Recruitment 3.0, Matthew Jeffery, Head of EMEA Talent Acquisition and Global Talent Brand, Autodesk, UK

 

  • Sustainable Social Media Recruitment Strategies - ...or how to prevent your strategy from failing after 3 months, Ted Meulenkamp, International Program Manager, Employer Branding and Social Media Recruitment, Hoffmann-La Roche, Spain

 

  • The Human Face of Your Organization, Jean-Marc Mickeler, Partner and Head of Employer Branding, Deloitte, France

 

  • Exploring the Future of Talent Acquisiton, Christoph Fellinger, Talent Relationship Management, Beiersdorf, Germany

 

  • Expanding and Enriching your Social Media Footprint, Stephen Jio, Social Media and Community Professional, Dell, Ireland

 

  • From Best Practice on Earth to Best Steps forward in the ’Cloud’, Courtney Shelton Hunt, Founder, Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs), USA

 

  • Legal issues to be aware of “Rules of Befriending” on FACEBOOK, Dan Manolescu, Protection and Privacy Advisor, European Commission (Data protection Officer‘s Office), Belgium, Data

 

  • How Individual HR Professionals can and should use Social Networks and Digital-Virtual Technologies, Carrie Corbin, Associate Director of Strategic Staffing & Talent Attraction, AT&T, USA

 

It looks like a great event and I’m looking forward to catching up with Matthew Jeffery again and meeting all the other speakers – particularly Courtney Hunt as I’m in her SMinOrgs groups and we have tried to get together before – particularly in a joint proposal for a presentation to the US’ Enterprise 2.0 conference which unfortunately didn’t happen. So it’ll be good to team up for this.

And I hope I’ll also get to meet you there too?

If you’d like to attend the event you can book at http://human-resources.flemingeurope.com/social-media-hr/register.

 

 

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London 2012 – taking a sickie / playing the game

by Franklin Bros

 

   I’ve spent a couple of non-Olympic days in London this week and have been pleased to see travel disruption significantly down on what had been feared – in fact away from the Olympic venues and major train stations there seem to be less people around than there are normally.

The other big fear of many organisations was that sickness absence would rise to Robbie Grabarz heights as employees take unathorised leave to attend the games in person or more probably watch them on TV.  Badenoch & Clark’s not thoroughly believable survey even suggested that a quarter of young employees (18-24) were likely to take sick time.

Of course the issue isn’t really about management of sickness absence as it is about more progressive employee support.  For example, Nicola Linkleter, MD at Badenoch & Clark comments:

"To discourage employees against pulling a 'sickie', employers might consider embedding the London 2012 Games into the workplace. Showing events on big screens in breakout areas; allowing workers to take breaks to coincide with coverage and organising socials around major events could all help to increase employee engagement during the six week period."

 

Indeed, and I still think this sort of informal support would provide much more value than big, high profile corporate sponsorship schemes.

You could extend things beyond this too.  Some progressive organisations already provide duvet days for employees who on some ocaisions just can’t be bothered to make it in. (I don’t think that should be seen as a criticism – the more engaged an employee is on an ongoing basis probably the more likely it is that they’re going to have the odd disengaged spell.)  So how about ‘ticket days’ for those employees lucky enough to get one (perhaps only for the £20 tickets so it doesn’t just reward the richest).

What I don’t think organisations have to do is organise their own mini-Olympics.  It can work in some organisations but just because your school kids have done it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily going to work for your employees!

So, yes, there is a lot of talk about gamification around these days and there should perhaps be a link between the games and organisations’ use of gamification.  But gamification isn’t just about playing games (on an ipad or on a soccer field). It certainly doesn’t have to involve being given points and league tables as this article by the normally sound Will McInnes sort of suggests.

Gamification is simply about learning what makes games (including sporting ones) so compelling to make employment a bit more exciting too.  Part of this is about striving for the best possible performance. As Lord Coe put in during the Opening Ceremony:

“The Olympics bring together the people of the world in harmony and friendship to celebrate what is best about mankind…  There is a truth to sport, a purity, a drama, an intensity, a spirit that makes it irresistible to take part in and irresistible to watch…  In every Olympic sport there is all that matters in life. Humans stretched to the limit of their abilities, inspired by what they can achieve, driven by their talent to work harder than they can believe possible, living for the moment but making an indelible mark upon history.  To the athletes, gathered here on the eve of this great endeavor, I say that to you is given something precious and irreplaceable. To run faster, to jump higher, to be stronger.”

 

What games aren’t about is traditional reward. Though it’s interesting that some countries pay their gold medal winners up to £600k the UK doesn’t and I think that’s the right approach.

This is perhaps the real lesson from Olympic Games-ification – we need to make employment less about the salary and more about the mission of, performance development opportunities in, and the potential to have fun within, our organisations too.

More breaks, social events and ‘ticket day’ type flexibility are all examples of how organisations could make this sort of change.

 

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London 2012 and corporate sponsorship

Tuesday, July 31, 2012 by Franklin Bros

 

   Whoops - I've just remembered we're not supposed to use the words 'London 2012'  except as an official sponsor of the games, which clearly I'm not.


I have to say I find this slightly ridiculous - both London and 2012 are commonly used words and together could refer to many different things.  And it's just one example of rather heavy handed support for the games' corporate sponsors (another is the #wedemandchange movement).  It also seems particularly odd given the background of amateur involvement and spirit of competitiveness at the centre of the games.

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PR Benefits?

 

I also wonder about the real value that the sponsors get from all this.  I can't say booking my tickets with a Visa card has made me any more likely to prefer this to Mastercard (and it's also annoyed many who had to take a new card for this particular purpose - and who will, I'm sure, promptly cut it up at the end of the games).

 

Similarly with McDonalds - though the value of the meals, even without the opportunity to 'go large', was considerably higher than the other outlets, and sort of made up for the mega queues.

 

While I'm on the subject - what planet is Panasonic on?  Having people wait 50 minutes for a very short 3D film of the opening ceremony interspersed with a dozen adverts for Panasonic, followed by an 'opportunity' to view their products, is NOT smart.  Coca-Cola does slightly better with their panel thing, but their estimates of the queue lengths are dismal.

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I thought Cisco did a lot better than any of these - their Games Face device is a lot of fun, and you even get emailed a picture after the event.  Absolutely not in-your-face advertising like Panasonic, but much more likely to leave you with a positive impression of the company.  And not as extreme as building a 115m high sculpture / tower, though this was fun and provided a great view over the stadium and rest of the park - so thanks Arcelor Mittal - but I'd have put my £16m somewhere else.

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Employee Benefits?

 

I suppose part of the benefits that sponsors are hoping to gain some from increased engagement of their employees.  This was certainly the argument put forward by BT, Sainsbury's and Kraft Foods in a session I saw called 'The Olympics as a Catalyst for People Involvement and Development' at the HR Directors Business Summit this year.

 

I, and I know a lot of other people, weren't convinced.  Wouldn't it just be a lot simpler, and certainly cheaper, to let staff take time off for Olympics events, perhaps have office parties / events linked to these, and otherwise work to increase motivation?

 

 

Other Benefits?

 

So if not these benefits what are the real reasons companies sponsor these events? Could it be anything to do with the opportunity for execs to get premium tickets for the most in-demand events perhaps?

 

Whatever the reasons, I'd like to see less sponsorship (and certainly less heavy handedness).  Of course, this would require a different model for running the games but perhaps that would be no bad thing - meaning no zil lanes for example.  That would require athletes to get themselves to events on time, just like the rest of us - and why shouldn't they have to do this?

 

One of the highlights of Danny Boyle's Opening Ceremony for me was the inclusion of the audience in the performance through the use of pixel tablets.  And I do love all the wizardry of the modern Olympics, but it'd be great to see a more broadly inclusive games - including letting everyone refer to the title of the games!

 

 

 

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London 2012 – inspiring a generation?

Monday, July 30, 2012 by Franklin Bros

 

   So after all the road closures, public sector strikes, G4S recruitment problems and Mitt Romney’s international ‘charm offensive ‘ – or offensive charm perhaps - London put on a hell of a show on Friday.

Then on Saturday I was at the Olympic Park for Team GB in the women’s handball which was an amazing day too. That was partly about the handball which I hadn’t seen before and is a great sport in which we’re showing some early potential (we need to change the goalie though). But for me it was mainly about the atmosphere at the park where there was a great buzz and everyone seemed happy and friendly, which is an increasingly rare experience these days. I thought the volunteers made a great contribution to this, being friendly themselves, offering to take photos and clearly being keen to help out when they could.

If we manage to keep this up, the rest of the two weeks should be fantastic too.

There’s still the legacy of course. And that’s going to be even harder to deliver – and there are some disconcerting signs that we won’t manage it (see Mr Romneyshambles, I can say this, you can’t).

Any legacy will be partly about the infrastructure, and I hope West Ham are finally successful in taking over the stadium after the events. But being based in West London rather than the East I’m not clear about the potential for the rest of the site.

And the legacy is partly about people, hence the games’ tagline, ‘Inspiring a Generation’. And that’s probably going to be much harder to do – certainly more demanding that handing on the torch to a group of young athletes which was the one bit of the opening ceremony I did find a bit naff.

From an HCM perspective, it’s about increasing engagement (in society – yes, in business – we’ll still have to see), and probably health and wellness too. This is something the Olympics could definitely make a difference too – particularly with around 30% of children aged 2 to 15 (in England) being classified as overweight or obese. (See Mitt I could have talked about the US here, but I’ll choose not to do that).

It’s something else I was talking to people about at Monster Buzz where I to think Gareth Jones made the point that there was nothing overt being done to encourage young people to engage in sport (and I did look under my seat in the handball for something but there wasn’t anything there).

But perhaps we don’t need this – eg with the current upsurge in cycling to get around the extra traffic in London, plus all the interest in Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish, Sir Chris Hoy and Lizzie Armitstead, we shouldn’t need any more promotion to get more people on their bikes.

And it’s early days so far, but from the way my daughters have been playing with their Olympic footballs on way back and since we got home, I think we’ve got it about right.

 

 

 

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Happy Employees?

Friday, July 27, 2012 by Franklin Bros

 

   Right, sorry about that – two weeks away from blogging.  I’m not sure why really though I have been feeling a bit less buzzy than normal.  For example I found myself in a particularly morose mood at the Monster Buzz event last week.  Perhaps it was the questions I was asked but I seemed to spend a lot more time talking about why talent management isn’t working very well rather than why it’s so important (although we did still come to the collective conclusion that talent management IS more important than talent acquisition, so that’s one positive outcome recently).  Although perhaps of course this is one reason why it is so important?

It doesn’t seem to be just me that’s low on enthusiasm.  One of the surveys I mentioned at Monster Buzz was Towers Watson’s Global Workforce study suggesting that that a quarter of UK workers feel stuck in their roles and three quarters say that their ability to advance in their career has either got worse or stayed the same compared to a year ago.  (I think it was at this point that one of my fellow panellists suggested they were surprised in what I was saying and hadn’t realised how bad things had become.)

Then, there’s the CIPD’s Employee Outlook which suggests that only a third of workers trust their senior leaders and more than half display signs of having adopted a ‘not bothered’ attitude to their work.

Like me, the CIPD also put this down to poor talent management:

“At the CIPD we are curious as to why so many feel this way,
particularly given the business and personal benefits reported
in the survey of when people are actively engaged at work.

There are a number of pointers in the research as to why people
might be feeling this way – and these mainly relate to how
people are managed. While satisfaction with immediate
managers is generally strong, there are continuous issues around
a lack of personal development – including coaching on the job,
discussing learning and development and giving feedback on
performance. Perceptions of leaders also need to improve, with
views on leaders’ consultation being particularly poor and trust
and confidence in leaders falling further this quarter.”

 

The one piece of good news I suppose is that people are at least more engaged in work than they are without it – shows in this week’s National Wellbeing survey (Happiness Index) results that whilst 20% of UK workers rated their life satisfaction below 7 out of 10, this increased to 45% in the unemployed.  That’s not saying much though is it, surely we should be aiming for more?

Perhaps the Olympics is going to help, but even if the games do manage to ‘inspire a generation’, this doesn’t mean they’re are going to have much impact on people’s attitude within employment…

I’ll be considering this issue over the next couple of weeks…

 

 

 

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