Why Employee Communication Programs Fail and Hurt Bottom Line Results

December 2, 2009

By Mary Lynn Coyle and Jeannette Paladino

Employee communication is often the poor stepchild of companies that ignore their employees’ overwhelming need and desire for information so they can do their jobs better.  Yet research shows that organizations excelling in internal communications also excel in financial performance.

A Watson Wyatt study found that companies with highly effective communication practices have a 19 percent higher market premium and a 47% higher shareholder return.   A Towers Perrin study found that four out of five workers are not engaged in doing the things that drive results. That’s why we believe that companies need to instill a total Culture of Communication throughout their organizations that is open, consistent, simple, and caring. Read more

Employee Communications: Internal Branding = External Success

August 31, 2009

It’s a simple equation. Internal Branding = External Success.  Employee communications programs should embody the brand and foster a culture of communication that rallies employees around the mission and business goals of the company.  Yet many organizations neglect internal communication.  With an economy in the tank, some companies feel that employees should be happy to have a job.  But when things are bad, employees need to be hearing frequently about the true state of the company, what management is doing about it, what it means for the individual employee. Read more

The CEO as the Chief Communication Champion

April 8, 2009

The shadow of a leader – meaning the impact an executive has on his or her employees – is always bigger than you think.  This is especially true when it comes to trust and believability in internal communications.  For internal communications to be meaningful, it is important for executives to lead by example: “Don’t just do as I say, do as I behave.”  In addition, employees in most companies are craving leadership – they want champions they can trust to lead them in new directions. Read more

Juicing Up the Annual Report

March 11, 2009

Spring is coming and so is the avalanche of annual reports that public companies send to their shareholders.  And, as usual, most of them will be as dull as dishwater.  Think about it.  When was the last time someone told you he had curled up in bed with a good annual report to read?  Not likely, unless sleep was the primary motivation. Annual reports can be real dullards. Read more

• Try Different — Seth Godin

  The usual mantra is to 'try harder'. Trying harder is impossible when you're already trying as hard as you can.

  But you can always try different.

  Years ago, I was creating trivia questions for a product we built for Prodigy. We had a 99% accuracy rate in doing the questions. Which was great, except there were 1800 questions in a batch, which meant 18 wrong each time, which was totally and completely unacceptable. These were honest mistakes, made by smart people working as hard as they could.

  No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't do better than 99%. So we switched our system completely and did it in a totally different way. Same number of people, same number of hours, 100% accuracy.

  If it's not working, harder might not be the answer.

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