Archive for Employee Engagement
Employee Engagement = Improved Financial Performance
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A highly engaged workforce translates into improved financial performance for companies. You’d expect that, wouldn’t you? Yet many companies with command and control structures still don’t get it.
Because jobs are scarce now, senior management of these laggards don’t feel the need to engage with employees to reach the shared goal of making the company great. As a result, according to an Aon Hewitt study, companies that don’t fit its “Best Employers” category are losing shareholder value.
Smart companies understand, however, that an engaged workforce is a productive workforce. Read More→
The Power of Small Wins in Our Inner Work Lives
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Do you ever wonder if all the work you’re putting in is making a difference? I know I do. We envy the “stars” in our professions. But they got to where they are with a succession of small wins that add up to major progress and their huge success.
In her book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, co-author and Harvard professor Teresa Amabile describes how even small, incremental wins can have a major positive influence on what she terms an employee’s “inner work life.”
Finding Meaningful Work
Perceptions, emotions and motivations influence inner work life, but the single most important factor “is simply making progress on work they find meaningful.” Even the most trivial wins can affect performance. On the flip side, a trivial negative experience can have two to three times the impact as a positive experience. Read More→
Building Online Communities Around the Wired Water Cooler
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With so many employees working virtually and scattered around the globe, is the water cooler extinct as a place to exchange ideas? Well, maybe in person, but the wired water cooler is emerging as a force in employee engagement.
Companies are creating online communities where employees can pull in the information they need when they want it and engage in conversations with other employees.
How empowering – employees expecting their companies to serve up information that is interesting, entertaining, useful and, most of all, authentic. If it doesn’t smell right, they will know and vent online with each other. Welcome to the new world of the wired water cooler!
Pfizer, American Express and Tiffany Are Doing it Right
At a recent panel discussion, Pfizer communications executive Robert Libbey said his company’s communication funnel is “almost too successful and it’s not always easy to control the fire hose of information” inundating employees. That is the challenge faced by many companies in a wired world.
Sponsored by the New York Chapter, International Association of Business Communicators (NYIABC), the panel also included Audrey Gray, vice president, executive communications for American Express Company, and Bill Carr, director, internal communications, Tiffany & Co., who discussed how their companies are using their intranets to connect and interact with employees.
Pfizer’s Transformation
Robert Libbey
When Mr. Libbey, who is senior director, global colleague communications for Pfizer, took a comprehensive look at the company’s various internal outlets in 2008, he found 400-plus news and information intranet sites that weren’t connected and almost impossible to manage.
Fast forward to 2011. Pfizer scrapped the old system (in 2009) and now manages a corporate news channel, with underlying SharePoint 2007 technology that is easy to manipulate. “We went from bricks to play dough,” he said, explaining the malleability of the new technology.
The corporate news bureau pushes out nine to 10 stories a week. He said there is no “spin” on stories – with the company informing employees about the good and the bad and encouraging comments. The content sometimes is repurposed and posted on Pfizer’s external company website. “We assume that anything we send to employees is likely to be seen by outsiders.”
In 2010, with more than 30 editions tailored for business units, functions, markets and locations, the new Pfizer site had 162,000 unique users, 5.2 million article views and nearly 60 million page views, with savings in the millions in development and maintenance costs.
Community Building
In response to the fire hose of information Pfizer colleagues face each day with all that they can access externally and internally, Mr. Libbey said that part of his company’s solution is to let employees create their own intranet home page and choose the information they want to receive.
To this end, Pfizer has embraced internal social media – paralleling the company’s active participation in external social media – and created its own Facebook-like community called “MyWorld.” Any employee can join – all have a profile – and use the 250-character micro blog feature to connect with others and follow the micro blogging of others.
Employees can also start conversations on the company message board about almost any topic. The comments are not vetted first. “People are going to have these conversations anyway,” said Mr. Libbey, and rarely does a post have to be removed because it didn’t conform to guidelines.
The World of Tiffany
Bill Carr
With 9,000 employees around the world, Tiffany is using its intranet and other interactive communications to help connect employees and share best practices. Bill Carr, director of internal communications, said Tiffany recently consolidated its corporate headquarters in a new location with the latest high-tech equipment.
The company just launched “BlueTube,” a digital signage tool that will provide a rich, interactive experience for employees to connect with the company and each other.
With stores in far-flung locations, it isn’t possible for employees to gather around the water cooler to exchange ideas. He said that a very popular Tiffany tradition is the annual holiday video. Employees look forward to it every year with great anticipation.
In the most recent video, Tiffany sales professionals share tips that have worked for them in building relationships with customers. One described how she sends personal, hand-written notes to her customers, inviting them to visit and see the new collections. These are greatly appreciated and help to build customer loyalty.
“We still have a long way to go,” said Mr. Carr, “but we’re excited about new opportunities to use interactive tools to inform, educate and inspire our employees, while building engaged communities that can interact and learn from each other.”
It Isn’t Boring at American Express
Audrey Gray
Audrey Gray, vice president, executive communications, began with a quote from Henry James: “The only rule is never be boring.” You’ve got to keep employees engaged with information that is informative, interesting and authentic. She stressed that authenticity in marketing is actually respect for one’s audience.
Amex’s intranet “The Square” hosts 10 different blogs, company news, tools for accessing company information, and a news story every day, delivered to 63,000 employees globally. She reiterated what the other speakers said – use “hot headlines,” short quotes, and liberal use of bullet points and subheads. “We’ve changed our writing style so that we don’t use any corporate speak. It needs to be real.”
The most popular feature on “The Square” thus far has been a “live blog” of the company’s annual senior management meeting. Her team was at the meeting and wrote posts all day long for two days, more than 100 in total. “Employees felt they were let in the door,” she said.
Junking the Old Water Cooler
If you read a blog I wrote a while back about the water cooler you know how important I feel it is to bump shoulders with your colleagues. Connections are critical to learning. But let’s face it, there isn’t time and employees are widely scattered, making the wired water cooler an attractive alternative. Besides, most people are glued to their computers all day – so if they can’t get to the water cooler, why not bring the water cooler to them?
How about it? Is your company turning your intranet into a wired water cooler where employees can hang out in chat rooms and form communities with like interests? Let us know.
