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Edelman Change and Employee Engagement |
The Third Annual Best Practices in It’s an almost universal question among organizational communicators: “How can I achieve business – not just communication – results?” In today’s rapidly changing economy, this challenge is more critical than ever. Edelman Change and Employee Engagement brought together industry professionals to examine this – and other pressing questions – at its 3rd annual Best Practices in Change & Internal Communications Summit Nov. 7 in New York City. Fifty communicators joined us to explore our theme, “Evolution & Revolution: An Examination of Organizational Culture and Trust.” Through a series of industry-spanning discussions, we dove into how companies work, communicate and motivate to enhance organizational performance - and sustain it. The following are some of the most provocative thoughts from our speakers, with links to video segments of their presentations. We invite you to continue the discussion by joining our Facebook communications forum. Related video: Evolving the employee experience: Impact amidst adversity “You’d be better off if we were all dead.” Those were the exact words a seasoned United pilot had for the airline’s management. Her point: The challenges heaped upon the industry – September 11, massive layoffs, price erosion, bankruptcy – left employees reeling. But “we remember what it used to be like. And we’re angry. And until we’re gone, it’s going to be tough for management to make improvements.” Welcome to the airline industry, where chaos is a constant. Todd Arkenberg detailed the steps United has taken since emerging from bankruptcy to align employees with its business strategy, despite these turbulent times. Management’s first attempt backfired spectacularly: Leaders intended to take all 56,000 front-line employees through a series of business alignment sessions explaining the company’s long-term vision. Instead, the meetings became feedback free-for-alls in which employees demanded, “how can we think about a vision when the basics are broken?” They cited broken airplane seats. Filthy breakrooms. Scheduling chaos. Executives hosting the sessions became physically ill before beginning such meetings. The program skidded to a halt after reaching just 15,000 employees. United realized it needed to listen to employees and act upon their feedback. Todd’s group reached out to workers to understand what needed fixing and set out to do it, spending $30 million on improvements to physical work environments, processes and other visible changes. The team brought United’s employee idea center back from the dead (only after discovering that the administrator had left the company a year ago and 940 ideas had accumulated.) They reached out to Denny Flanagan, a veteran United pilot whose flights consistently earned high customer ratings and explored what the company could learn from him – including his famous personal touches – and replicate elsewhere. Organizing to drive business results To that end, Sharon challenged communicators to resist thinking of culture change as a communications campaign. “If you wanted your family to keep the house clean, would you launch a Clean House Initiative?” she asked. “Would you put flowers and balloons in your atrium, serve doughnuts and juice and send out a blast email to announce it?” Instead, Sharon argued that communications can help solve business problems by fundamentally changing the way companies operate. She described how she is building a team that has business and consulting competencies, employing a change management model, aligning her employees’ score cards with those of the business leaders they serve and teaching them the Socratic method of questioning. Related video:
General Motors – The Volt as a Cultural Shift In the midst of a financial crisis, employees desperately need a beacon of hope for the future. Rob Peterson shared how the Chevy Volt – the electric car GM is currently developing – has become a source of optimism in troubling times. For years GM was rated abysmally for ethical standards, landing at the bottom of the list alongside the tobacco industry. GM recognized it was time to shift its perception from “the company who builds Hummers” to one that builds solutions, particularly as sustainability continues to gain momentum. One such solution came in the form of the Chevy Volt, a car that marries ultra-fuel efficiency with spirited performance. But how do you take a concept car, one that’s not yet ready for market, and make it a symbol of GM’s evolution? GM engaged both internal and external stakeholders simultaneously to build excitement for the Volt. One example: the company reached out to Dr. Lyle Dennis, a neurologist and Volt aficionado who started gm-volt.com, a popular site dedicated to the latest news and gossip about the car. Engineers began regularly visiting the site to learn what consumers wanted, and GM began providing Dennis information that reaches thousands of people each day. Now, unofficial estimates put the number of customers on the waiting list for a Volt above 33,000. Conversation to Coherence: It worked. People now know where to go for answers and advice on issues, while Luis is encouraging knowledge-sharing by expanding online dialogue beyond the traditional back-and-forth limited to two individuals over email. And Luis no longer finds himself answering the same question multiple times. Steve asked Luis if he was nervous when he began his experiment. “I wasn’t,” he said. “I was actually excited. I did start with the uncomfortable feeling that I no longer have the urge to go on and constantly check my email. I no longer have that.” Related video: A conversation with Richard Edelman Remember the old days, when communicators handed the CEO three key messages and coached him or her to always bridge to those points? Richard Edelman turned this PR 101 axiom on its head: “That approach might work for analysts, but don’t enter conversations like that,” he said. “It’s artificial. Safe messages no longer work.” Evolutionary/Revolutionary Cultures Panel: A Look Inside What do an online shoe retailer, a software firm and a credit card company have in common? Not much, which is why we invited all three to discuss their radically different approaches to building performance-focused employee cultures. One thing all three companies on our panel had in common: Their employees weather change most successfully when management is consistently transparent in good times and in bad. Although Zappos.com is a private company, it shares with employees daily updates on the previous day’s sales and expenses, as well as annual shipping and advertising budgets. “This helps us in times when we do have to scale back, because it doesn’t come as a surprise,” Rebecca said. “It also engages them in working toward solutions with us.” Similarly, American Express makes concerted efforts to explain what changes in the financial markets mean to employees outside the finance or treasury departments. “Our job is to define reality for our people,” said Matt Anchin. Sometimes, that reality translates into layoffs. And given today’s instantaneous online communication, employees are learning of their colleague’s departures via Facebook, as Matt and Kyle pointed out. That trend is especially true in social network-savvy companies like Serena, which recently replaced its intranet entirely with Facebook. “I have a thousand friends on Facebook,” said Kyle. “Four hundred of them are coworkers, so I got to see every single person that was laid off. So we have to be very transparent and communicate immediately so employees hear news from us first.” Related video:
Rhetoric to Reality: Sustainability as an Organizational Imperative Lynn Brown had no problem talking dirty at our summit. She answered a question many of us have never thought to ask: What happens to your garbage once it’s taken away? “Waste Management isn’t in the garbage business, it’s in the business of environmental stewardship,” Lynn said. Despite the company’s emblematic green trucks, its reputation for sustainability was hazy. “People didn’t know we are the largest residential recycler in North America,” she said, “or that we power a million homes a year from renewable energy. Or that we foster 19,000 acres of protected land for wildlife habitat.” Thus, Waste Management set out to engage its own employees as ambassadors for the company’s sustainability efforts. First, leaders outlined exactly which behaviors they expected of employees, such as do it right the first time, be safe, be proud, be clean and professional, etc. “These kinds of simple messages work well for someone who’s driving a truck and doesn’t necessarily have a lot of time to read emails,” Lynn said. Similarly, the company put “happy facts” on all of its trucks (i,e., “last year we recycled enough paper to save more than 41 million trees”) to raise awareness among both drivers and customers. Then, thinkgreen.com launched as a vehicle to educate employees and external stakeholders about what really goes on at a landfill. Finally, Lynn described how the company gave employees a meaningful role in showcasing sustainability. “There’s what employees call ‘Lunch at the ‘Dump,” said Lynn, “or ‘Dumpster Diner.’ People can come in, have some BBQ and employees can teach their neighbors how a landfill works. They love showing off what they do.” Related video: Looking Ahead: The Importance of Insight in Cultural Change In today’s dismal job market, employers may assume that retaining employees isn’t critical – after all, where are they going to go? Sarah Peterson and Courtney Zegarski of StrategyOne, Edelman’s research firm, debunked that myth with new primary researched conducted in Oct. 2008 among Americans working full-time. One in four employees said they would consider switching jobs once the economy picks up. That number is significantly higher for employees who don’t trust their employer – with 41 percent saying they’ll consider heading for the exits. “Unless your company can afford to lose such a huge segment of its workforce, it’s important to invest in and communicate with your employees in difficult times,” Courtney said. Just how trusting are today’s employees? Despite economic struggles, 72 percent voiced high levels of trust in their employers. Conversely, one in five don’t trust their employer, and several types of employees tend to fall into this category, including men, Northeasterners, those working in metropolitan areas and workers earning more than $75,000 a year. Trust impacts more than just employee retention. Previous StrategyOne studies have demonstrated that the way a company treats its employees affects its overall reputation. According to the 2008 Edelman Trust Barometer, fair treatment of employees is the number one way a company can show it is socially responsible. When customers trust a company, they are more likely to buy its products and services, share their opinions with others and choose to invest in it. Of course, the same is true on the flip side: People are just as strongly inclined to not buy from, invest in or recommend a company they distrust. Related video: Closing Thoughts Matt Harrington left us with some powerful closing thoughts. “We’re always interested in taking action today, but we have to remember to plan for the long-term,” he said. “We need to help our management teams communicate about that. For example, at a luxury category retailer, the CEO stood up and said, 2009 is going to be absolutely abysmal. But in 2010 – 2012 we’re going to be coming out of this strong. We’ll continue to speak to our customers, innovate and market. It was encouraging to his staff, because they hadn’t heard that message – that we will get through this – before.” On the other end of the spectrum, Matt cautioned against adopting a “bunker mentality” when the cascade of bad news is extraordinary. “One large company here in New York never even communicated to its thousands of employees the fact that it had a new CEO,” he said. “They never even sent out an email, leaving employees to read about it in the media. Part of me thinks that’s gross negligence – you can’t afford a bunker mentality.” Finally, Matt emphasized the power of leveraging internal messages externally and vice versa. He pointed to when Starbucks closed all of its stores earlier this year for three hours of training. “It was an internal exercise,” Matt said. “But the PR team made sure people knew that it was about improving the customer experience. And then Stephen Colbert, an addicted Starbucks customer, raced around Manhattan trying to get a cup of coffee. It was a 7-minute spot on his program, and they merchandized that video right back inside, opening a meeting of 3,000 managers with it. It was about passionate consumers and customers, and the connection between them.”
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