Gatehouse Blog
Views from the SCM Summit – day two, final instalment
Following Bill Quirke’s inspiring talk on recession-proofing the internal comms function we chose specific conference tracks and broke into smaller groups for much of the remainder of the day.
More insights from Bill
First off I chose to join Bill again for a more intimate ‘clinic’ on leadership and line manager communication – a broad, meandering conversation from which a wide range of Bill’s views, practical tips and ideas emerged. Key points for me were:
- Our role as communicators is to join the dots – to drive consistencies – at Board level. Senior executives have a habit of conveying conflicting messages – the FD shouts ‘let’s cut costs’ from the rooftops whilst the HRD continues to say ‘we want to become a world class employer and provide the best development in the business’. The two messages clash. We need to find the commonality amongst Board members regardless of their functional responsibility- and ensure that the top team is setting the right tone in the right way. To help do this Bill suggested mapping out key messages and, next to each message, highlighting the leadership behaviour that will help reinforce (or, indeed, undermine it).
- When working with senior leaders it’s important to create a safe environment – where leaders can make their views and feelings known without undermining their functional responsibilities or being seen to lose face at the top table. A powerful technique we can use is to capture what I call the ‘bastard questions’ – all those difficult, irritating, explosive questions everyone thinks but no one is brave enough to ask. Posing these questions – as an independent internal communicator who is also the ‘voice of the organisation’ can help you really cut to the chase.
- We need to work with leaders’ existing skills, characters and personalities – rather than trying to shape them into something they’re not. Not everyone can be a Richard Branson. Make it your business to understand what makes them tick. Find out what they’re passionate about (horse racing, formula 1, soccer?) and use a metaphor they are comfortable with to help them bring their subject to life.
Sandwell Community Caring Trust – the power of simple manager-led communication
Next up was Geoff Walker, CEO of Sandwell Community Caring Trust. This was a really interesting session from the boss of a West Midlands-based charitable trust which was recently ranked second in the annual Best Companies to Work For study. Not only was it great to hear another regional accent, but it was genuinely enlightening to hear Geoff’s simple recipe for value-adding internal communication. What he did so well was demonstrate many of the tangible, measurable benefits of an increased investment in face-to-face communication and improved employee engagement. Over a relatively short period SCCT has reduced absence levels from 37 days per year to just 0.3, cut staff turnover from 22 per cent to four per cent, slashed management/admin costs from 24 per cent to six per cent and increased the proportion of spend being used to enhance frontline services from 63 per cent to 87 per cent. Impressive results which would make any CEO or FD sit up and listen. He put much of this success down to freeing up managers and leaders to spend more ‘quality time’ with staff.
Internal/external alignment
In the afternoon I ran a small discussion group on the alignment of internal and external communications. My group was passionate about the need for a joined-up approach and all felt that internal comms should be part of an integrated comms function, rather than sitting elsewhere (e.g. HR, Marketing). They flagged the danger of handy labels like “employee engagement” (step up HR) and “internal brand” (step up Marketing) and the risk of departmental in-fighting in these areas. To help improve internal/external alignment they suggested more combined roles (generalists rather than specialists in either internal or external), getting iC people to buddy-up with members of the press office, creating virtual teams around key projects and ensuring a joined-up approach to planning.
IKEA UK – the BIG 2008 Retail Seminar
Phil Rogers and Lois Blenkinsop of IKEA UK then jointly ran a session “coaching managers to be more effective leaders at IKEA”. A nice example of thinking big, differently and taking risks, this case study revolved around the annual retail seminar which had in the past involved a group of 36 senior managers. Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, falling visitor numbers, increased competition from the likes of Tesco and an internal reorganisation, the IKEA team wanted to find a way to involve greater numbers of managers, to identify the potential leaders of tomorrow and to spark real behaviour change. The result was a brave and ambitious retail seminar entitled ‘Big 2008′ which involved 14 UK stores, 576 direct participants, a further 576 ‘shadow managers’ who back-filled for the permanent managers, 60 retail coaches and 40 content specialists. The programme was run over a period of eight weeks, with a week spent learning about operating an efficient IKEA store, the product range and commerciality, the market and consumer and culture, management and leadership, and a further four weeks spent on the frontline putting that learning into action. It was both a major management development exercise (colleagues voted for shadow leaders) and a giant back-to-the-floor for senior leaders (who spent time shifting product, on the tills, etc). The supporting comms campaign was effective and involved the usual suspects -teaser posters, magazine articles, and intranet content. Anecdotally at least, the results were impressive – the initiative sent a strong and clear signal to the organisation about its ethos/culture/brand, the importance of people and the scope to grow and develop. However, when someone from the audience asked what hard results they had seen, the IKEA duo confessed that, to date, there had been no corresponding increase in sales and minimal impact on employee engagement.
The decline of corporate reputation
Peter Jones, Corporate Communications Director at Bupa, wrapped up the conference by exploring the current state of corporate reputations. With references to a number of recent research studies, he painted a fairly grim picture and suggested that communicators could be doing more to protect and enhance the reputation of big business. He proposed a back to basics approach to communication planning – making sure we identify the right stakeholders, be clear about their current and desired perceptions of the organisation, clarify key messages and measure, measure, measure. I’m all for that. He then scrutinised the communication profession more closely and suggested that in many way we’re at fault due to our fragmentation as a profession, a lack of talent, limited learning and development opportunities and poor resource allocation. Peter went on to criticise some communicators for creating ‘do me’ departments – largely reactive functions which merely jump to the turn of managers and do what is asked of them, when it is asked of them. By way of a solution he proposed an ‘IC Code’ for practitioners to follow, which I will repeat in full here:
Our internal communications will be:
- a primary consideration in any situation affecting the business, its people or its sector
- accurate, honest, contemporaneous, concise and free of jargon
- address all relevant issues
- confidentiality will never be used as an excuse not to communicate
- two-way – we will encourage you to speak up
- will go first to those who need it most
I’ve created similar charters or codes in the past, but I quite like Peter’s version – a good set of guidelines to bear in mind as we go about our day jobs.
And with that the Melcrum SCM Summit for 2008 closed – all in all a good, insightful, thought-provoking and nicely varied event. I look forward to next year. You can read more in the special conference edition of Strategic Communication Management, which is now available from Melcrum.
