New from Gatehouse Academy, BiteSize is a unique modular programme comprising a growing number of stand-alone sessions on all aspects of organisational communication.

Responding directly to the changing development needs of in-house communication professionals (not least reduced budgets and more limited scope to travel) it is designed to provide access to the very latest thinking, good practice, case studies and practical advice on a wide range of must-know subjects without the considerable time commitment, inconvenience and high costs usually associated with externally run courses.

Two BiteSize programmes are currently available - the Master Communicator programme is aimed at in-house communication teams, whilst the Engaging Manager programme is geared toward line managers and team leaders. See our website for further information.

Delivered in single stand-alone sessions of just 90 minutes (face-to-face) or 60 minutes (webinar) by an independent and highly experienced practitioner, this is a great way to provide targeted learning to multiple members of your team or wider communication network for a small one-off fee.

In summary, BiteSize delivers the following benefits:

• Condensed learning - BiteSize covers the fundamentals of each subject in just 90 minutes (face-to-face) or 60 minutes (webinar), providing delegates with maximum returns for a minimal investment of time
• Delivered to your door - BiteSize sessions are designed to take place on your premises or online at a time and date to suit
• Team-based learning - BiteSize can be delivered to up to 15 members of your team (face-to-face) or 100 (webinar), helping drive consistencies and build a common foundation of knowledge and skills across your network
• Pick & mix - you can choose to run just one module as part of a team away day or combine a handful of modules to create an integrated programme delivered on a regular basis over a period of time
• Low cost - delivered for as little as £100 per person per session (face-to-face), BiteSize represents excellent value for money
• Created by communicators, for communicators - all our trainers are practicing communicators who have spent considerable time operating in-house
• Professional endorsement - BiteSize is supported by the UK's only Chartered body for communicators, the CIPR, and participation qualifies for Continuing Professional Development points for delegates who are CIPR members

BiteSize has been piloted successfully within the UK Government over the last six months and is now being rolled-out to other public and private sector organisations.

If you'd like to discuss how BiteSize can help your team members and managers develop and hone their skills and knowledge don't hesitate to get in touch - lee.smith@gatehousegroup.co.uk.

Happy New Year!

Lee, Gatehouse

To celebrate the launch of our Engaging Manager learning programme for line managers and aspiring leaders, Gatehouse Academy invites you to participate in a free 60 minute BiteSize webinar exclusively for in-house communicators.

Available on a first come, first served basis, this special web-enabled learning session will make the case for increased investment in line manager communication and explain how to begin creating truly Engaging Managers within your organisation.

In this fast-paced interactive session, which I'll be leading, you'll learn:

• The business case for investing more of your budget in line managers
• The six traits of The Engaging Manager - what makes the great ones stand out from the average
• Fascinating evidence and case studies from a handful of organisations that have put line managers at the heart of their communications
• Our blueprint for improving line manager communication
• How to build managers' communication skills and competencies
• How to hardwire employee communication and engagement excellence into line managers' roles
• How to ensure you feed managers the right content and avoid overloading them

The session will take place from 0930-1030 GMT on Monday 1 February 2010.

Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat here.

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

Alongside the guilt-induced dieting, hopeless resolutions to get fit and short lived promises to quit smoking, alcohol and other assorted vices, January is the time when many of us dust off our personal development plans and contemplate, albeit briefly, the future direction of our careers.

And like so many of those well intentioned resolutions, our own development is quickly forgotten as work returns to its normal frenetic pace. Development plans inevitably end up at the very back of the filing cabinet, only to be revisited a year later when it's time for the obligatory annual review.

But it doesn't have to be this way. The key, as with any self improvement programme, is discipline - setting realistic goals at the outset, approaching the challenge in a balanced, holistic way and staying focused throughout the entire year.

The development landscape

The development landscape for internal communicators has changed considerably over the last few years. At the start of the decade you'd have struggled to have found more than a handful of specialist courses, publications and events for internal communicators, and many of those that did exist were pretty poor.

Thankfully things have changed and today - as we steam towards the second decade of the millennium - we're spoiled for choice. There are now three decent professional bodies to choose from, a number of excellent degree programmes, a wealth of specialist training courses and qualifications (see below) and dozens of networking events, publications, websites, LinkedIn Groups and blogs to inspire you. We're still some way behind our colleagues in HR, PR and marketing, but we're a lot better off than we once were.

Yet internal communicators continue to struggle with their own development. Proper development plans are few and far between. Many of us remain uncertain about the options and unclear about our roles and future career paths. Some of us are just plain lazy.

But if you're serious about internal communication; if you want to become a bona fide professional, a credible practitioner and a trusted advisor to your clients and colleagues, then it's time to get serious about your own development.

So, before reading the rest of this post, think briefly about your own views on development. Do you take it seriously? Have you learned new skills in the last 12 months? Do you have a realistic but stretching development plan in place? Does it cover the next 12 months and map out what you're going to do to broaden your knowledge, sharpen your skills or widen your experience? If the answer to any of those questions is no, then read on...

There are two very basic questions to consider before embarking on your professional detox - "where am I?" and "where am I heading?"

Every good development plan starts with an honest and critical assessment of your current skills, competencies, knowledge and experience. It can be hard to be objective, so make sure you seek input from your colleagues and clients. If you're organisation offers it (and you're brave enough to stomach it), 360-degree feedback is a great way to find out how co-workers at all levels - above and below - perceive you and where, in their eyes, you need to develop. Another useful self-assessment tool is the InterComm matrix.

The InterComm matrix

A few years ago representatives from the Internal Communication Alliance (now known as CIPR Inside), CiB and IABC came together to identify the knowledge, skills and experience internal communicators should ideally have at various stages in their careers. I was part of this small group. The result, the InterComm matrix, is the closest thing we have to a common industry-backed professional development framework.

Although it's now a little dated (the matrix was first published back in 2004) it remains a very useful tool and I believe it continues to be recommend by all three organisations as a basis for planning your personal or team development, and as a guide to recruitment.

The matrix is based on four career stages:

• Band One - Entry level (6 - 12 months in internal communications)
• Band Two - 12 months to 2 - 3 years
• Band Three - Manager or supervisor with at least 2-3 years communications experience
• Band Four - Senior practitioner - at least 5 years operating at band 2 and above

If you haven't thought about it already, that's a great way to approach your development - to adopt a two-pronged approach by focusing on your generic/business skills on one hand and your specialist IC skills on the other.

The bands are slightly arbitrary and they don't take account of the fact that many internal communication practitioners move sideways from related functions like HR, PR or marketing. But it's a useful yardstick and a good guide to the sort of areas you should be gaining exposure to as you progress through your career.

More recently Sue Dewhurst and Liam FitzPatrick of Competent Communicators created an excellent framework that builds on the foundation provided by InterComm and takes it to the next level. I'm a big fan - see my previous post for details.

Looking forward

Clarifying where you're heading can be tougher.

First there are the practical issues. Many internal communication teams are small and there is often little room for career progression without jumping ship. Even then, depending on the sector, suitable managerial or senior level roles may be few and far between. If your desire is to head up a team then you'll be restricted to large organisations. Then there's the London bias which can make it more difficult to progress if you're based in the regions. It's important that your career goals are realistic, so it pays to think about these factors early on.

Where do you see yourself in five years time? It's a question that's often asked in job interviews, but it's one that's worth pondering every year. Do you see yourself as a dedicated internal communicator, or as a broader corporate communicator? What aspects of your current role do you most enjoy? And what do you detest? Do you want to lead a large team, or would you prefer to become expert at delivery, perhaps focusing on publications, the intranet or events? Do you enjoy budgeting? Really? These are important questions and will help you avoid the promotion trap - where you end up securing a high status senior role only to find that you hate it.

There are a number of career models out there which suggest a nice, linear progression from being a doer (at the bottom of the career ladder) to being a thinker (at the top). Unfortunately the reality is rarely like that. Whilst there is no doubt that broader managerial skills, like budgeting and business partnering, become more important the higher you climb, there are very few senior communicators who don't have to roll up their sleeves and muck in at least some of the time. Rock solid tactical skills are important whether you're a junior team member or a high flying communication director. Ignore them at your peril.

Your development menu

Once you've identified where you are and where you're heading, it's time to create your development menu - to identify what exactly you should do to plug your career gaps.

As any decent HR person will tell you, there are numerous options for professional and personal development and the obvious choices may not always be the best. In addition to traditional classroom-based training courses, you could consider coaching, mentoring, diploma or degree courses, webinars, teleseminars, secondments, volunteering, planned reading, networking, on the job experience and work shadowing. Indeed, a combination of three or four of these development options will make for a much more rounded and effective development programme.

There are pros and cons to each. Coaching, for instance, is very expensive and not everyone can afford to leave the office for two days to attend a training course (though that's changing thanks to programmes like BiteSize from Gatehouse Academy which are short, focused and delivered to your door). Your choices will depend on a number of factors, including your budget, your availability, your location and your preferred learning style.

Don't be fooled into thinking that a limited budget means poor development either - there's an enormous amount you can do on a shoestring. Many internal communicators are very happy to talk about their work and to share their secrets of success, even with communicators from competitor organisations. Just catching up with a respected communicator over an occasional coffee can be a very effective form of mentoring. And there's also a huge amount to be gained from getting more involved in one of the professional bodies.

If you need additional inspiration when it comes to formal learning, check out the following links:

• CIPR Internal Communication Certificate from PR Academy
• CIPR Internal Communication Diploma from PR Academy
• CiB Foundation Diploma of Proficiency in Internal Communication
• CiB Advanced Diploma of Proficiency in Internal Communication
• Melcrum's Black Belt Programme

Kingston University's Internal Communication Management PgDip/MA top-up
And if you're interested in team-based learning, our own BiteSize modular learning and development programme from Gatehouse Academy could be just the ticket.

A highly focused and flexible programme backed by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), it is designed to cover the fundamentals of effective internal communication in a fast-paced, hassle-free way.

Delivered in stand-alone 'bite sized' sessions of just 90 minutes by an independent and highly experienced practitioner, this is a great way to provide a programme of targeted learning for your team for a small one-off fee. What's more it's also available as a webinar programme for larger or geographically dispersed teams.

Check out the new Gatehouse website or get in touch with me if you want to know more about BiteSize - lee.smith@gatehousegroup.co.uk.

Continuous development

The best approach to professional development is, of course, a continuous one. Rather than thinking about your skills and experience once a year, you should look for, and seize, development opportunities on a day-to-day basis. You should make learning a habit, not an afterthought.

At present I believe the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) is the only UK body for communicators to operate a continuing professional development programme, but the soon to be rebranded Institute of Internal Communication - the successor to Communicators in Business (CiB) - will no doubt be heading down this route as it pursues Chartered Status itself.

If we really want to be recognised as a profession, then we need to invest a lot more time and energy in our own development. Continuing professional development is, for me, a vital ingredient for success. Whatever your level, there's simply no excuse for not learning new skills or sharpening existing ones, whether you do it formally or not.

As your other resolutions begin to fade next month, make a commitment to yourself - to create a well balanced and stretching development plan and to review it monthly. If you do, I promise you'll be an even better communicator in 2010.

Lee, Gatehouse

Study after study shows that face-to-face is the communication channel most preferred by employees for certain types of information. It is the key to unlocking engagement, to building internal trust and commitment and to creating a culture and climate for success.

To build a robust and effective face-to-face (f2f) communication strategy, you need to focus your time and effort in three key areas:

1. Leadership

Senior leaders have a vital role to play in setting the tone within organisations and your face-to-face efforts will only succeed if they demonstrate their support through their words and actions.

Empower your leaders by creating opportunities for them to interact with employees, by playing to their own unique style and capabilities, by giving them feedback on their communication performance, and by challenging them if there's an obvious mismatch between what they say and what they do.

2. Managers

Managers represent the front line in the battle to improve f2f communication. As communicators we rely heavily on them to provide context, to translate strategy into action, to build trust, to create 'line of sight', to communicate performance and to listen to and involve frontline employees.

Help managers by providing clarity about their roles as communicators and by explaining what they are accountable for. You can support them through coaching and skills development (though be careful not to patronise them by labelling it 'training'). As with leaders, you can observe them in action and give them candid feedback on their performance.

3. Tools, resources, and techniques

The other big area to focus on is communication 'stuff' - content, materials, templates, formats, processes, resources and training. You will need to work hard to create the right briefing pack - one that captures the key messages succinctly, yet allows for local interpretation. Managers, in particular, will look to you to help them structure their team meetings and find unusual way to break the ice, capture feedback, bring the numbers to life or involve participants in business planning.

The good news is that, for the most part, you'll be knocking on an open door. Many managers and leaders feel ill equipped in this area and welcome robust knowledge and practical suggestions that help them engage their people more effectively.

Lee, Gatehouse

Described as "an entertaining journey into the world of communicating inside large and complex organisations" it features a wealth of original illustrations by our good friend, graphic facilitator Paul Richardson.

Each page introduces the reader to one of the common issues, complaints or question marks facing internal communicators - and offers helpful tips, suggestions and solutions to help overcome them.

Just to manage expectations, this is most definitely a light read - a tongue-in-cheek look at our profession, rather than a weighty text book (if you're looking for the latter check out my reading list).

Well, if you fancy getting hold of a copy for yourself you can now purchase it over at Amazon. I understand they're flying off the shelves...

Alternatively, if you're an in-house communicator and you would like to invite us in to present our impressive credentials - or respond to a specific brief - we'll happily give you and your colleagues a copy for free!

A friend of mine has recently returned from a two day management conference. The event follows a long and extremely painful period for the organisation (and the broader industry) and was, I imagine, intended to inspire and motivate the troops and to prepare them for a new, different and hopefully more successful 2010.

Those sound like sensible objectives to me and I imagine the team behind the event explored lots of options around event content and style, before finally nailing their approach.

I bet they sat there and brainstormed lots of ideas and grilled lots of agencies in their search for an event that combined a fun team building exercise with something valuable and cathartic. Something that fused real fun with serious business. Something that would be both memorable and impactful. The holy grail.

From what I can gather they settled on some sort of music-based theme centred around an exercise that required participants to listen to some tunes as a group and use them to uncover and explore their emotions. You know the sort of thing - a bit of Mahler, Barber or maybe Girls Aloud to stimulate a discussion about your feelings relating to the past year. Cute.

Jesting aside, I do see the logic - get them to identify and verbalise their negative emotions before symbolically parking them up at the door and marching on together as one. Indeed, I'm pretty sure I used a similar rationale myself during my in house days (though times were, admittedly, a little more buoyant back then).

My own personal favourite, rather appropriately given this post, was a management conference we developed themed around the book Who Moved My Cheese? Complete with rubberised cheddar desk drops, it was certainly different and memorable but, like this one, with hindsight I'm not convinced it actually hit the mark.

Back to the recent event, the problem is that my mate and her peers - the target audience in comms speak - thought all this was cheesy beyond belief. I think Stilton may have been mentioned at once stage. The intention was clear, but the execution somehow undermined the validity of those [very real] emotions and made light of them. Own goal.

I guess the lesson here is to be very sensitive to the emotions of the audience and the context in which an event is happening. Oh, and not to get too wrapped up in searching for that funky theme or super cool hands-on exercise.

It's all about context.

Many organisations have experienced pain in the past year and, even for those that haven't, the fact remains that most employees have family and friends who have lost their jobs.

Before rushing to the door of your nearest 'motivational' events company to book the very latest musical, theatrical or art-based exercise for your people, stop to think how it will play out. If you're not careful it could, like this one, be rather counter productive.

Big events have a powerful role to play in engaging employees, but the fact that they are high profile also means they are high risk - get it wrong and you could spend the next 12 months trying to re-establish credibility.

As a rule of thumb, treat your employees as adults and, if there's negative stuff to surface, address it head on. You know, sometimes just talking can work wonders....

NICE reckons the total cost to the UK economy of work related stress, anxiety and depression is now a staggering £28bn - more than 14 million work days are lost every year due to these conditions.

It says that businesses can make their employees happier, reduce costs and boost productivity by following a few basic guidelines - like giving positive feedback, encouraging flexible working and giving days off as a reward.

And it's not the only study to highlight this issue recently. Recruitment firm Badenoch & Clark found that 91% of employees are stressed at work - and worse still, seven in 10 are too scared to raise their concerns with their bosses. And back in the Spring a Finnish study concluded that poor team spirit at work can increase the chance of developing depression by more than half.

Now line managers clearly aren't solely to blame for rising levels of stress and depression at work - the state of the economy doesn't help - but their actions can play a big part in reducing or encouraging it.

And it's often the little things that make the biggest difference - like saying hello to team members in the morning, recognising and celebrating successes, communicating regularly as a team, listening, providing constructive performance feedback, ensuring employees are clear on what they need to do by when and promoting a sense of 'esprit de corps'. These are all practical things that line managers can do to help create a healthy and happy workplace.

Again and again in study after study the pivotal role of line managers is underlined. They hold the key to so many aspects of organisational success and, in my mind, represent the frontline in the battle for hearts and minds - and health - in the workplace.

If they are not already, I believe internal communicators should be focusing the bulk of their time, resources and energy on enhancing the quality of line managers, equipping them with the right skills and information and directly engaging them. As my old boss used to say, happy people + happy customers = successful business - and the first part of that equation rests largely in the hands of line managers.

This is the culmination of the third phase of the project - preceded by qualitative interviews with the leadership team (phase one) and an all employee survey (phase two).

We used the initial interviews to identify key themes to explore, to investigate perceptions of internal comms by the top team and to understand their needs and expectations of the function. We then used the focus groups to 'get under the skin' of the issues identified in the survey, to test the findings and explore some of the themes in more detail. All in all during this process we'll have canvassed the views of more than 2,500 employees and actually spoken to around 150 in person.

What this project has reminded me of is the enormous power of qualitative research in general - and focus groups in particular - and the importance of doing communication research in a thorough, joined-up way.

Now we get asked to design and run a lot of communication surveys and benchmarking projects on behalf of clients - and they're always useful and enlightening exercises. But I have to confess that the real value often comes from the qualitative side, where the budget permits this to happen (and unfortunately it doesn't always).

Useful as the numbers are, the really rich insights often emerge from conversations - whether it's the one-to-ones with the senior team, or focus groups with a selection of front-line employees. Indeed, this is so important it's something we try to incorporate into every Gatehouse research project.

We are, of course, lucky to be working with a client right now who really understands the value of research and genuinely wants the insights this sort of approach brings - and who is willing to allocate a meaningful budget to enable it to happen (particularly commendable in this economic climate).

And insights it will bring by the bucket load. It is, for instance, fascinating to contrast the results of the survey with what's said in the focus groups - to get to the reality behind the numbers and really understand why people answered (or not) in the way they did. It's also extremely eye-opening to talk to employees in different regions - the US, Europe, the Middle East and Asia on this occasion - and to see how different their views and perceptions on organisational communication are. We often forget the impact of culture on employee attitudes and opinions.

Had we not been able to talk to people to the extent we have been, we just wouldn't have unearthed half the insights we have.

I can't go into the results of this research for obvious reasons, but it has once again provided a range of genuinely valuable perspectives on internal comms - from all levels and across a wide geography - which will inevitably have a direct impact on the activities and approaches our client adopts next year and beyond. Put simply, it will change the way they do things and help improve the quality and effectiveness of their employee communication. And that's the acid test when it comes to investing in research - whether it makes a difference.

Having seen this project through from the start, it's a process I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to other clients. In fact, i think every in-house internal comms chief should do comprehensive research along these lines every three or four years - backed up by a more frequent survey to keep tabs on the trends. This exercise has been so valuable it should be mandatory.

No matter how strong and connected you are, the truth is that as a full time communicator sitting in head office you rarely get the opportunity to immerse yourself in the organisation like this. But the value that comes from doing so is immense.

The other challenge in-house practitioners face when trying do do something like this themselves is around honesty - and therefore the overall reliability of the results. From the leadership team down, employees are more likely to open up to a third party - and that's when the really interesting views begin to emerge. That's why it makes absolute sense to bring in a consultancy like Gatehouse to conduct the research for you.

I've always been pro-research but my recent experience has renewed by interest and belief in it. I'm now a qualitative research evangelist!

L

First off, Wayne defined engagement in simple terms - "doing something because you want to, not because you have to" - a nice definition which captures in plain English the essence of engagement, discretionary effort. He then went on to underline the role of engagement and its value to businesses - showing how companies with high levels of engagement typically outperform the corporate norm.

Sharing new data based on a re-analysis of the Best Companies research from the past decade, Wayne explained how 'quality dialogue' could be identified as one of the key drivers of engagement, productivity and, ultimately, profitability.

Using the Best Companies model (purpose/principles/ambition/plan) as a framework, Wayne explored the role that internal communicators can play in enhancing employee engagement in each of the eight areas their research investigates (see below).

Tips included focusing on providing direction - clearly articulating the vision for the organisation; recognising and celebrating progress; helping leaders and managers listen and creating a conversation culture based on genuine openness and honesty.

He went on to discuss the Best Companies methodology - how it explores eight factors: leadership, my company, my manager, personal growth, my team, fair deal, giving something back and wellbeing. Check out the above link for the low down on each of these.

His session included lots of examples and secrets of success - like Amex, which has worked hard to equip managers with the right skills to unlock engagement, and Nando's, which operates each of its outlets like a small family or cell. Like the Best Companies report itself, Wayne's session provided an excellent insight into the art of employee engagement.

In summing up, he suggested that the key to building a high engagement workplace is 'doing small things consistently well all the time'. It is not necessarily about big symbolic gestures - like having a well equipped free gym in the office - but is about having managers and leaders who show they care, who listen and respond to what they're hearing.

Hear, hear!"

L

More than 200 communicators packed into the conference suite at the Tower Hotel for one of the highlights in the professional calendar - and once again Melcrum didn't disappoint.

Leanne Carmody, ING Wholesale Banking - on communicating business strategy and managing the cascade

After morning coffee Leanne Carmody of ING Wholesale Banking took to the stage - for a fascinating session focused on the financial services industry and the internal impact of the credit crisis.

Leanne joined the organisation in 2007 - at which point engagement within the Wholesale Banking function was, by her own admission, relatively low. One of her first tasks was to launch a new strategy to employees and build engagement around it.

Working with the ING leadership her team developed and packaged a three-pronged strategy dubbed FFF - Fitter, Focused, Further. Her primary audience was straight-talking wholesale bankers - independent, ambitious, busy and clear thinking professionals - and this was reflected in the simplicity and clarity of the campaign. In line with this, Leanne focused on boosting the visibility of the leadership team and improving the consistency of communications across the division.

A three phased campaign was developed, based around first telling, then facilitating the discussion, and finally living the strategy. There was no rigid timeline for communications - the desire was to be as flexible and adaptable as possible.

The highly visible campaign was launched via a global CEO webcast - followed swiftly by regional town halls. A nicely integrated campaign, all this was supported by an online micro site, posters and branded merchandise. Managers were also trained and equipped with toolkits. A strong visual identity - based around three simple icons - was used to give strategy comms a consistent look and feel and provide the 'glue' to bind everything together.

Measurement was at the heart of Leanne's approach and informed her planning throughout. Key metrics included recall of key messages and understanding and support for the strategy. They also tracked engagement levels.

The results? Campaign awareness was extremely high at 94% recall, but more importantly an impressive 82% of employees said they supported the strategy.

Focus groups were also carried out to test and fine-tune the comms plan. One key finding from this qualitative research was the need to do more to mobilise and motivate the middle managers - to engage them, encourage them to communicate the right messages and effectively 'translate' the strategy for their team.

All was going well for Leanne and her team. Then the financial crisis hit. Public sentiment turned against the banks overnight (apparently jogging employees wearing ING t-shirts were heckled in the street) and the media onslaught began. During the turmoil that followed a new CEO was bought in, the group needed Government support and the business began restructuring, fast.

Her next step - a necessity in the face of all that change - was to develop a simple quarterly cascade. This process kicks-off with the top 100 management team joining a briefing conference call and receiving a supporting toolkit containing key messages, Q&As, etc. Managers are asked to cascade the material to their teams within a specific timeframe (which differs according to the content). The IC team provides help and support around this - coaching managers in how to bring the content to life for their teams and manning a special IC 'hotline' for managers. As you'd expect, Leanne emphasises the need to capture feedback, monitor, measure and respond to it.

The good news is that this process is working really well - though Leanne admits some managers would benefit from training to improve the quality and consistency of their delivery. Employee feedback has been extremely positive - managers feel more empowered, staff feel more confident, improved trust, enhanced engagement.

One of the other big benefits is that the leadership team now have a more sophisticated understanding of internal comms. As a result, Leanne's team is now focused much less on sending stuff out and much more on supporting and advising line managers and leaders.

Key lessons learned:

• Need for scenario planning (think the unthinkable - what could possibly go wrong?)
• Don't under-estimate the time needed to educate and engage the leadership team
• Research, research, research - get the evidence, test as you progress and prove the value add
• Involve a small group of managers in shaping-up the cascade pack - their input is invaluable
• What this session underlined for me, more than anything, is the need to adopt a joined-up approach when it comes to planning, research and evaluation (PRE). PRE is a constant, ongoing process - not something you do only at the beginning and end of a project.

Pete Stevenson, The Edge & Mark Shaoul, Network Rail - on using video to embed a culture of safety

There is no doubting that The Edge make truly great short films for business. I remember seeing some of Pete's work from a few years back for McDonalds - so i had high expectations of this session, which focused on the role of video in creating a safer environment for track maintenance workers - literally a life or death comms challenge.

As with all good communications, it all started with a good understanding of the audience - in this case working class lads typically in their 30s and 40s. To succeed where previous campaigns had failed, this one would have to get to - and get through to - that rather tough and often cynical audience.

At its heart, this was all about 'cutting through the noise' - the title of the pair's presentation - and developing a communication campaign that the audience would notice and, more importantly, respond to.

The stakes were high. This is a serious issue -every year there are railway workers who either die or get horrifically injured at work. The rules and regulations already exist - and in almost infinite volume - but unfortunately not everyone takes them on board - sometimes with dire consequences.

The resulting campaign, entitled 'Safety 365', featured clear branding and well conceived and constructed comms materials.

'Don't do your doughnut' - a set of communications explaining how to lift properly - is a good example of the team's approach and shows how they talked the language of the audience.

Like so many good campaigns, this was unashamedly consumerist/marketing inspired stuff. There were custom water bottles featuring the words "for once we're asking you to drink more" on the label. The team even tapped into the competitive spirit with the 365 challenge - which tracked the number of days since a team member last had an accident/incident.

All this was great, but what really drove the message home was the video.

The first film in the safety series was called 'hit or miss' and is one of the most impactful corporate videos I've ever seen. And definitely the most gory!

Complete with severed hand, this hard-hitting film told the story of a track worker who got hit by a train - and the aftermath of his actions. Emotive it most certainly was - and a great example of the power of video to tell a story far more effectively than mere words.

But how do you get them to watch? These guys are out on the tracks day and night - they rarely if ever sit in front of a computer and there's no way you'd get them to watch corporate stuff at home. The answer was simple but ingenious - take the cinema to them. This involved a creating a mobile cinema in a truck and literally driving it around.

The team also used PR to gain exposure for the campaign in the tabloids - including a major feature in The Sun - helping reinforce messages using a trusted medium.

Lessons:

• Acknowledge the reality of the situation, however painful
• Speak the right language for the audience
• Use the right channel for the audience
• Lead them to the right conclusion, don't tell them - let the audience fill in the gaps for themselves

Talk about communications making a difference!

For more views from the Summit, check out Rachel Allen's blog.

More to follow....

L

"Trust is a fragile plant which may not endure inspection of its roots, even when they were, before the inspection, quite strong" Baier

What exactly is trust?

Decades ago Douglas McGregor wrote on the importance of trust in The Professional Manager: "Trust means I know that you will not - deliberately or accidentally, consciously or unconsciously - take unfair advantage of me. It means I can put my situation at the moment, my status and self-esteem in the group, our relationship, my job, my career and even my life in your hands with complete confidence."

Galford & Drapeau, writing in the Harvard Business Review a few years ago, suggest there are three types of trust:

• Personal trust - the trust employees have in their own managers and close work colleagues
• Strategic trust - the trust employees have in the people running the show to make the right decisions
• Organisational trust - the trust employees have in the organisation itself

The Great Place to Work Institute describes three components of trust - credibility, respect and fairness.

A few years ago the consultancy Mercer conducted some research on the organisational impact of trust. They found that 62% of employees who are kept informed about changes affecting the organisation trust their management team, compared to just 9% of employees who say they are not kept informed about changes.

Edelman's most recent Trust Barometer found that nearly two in three informed publics--62% of 25-to-64-year-olds surveyed in 20 countries--say they trust corporations less now than they did a year ago. More worrying still was the scale of the decline over 12 months. Trust in US-based business--at 38% down from 58% last year--is the lowest in the Barometer's tracking history among informed publics ages 35 to 64-- even lower than in the wake of Enron and the dot-com bust.

Trust is about predictable behaviour - an expectation that one's interests will be protected, having confidence in the reliability and integrity of others, and believing that people have a moral compass and will act with fairness, integrity and honesty.

Hosmer (1995) suggests that trust-based relationships are characterised by five dimensions:

• trust is generally expressed as optimistic expectation
• trust will generally occur under conditions of vulnerability
• trust is generally associated with willing cooperation
• trust will be difficult to enforce should a breakdown occur
• trust is supplemented by an expectation that the trusted is morally bound to protect rights and behave in a way that is good for society.

In his entitled book Trust, Jack R Gibb highlights a number of situations in which distrust is likely to occur:

• where the organisation's leaders are feared
• where employees are placed under excessive pressure
• where sales and corporate performance is poor
• when the organisation is faced with an emergency or crisis
• where there are poor labour relations (step up Royal Mail)
• where the vision and direction of the organisation is unclear
• where there is cultural unrest

If you're heading for the SCM Summit next week, I look forward to seeing you there!

Lee

There are sessions and workshops from Black Belt trainer Sally Hinder and Leanne Carmody of ING that touch on this topic - both of which will be on my must-attend list. And, if not made overt, it's a subject that's bound to be lurking just below the surface during many of the conference sessions.

One thing that is true about trust is that it takes years to create, yet it can be destroyed in a matter of seconds.

There are, of course, numerous ways to build and demolish trust inside organisations, but here's a basic list I've compiled of some of the things, large and small, that are guaranteed to do the latter...

1. Whispers in the powder room

Some situations are so personal, painful or plain embarrassing that it's easier to turn a blind eye and just pretend they don't exist. I've experienced this sort of collective censorship at board level when a senior employee has been up to no good. Although the top team won't face the music, be sure that everyone else in the organisation is likely to be whispering and chattering about it behind closed doors. Sensitive issues sometimes need to be aired in the open and 'dirty washing' acknowledged or discussed. Concealment is rarely a good option.

2. Ivory tower syndrome

This one is best summed up by a quote from Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon - "I don't think I've ever seen an effective manager or leader who doesn't spend some of their time down in the trenches...If they don't do that they get out of touch with reality, and their whole thought and management process becomes abstract and disconnected." In short, get out of your plush office, get back to the floor and reconnect with your people.

3. Terminal inconsistency

Whether it's mixed messages or variable standards, being inconsistent is one of the fastest destroyers of trust. Mixed messages can and do occur anywhere in an organisation, from the top team down. The other thing to watch out for is selective messaging - where a senior leader tells one group one thing, and another something contradictory. The other big impact is around inconsistent standards and favouritism. Employees keep score. They notice who gets promoted, who gets away with bending the rules (and who doesn't) and who get the palatial office suite. People expect a level playing field and the game of trust inevitably suffers when they the pitch has numerous bumps on it.

4. Misplaced benevolence

Most managers knows they've got to do something about the employee who cheats, steals or harasses fellow workers. But dodgy behaviour is often more subtle than this. Consider incompetence. I'm sure we can all think of examples of employees who are clearly crap at their jobs, but who seem to be protected and sheltered from criticism. Trust cannot thrive in such an environment. These people are surrounded by a cloud of negativity and drag down those around them.

5. Failure to trust others

Trust is a two-way street. You cannot expect employees to trust you if you don't demonstrate that you trust them and others. Empowerment is more than a buzzword.

6. False feedback

We know that honesty drives trust, yet all too often you find managers who give 'soft' feedback or downright lies when it comes to performance appraisal. I've seen time and again how people have had to be let go due to poor performance only to turn around and accuse the organisation of wrongful dismissal based on apparently "positive" annual feedback. Even if you avoid this, organisations are leaky as sieves and word gets around the grapevine like wildfire.

7. Walk/talk mismatch

Leaders, managers, colleagues and organisations who say one thing and do something else. A guaranteed trust killer.

8. Issue-dodging

Issue dodging is rife. In a number of organisations I've worked in we've had intranet-based question and answer systems - where employees can 'ask the boss' whatever is on their mind by submitting a question online. Every now and again there was an answer on there which somehow managed to find its way through which was so clearly a cop-out - a bunch of weasel words designed to dodge the true issue. As communicators we have a duty for fight for these issues - to make sure they are aired, tackled and dealt with honestly.

9. Inaction (real or perceived)

There's perhaps nothing worse than the organisation that asks employees for input, ideas, feedback, publishes the findings of the employee survey and then seems to take virtually no action as a result. Not acting on what your employees are telling you destroys trust fast.

10. Lack of sensitivity

Communicating tough messages without sensitivity is guaranteed to break down trust. Remember David Brent's bungled announcement about the closure of one of Wernham Hogg's offices?!

11. Rumours in a vacuum

Typically during times of change you will see lots of clandestine meetings and diary appointments marked 'private'. Employees aren't daft - they will know that something interesting is going on and, if you don't come clean quickly, they will start guessing at it...

12. Consistent corporate underperformance

Any company that regularly fails to meet expectations - either internally or externally - will see trust eroded. Trust often takes a battering in a recession, but the key is to set realistic expectations and to be honest about performance to all audiences.

What would you add to the list? Do let me know your thoughts....

Lee

The line-up this year is first class and I'm really looking forward to two days of inspiration, good practice and interesting discussions and debates.

There's CiB chair Dominic Walters on rebuilding trust, Wayne Clarke on the comms traits of Best Companies, Russell Grossman on engagement, Undercover Boss Stephen Martin of Clugston Group, Volvo's Charlie Nordblom and many more besides.

For those of you who follow me on Twitter, I'll be tweeting live throughout the event using the conference hashtag #SCMuk. I'll also be posting a more thorough review of each day in conjunction with fellow comms blogger Rachel Allen.

Let me know if you're planning to go along next week - would be great to say hello in person!

L

PS - make sure you check out some of the pre-conference iPadio interviews before you go...

PM Forum is a 5,000 strong regionally-based members' association, formed in 1996, dedicated to raising the standards of professional services marketing and to enhancing the credibility of marketers working within the sector.

Now this isn't a subject I've spoken about at length before, but having spent a long time operating as a senior communicator at one of the Big 4 accountancy firms, it's something I'd had a fair bit of exposure to over the years. So I thought it would be a fun exercise.

Working with the excellent Halina Kochanowicz, Head of UK Marketing at 'magic circle' law firm Linklaters, we developed a session to explore the softer side of cross-selling. For us this meant exploring four broad areas that echo our own passions and interests:

• Conversation - creating the right internal dialogue
• Collaboration - connecting people, match-making, internal networking
• Culture - tapping into diversity, creating a positive 'can do' culture, building a 'one firm' identity
• Confidence - building brand, reputation and trust from the inside-out
• Cross-selling remains one of the key challenges facing the professional services sector.

It's an area that most firms acknowledge as critically important, but very few ever manage to get right. Indeed, according to one survey (BTI Consulting Group's 'Benchmarking Law Firm Marketing & Business Development Strategies'), just 4% of firms rate themselves as highly effective at cross-selling and a worrying 77% rate their firms as ineffective.

Where does cross-selling break down?

So where do firms go wrong? What are the things that typically get in the way of cross-selling? I'm going to apologise right now for our extreme overuse of the letter 'C', but here's what we came up with:

Compensation
a belief by individual fee earners that they will not be fairly rewarded for referrals

Control
a fear of relinquishing ownership of a valuable personal relationship

Contact
not knowing colleagues well enough or spending sufficient time with them

Competence
doubting the knowledge, skills and ability of colleagues (particularly 'unproven' new joiners)

Client focus (lack of)
not thinking from the client's perspective or appreciating what they most value

Cynicism
operating in a low trust, sceptical or suspicious environment (particularly relevant during times of change)

Cooks
too many (or too few) senior client contacts spoil the broth!

Chemistry
Not selecting the right people to lead and develop the client relationship.
There are no doubt many more, but this strikes me as a pretty good list of the main challenges and blockers firms face in this area.

Having reviewed this list we went on to explore each of the four areas in a little more detail, before breaking out into a workshop session to capture some thoughts and ideas on what participants could actually do to improve their chances of cross-selling success.

I've captured below the main outputs from this exercise - a useful list of practical things you can do to begin creating the right culture and climate for cross-selling to take place....

1. Hold a fun 'speed-dating' session after work or as part of your internal conference programme - where employees from different teams are tasked with meeting and learning about people from other teams.

2. Face-to-face forums where you mix up people from different teams, service lines or practice groups.

3. Fact sheets (one sided, plain English) on your services (perhaps written by your graduate or new starters as part of their induction).

4. Tap into your hospitality, sponsorship, sports & social and corporate responsibility activities.

5. Include a slot in team meetings for someone from another area of the firm to come in and talk-through what they do (short and simple elevator pitch with client benefits highlighted and stories and anecdotes used to bring to life).

6. Have a look at the material on your website - is there stuff you are communicating externally that could be repackaged and used internally?

7. Celebrate cross-selling wins - not just new clients.

8. Is compensation getting in the way? Have a closer look at your reward strategy..

9. Weave success stories into all communications - magazine, e-zine, intranet, etc.

10. Focus on your leaders - what else could they be doing to champion cross-selling and, more importantly, demonstrate the right behaviours. Can they become your chief match-makers?

11. Tap into your firm's competitive spirit by using quick-fire online quizzes (or perhaps a live 'pub quiz') to test employee knowledge of your products, teams, etc.

12. Start up a corporate choir (like Ernst & Young) or ballroom dancing (Lovells) 'club'!

13. Run [optional] breakfast briefings or 'lunch and learn' session where people can turn up to learn about products and services in return for a free lunch.

14. Embrace social media as a way of connecting people.

15. Follow the lead of Deloitte and run a 'film festival' - equip employees with cheap USB cameras and encourage them to make short films about other teams.

16. Tap into you new starters - get to them while they are fresh and 'untainted' - ensure they are given a good understanding of your services during their induction.

17. Feed the grapevine - create the right environment in your office for people to talk to each other inf0ormally.

18. Go and find your cross-selling success stories - proactively go to your 'star' partners and fee earners and interview them, capturing the secrets of their success and packaging their story, identifying good practice, tips and lessons learned.

19. Get the partners out there - if you have a regional office network, get them to commit to spending a day a week/month in another/other offices.

Of course, there's a whole other side to this which we didn't touch on during our session - including having the right technology and systems in place and getting the reward strategy right. I can't help feeling, however, that the softer side - the areas we did explore - is fundamental to success in this area.

If you work in a professional services business and you'd like to explore any of these ideas further, don't hesitate to get in touch with me.

Lee

One of the topics my group got discussing was the types of measure you can use to assess your effectiveness and evaluate your impact as an internal communicator. As part of this we spent some time talking about the differences between input, output, out-take and outcome measures.

This is often an area where practitioners appreciate some guidance, so I have pulled together a brief summary below:

Input

What's already out there?

Background information and research to inform your initial planning.

Some of this information could also provide benchmarks against which to measure future progress.

This is the sort of information you make use of during the audit stage of your planning and can often be uncovered using desk research. Good sources include your in house HR or Marketing team, which are usually sitting on a wealth of rich (and often untapped) data.

Sources include the internal comms brief, desk research (demographics, survey data, content analysis of channels, etc) and qualitative research (interviews and focus groups).

Output

Are your messages getting to people?

Used to measure WHAT we did - typically around message exposure and audience reach.

A valuable measure focused on the efficiency and effectiveness of your processes. It can analyse message exposure but it cannot explain to what extent people's opinions or behaviour has been influenced.

The sorts of measure here include the volume of IC material issued (number of newsletters distributed, publication of related stories on intranet), events (who and how many attended) and the frequency of exposure to key messages (how often did we communicate key messages to each audience?)

Out-take

Are your messages getting through to people?

Used to measure THE IMPACT of what you did - the extent to which the audience is aware, has understood and remembered and their likely reaction and response.

Out-take research is often carried out during a campaign or programme to check whether messages are getting through to people - helping you refine and fine-tune your plans.

This sort of research includes looking at the number and type of questions submitted to an intranet-based Q&A, the pattern of intranet hits, awareness measures (is the message getting though?) and the likely intentions of audience.

Outcome

Are your messages changing attitudes or behaviour?

Used to measure the TANGIBLE RESULT of what you did - the degree to which comms changed awareness, opinions and behaviours.

The most valuable form of measurement, it provides concrete proof that a change in employee behaviour can be traced back to an internal comms programme, activity or message. It is also the basis for calculating ROI.

Outcome-based research includes an assessment of results versus objectives, hard evidence on value added (quantitative - sales, financial, etc) and soft evidence (qualitative - focus group feedback, etc).

A wide range of tools and techniques are available to evaluate IC effectiveness at all four levels. Your choice will depend on a number of factors - particularly how much depth and detail you require, your time availability and your budget.

A simple 'menu' of research methods is shown below, according to degree of sophistication. Externally sourced research will generally be more reliable, but there is a huge amount of valuable information that is likely to exist already inside the business and that you should be able to access quickly and easily.

Basic
Communication team can source, undertake and analyse internally.

• Desk research and information gathering


• Collecting demographic data


• Telephone interviews


• Pre testing of messages


• External benchmarking


• Developing a brief

Intermediate
Managed by communication team but may require specialist external input.

• SWOT analysis


• Focus groups


• Pulse surveys


• Content analysis(channels)


• Audience profiling


• Creating a communication dashboard


• Creating a communication scorecard

Advanced
Relies on specialist external advice, managed by senior member of communication team.

• Key driver analysis


• Telephone surveying


• Major employee surveys

The above is adapted from my CIPR Guide to Measurement & Evaluation for Internal Communicators - which is available exclusively to CIPR Members via the Member Area of the Institute's website.

Whilst on the subject of demonstrating your value, you might also be interested in a funky new tool which has just been developed by Russell-Oliver Brooklands at the Internal Communication Model. ROB has created a seemingly rather sophisticated toolkit that apparently enables you to quantify the value of your contribution in pounds and pence. I haven't had time to scrutinise it yet, but if it does what it promises to do then ROB may well have moved us one step closer to the Holy Grail! It's free, so why not check it out...

Lee