How to help leaders rebuild credibility and trust
Advice on how you can support your leaders to rebuild trust throughout the organization from one of the speakers at Melcrum's US Strategic Communication Management Summit 2009.
According to the Watson Wyatt 2007/2008 Communication ROI Study, effective employee communication is a leading indicator of financial performance, meaning that companies that invest in employee communication and implement or improve communication practices typically see higher subsequent financial returns.1
As communication professionals, our role is increasingly vital to the health and prosperity of the organizations we support. The hard and fast truth of our current economic state is that uncertainty, the changing business landscape, fallen stock prices and declining value of employee savings vehicles such as 401(k)s, profit sharing plans and bonus pools have taken a toll on employee engagement and discretionary effort.
Then...
The job of communication professionals was markedly easier ten years ago when the profit sharing plan was pumping out sizeable checks annually to employees as they watched their 401(k) balances grow at healthy rates.
Overtime was plentiful for those who qualified for it and employees came to work with a bounce in their step, certainty in their voices, loyalty in their hearts and predictability in their output. The focus then was to explain the company’s three- and five-year plan and to build the bridge for the population to understand how the firm would get from here to there.
...And now
Today, it's more like a six-month or year-plan at most companies, furloughs and unpaid weeks off, reductions in force and reduced or suspended benefits. A considerable number of individuals are looking towards 2010 as the magic year in the economic recovery and most (not all) companies are sheepishly planning for stabilization. An over simplified view, perhaps, but the point is the world has changed and so have the challenges of our roles.
With the blogsphere, detailed analyst reports and 24/7 access to online media, employees have unprecedented access to information and, as a result, have significantly higher expectations of leaders to be candid and forthright. Our role as communicators is to establish the strategy and ensure the right flow and cadence of information to specific audiences.
Begin with measurement
Executives have little interest in "nice to haves". Steve Karp, President of Karp Solutions, explained it this way: "Executives are focused more than ever on the bottom line and results. Communicating for the sake of simply doing the right thing is no longer enough. With resources limited, business leaders are demanding accountability from all their businesses and functional areas, including communication."
It's incumbent upon communication professionals to gather and present data so the value of effective communication is evident.
It's incumbent upon communicators to gather and present data so the value of effective communication is evident.
When I was working at a manufacturing conglomerate, an employee engagement survey was administered annually. Clearly the survey measured engagement levels but by partnering with human resources, the corporate communication function leveraged the survey to measure communication effectiveness.
Effectiveness was measured across a number of channels including managers and business unit leaders. The 60,000-employee-strong organization was rigorous about reporting results to employees, tracking performance year-over-year and holding managers accountable for implementing remediation measures. Corporate communication had the data necessary to establish a baseline and identify target areas for improvement.
By starting with the end in mind – which behaviors do you want to modify to improve business results – you're able to tailor your survey questions or focus group discussion to test specific areas of interest.
For example, before developing a manager communication program at a financial services firm, timeliness, credibility and relevance of information employees were receiving from their managers had to be measured. A survey strictly designed to measure internal communication yielded rich results for the entire communication program and specifically highlighted the value of leader/manager communication for employees.
Although email was rated as most utilized it was ranked least effective. Employees rated their managers as highly credible and reported that managers provided relevant information (meaning employees understood the "what's in it for me") but indicated that timeliness was sub-par and needed improvement.
Align your communication strategy to business objectives
Communicating without clear objectives leads to a fragmented and ineffective end. Through the survey noted above, the company learned that too many irrelevant emails were being sent to large segments of the employee population throughout the course of the business day. Because so many people were being bombarded with corporate emails, every email took on extreme importance and led to an inability to prioritize effectively.
The business objective was to improve understanding of the firm's growth plan.
The business objective was to improve understanding of the firm's growth plan and increase employee productivity and engagement. So, streamlining all the electronic communications and creating a focused "Managers First" strategy was an imperative component of the communication strategy.
Before this strategy was deployed, managers at the firm received information at the same time as employees. They didn't have the opportunity to sift through announcements and decipher the impact to their work group in advance.
As a first step, the internal communication group worked with the human resources information systems team to create a distinct email distribution list for all people mangers throughout the organization. This list has every individual with a direct report and is refreshed monthly to ensure its accuracy.
Secondly, a branded communication vehicle was created to share the highlights and key messages of an announcement with managers, along with potential questions & answers that may arise from employees. The manager communication piece, Leader Briefing, is released in concert with all public announcements and 30 – 60 minutes prior to an all-employee announcement to afford managers the time to prepare for team discussions and questions.
Leader Briefings debuted immediately after the survey results were announced to ensure managers received timely reinforcement and had a clear understanding of their role to inform and engage employees.
A testament to the value of the Leader Briefings is that managers who weren't on to the distribution list (the list is refreshed monthly) called or emailed the internal communication group asking to be added immediately.
Ask and you will receive
By engaging your audience and asking them what they need to do their jobs more effectively, you will be armed with first-hand data. Focus groups are an excellent means to get deeper into an issue.
These can be held both in person and virtually. After launching the Leader Briefing communication vehicle and while creating wireframes for the manager communication website, a series of six focus groups were held to explore four areas:
- How well do managers understand their roles in the communication process?
- What is their perception regarding having access to information?
- How have they learned about key business issues in the past?
- What resources do they need to be more effective at their jobs?
Four in-person focus groups were held at large locations throughout the organization and two were conducted via WebEx to include managers from outside the US. If any part of your business is outside the US, it's necessary to capture feedback from all parts of the organization. Neglecting to do so will negate the validity of your data to various stakeholders.
The key findings were pivotal to advancing the manager communication strategy. They included:
- Managers understood they have a communication role as part of their job responsibilities.
- Managers recognized improvements to information sources and the flow of information.
- Participants identified a number of resources they needed to help them with their communication role.
The tools managers identified to help them do their jobs more effectively were incorporated into the plan.
The tools managers identified to help them do their jobs more effectively were incorporated into the plan.
Creating and maintaining credibility
Feedback from managers often points directly to credibility. In the focus groups, participants shared that information being sent from corporate was often too "rosy" and "packaged". They wanted more candid discussion with executive leaders and information delivered in bulleted format, plain "English" and a clear link to how it impacted the bottom line.
Dave Cote, CEO of Honeywell, demonstrated candor as well as any executive I have worked with. Fairly early in his tenure at the company, Dave invited all senior leaders across the company to a 30-minute conference call. A tort reform issue that was being discussed in Washington that would have significant implications to the company’s bottom line.
Two interesting things happened. First, Dave made a list of all participants on the call. He followed up with those who hadn't taken part to send a strong message about accountability (another good example of setting expectations).
Second, he spoke about the reform issue in simple and exact terms. He laid out exactly what each and every leader needed to do and explained in clear terms the ramifications if each leader in the organization did not take action. He didn’t spin it or sugarcoat it. Dave had a strong, capable leadership team and treated them with respect when it came to outlining business challenges, opportunities and priorities.
Provide relevant content
Creating a hub for relevant, timely information was critical at the financial services company, particularly as the industry was facing difficult times with the precipitous decline in the market. The manager communication portal was a source for weekly, sometimes daily, information updates. It also provided in-depth communication training modules and facilitated best-practice sharing through an on-line discussion thread.
In just two months, traffic to the site increased by 50%. Bi-weekly news updates were sent to managers to advise them of new information on the site. This push communication was designed to change behavior and lead the target audience to the tools and resources they identified as needing to be more effective. Because the site was new and "something else to do" the internal communication team made it easy for managers to scan the updates and pull off what they needed.
Stay in touch with your stakeholder group
Analyzing, setting expectations, establishing goals and implementing are the first four steps. Continually evaluating and knowing your stakeholder group determines the ongoing success of your strategy and program. Stay close to your audience and business objectives and you will continue to demonstrate the value of effective communications.
1. From Secrets of Top Performers: How Companies With Highly Effective Employee Communication Differentiate Themselves, Watson Wyatt 2007/08 Communication ROI Study
Have your say
What techniques do your senior leaders use to keep communication at the top of the agenda? Or have you needed to persuade them that they need to change their approach for the good of future company performance? How have you coached them in this regard?
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