In my series on Sharing Information with Employees, the first and best book ever written on employee communication, I've covered (and we've discussed): the purpose of employee communication for organizations, employees and society … what attitudes executives ought to have about communicating with employees … how to make sure what management has to say matches what employees want to hear.
In this installment, we get down to brass tacks. "How?" asks Heron. In his answer, he describes the character of a solid employee communication program and discusses when and how one might be launched. —DM
Like communication consultants today, Heron distinguishes between communication vehicles and a communication program. Unlike communication consultants today, he does not talk glibly of "behavior change" as the end-all, be-all of employee communication.
"Our objective is a lasting and continuing attitude, not an early and conclusive action. We are not seeking to persuade employees to buy something or to do something specific. We are not even interested in causing them to know some particular fact or to think any specific thought."
Long before employees can be reached on that level, an understanding must be reached, Heron writes.
Actually, it's not "incidental" at all when one is considering launching or dramatically retooling an employee communications operation. Heron goes on to ask and answer the question, "How can [management] avoid shocking employees and at the same lead them to recognize that they can know the facts about the enterprise which is a part of their lives?"
[Are you listening, Rueben?]
Answer: "There is no sudden way. There is no channel which can instantly make employees conscious of the new possibilities. Any pressing for sudden results, for sudden interest, greater confidence and general acceptance of information by employees is hopeless. The first rule must be that the process of sharing information with employees is a gradual one."
Heron goes on to describe the employee communication program in more detail:
It almost sounds as if Heron is banning communication vehicles and employee communication practitioners. Not quite. "Fully recognizing the popularity of many of these methods, and the fact that tens of millions of dollars are being spent every year on their use, I confess a prejudice against any or all of them as a complete program. I recognize immense value in some of them, an undeniable need for most of them. [But] the proposition to which I hope to lead is that the best of them, selected to fit the exact conditions of a single company, will do the most that they can do when they have invited the flow of information through the natural, functional line organization, the supervisory personnel of that company."
All right, Heron—employee communication practitioners and our programs have to be broad-minded, patient and unobtrusive.
When can we start?
Not now.
"When our employees want to know whether the plant will run full after Christmas, it is almost certain that they will not 'receive' our bulletin-board 'propaganda' about the burden of our social security taxes for the year."
Employees are deeply suspicious of organizations that,
The mind of the average American is a naturally sensitive receiving instrument. Through the years of growth of mass employment, the instrument has not been invited to "tune in" on basic information from which understanding of the free-enterprise system can grow. It has not been invited to "tune in" on facts about industry and business, particularly about the business in which it is engaged.
So companies who have seen the light about the need to communicate aggressively with employees must wait for the current recession to recede the way Depression was doing by the beginning of U.S. involvement in WW II, in 1942. "While they are worried about curtailed and unstable earnings, employees are not willing to 'tune in' on messages about anything else."
But just afterward—that's when they will.
Will we, in the next phase of U.S. economic history, be ready for the moment?
That was interesting, David, his analysis of how employees will mistrust a sudden attitude of openness on the part of an employer who had been reticent and suspicious beforehand. I have to agree, having worked for one of those companies who entrusted real information only to the C-suite elite. Although I’ve left their employ, I know that had that happened, a turnaround in attitude like that, very few employees would not have suspected some sort of manipulation at work. In a case where a company has been so “grudging,” as Heron puts it, I doubt that anything short of a management overhaul (such as canning the current CEO and his favored few and putting a whole new team in place) would convince employees that the effort was sincere.
Yes, I’m listening. And I’m happy that he addressed the issue. In many ways, the senario he’s describing mirrors my organization – one previously lacking any corporate internal comm model at all, and now spending several years slowly building the trust and sharing information openly. Of course, we still have employees who question even the most solid facts we share. But, as I’ve mentioned earlier, that group does seem to be shrinking.
And for those who like to measure: despite the reality that we’ve been honest with employees that over the next two years the crap economy will likely result in layoffs of up to five per cent of our workforce, our annual engagement survey in April showed our third consecutive annual increase in employee engagement across the organization. So maybe we are getting somewhere…
Right on, Joan. Short of the senior executive standing before all employees and explaining to them that he or she has had a revelation–“you see, there’s this book called ‘Sharing Information with Employees’ that I read about on this blog called Writing Boots”–what else could they assume but Machiavellian intent?
And Rueben–maybe never having had any internal communication model is your greatest advantage. Whatever you’re doing, it sounds like it’s working. Congratulations and as always, keep us posted.
You tipped me off with what you said about “behavior change.”
Change management consultants think they own communication. They own it because in their minds, they’re smarter than we communicators about the “change needs” of the “stakeholders.” They get to be the thinkers; we get to be the people who push the publishing buttons. The fact that they don’t know how to write, think, or communicate doesn’t stop these awful drones from holding their “engagement sessions” and “messaging meetings.”
Mark my words, friends, this menace is on its way to you if it hasn’t gotten there already. They come with charts and graphs and “change curves” and seductive promises to management that are the very opposite of what we’re talking about in this series you’ve shared, David.
Lord have mercy on us poor commuicators. And on the poor employees who will be forced to suffer along with us.
Beautifully said, Amy.
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Writing Boots: How might we start an effective employee communication program? And when?
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Writing Boots: How might we start an effective employee communication program? And when?