Employee communication, as I have said here many times, is different from other communication disciplines. (In fact, I wrote a book about it, titled Employee Communication Is Different.)
You can do PR dispassionately and well—for whatever money, status and power it affords you.
But employee communication is so hard to do compellingly, so unrewarding, so misunderstood, that to do it well, one must be just a teensy, weensy bit crazy—the way you are when you have a fever.
Repetitive dreams (of editorial freedom in a corporate environment), obsessive thoughts (employees ought to be treated like adults) and mild hallucinations (I can change this culture).
The fever doesn't break inside a practitioner—it's permanent, like herpes—but when a great employee communicator retires, it breaks in a company. Immediately, and completely. I've seen it happen, often, and recently.
The good news is, the fever can spread too. Steve Crescenzo is contagious on a big scale, and practitioners like Rueben Bronee spread the disease around their communication departments.
Readers, from where you sit, is the fever for employee communication spreading for the most part, or is it receding?
Talk to me.
Gonzo, you nailed this one. Yes, I am one of the many internal communicators who has the fever and always has hope that I’m changing the culture. In my case, the fever has been spreading as the business underwent a change; now we’re trying to keep the fever going as the change winds down. I’m using the opportunity to implement some ideas that Steve and Cindy Crescenzo helped me with in my post-change planning. And I’m not going to give up!!!
My wife will no doubt be pleased to hear I’ve been diagnosed as someone who actively spreads a disease “like herpes” that can’t be cured. But coming from you, and considering the virus in question, I’ll take it as a compliment.
I am fortunate that I work in an organization that has the fever and has it bad. That’s because I have a great team of highly contagious people working with me. While I agree that it can be killed in some orgs, I think (perhaps optimistically) that it may be deep enough into our bones now that it could never be completely eradicated. Out into remission maybe, but never really eliminated.