Alexander Heron seems kind of bored, discussing communication vehicles. Like a lot of internal communication big thinkers who have followed him, he has contempt for the reader who demands to know exactly how to get the messages across. "Do I have to do everything for you?!” he seems to demand.
        Nevertheless, his game effort to survey the hottest communication media of his moment affords us insights by comparison and contrast.
        In the next-to-last installment of my series on the first and best book ever written on employee communication, I’ll take them one by one. —DM

The Bulletin Board. Heron’s tips effective bulletin boards might as well be a seminar on Twitter (or the internal communication app, Yammer). He says messages on bulletin boards must be brief, current and relevant, and he issues a final warning about bulletin boards: “Too much matter of any kind will lead to a growing disregard of the bulletin board. Then we can no longer depend on it as a medium for telling and emphasizing those things which are important to our immediate operating plans.” Got that, Kawasaki?

The Pay Insert. Yes, kids, there was a time when “direct deposit” meant you didn’t cash your paycheck at the tavern, but took it straight home to your wife. And in those good old days, the paycheck stuffer was an important means of internal communication because, as Heron points out, “it reaches every employee more surely than any other medium. It occurs at a time of automatic attention; the employee is alert to the arrival of his check or envelope, ready to look at it and check its correctness in some cases, perhaps even see if it reflects a raise. Moreover, he cannot refuse to take it. And almost always in the case of family men the envelope or check will go home and be seen by the wife.”

As old-fashioned as the pay insert is, it occurs to me that reaching spouses is one dimension of employee communication that’s been sorely neglected in recent years (though it was frequently discussed as recently as the 1990s, when I was first studying this business). Is it no longer of any importance at all to give employees’ families a little corporate news and context—or is it just preposterous to imagine they might actually read your corporate horsehockey?

The House Organ. (Not a musical instrument, peeps; the old-fashioned name for an employee publication.)

Lots of modern consultants and practitioners have passed themselves off as bleeding-edge by dismissing “babies and bowling scores” as legitimate content for an employee publication. Well, Heron was making the same point in 1942, recommending a second, “radically different type of house organ”:

Despite all the technology, employee publications still exist, and Heron’s description above is pretty much what the best ones are still after.

The Line Supervisor. Heron dashes through various kinds of employee meetings, direct mail, the employee handbook and the annual report on his way to making a claim that will cause a bar fight among employee communicators even today:

I’ve never been terribly interested in the ongoing debate between who’s more effective as a communicator—top management or line supervisor—because I believe both are equally necessary. (Which would you rather know before going outside: The temperature or the chance of precipitation?)

What does interest me is how Heron measures the success of all communication vehicles. Going back to the example of the house organ article about Lars Olson and his 50 years of service, Heron asks and answers, “How are we to know whether or not the results are good, whether or not the story was read and its real meaning comprehended?”

More on those questions—and on how we know if internal communication is working—in the next, and last, installment in this series.

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,

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?

Alexander Heron's 1942 book Sharing Information with Employees is the first ever written on employee communication, and I'm arguing it's also the best. But it's not perfect. As I tried to imagine this scene, I had to laugh. —DM

"One of the best jobs I ever knew of making 'company investment' take on a life meaning is done by a manager of a small plant employing about five hundred," Heron says. "This manager systematically plans to see each new employee soon after he joins the organization. He plans the conversation so that he can ask the new employee why he prefers to work for wages rather than to work for himself. Of course, the answer is almost always, 'I have no capital. You gotta have capital to work for yourself.'"

And here is where the trouble begins:

We can see the new employee wiping the sweat off the back of his neck and trying to appear befuddled: "Gee, boss, I never thought of it that way!" And meanwhile wishing fondly to quickly get to work digging clinkers out of the furnace. But the boss isn't finished.

No, Heron: An employee who has been condescended to in this way—and at the very moment he is most powerless to argue with the chief, perhaps by pointing out that if he's to "pay for the investment he uses" maybe he ought to receive some of the fruits of that investment—will be forever hostile to everything management ever tries to get him to understand about company finances.

And readers,  you'll be even more gobsmacked at Heron's foolishness here when you read the next installment of this series, which explains with sensitivity and insight when and under what circumstances an organization can get employees to receive information about economic "reality."