Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

One provocative opinion, one urgent fact, one bit of good news

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Provocative opinion: If you have a few minutes to rub together, please read my speech from the RonCon 2010 conference last week, in which I claim that employee communication is as important to democracy as public education (and go about trying to tell employee communicators what to do about it). I'd be happy to get your reaction.

Urgent fact: Friday is the deadline for entering the E2E Communication Awards, for excellence in the communication discipline no democracy can do without. There's a late deadline of April 9, but you have to pay extra and, even worse, you make the awards chairman's life more difficult. So enter this week!

The good news: Entering E2E is so easy you can do it in the time it would have taken you to read my speech.

Employee communication is different … and so are the E2E Communication Awards

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 Most HR executives can't stand employee communication. They talk about "having it" in their portfolio the way the rest of us talk about having an inoperable tumor in our belly.

Most marketing people, on the other hand, love employee communication! They love it so much, they recreate it in their own image, and call it Internal Marketing!

PR people like to do employee communication too. They take it one campaign at a time.

The E2E Communication Awards is for those of us who believe that employee communication is different: from HR, from marketing, from public relations: Another discipline entirely, with separate principles, different techniques and goals all its own.Logo

You wouldn't enter your art project into a science fair. So don't enter your employee communication work into some PR awards.

Peruse the perfectly calibrated categories and the agreeable entry process for the E2E Communication Awards, and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

But do it soon. The deadline for entries is April 2.

Sincerely,

David Murray, Program Chairman

P.S. Employee communication impresario Steve Crescenzo has just agreed to present the best of the winners at the Employee Engagement, HR and Social Media 2010 conference in Chicago May 12-13. Mark your calendars. More details to come.

Employee Communication Is Different—By David Murray

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I could call it a white paper, but why hide my light under a bushel? Here's my first book, created chapter by chapter on Writing Boots a little less than a year ago. EmployeeCommunicationIsGRAPHIC

It's the employee communication philosophy articulated almost 70 years ago in the first (and best) book on the subject—endorsed, modified and translated to modern employee communication management by yours truly.

Boots readers' brilliant comments run throughout.

Best of all (unless you're me): It's free!

So if you're an employee communicator, download Employee Communication is Different and learn why you're doing what you're doing—and what you ought to do to improve.