Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Employee communication is a fever that has broken

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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.

Two communicators and one crazy idea: employee communication is different

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Writing Boots reader and frequent commenter Rueben Bronee* and Robin Farr, his colleague in an employee communication department, say they are starting an employee communication "revolution"—their word—in their organization.

They state their intentions on their brand new blogs.

Rueben's here.

Robin's here.

They credit me for inspiring them with my speech of last week, but whatever gains they achieve from here on out—and I will chronicle their efforts on Writing Boots, as I promised them I would—are all on them.

Best of luck to you both. This will be interesting.

* Yes, Boots regulars, you heard me right. Rueben Bronee, no longer content to opine only from his bar stool here, has opened a tavern of his own. Comparatively, it's a clean, well-lighted place—and I'm adding it to the list of blogs I always read ….