Michael J. Petrillose, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Hospitality Management, SUNY Delhi
Diane Gayeski – Ithaca College Ph.D., CEO, Gayeski Analytics and Professor, Organizational Communication, Learning & Design, Ithaca College
Abstract
Workplace violence is a worldwide epidemic and is a major financial and performance risk in any organization, especially restaurants and hotels. Synthesizing research on workplace violence and organizational performance engineering, this paper rejects the assumption that aggressive behavior is best prevented by screening, surveillance, and training. Rather, it asserts that many typical management and communication practices actually create an environment that breeds poor service, property destruction, anger, and even violence. A pilot tool for assessing an organization’s management communication infrastructure is presented, accompanied by recommendations for initiatives to advance this stream of research and practice in the hospitality industry.
From desk rage to homicide: threats to the hospitality industry
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the workplace is the most dangerous place to be in America. Violence that leads to serious injury or death is merely the most visible tip of the iceberg of aggressive behaviors. Workplace stress can cause what has been coined “desk rage”, a syndrome that includes pushing, teasing, or yelling at co-workers or customers (Integra Realty Resources, 2001), damaging property or equipment, or purposely “hiding out” and not working up to standards (Girion, 2000). Belligerent behavior – from simple verbal abuse to actual homicide – represents a major financial and performance risk for any organization, especially for restaurants and hotels. These environments typically are characterized by many situations in which it may be difficult to control negative behaviors:
q Large staffs with a high turn-over rate and spotty performance in prior jobs and education
q Lack of ability to carefully monitor employee behavior (e.g. high employee to supervisor ratios, much work done independently such as housekeeping, night shifts done with minimal supervision, etc.)
q Complex work environments that create opportunities for mischief (e.g. kitchens where food can be contaminated, use of knives, etc.)
q Workplaces open to the public with constant mobility of customers (e.g. hotel public spaces)
q Hours of operation and environment that tempts crime perpetrators (e.g. late-night restaurants with minimal staff to protect people, property, and cash).
The hospitality industry has typically taken a person-oriented approach to preventing violence and aggressive behavior. The underlying assumption is that the tendency for negative behavior is situated in individuals: in other words, there are people who are prone to violence or who simply don’t know how to control their anger and be courteous. Thus, the common management interventions to preempt negative behavior have been:
q screening of prospective employees
q surveillance of the workplace through cameras, security guards, etc.
q training employees in customer service and harassment prevention
Although these assumptions and interventions are partially appropriate and effective, research indicates that rude and even injurious behavior is often prompted by factors in the organization itself – specifically policies, culture, and management communication (O’Leary-Kelley, Griffin, & Glew, 1996). The management system itself (rather than employees’ backgrounds, character, or training) may well be the most powerful factor associated with aggressive behavior. Because the hospitality industry is so susceptible to violence (Desk rage is on the rise, 2001) and its success is so intimately tied to safety and courteous customer service, (Petrillose, Shanklin & Downey, 1998; Petrillose. & Brewer, 2000), it is critical to:
q Conduct research about how organizations unwittingly create environments that breed aggressive behavior
q Develop practical assessment methods to screen organizations for management factors that are associated with aggressive and violent behaviors
q Create tools and techniques that hospitality executives can use to preempt aggressive behavior and violence through management interventions that go beyond the common practices of employee screening and surveillance
q Teach and model the management communication techniques that are required for future hospitality supervisors to sustain a courteous and safe environment.
This paper presents a foundation for these initiatives.
Review of workplace violence research
Persons in service–related fields are more likely to be victims of workplace violence, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Violence is most likely to occur in public and government facilities (17.2%) followed by restaurants and bars (14.6%) and hotel and motels (1.4%) (Desk rage is on the rise, 2001). One in four workers are attacked, threatened, or harassed each year, with instances of verbal violence being about three times that of physical violence. The cost of this is estimated to be as high as $36 billion in the United States alone, reflecting lost productivity (500,000 employees missing 1,750,000 days of work per year), diminished company image and customer retention, more than $13 billion in medical costs, and increased security and insurance payments. When there are aggressors in the workplace, employees and customers are repelled, causing tardiness, absenteeism, turnover, and lost sales (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2003; Johnson & Indvik, 2001; Reisenauer, 2002). In telephone surveys, employees across various industries admit that stress and anger at their employers is causing them to pick fights with and yell at co-workers or customers, cry on the job, purposely damage equipment or property, and intentionally work slowly or look busy while doing nothing (Girion, 2000). The personal and societal cost of poor work environments is also significant: many unhealthy patterns such as lack of sleep, abuse of alcohol and drugs, and overeating are common reactions to stress, and family and community relationships suffer.
What factors are associated with workplace aggression? Although most violent crimes are perpetrated by individuals who have some history of psychological and /or social problems, much belligerence is caused by factors in the work environment. Thus, it is important to avoid a “blame the victim” approach when instituting measures to reduce bad behavior. Based on a synthesis of the research on workplace violence, the following factors have been found to be indicators of the kind of problematic workplace environment that is associated with aggressive behavior:
q Highly authoritarian workplace
q Employees overloaded by work and stress
q Long hours and inadequate breaks
q Supervision is changeable and unpredictable
q Employees get mixed messages
q Management methods are invasive of privacy
q Extreme secrecy; management not open about goals, strategies, or current business data
q Employees are devalued; their unique contributions not solicited or recognized
q Short-term benefits are pursued at expense of long-term effectiveness
q Tolerance of moderate levels of aggressive conduct or rude behavior of peers or customers
q Recent downsizing, poor business performance, or other major changes in jobs
q Uncomfortable workplace (poor temperature, seating, etc.)
q Long, stressful commute
q Use of new technologies that cause information overload, require continual learning, and cause stress when they are unreliable (e.g. e-mail, new POS systems)
A communication and performance engineering approach
As indicated above, an emerging body of research finds that much violence and uncivil behavior in the workplace is caused by managerial and environmental factors rather than individual traits. O’Leary-Kelley and Griffin (1996) defined the term Organization-Motivated Aggression (OMA) which is based on social learning theory. Their exploratory study found that a major factor associated with workplace violence and aggression is modeling of peers’ or supervisors’ behavior, despite training or executive assertions that rudeness, harassment and violence are not tolerated. In other words, many supervisors operate according to the old saying, “do what I say, not what I do”. This study and others found that rude, patronizing, and punishing behavior by supervisors is common, especially in service industries, and thus a focus on managerial communication is essential because employees model the behavior they experience. Put simply, employees treat others as they are treated. Research specifically in hotel management has reinforced this assertion, finding that service behaviors and an orientation towards quality must emanate from top management actions (Withiam, 1996).
Another approach to reducing workplace aggression is provided by the field of human performance technology, a professional model for organizational improvement that focuses on assessing root causes of performance gaps and developing interventions that address both the workplace environment and the worker’s repertory of behavior (Van Tiem, Moseley & Dessinger, 2000). Thomas Gilbert (1978), one of the founders of this approach, developed the Behavior Engineering Model as a way to categorize the management approaches and personal factors that impact performance (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 Behavior Engineering Model based on Gilbert (1978).
| Information | Instrumentation | Motivation | |
| Environmental Supports
|
Data: (feedback, performance goals) | Instruments: (tools, materials, and work environment) | Incentives: (bonuses, non-monetary rewards, career development) |
| Person’s Repertory of Behavior
|
Knowledge: (person’s background and experience, coaching, training, job placement) | Capacity: (capability of person to perform the job intellectually, physically, emotionally) | Motives (personal goals and preferences) |
Rummler (1999) asserts that the most influential factors in workplace performance are the organizational and job systems: policies, procedures, communication climate, information, and management incentives: “If you pit a good performer against a bad system, the system will win every time.” (p. 55). Even when organizations do focus on their management systems, decision-makers often inadvertently institute performance interventions that generate exactly what they wish to avoid. For example, rigid managerial control and surveillance develops a suspicious culture in which employees do not feel valued and trusted. This is precisely the climate that research shows is associated with destructive and violent behavior.
Sending employees to training on customer relations or harassment prevention can also lead to unexpected results. Employees may feel punished or insulted by being “sent” to training rather than having a say in this decision themselves. For example, one major study in the training industry reported that workers have a significant voice in the decision about whether they will receive training less than 10 percent of the time. More than seven times out of 10, that decision is made by a supervisor, manager, or higher executive (Schaaf, 1998). Patronizing content or approaches or exercises that bring up sensitive cultural or personal issues can be direct antecedents to violence. A workplace shooting in August 2003 occurred directly after the perpetrator attended a required ethics training course during which he apparently became agitated (Seven Dead in Chicago Workplace Shooting, 2003). Other studies find that sometimes front line employees actually perform more poorly after training: they are so overwhelmed with information that they return to the job and freeze. This information overload causes stress, which is associated with absenteeism, turnover, and hostile behavior – exactly what the training is trying to prevent.
Communication technologies such as voicemail, e-mail, the Internet and corporate intranets, cell phones, and instant messaging are also stressors. In a consulting engagement with a major restaurant chain, it was found that store managers were typically rising at 5 AM and beginning to listen to their voicemails as they dressed because they could expect to receive several hours worth of voicemails from various corporate sources throughout a typical day (Gayeski, 1999). Similar research has found that workers are typically interrupted by email or phone messages every few minutes. This overload of data, as well as the popular and unquestioned assumption that “more communication is better” have made these problems even worse. Communication and training activities take time away from one’s “real” work, further adding to stress because employees then have to somehow catch up on the work that accumulated while they were in meetings or courses. Too often, corporate messages come from different sources and are not coordinated; in fact, they may be contradictory and seemingly arbitrary. This dis-integration of the communication system is causing stress, an erosion of credibility, an attitude of cynicism, and poor performance focus (Gayeski, 1998).
Clearly, new approaches for not only interpersonal communication but also for selecting and managing formal communication and training are needed. Often the most powerful messages are embedded in the communication and training policies themselves rather than in the content of instruction or meetings. For example, employees may be required to attend “empowerment training” and to wear silly empowerment buttons – clearly sending the message that they are not, in fact, empowered. However, uncovering these unintentionally destructive patterns is not as easy as it may appear.
Prototype screening tool
To bridge the gap between theory and practice, the hospitality management field needs tools to screen operations for the typical management and business environment factors that have been shown to be antecedents to organizational-motivated aggression. Building on established models for organizational communication audits (Gayeski, 2000), and the review of literature on workplace aggression, a survey has been developed and is being piloted at selected hospitality operations. Each item will be rated by an individual employee on a 1-5 Likert scale, from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The statements noted here with asterisks indicate problematic factors; the rest of the statements represent conditions or policies that are considered “best practice” in avoiding aggressive behavior. (see Table 2).
Table 2 Hospitality communication analytics survey
Copyright Gayeski Analytics 2004 all rights reserved
| 1 Company strategies and performance information (such as sales figures and budgets) are made widely available and discussed with employees openly | ||
| 2 Training and communication materials, courses, and meetings regularly feature employees’ ideas, opinions, and their contributions to the organization’s success | ||
| * 3 There is frequent turnover of management and first-level supervisors | ||
| 4 The company has policies and practices that protect employee privacy (e.g. personal information, salary and performance data, content and use of email and Web access) and employees are made clearly aware of these protections | ||
| 5 The organization values long-term performance and corporate values over short-term gains | ||
| 6 Professionals in communications (such as advertising, employee communications, HR) and training work together to clearly communicate strategic plans and messages to reduce any mixed messages sent to employees | ||
| 7 We have standards to ensure that everybody in the organization understands the culture and brand communicates in a way that supports the culture and the brand | ||
| 8 Employees are given frequent feedback on company goals and how their performance contributes to them | ||
| 9 Training, feedback, and other developmental opportunities, are made available to all employees, regardless of their position | ||
| 10 The organization is using methods (such as bulletin boards, print newsletters, or handheld computers to provide training and job aids to ensure that employees who don’t have computers are well informed and connected | ||
| -* 11 Standards, policies, and performance expectations are set by upper management with little input of front-line employees | ||
| 12 Managers, in general, employ an “open door” style of management | ||
| * 13 Managers tolerate a certain amount of teasing, arguing and “horseplay” among employees and typically let them settle their differences on their own | ||
| 14 Communication systems are in place that allow all levels of employees to contribute ideas and ask questions of upper management | ||
| 15 The company does not tolerate any level of aggressive behavior on the part of employees or customers | ||
| 16 We have training in place for all employees on workplace security including what to look for and how to react if there is any suspicion of danger | ||
| 17 The company has methods in place to reduce information overload and stress (such as initiatives to reduce e-mails, paperwork, or meetings) | ||
| 18 Most employees would say that our company treats its employees better than the competition (similar hotels, restaurants, etc.) | ||
| * 19 Employees do not contribute to company materials like brochures and newsletters | ||
| 20 We have a strict set of selection and interviewing guidelines to screen out potentially violent employees while remaining compliant with the law. | ||
| 21 All employees feel free to deal assertively if a co-worker or customer appears to become abusive or violent or poses some other security risk | ||
| * 22 We monitor employee emails and their use of the Internet | ||
| * 23 We use cameras or other devices to monitor employee whereabouts and behavior | ||
Last year, a friend who works in corporate communication for a major local company advised me to keep my ears open to the topic of “offshoring” — the latest cost-reduction trend of sending service jobs to other countries. “This is going to be a big issue for communicators,” she warned.
I was aware that some companies already were exporting jobs, but sure enough, I began to hear more and more about it. More stories about “offshoring” appeared in business publications, more talking heads with creased brows lamented it, and I even saw more discussion in the public-relations industry press.
I have paid close attention to the topic, but two things keep bothering me. One is that the only thing new about “offshoring” is that it primarily affects white-collar and service-industry jobs. Exporting jobs as a cost-cutting measure is nothing new. It has been going on for years in the manufacturing sector, but white-collar managers essentially told their blue-collar employees to suck it up and get used to the global economy. Now that those white-collar managers are seeing their jobs disappear, the practice has a new euphemistic name and urgency assigned to it.
One of these days — and I hope I live long enough to see it, but I doubt it — business managers everywhere will realize just how condescending they often appear to the people they manage. This is a communication issue because an inappropriate attitude and tone can create huge barriers to open communication between bosses and employees.
The other thing that keeps bothering me is that “offshoring” would be considered a big issue. This is not to downplay the significance of exporting jobs as a workplace issue, but it is only a communication problem when business leaders try to dance around it. Telling people that some of them might lose their jobs is not fun. It’s not easy. The discussion won’t make managers the object of employees’ affections. However, people deserve to know why jobs are being sent to other countries and they deserve the opportunity to express their anger, fear and disappointment.
I was talking recently with an employee of a local company who described a new manager in her department. She contrasted the former manager’s style of keeping everyone in the dark with the new manager’s style of frequent and open communication. The former manager’s approach led to mistrust and dissension. The new manager’s talk of the reasons for upcoming layoffs was not easy to hear, but employees appreciated the honesty and candor.
One of my favorite newsletters for communication executives, The Ragan Report, recently published comments from an unnamed computer programmer for a high-tech firm that was planning to export jobs. She wondered about the degree of employee backlash to “offshoring” and then described why she believes it is not the best solution to her company’s problems. She described the amount of time it will take her to train workers in other countries, to overcome time and language barriers, and to adjust to the cultural differences.
I found the programmer’s points to be interesting, but I couldn’t help wonder how much more useful her ideas would have been if she had the opportunity to express them to the leaders of her business.
Our organization has been planning this summer. I want to be able to anticipate and prepare to build our business. To do that I need a forecast of where organizations are going rather than where they have been.
One of our crystal balls is an interview the Conference Board of Canada conducted with University of Michigan’s management guru, Dave Ulrich. He identified eight issues to plan for. Four have a special relevance to our work and we thought it would be useful for our readers to know where we will be skating as we go for the puck.
Leadership – Ulrich forecasts a redefinition of leadership to one that focuses on role rather than function. Individuals will be called upon to exercise leadership within their spheres of influence. Leadership will be exercised at many levels of an organization and the culture will encourage and demand leadership of all employees.
Engagement – Talent is increasingly more mobile with fully 58% of Canadian employees open to moving employment. Corporate strategies to engage employees are woefully inadequate and must be beefed up to succeed. Engaged employees are those who can find meaning in their working lives. Successful organizations are those that focus on instilling a high sense of organizational purpose in the minds of their employees.
Managers communicate – The major weakness in most organizations is the ability of line managers to effectively communicate. Employee motivation depends upon how well the line manager communicates face-to-face. Effective internal communication will be redefined in terms of the abilities of line managers to communicate and the degree of accountability the organization places on them to do so.
Measurement – The trend to accountability based upon returns on investment will continue. Measuring performance by the outcomes of work is replacing measures of work by outputs of activities. We will be required to measure success of our work by the contribution it makes to innovation, change and achievement of the organizations strategic goals.
As Ulrich points out that, for the first time in the history of management, it is the human mind that is the primary creator of value. Our priorities will be developing the quality of the workforce and its engagement in the business. These will be the critical success factors in corporate vitality and survival. – for us and our clients.
By Tudor Williams, ABC
Play at your work and work at your play. Do the right thing for the right reason in the right way. Anonymous
X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut. Albert Einstein
The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both. Chinese proverb
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of discussion. Plato
…when it comes to learning (play), play (learning) is not an accessory, but a partner. Bernie DeKoven
The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. Carl Jung
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play. John Cleese
Communities of Practice Definitions
by Richard McDermott*
SHORT VERSION
A community of practice is a group of people who share information, ideas,
insights and advice about a topic or domain. In the course of doing so they
develop a common practice (a shared body of knowledge, process, rituals,
approaches, thinking. Over time they build a common history and develop a
shared identity.
LONG VERSION
A community of practice is a group of people who share knowledge, learns
together, and creates common practices. Communities of practice share
information, insight, experience, and tools about an area of common
interest. This could be a professional discipline–like reservoir
engineering or biology–a skill–like machine repair–or a topic–like a
technology, an industry, or a segment of a production process. Consulting
companies, for example, usually organize communities of practice around both
disciplines, such as organizational change, and industries like banking,
petroleum or insurance. Community members frequently help each other solve
problems, give each other advice, and develop new approaches or tools for
their field. Regularly helping each other makes it easier for community
members to show their weak spots and learn together in the “public space” of
the community. As they share ideas and experiences, people develop a shared
way of doing things, a set of common practices. Sometimes they formalize
these in guidelines and standards, but often they simply remain “what
everybody knows” about good practice. Since communities of practice focus on
topics that people often feel passionately interested in, they can become
important sources of individual identity.
You can find more in Etienne Wenger’s book Communities of Practice (Cambridge
Press 1988) or my Learning Across Teams (Knowledge Management Review Summer
1999).
*Richard McDermott McDermott, McDermott & Co., Phone: 303-545-6030, eMail: Richard@RMcDermott.com Fax: 303-545-6031.
In addition to keeping on the right side of the law, it’s important to realize that simply writing a policy does not protect the organization. The policy needs to be augmented with communication, training and monitoring. The policy is a living document which will need revision as the organization learns about social media. It will also need revision when missteps on social media occur – as they inevitably will. But with experience comes learning and that is a good thing.
The problem with many policies is that while they are often quite clear on what the company’s employees should not do, they leave some unanswered questions about what they should do. We believe a more useful approach for social media policy writing is to focus on the dos, rather than the don’ts.
Just telling someone what they should not do doesn’t automatically help them understand what they should do. In cut and dry situations – the ones we’ve all been through a dozen times before – it is easy to infer that if the sign says “stay off the grass” it means we should use the paved path instead. With social media, inferring the positive action that is desired from the negative action that is forbidden is not always so easy. Will every employee know how they can avoid violating applicable copyright laws and statutory requirements? Can they list the five signs that indicate when they are not appropriately safeguarding company assets?
Thanks to the onslaught of technology and our need to constantly rush through everything, our grammar has gotten worse. Emails, text messages and other corporate communications are being sent without a thorough and professional proofreading, and using poor grammar in the workplace can have some negative impacts on your business.
It causes confusion.
If you use poor grammar in the workplace, you could end up confusing those people who need to read what you write or listen to what you say. Causing confusion will negatively impact your company’s productivity and require additional communications to clear up the confusion.
It makes you look unprofessional.
Poor grammar makes you look unprofessional. Nobody wants to do business with the company that has spelling and grammatical errors in their marketing materials, and no client wants to do business with the representative who doesn’t know the difference between their, there and they’re.
It hinders productivity.
Read full article on Every Marketing Thing
If employees are so connected, why is it so hard to communicate with them?
This question, “Why don’t they get the strategy?” drives straight to the heart of what internal branding and change communications is all about.
As a senior executive, what would you do? What would you do if you discovered that different business units of your company were essentially working against each other to support their own business and political agendas, rather than the objectives of the entire company? Or, what would you do if you had just found out that, after spending five years in IT planning, deploying 65 full time staff and exceeding $55 million on an ERP implementation, that you were only achieving 40% utilization across your enterprise? Scenarios like these are real and are happening every day, and CEOs and their boards continue, sadly, to ignore and tolerate them.
These matters are urgent and important. But management doesn’t know what to do about them, or how to deal with them. So, all too often, they do nothing.
Why am I drawing your attention to this? I was recently talking to the CEO of a major Fortune 100 company about change management and the importance of communicating with his employees. I was pointing out how companies, who embrace change effectively, making wise use of internal branding and team alignment, perform better, grow faster, and produce higher revenue. His answer has been haunting me ever since. “What you’re selling me on is soft stuff”, he said. “I need to make tangible investments that have a direct impact on results. If I can’t touch it, feel it or talk to it, it doesn’t seem like an imperative investment.”
I tried my hardest to explain, “Most companies who fail,” I said, “do so because they can’t execute. Employees receive mixed messages. They don’t really recognize the consequences of doing things in new ways and changing old behavior. Your employees are tangible assets – in fact they are your greatest assets.”
It didn’t matter. I failed to convince him that effective change management is urgent and critical in today’s business world. CEO’s confide to their direct subordinates, “Why don’t they get the strategy? I’ve only told them about it a thousand times”. But what these CEOs fail to appreciate is that hearing something and really understanding it are quite different animals. Employees need to understand an idea deeply for it to become relevant and important enough to change their behavior. If they don’t get it change will not occur.
This question, “Why don’t they get the strategy?” drives straight to the heart of what internal branding and change communications is all about.
I have a passion for helping companies become high performance businesses. High performance comes from aligning your people, your process and your resources with your company’s strategic vision and its mission. In other words, if you have the right people in the right jobs, working with efficient and effective processes that are repeatable, trainable and coachable, your company can indeed attain a higher level of performance, as measured in throughput, productivity and revenue growth.
Technology enhances process improvement, speed, communications and productivity, ultimately saving money and improving productivity. But CEO’s and boards often make one huge mistake, believing that people management issues will take care of themselves naturally. After all, employees are hired to do the job they are instructed to do. Right? Absolutely not!
High performance actually comes as a direct result of people doing their jobs in the ways they feel are most effective. Success has always been about people, and about their will to set their own priorities – not about technology, policy or strategic initiatives. The job may be reducing internal slippage at Best Buy, or recognizing the importance of keeping prices low and margins high at Wal-Mart or understanding the importance of co-marketing to serve Campbell’s Soup’s retail clients better. But it all comes down to people understanding what is expected of them, being motivated and inspired by that knowledge, and signing on to change their behavior to support the company’s goals.
Metrics & measurements show clearly that this is so…. Here are a few factual illustrations of the value and necessity of investing in the soft stuff.
- Last year Pitney Bowes launched a major external branding effort. They were redefining the scope of their business from a mail meter firm to “Engineering the Flow of Communication”. In addition to an outstanding advertising campaign, they sought to educate each and every employee as to what “Engineering the Flow of Communications” would mean to the company’s bottom line and business success. Results show that the internal brand immersion program was a big success. Where only 29% of Pitney Bowes employees had understood the brand, soon over 70% said they did (40% among customer facing employees). Among the sales force, the understanding rose from initially 11%, to a whopping 65% who claimed to use the new brand to open doors with C-suite customers rather than as was usual in the past, going through the mailroom.
- With Sam Walton as a mentor, Wal-Mart learned early that it was critical to enroll employees to care about the customers. From its research, Wal-Mart found that if it took the time to educate employees about how the company worked, and to communicate basic instructions to them about how to perform their jobs, the company would not have to nag them constantly. Eventually, they would figure out what to do on their own, and customer-caring behavior would become the operational standard across the company. This would save billions of dollars worth of time and energy. The results are obvious – Wal-Mart has become the largest retailer in the world, with gross revenues and profits higher than many countries’ GNP.
- After HP acquired Compaq the company sought to create a unified brand that embodied the cultures, employees and products/services of the two companies. Their efforts culminated in the launch of a new marketing campaign and tag line: “Invent”. They added additional attributes (such as brand equity, employee commitment and understanding to the traditionally non-financial, creative elements of the brand (such as corporate reputation, brand perceptions, customer experience and messaging). HP created a brand model that would compute and correlate their contribution to growth and shareholder value. By pushing the right buttons and doing these analytics, HP was able to compute how internal & external brand attributes contribute to performance and shareholder value. Wow – powerful stuff!
Your people and their customer facing experiences and behavior are indeed assets. As with all your assets, you must manage them so they become drivers of employee commitment and customer satisfaction. These in turn ultimately drive shareholder value. It’s time to start managing the “soft stuff” as if it were a financial asset-because it is. The result of doing so will contribute to above average share growth in strong markets and protect you against market downturns. It will build the kind of employee commitment that helps to justify premium price protection and customer loyalty.
So–is this soft stuff when all is said and done? Clearly, NO. But a lot more education will have to happen before CEOs understand its impact, and before they can stop wondering why their people just don’t get it.
High levels of job satisfaction don’t necessarily translate into an engaged workforce.
That’s the key finding from research by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), which found U.S. employees are generally satisfied with their jobs, but only moderately engaged.
The results show that, overall, employees are fairly satisfied with key attributes of their jobs, including:
- Relationships with co-workers (76 per cent).
- The work itself (76 per cent).
- Opportunities to use skills and abilities (74 per cent).
- Relationship with immediate supervisor (73 per cent).
But other aspects of the work experience were seen as falling short, and had considerably fewer respondents reporting satisfaction. These included:
- Career advancement opportunities (42 per cent).
- Career development opportunities (48 per cent).
- Communication between employees and senior management (54 per cent).
- Job-specific training (55 per cent).
- Management recognition of employee job performance (57 per cent).
Here are four ideas that will help you become a more inclusive leader:
1. Let Them Build It. To construct and convey key messages, smart leaders don’t always rely on professional communicators or on elaborate messaging campaigns. Instead, they recognize that often it’s front-line employees who know best how to tell a given company story. (For an example of a grassroots project that resulted in an employee-generated book, see our earlier post on that topic.)
2. Lead by Following. The notion that senior executives might maintain a blog or a Twitter feed — one that employees, along with other company stakeholders, can follow — is fairly commonplace. In some instances, though, leaders reverse that equation: In a bid to share the digital limelight, they invite rank-and-file employees to become company-sponsored bloggers.
3. Send a Messenger (Not Just a Message). People today are skeptical of slickly produced brand messages. They’re skeptical of slick official spokespeople, too. Leaders who want to build public trust in their company brand, therefore, often recruit employees to serve as brand ambassadors. Training people who work for a company to speak for that company is a marketing practice that doubles as an engagement-building practice.
4. Lose Control. It’s hard to break free of the mindset that treats communication as a control function. But many leaders find that ceding control over what employees say on company channels — on an intranet discussion forum, for example — means gaining a new way to tap into the talent, the insight, and the passion of their people. They also find that self-policing by employees works to keep such discussion from going off-track.
For an inclusive leader, the term “employee communication” takes on a provocative new meaning. For generations, that term has referred to communication aimed at employees. Today, by contrast, more and more leaders are seeking ways to leverage the value of communication performed by employees.
Based on interactions with recruiters, friends who have worked there, and Amazon employees in the working world, a couple of things stand out, and I’ll contrast with eBay where I worked:
- It’s a very customer driven company; everything they do is with the goal of improving the experience for the customer (we were more revenue focused in the short term).
- It’s an anti-PowerPoint culture—all of their products are ideated and communicated through written stories/long memos. I recall their recruiters saying every product starts with you writing the press release for the final product, because if you can’t articulate that well, then the user won’t be able to understand it either.
- It’s a very innovative culture, where people are encouraged to do things differently from how others are doing things—note this is different from Facebook (move fast and break things) or Google (most elegant, scalable way of doing something)—in that different may not fit either of these criteria, but if it’s better for the customer, it’s okay.
Before a company can communicate well externally, it needs to communicate well internally. Companies that focus on honing their culture and employees via communication and education can create brands with a purpose. Brands need to start trusting the voices of their valued employees. In essence, brands need to become social.
Take, for example, this site, the AT&T Networking Exchange Blog. Bill Strawderman and Trish Nettleship spearheaded this blog in order to bring the digital voices of their employee ambassadors in the public sphere as part of the company’s effort to help foster authenticity. In an eMarketer article, Nettleship said, “The idea is to build that thought leadership and engage customers earlier in the research process, as they’re starting to learn about these technologies and how they are going to help their business.”
While it’s been over 12 years since the publication of the Cluetrain Manifesto companies are still trying to humanize their businesses. Internal communication among employees is critical for external communication to start the process. Despite the reality at most companies, these firms need to remember that people don’t think of a brand as a series of departments. Rather, they think of a brand as a whole entity.
The concept remains difficult for many brands, but companies are made up of people. Real people. Brands need to start tapping into this golden opportunity to elevate their brand relevance in a world where a person or business’s reputation can be destroyed in a mouse click. There’s liquid gold in the voices of employees, but few brands realize this unharnessed potential.
The technology decisions that businesses should make are not trivial. In his 2005 book, Dealing With Darwin – written at the dawn of the enterprise 2.0 movement – Geoffrey Moore discussed the dynamic between systems of record (SORs) and systems of engagement (SOEs). Think of SORs – enterprise software platforms and tools – as investments that will get a bigger return when the next generation of technology (SOEs) are implemented. If you are a CIO, you will not need to blow up what you have already built (nor should you). But you should find a way to integrate and fit the new technologies that have been purpose-built for human engagement.
If you want to evolve you need to kill PR. Why? Because there is too much head trash about what public relations means. I think it is unrealistic to expect that others outside the profession, including most bosses and clients, will ever see it more than publicity, free advertising, or press releases. Your job is about to get harder than it already is, and dragging that old description around is just dead weight. If we want to evolve I think we need to kill “PR”.
Don’t get me wrong. This is not a “PR is Dead” post. In fact, the idea of relating to the public is now as important as ever. Your smart practices on quality communications are extremely valuable, but I think to stay fresh you will need to shift your view of yourself from a company communicator to that of a communities facilitator
The Pinterest frontier as yet unexplored is the territory of internal communications. The fast-growing social network is a natural for companies that sell visually pleasing products or promote a lifestyle brand. Brands like Nordstrom, Whole Foods Market, Bergdorf Goodman and even Chobani Greek yogurt have started Pinterest boards directed at their consumers. Ann Taylor launched a brilliant Valentine’s contest that motivated Pinterest users to pin Ann Taylor clothes and accessories to their own boards.
Now Pinterest has the potential to become a powerful employee engagement tool as well. At Tribe, we’re beginning to recommend its use internally, particularly for brands with predominantly female workforces, such as retailers for women’s apparel.
One of the trickiest communication issues for such retailers is communicating with the employees on the sales floor. They’re separated geographically from corporate and from other stores, yet it’s essential to loop these employees in on what the brand represents.
After all, the sales associates are the ones who interact with shoppers. You can have fantastic external branding, but if the customer experience doesn’t live up to that branding, you’re sunk. Especially in this economy, retail customers want to feel like they’re getting what they’re promised.
Perspectives and tips on the current state of the U. S. workplace and the people in it:
American Mania: When More Is Not Enough
Peter Whybrow MD
Norton, 2005
(The author links psychiatry, anthropology, economics, neurobiology and genetics to explain the root of increasing incidents of depression, obesity and addictions in our ever-faster-paced American society. Possibly this is the dark side of “hard fun”…)
Contagious Success: Spreading High Performance Throughout Your Organization
Susan Lucia Annunzio
Portfolio, 2004
(New global research that supports the idea that high performance (the ideal organizational form of “hard fun”) depends on the same things no matter where you are.)
Getting to the seventh person first
Paula Bartholome
http://www.parallax-perspectives.com/newsletters/summer2004.html
(Lead article in my enewsletter about the positive culture of an organization doing a mundane job, web hosting, and how they have “hard fun” doing it. Includes tips on creating such an environment.)
Story Power for Teams
Paula Bartholome and Evelyn Clark
http://www.parallax-perspectives.com/images/Story_Power.pdf
(A brief article on how communicating with stories can facilitate moving a team through the stages of development and on to “hard fun”.)
Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace
Gordon MacKenzie
Viking, 1998
(A joyously fun read! All about maintaining creativity in bureaucratic environments.)
The impact of incivility on employees and workplaces
http://www.civilityworks.com/resources.html
(Several articles [research and anecdotal evidence] on the corrosive impact of uncivil behavior in workplaces. It’s difficult to imagine anyone being able to have “hard fun” in such places…)
Last year, a friend who works in corporate communication for a major local company advised me to keep my ears open to the topic of “offshoring” — the latest cost-reduction trend of sending service jobs to other countries. “This is going to be a big issue for communicators,” she warned.
I was aware that some companies already were exporting jobs, but sure enough, I began to hear more and more about it. More stories about “offshoring” appeared in business publications, more talking heads with creased brows lamented it, and I even saw more discussion in the public-relations industry press.
I have paid close attention to the topic, but two things keep bothering me. One is that the only thing new about “offshoring” is that it primarily affects white-collar and service-industry jobs. Exporting jobs as a cost-cutting measure is nothing new. It has been going on for years in the manufacturing sector, but white-collar managers essentially told their blue-collar employees to suck it up and get used to the global economy. Now that those white-collar managers are seeing their jobs disappear, the practice has a new euphemistic name and urgency assigned to it.
One of these days — and I hope I live long enough to see it, but I doubt it — business managers everywhere will realize just how condescending they often appear to the people they manage. This is a communication issue because an inappropriate attitude and tone can create huge barriers to open communication between bosses and employees.
The other thing that keeps bothering me is that “offshoring” would be considered a big issue. This is not to downplay the significance of exporting jobs as a workplace issue, but it is only a communication problem when business leaders try to dance around it. Telling people that some of them might lose their jobs is not fun. It’s not easy. The discussion won’t make managers the object of employees’ affections. However, people deserve to know why jobs are being sent to other countries and they deserve the opportunity to express their anger, fear and disappointment.
I was talking recently with an employee of a local company who described a new manager in her department. She contrasted the former manager’s style of keeping everyone in the dark with the new manager’s style of frequent and open communication. The former manager’s approach led to mistrust and dissension. The new manager’s talk of the reasons for upcoming layoffs was not easy to hear, but employees appreciated the honesty and candor.
One of my favorite newsletters for communication executives, The Ragan Report, recently published comments from an unnamed computer programmer for a high-tech firm that was planning to export jobs. She wondered about the degree of employee backlash to “offshoring” and then described why she believes it is not the best solution to her company’s problems. She described the amount of time it will take her to train workers in other countries, to overcome time and language barriers, and to adjust to the cultural differences.
I found the programmer’s points to be interesting, but I couldn’t help wonder how much more useful her ideas would have been if she had the opportunity to express them to the leaders of her business.
Startup cultures are often defined by personalities of their founders (hoodies and hackathons, anyone?). Growing beyond the original crew means that those initial quirks either become more defined or diluted, depending on how tightly leadership holds on to them. So how to preserve that scrappy vibe and the can-do vision that will continue to attract the best and brightest so your business can grow? Fast Company talked to culture mavens who are working at that right now to get their best advice.
Grow the Staff, Not the Teams
As part of its due diligence process, CityGrid hunts for startups with a strong sense of company culture, even if it’s only shared among three people–the size of Urbanspoon’s staff was when it was acquired. Still based in Seattle, Urbanspoon’s ranks have swelled to 70 people and counting, but true to its roots, the vibe is still casual. There are no corporate titles listed on the Web site and all headshots are candid photos of staff tucking into a favorite dish.Nortman says that’s due to a CityGrid-wide practice of keeping the size of teams and meetings manageable. “Even if you become bigger, you should size your teams so they have a clear feeling of ownership,” she offers, “That’s instantly more important than a boss telling you what to do.” Likewise, Nortman advises hammering out how many meetings will be required to make any decision and then determine how many people should attend. “You want to make those decisions and fail quickly instead of waiting for 17 people to say yes,” she adds.
Keep the Lines Open
Teamwork was so important to cofounder of Foursquare Dennis Crowley that when the company added its first eight people, he hired friends he knew could foster the kind of open sharing that continues to be a core value, with 135 people now working in three separate offices.Susan Loh, head of talent at the social check-in company says that to keep the lines of communication open, Crowley started holding office hours once a week. “Anyone can sign up for a 10-minute time slot,” she says, to bring their ideas and feedback straight to the boss. For those not based in New York, video technology such as iPads in the conference room are available for virtual face-to-face meetings.
Foursquare also has an internal email blast called Snippets that allows everyone, including senior management, share what they are working on. “It’s not about what meetings they have scheduled; it’s what’s keeping them up at night and calls to action,” Loh explains.
Pay People to Leave
Culture isn’t passed through osmosis at the water cooler. When Clate Mask, CEO of Infusionsoft, talks about the early days (in a garage) of the sales and marketing software company, he references family and fun as often as he cites innovation from within, faster execution, and fierce loyalty. He admits it’s been a challenge to keep that “one big happy” feeling as the company grew to 300 employees, but is on track to beef up to 1,000 in three years. “We believe we can keep this forever as long as we are intentional. We wanted to dispel the notion that you can’t scale culture.”To do this as Infusionsoft adds about 10 to 15 people per month, each new hire must go through a two-week intensive orientation. When that’s complete, they are offered $5,000–to leave (a practice made famous by Zappos). “It’s expensive to have the wrong people,” Mask says, “This gives the individual an opportunity to assess if they are really committed.” So far he’s gotten no takers and says Infusionsoft’s retention rate is 90 percent.
Our research has shown that more and more leaders — from organizations that range from computer-networking giant Cisco Systems to Hindustan Petroleum, a large India-based oil supplier — are using the power of organizational conversation to drive their company forward. For these leaders, internal communication isn’t just an HR function. It’s an engine of value that boosts employee engagement and improves strategic alignment.
Broadly speaking, there are four steps that you can take to make your approach to leadership more conversational. (In future posts, we will address each of these points at greater length.)
1. Close the gap between you and your employees. In our survey, we also asked respondents to name the biggest employee communication challenge at their company. In response, one participant cited the need to “move away from top-down communication.” Another highlighted a “disparity between the senior management team and middle management due to low transparency.” Trusted and effective leaders overcome such challenges by speaking with employees in ways that are direct, personal, open, and authentic.
2. Promote two-way dialogue within your company. One survey respondent lamented “a lack of understanding in management of the need for communication,” adding that “the traditional practice” of communication at his or her company “has been one-way.” Leaders can show that they appreciate the value of real communication by adopting channels that allow ideas to move in multiple directions across their organization, and by working to create a truly conversational culture within that organization.
3. Engage employees in the work of telling the company story. The need “to get more participation from employees,” according to one respondent, is a pressing challenge at his or her company. People in that company “tend to shy away from speaking openly.” The practice of organizational conversation alters that dynamic. Where that practice has taken hold, leaders encourage broad-based employee involvement in a wide array of communication efforts.
4. Pursue a clear agenda. One participant expressed concern about a “lack of consistency” in communication. Another mentioned a tendency among top leaders to generate “too much communication.” Yet another voiced this complaint: “The strategy is only discussed at the management level and is never cascaded to all staff.” To deal with such challenges — to prevent the communication process from becoming diffuse and ad hoc — effective leaders take steps to ensure that their conversation with employees unfolds according to a clear strategic plan. They also seek to align that conversation with organizational objectives.
