Employee Communications is being called upon to soften the blow, calm the troops and prepare the news that is impacting employees in every business sector. This is a difficult time but also an exciting one. It is a welcome change to see the appreciation and dependence on the Communications staff. The opportunity to shine is more than just in your writing. Getting the words that are appropriately informative and compassionate without getting cross wise with Legal is an art in itself.
This is an opportunity to instill some good processes into the minds of your leadership team. Take this as a chance to identify the value of planning the communications to redirect the team to focus on productive activities. The intranet can be a valuable tool to provide not only access to gold sources of information about potential layoffs and corporate economics but also to provide a means of directing resources to ways they can contribute to the future viability of their companies.
I am not talking about obvious links to information and tools. I believe that most of you have examples of success in this area. At General Motors we used the intranet to link to product information, to provide data on the variety of hybrid vehicles they offer and links to products that get over 30 miles to the gallon. Before GM started this activity many employees didn’t know that GM had more vehicles with over 30 mpg than any other manufacturer. Over the past couple years if you wanted information on the restructuring of the company you knew where to get it. This was great and continues to be a valuable resource. Keep this up but do more.
Do your homework. Find out what each of your key leaders feels is most important for his team to focus on and dedicate some time to building a communications strategy for achieving the critical deliverables. What is it he/she needs done? What is it the team needs to know or remember to be successful? Build a plan to stage information to get them focused and moving in the right direction. Become integral to their process by demonstrating the power of knowledge, the importance of communicating expectations, implications and results.
This is the chance for you to be remembered as the key resource who took the extra step to get the troops moving by building their confidence in themselves even while providing bad news. Use your intranet, post links to processes and other helpful information. Provide charts showing expected deliverables and timing of events. Let leaders blog about key deliverables and steps to the future. What is the next generation of Communications going to be like? Does the future start now or after the crisis do you go back to normal? I’d like to hear where you think this leads.
