Study after study confirms the link between good manager communication and engaged employees. Listen to this webinar and learn what managers can do to become better communicators – and stronger leaders. You’ll learn how managers can change employee attitudes and behaviors, the type of information employees demand, and which communication resources leading organizations provide managers. You’ll leave the session with practical tips, tools and frameworks that managers can apply immediately and insights into what separates outstanding managers from the rest.

What You Will Learn:

• Communication competencies every manager needs
• How to keep managers and employees informed and engaged
• Winning managers’ support for communication
• The best way to alienate managers
• How to convey information, field challenges and brainstorm solutions – in under 15 minutes

Questions that are answered:

• What are leading organizations doing to enhance manager communication?
• What feedback should communicators solicit from managers?
• What do employees want most from their managers?
• What can communicators do to help managers succeed?

Who Should Attend:

• Communications professionals who want to enhance their partnership and value to the business
• First line supervisors and managers who want to take their staff communications to the next level

Instructor: 

Andy Szpekman provides human resource management and communication research, strategies and tools to improve business performance. His clients include Bank of America, BC Hydro, Cardinal Health, McKinsey & Co., Microsoft, News Corporation, Scholastic and Wachovia.

Earlier in his career, he led HR communication at Bank of America, served as communications manager for a global division of Warner-Lambert, and was a senior HR and communications consultant with Brecker & Merryman, Inc.

Andy is active in the Council of Communication Management and a former Officer of the Metropolitan New York Association of Applied Psychology. His work has been featured in national news and business publications and leading trade journals. He holds a B.A. in psychology from William Paterson University and an M.A. in organizational psychology from Columbia University.

In today’s dynamic marketplace, businesses simply cannot afford to leave strategy execution to chance. Organizations that succeed will be the ones that can effectively mobilize and engage their employees in implementing new business strategies to produce immediate value for customers. Making a solid case for the new business realities to employees is critical for any organization to survive and thrive. Employees who have seen change initiatives fail in the past are likely to avoid risks associated with change. They become roadblocks when communicating the new business realities to employees. Employees must buy into any business’ priorities to succeed.

What You Will Learn:

• The three biggest mistake companies make when communicating bad news
• Establishing and communicating performance expectations and accountability.
• Building trust with employee involvement.
• Establishing team norms for how work gets done.
• Modeling effective virtual behavior across boundaries with all stakeholders.

Who Should Attend

Individuals responsible for corporate communications, public relations, corporate affairs, human resources, employee communications, media relations, and issues management.

Presented by:

Dr. TJ Larkin and his business partner, Sandar, began Larkin Communication Consulting in 1985. The Larkins help large companies communicate major change to employees. Clients include: ABB, AT&T, Bank of America, Bankers Trust, Bell Labs, BHP Billiton, Boeing, BP, Caltex, DaimlerChrysler, ExxonMobil, GM, ICI, NASA, National Australia Bank, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. TJ and Sandar wrote the book, Communicating Change, now a McGraw-Hill Bookstore bestseller. Their paper, “Reaching and Changing Frontline Employees,” published in the Harvard Business Review has sold more than 40,000 reprints. The most recent papers by the Larkins can be downloaded, at no charge, from their Web site (Publications Page). TJ has a Ph.D. in communication from Michigan State University, and a B.Phil. in sociology from the University of Oxford.

Mary Lou Dlugolenski, with nearly 20 years of experience, has established herself as a solid communications professional in roles spanning employee communication, public relations, marketing communication, change communication, and crisis management. She has worked in a number of industries including healthcare, manufacturing, engineering, advertising and financial services. Mary Lou has been with MassMutual for 18 months and serves as the company’s vice president of strategic enterprise communication. Recognizing employee communication as a critical business driver, Mary Lou and her team lead a strategy of employee engagement and culture change that creates dialogue between executives and employees
through well-orchestrated communication tactics. Prior to joining MassMutual, Mary Lou managed internal and external communication at various public companies, domestic and international, including Philips, GE, ADVO and
Alstom. Mary Lou lives in North Granby, Conn., with her husband and two children.

The problem is how to get your organization’s top executives out in front of as many employees as possible and provide a genuine communication exchange. The solution, for the past 100 years or so, is what we now call the “town hall” meeting, even though companies are not towns, and hardly ever do they occur in halls.

For employees and top executives, town hall meetings can be the best of times, or the worst of times, depending on how they’re handled. This webinar will surface some tried and true ways to create a mass employee meeting that allows a genuine exchange of ideas, issues, concerns and opportunities. You’ll also get a good list of what you absolutely should not do when you plan and produce your next town hall meeting.

What You Will Learn:

• Checklist on planning an effective series of town hall meetings
• Best practices on prepping your executives
• Techniques to break the ice and make the meetings fun and anything but boring
• Planning for tough questions and awkward moments
• Crucial tasks after the event
• Tips and techniques on using the newest technology to simultaneous global town-hall meetings

Presented by:

Les Landes is President of Landes & Associates. His firm provides services in the areas of planning, marketing, public relations, organizational communications, team development, and quality improvement systems. Prior to starting his own firm, Les worked with Pet Incorporated where he served for 10 years as the company’s Director of Communications with responsibilities for corporate advertising, employee communication, public and media relations, consumer affairs, and creative services. He also played a major role in developing and implementing Pet’s quality management system.

Veronica Apostolico is Director, Internal Communication, Global Operations, for Smith & Nephew. Veronica has 18-plus years in the communications field and has worked across all communications disciplines, internal and external, but has focused mainly on internal (change management, leadership coaching, crisis comms, employee comms). She has held communications positions with Warner-Lambert (now Pfizer), Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis – part of the team that led communications during the merger), Knoll Pharma (now Abbott) and RTI International. Veronica has also had her own communications consultancy for 5 years with clients including Aventis, Merck and J&J.

How and why FedEx Employee Communications moved from focusing on creating more news to creating better business outcomes.

This webinar features Terry Simpson, head of employee communications for FedEx Express. After conducting a global communication assessment, Terry and her colleagues decided that the communication function needed to focus more on creating business outcomes rather than distributing more news. Working with FedEx Express leadership she identified and conducted a project in Los Angeles to improve US export volume through better managed communication. The result: 15% increase in volume and 23% increase in revenues with an overall 1,400 ROI.  

What You Will Learn:

• How to work with senior leadership and a lot of data to identify opportunities to improve performance through better managed communication
• How to search for opportunities within the white spaces—the areas between functions and disciplines
• How to bring disparate groups together to improve performance through enhanced communication
• How to recognize root causes of performance problems
• The powerful role rewards play in communicating what’s important
• How to take a success and create an even bigger one with five more locations.

Questions that are answered:

• What’s the difference in managing communication to create output—a distribution business—and managing it to create outcomes—a solutions business?
• Is there a role for traditional communication practitioners in this process?
• What additional skills and knowledge do I need to move to this new level?
• How do I get started?
• How do I pick the right project that practically assures success?
• What’s in it for me if I make the shift?  More money? More career opportunities?  More fame?
• What’s the best way as a communication manager to move from output to focusing on solutions?
• What did FedEx stop doing when it embarked on this project?   This goes to the question of staffing – were additions made to the department?
• Did you use any formal media channels to bolster your face-to-face solutions processes?
• Where do you go to get training to lead your department in this direction?   What disciplines should you study?
• What pushback do you hear from communicators when you present this message? What’s the best way as a communication manager to move from output to focusing on solutions? 

Who Should Purchase:

• Communications professionals who want to enhance their partnership and value to the business.

Instructor:

Jim Shaffer is one of the world’s leading thought leaders, consultants and authors, helping businesses engage their people to achieve ultra-high levels of organizational performance. His book, The Leadership Solution (McGraw-Hill), has been hailed by leading CEOs as “invaluable for someone wanting to lead an organization into the future” and a “practical common-sense look at how leaders use communication to solve business problems.”

Jim’s focus is on improving people performance: helping business leaders execute better by creating engaged people, who think and act like business owners. He blends his unique background in general management, product line management, organizational change and communication management and helps clients get at the root cause of people performance problems. His track record includes significant, quantifiable improvements in quality, service, costs, productivity and speed through a more engaged workforce.

Terry Simpson has worked in the Communications field for over 30 years in every area including broadcast, video, print, web sites, event management, strategy and content development.  Terry is leading the change at FedEx Express and using communication solutions to solve business problems.

If you think performance counts now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! Jim Shaffer, who pioneered the results-driven approach to managing communication, will explain what others have done to become indispensable to their leaders, because they are over and over again putting money in their leaders pockets. Literally! Jim’s lively and provocative CD will reveal what companies are doing to surgically shift their priorities and focus on those parts of the organization that can drive performance results most. Using real case studies, Jim will show how companies can generate two- and three-thousand-percent returns on their internal communication investments. He’ll explore the Three Stages of Organizational Communication Maturity and explain how a department can attain increasingly higher levels of operating and financial performance. 

Learn How: 

• FedEx, Owens Corning and others have created significant performance improvements with returns on their investments exceeding 1,400 percent
• Honeywell cut its billing cycle by 10 days and eliminated 1.4 million process steps while improving quality

• Sara Lee reduced waste by 18 percent in five weeks at one its bakeries

Learn Why:

• Dave Brown’s CEO said: “We are absolutely convinced that there’s a competitive advantage to be gained by engaging our people through better managed communication. We’ve seen it pay off already in measurable improvements in costs and productivity.”
• Owens Corning’s senior vice president of manufacturing said, “We’ll take as many 700-percent returns as we can get.”

Discussion Topics:

• Why the communication function in every business must measurably increase the value it adds—or die
• What other companies are doing about it and how they’ve moved from an output to an outcome-generating organization
• What you can do next to take your department to the next level on the maturity curve
• What questions to ask to identify what matters most to your business
• How to set up an outcome-based project that generates huge financial returns
• How to measure your impact and your return
• How to shift your work from low value-adding to high value-adding
• How to get junk off your plate, because it doesn’t contribute to the bottom line

Who Should Purchase:

• Corporate communications
• Non-profit communications
• Media relations
• Public affairs
• Public relations  

Instructor:

Jim Shaffer is one of the world’s leading thought leaders, consultants and authors, helping businesses engage their people to achieve ultra-high levels of organizational performance. His book, The Leadership Solution (McGraw-Hill), has been hailed by leading CEOs as “invaluable for someone wanting to lead an organization into the future” and a “practical common-sense look at how leaders use communication to solve business problems.”

Jim’s focus is on improving people performance: helping business leaders execute better by creating engaged people, who think and act like business owners. He blends his unique background in general management, product line management, organizational change and communication management and helps clients get at the root cause of people performance problems. His track record includes significant, quantifiable improvements in quality, service, costs, productivity and speed through a more engaged workforce.

Jim leads the Jim Shaffer Group, a consultancy devoted to creating compelling places to work—where people are actively engaged in building and sustaining winning organizations. Previously, he was a principal, senior consultant and leader of a Towers Perrin center of excellence. He was one of the architects and leading practitioners of the firm’s global change management consulting practice. Prior to that, he served as press secretary to Kansas Governor Robert B. Docking, headed public relations and advertising in two Chicago-based businesses, and served as a marketing product line manager.

Jim is a recipient of the International Association of Business Communicators’ prestigious Fellow award, and he was named “Communicator of the Year” by IABC’s Washington, D.C. chapter. Jim is a regular contributor to many business publications and a frequent speaker at leadership groups and professional associations. He has taught in the graduate schools at George Washington University and The University of St. Thomas. His clients have included IBM, The Mayo Clinic, Verizon, Toyota, FedEx and many more.

Is your communication planning approach connected to the goals of your business? Can you measure the value of your communication planning efforts once the plan has been executed? So often as communication professionals we are asked to create plans that focus on communication tactics, without assessing the real strategic impact of what the plan will accomplish. This Webinar provides a step-by-step approach to developing a communication plan that is truly strategic and connected to your business.

What You Will Learn: 

• Creating a vision of the desired future state, based on the current situation
• Identifying what is important to focus on, based on the vision
• Developing clear objectives based on your priorities
• Aligning messaging, strategy and tactics to your objectives
• Gaining buy in for your plan, based on the impact it will have on the business

Questions that will be answered:

• What does is mean to be strategic?
• How do you develop a meaningful vision?
• How do you determine which elements of the vision are most important?
• What are the strategies and tactics that will have the most impact?
• How do you gain support for your plan?
• What are effective ways to measure impact?

Who Should Purchase?

• Communications professionals who want to enhance their partnership and value to the business.

Instructor: 

Barbara Fagan-Smith is the founder and CEO of ROI Communications, Inc., an award-winning internal communications consulting firm focused on helping large organizations adapt and succeed in times of change. Building on more than two decades of experience in corporate communications and journalism, she leads ROI’s work with Fortune 500 companies, helping them develop and manage effective internal communication projects that deliver clear business results.Since its launch in 2001, ROI Communications has worked with a broad array of major clients, including Hewlett- Packard, Sun Microsystems, Adobe Systems, Blue Shield of California, Cisco Systems, The Gap, Maxtor, Oak Technology and DreamWorks.  ROI Communications was most recently recognized with multiple awards from the American Society of Professional Communicators and the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) for its standard-setting work in change communications.Prior to founding ROI Communications, Barbara was the director of employee and electronic communications at Quantum Corporation and director of interactive communications at Simply Interactive, Inc.

Before her career in corporate communications, Barbara worked as a London-based television producer for ABC News, where she covered the revolutions in Eastern Europe and the 1991 Gulf War. Earlier, she covered international business and produced national radio programs for ABC. She holds a B.A. in Journalism and Communications from Humboldt State University. 

Learn how to gain control of your production processes, no matter how obstacle-ridden they might be.

The creative fun of communicating can be quickly overshadowed by the headaches of getting things through the process. Whether the source of your migraine is source reviews, management approvals or just keeping all the moving parts in sync, relief is on the way. You can gain control of your production processes, no matter how obstacle-ridden they might be, and this session teaches you how!

The six-person Editorial Services team at Philip Morris USA produces hundreds of stories, speeches and other writing projects per year. Add to this huge volume the challenges of working in a closely watched industry and the approval process becomes extremely complex. Hear how this team created tools — from a Job Request Form to an online Content Tracker — that keep stories moving at an amazing rate. Find out how they use client feedback, not only to improve their writing but also to improve their content management tools.

Learning topics:

• Why and how to create content management tools, and why you should keep tweaking them
• How to master the tactics of communication production, while staying focused on strategy
• How to minimize management and legal approval headaches — before they start
• How to manage internal clients’ expectations
• How to influence others in your company to follow your production processes

Robert and Denise answer real-world questions on:

• The decision to outsource writing and the tools that have helped make this work smoothly
• The response rate on post-work survey, and how to encourage clients to fill the forms
• Phillip Morris’ Content Tracker
• Additional tools in the works
• Integrating proofreading into the system and other quality control measures
• Typical turnaround time on review processes
• Getting information released

Who should purchase:

This practical, information-packed learning opportunity is ideal for managers and professionals in:

• Corporate Communications
• Internal Communications
• Public Affairs
• Web Management
• Speechwriting
• Publication Management
• Anyone who is responsible for producing content
• College/university libraries and bookstores

About the Instructors:

Robert J. Holland, ABC, is owner of Holland Communication Solutions LLC in Richmond, Va. After more than 12 years in corporate communications with AT&T, Lucent Technologies and Capital One, Robert formed his company in 2000 to help clients align communication programs with business goals. He has helped leading organizations such as the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Freddie Mac, Media General and Wells Fargo with services ranging from strategic communication planning to measurement. He is a frequent regional and national speaker, and he writes an award-winning column, “Communication at Work,” for Richmond.com. He is author of Prove Your Worth: The Complete Guide to Measuring the Business Value of Communication, published by Ragan Communications. Robert is also co-leader of the Communitelligence Internal Communications community.

Denise Koenig is manager of Editorial Services for Philip Morris USA in Richmond, Va. She has worked for the company since 1984, from coordinating and editing plant-level communications in Louisville, Ky., to managing communications for multiple manufacturing plants in Richmond. Beginning in 2003, she built the team of five editorial consultants she now manages, all of whom work in their individual offices. Denise manages the team’s production of content for executive communications, the pmusa.com Web site, the intranet, speeches and special publications. She is a graduate of Ball State University with a bachelor’s in journalism and political science.

For more than two decades, through his ongoing study, The Search for a Simpler Way, Bill Jensen has been researching how our managers and workforce communicate with each other.

In the past few years, something critical has happened: They have hacked our capabilities.
They can do what we do. Often, better than we can. How do we leverage that, instead
of fighting it? How can we learn from them?

Two-way communication means listening to what the workforce has to tell us. If you are
interested in learning from them, this is the most crucial webinar you will attend all year!

What You Will Learn:

• What benevolent hacking is, and how we are being hacked
• How companies waste massive amounts of time and energy…
  and how we are complicit in this act
• The top three things you should be doing to save your
  organization from itself
• Practical tips for getting started, and getting praise from above

Who Should Attend

This webinar ideal for communicators with: 

• VPs, Directors and managers of internal communications, social media, marketing,
  corporate communications, public relations, and branding
• Anyone responsible for integrating external communications — marketing, sales, customer service, branding, etc. — with internal change efforts

Presented by:

Bill Jensen is today’s foremost expert on work complexity and cutting through clutter to what really matters. He has spent the past two decades studying how work gets done. (Much of what he’s found horrifies him.) Known as Mr. Simplicity for his first book, Bill has written five best-selling books based on his research. His latest, Hacking Work, was hailed as one of 2010’s Top Ten Breakthrough Ideas by Harvard Business Review. It reveals an underground army of benevolent hackers — breaking all sorts of rules so everyone can do great work. Bill is CEO of The Jensen Group: his list of clients includes the top companies in the world and he is constantly on the road, speaking in places from tech-shops in San Fran to sweatshops in Asia to palaces in Europe. Most importantly: Bill’s personal life fantasy is to bicycle around the globe via breweries.

The best way to communicate with people you are trying to lead is very often through a story.

More and more organizations are realizing that stability and predictability are no longer reasonable assumptions. In fact, the number one problem of today’s managers is the difficulty in getting their organizations to adapt to a competitive environment that is neither stable nor predictable. Yet while change is irresistible, the organization often seems immovable.

Drawing on his experience as program director of Knowledge Management at the World Bank from 1996-2000 and his work with many of the top organizations in the world, Steve Denning shows how to identify and craft a springboard story; i.e., a story that will spark action. Using a simple template, you will be equipped to get started on crafting your own springboard stories.

What you will learn:

• The importance of storytelling
• Appropriate situations for telling stories
• Why storytelling can handle leadership challenges for which conventional command-and-control techniques are impotent
• The essential ingredients of a springboard story — i.e., a story to communicate a complex idea and galvanize action
• How and why storytelling can communicate complex ideas, and why stories are so persuasive
• How to find and craft springboard stories for your organization
• How to use storytelling to ignite your career by becoming an authentic leader
• A 10-point template for crafting your stories
• Eight types of stories that you can put to work for you
• How storytelling changed the way the World Bank shared knowledge

Who should purchase: 

This exceptional learning opportunity is designed for managers and professionals in:

• Corporate Communications
• Marketing
• Advertising
• Internal Communications
• Public Affairs
• Public Relations
• Organizational Development
• Human Resources
• Corporate Strategy and Development
• Senior Management
• Anyone, anywhere in an organization

It’s also an important addition to the offerings of college/university libraries and bookstores.

Instructor: 

Steve Denning is the former program director of Knowledge Management at the World Bank. He now works with organizations in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia on knowledge management and organizational storytelling.

Steve is the author of several books on organizational storytelling, including:

• The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative (Jossey-Bass in April 2005).
• Squirrel Inc: A Fable of Leadership Through Storytelling (Jossey-Bass, 2004), a fable that elaborates seven different kinds of organizational storytelling
• The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations (Butterworth Heinemann, 2000), which describes how storytelling was used as a powerful tool for organizational change and knowledge management at the World Bank

Steve was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He studied law and psychology at Sydney University and worked as a lawyer in Sydney for several years. He did a postgraduate degree in law at Oxford University in the U.K. before joining the World Bank, where held a number of positions from 1996 to 2000.

In 2000, Steve was named as one of the world’s “10 Most Admired Knowledge Leaders” (Teleos). In 2003, he was ranked as one of the world’s Top Two Hundred Business Gurus: Davenport & Prusak, “What’s The Big Idea?” (Harvard, 2003). In 2005, his book, The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling, was selected by the Innovation Book Club as one of the 12 most important books on innovation in the last few years.

Steve is a Senior Fellow at the James MacGregor Burns Leadership Academy at the University of Maryland. 

Practical techniques any manager can use to motivate new behaviors and deliver better business results

Why are managers employees’ preferred source of communication? Because employees crave information that affects their day-to-day lives – information that only their managers can provide. Andy Szpekman, president of AHS Communications, outlines what managers can do to meet employee expectations, become better communicators and be more successful managers.

You’ll learn the four competencies every manager needs, the type of communication employees demand, and proven ways to change people’s attitudes and behaviors. You’ll leave the session with a solid understanding of what separates outstanding managers from the rest, as well as useful tips and simple tools any manager can apply immediately on the job. Whether you manage others or advise those who do, this teleseminar will help you engage your organization’s employees to deliver their best work.

Learning Topics: 

• Six things every manager needs to do well
• What to look for when gathering employee feedback
• How to deliver a tough message effectively
• Stupid ideas about communication
• How to convey information, field challenges and brainstorm solutions – in under 15 minutes

Andy answers real-world questions on:

• Companies that are doing a good job at training their managers to be better communicators
• How to effectively measure whether a manager is communicating well
• advice and techniques to help managers be more open and forthright in their communications, even when they may fear repercussions from their management
• Specific advice for how to handle situations in non-public organizations, where laws prevent communications to be less timely than we would like it to be
• How to focus on listening rather than figuring out what you’re going to say when the other person stops talking
• the “huddle technique” to brainstorm solutions right after the change or problem has been communicated to employees
• The 360-degree survey technique to assess the effectiveness of manager communications
• The wisdom of setting up regular employee communication time

Who should purchase: 

• Line managers
• Functional managers
• Internal communicators
• Corporate communicators
• HR managers
• Change managers
• Internal marketers
• College/university libraries and bookstores

Instructor: 

Andy Szpekman provides HR and communication research, strategies and tools to improve business performance. His clients include Bank of America, BC Hydro, Cardinal Health, McKinsey & Co., Microsoft, News Corporation, Scholastic and Wachovia.

Earlier in his career, he led HR communication at Bank of America, served as communications manager for a global division of Warner-Lambert, and was a senior HR and communication consultant with Brecker & Merryman, Inc.

Andy is active in the Council of Communication Management and a former officer of the Metropolitan New York Association of Applied Psychology. His work has been featured in national news and business publications and leading trade journals. He holds a B.A. in psychology from William Paterson University and an M.A. in organizational psychology from Columbia University.

If you are like most communicators, you know that text alone is just not enough—today’s employees not only want to see their leaders on video, but want to be seen themselves.  YouTube, Vimeo and FaceTime are teaching your employees how powerful video is, and learning about video in their non-work life makes them want to do more with it at work. 

Creating meaningful business communications is not the same as recording cute dog tricks.  Your employees need to know what works, and what doesn’t. And more importantly, you and your company need to be ready for: increased demand on your IT networks; the need to put policies and procedures in place and the importance of providing training to help them get it right.

In this series you will hear top practitioners talk about how they’ve put a new generation of digital video tools to work in their organization to inspire, lead and train employees; to cultivate employee engagement by putting the right tools in the hands of employees themselves; and to integrate external and internal communications for the kind of results one can only get with truly aligned communications.  We’ve found practioners from leading companies to share specifics on what works  across categories including internal communications, marketing, PR, social media and human resources.

What You Will Learn:

• How leading companies use employee created video: when, where, and how
• What the IT and regulatory issues are that you need to be most concerned about
• How leaders train and manage employees who are contributing video
• How video can be better integrated with intranets and social media
• The three most important things to AVOID with employee generated content.
• AND most importantly, what kinds of good results happen when you get it right.

Presented by:

Ronna Lichtenberg is co-founder and CEO, Videotrope. Prior to her entrepreneurial career, Ronna had a long-tenured career contributing to strategic planning and marketing initiatives at Prudential and Prudential Securities. During her tenure, she was the first woman named to Prudential Securities Operating Council. As a superior communicator and strategic consultant, Ronna’s experience incorporates wide-ranging personal experience as a communicator, including former contributing editor of “O”, the Oprah magazine and regular appearances as a workplace expert on national TV. She has published three books in ten languages (to rave reviews) and has a decade of experience as a keynote speaker with Fortune 500 companies and helping small to large businesses successfully execute business development imperatives and strategic initiatives.

Dave Williams has been working at ESPN since 2000. Prior to joining the corporate communication team he worked with ESPN’s production operations team on all of ESPN’s studio shows including SportsCenter, Sunday NFL Countdown, and Baseball Tonight. As a senior internal communication specialist, Williams brings his vast videography, digital editing, writing, and production experience to the internal communication team. He ensures that the multi-media aspects of the organization’s internal communication strategy are of the same high-quality production techniques that ESPN employees are accustomed to seeing on their external programming.

Deirdré Straughan is a Technical Content specialist for Solaris Product Management at Oracle. In this position she produces and/or manages production of technical content (video, white papers, web pages) about key Solaris technologies including storage, networking, and installation. Examples of my video work can be seen here (look for the items with my name in the description). In this position she produces and/or manages production of technical content (video, white papers, web pages) about key Solaris technologies including storage, networking, and installation. Examples of my video work can be seen here (look for the items with my name in the description). Deirdré has been communicating online since 1982. Her experience managing and communicating with online communities dates back to 1993, when she began interacting with Incat/Adaptec/Roxio customers via CompuServe, the Usenet, and listserv. She also wrote, edited and managed a stable of newsletters with 140,000 subscribers, and managed websites and online strategy for Adaptec/Roxio.

The data is in!

1. Diversity is a source of competitive advantage
2. Diverse teams arrive at better, more innovative solutions than monolithic teams
3. Diversity is not the same as affirmative action or any other government mandated equality program – it’s better
4. Diversity makes common, moral and good business sense

You are a believer. Great.

But while your energy and enthusiasm on the topic of diversity are required, they are not sufficient. You need a rock solid communication plan and the know-how to execute it in order for diversity to take root and stay rooted in the fabric of how the company you work for does business.

What You Will Learn:

1. Explaining the business case
2. Reinforcing the values and visions of the diversity effort
3. Identifying the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) for employees
4. Defining diversity
5. Communicating expectations
6. Demonstrating ongoing commitment

Instructor: 

Jacqueline M. Welch is Vice President, Employee and Organizational Effectiveness for Rock-Tenn Company, a $2.2 billion Norcross, Georgia headquartered manufacturer of packaging products, merchandising displays and recycled paperboard. Rock-Tenn Company operates more than 90 facilities throughout the United States, Argentina, Canada, Mexico and Chile.

As Vice President of Employee and Organizational Effectiveness, Jacqui is responsible for talent acquisition, performance management, career development, learning and development, succession planning, organization development, employee relations, compliance, union relationships, corporate communications, and workplace practices such as corporate citizenship and diversity for a workforce of 10,000 employees. Jacqui reports directly to the CEO and is an officer of the company.

Jacqui’s expertise is in developing, implementing and institutionalizing people programs, practices and policies that support business objectives and optimize organizational culture. This includes developing customer-focused business strategy for the human resource function and building line capacity to manage the people asset.

Who should register:

• Communications, HR, public relations and managers and supervisors who want to help take their organization’s diversity program to the next level

Learn how to conduct a communication audit that will provide the hard data you and your management need to make the right decisions.  

Scrambling to meet the next deadline for the employee pub. Running e-mail copy through the approval ringer. Tying up all the logistical loose ends for next week’s town hall meeting. There’s plenty to keep you busy when you work in employee communications. But are you sure the tactics you’ve chosen are the best ones for reaching employees? And what about strategy? What do employees really need to know to do their jobs?

Before you spend scarce company resources on employee communications, you’d better know the answers to these and many other questions. And a communication audit can give you those answers.

Why a communications audit? How does it work? How can it help boost the bottom line? Where to focus? What to ask?

This session answers all these questions, plus gives you an inside look at how one company audited its employee communications program, what they learned and how they applied their learnings. Hear from the communicator who led the project and the measurement experts who helped her succeed.

In just 90 minutes, you’ll learn how to conduct a communication audit that will put your program on the right track.

Key learning topics:

• How to make the decision to conduct a communication audit — often the most difficult step in the process — and how to sell management on the idea
• How to know what communication issues to focus on
• How to write powerful questions that reveal the most useful information
• How to analyze data, so you know the most important items to act on
• How to develop and implement a plan of action — the greatest benefit of a communication audit

Plus: Robert, Katrina and Kim answer real-world questions on:

• The pros and cons of Web surveys vs. paper
• The percentage of responses should you expect in a survey and how to ensure a statistically significant number of responses
• Recommendations on alternate communication channels, such as blogs and wikis
• How to learn if your employees really want to end their employee newsletter
• The real costs behind a communication audit 

About your seminar leaders:

• Robert Holland, ABC, Holland Communication Solutions, has more than 17 years of experience in organizational communications, including employee communication planning, publication management, consulting, media relations and change communication. He is co-leader of the Communitelligence Internal Communications community and a frequent contributor to several national and international professional journals, including the Journal of Employee Communication Management. His column “Communication at Work” appears on the Business Channel of Richmond.com every two weeks. He is author of Prove Your Worth: The Complete Guide to Measuring the Business Value of Communication, published by Ragan Communications. Robert earned IABC accreditation in 1992. His bachelor’s degree in mass communications is from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va.

• Katrina Gill is president and founder of Gill Research LLC, a full-service research and consulting firm specializing in communication metrics, audits and employee/organizational research. Katrina has more than 14 years of diverse research experience, from the planning and development of projects through the presentation of results and recommendations for action. Katrina is formally educated in research methodology and has completed post-graduate study on a doctoral track in clinical psychology at the University of Missouri. A frequent speaker, workshop leader and author on strategic research and measurement, Katrina has taught undergraduate and graduate-level courses. She is a member of the American Marketing Association and the International Association of Business Communicators.

• Kim Hall is a communications consultant with Wells Fargo & Company, supporting internal communications for a division of 5,500 employees. She partners with managers in business units, human resources, marketing and public relations to develop integrated communication strategies that help the organization meet its goals. With 10 years in communications in the corporate and nonprofit sectors, Kim has worked on fundraising campaigns, grant writing, newsletter production, change communications and communications measurement. She has a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in English and is a member of the International Association of Business Communicators. 

Reduce waste, cut costs and reduce environmental impact, increase employee engagement and retention, bolster your brand … what’s not to like about infusing green and sustainability into your organization?

And so it is no wonder that companies, large and small across all industries, are launching and supporting employee green teams to add arms and legs to green and responsibility goals. But, as this webinar underscores, green teams and social innovation do not just sprout and blossom without coordination, recognition, communications and a basket full of other good practices.

Whether you are just thinking about launching an employee green team, or you would like to ratchet yours up to the next level, learn the latest strategies from our three experts with a wealth of what works, and what doesn’t.

What You Will Learn:

• Building and communicating the business case for green teams 
• How to grow green  teams without dampening the grass-roots passion that they started with
• Big picture overview of some best practices from other leading companies, including Bloomberg, EMC, Ingersol Rand and Genentech
• How to create unique recognition and training programs (specific to your corporate culture)
• How to connect green teams to customers and communities
• What are some pitfalls to watch out for?
• How should you measure success?

Learn how the eBay Green Team, started by a small group of employees, has grown to more than 2,400 eBay employeees in 23 countries and 225,000 eBay buyers and sellers. The program was awarded “Best Employee Engagement Strategy” by the 2010 Social Innovation Awards.

Presenters:

Krista Van Tassel: As the newest member of the Wells Fargo Environmental Affairs team, Krista supports our many Green Teams, who promote environmental innovation and educate team members about their role in supporting our sustainability efforts. Before coming to Wells Fargo, Krista earned her MBA in International Business at Georgetown University. She’s also worked in a variety of sustainability and marketing positions in both the nonprofit (Net Impact) and for-profit (Sun Microsystems) worlds, and served as the Cupertino Campus Chair for Hewlett-Packard’s 2002 Charitable Giving Campaign. In her oh-so precious free time, she enjoys running, reading and volunteering.

JD Norton has been with eBay for ten years and spent most of that time not only making it a great place to work for eBay employees, but also making sure eBay is a good corporate citizen in the communities in which they operate. He is currently heads Community Engagement for the eBay Green Team, where he leads a global employee Green Team of over 2500 employees spread out across 25+ office locations worldwide, as well as 300,000+ eBay community members who have also taken the green pledge.

Deborah Fleischer is President of Green Impact, a strategic sustainability consulting practice that helps socially responsible companies and NGOs transform a commitment to sustainability into action. She is a LEED AP with over 20-years of direct experience working with businesses, governmental agencies and non-profits on environmental and sustainability challenges. Her expertise focuses on strategy, engagement and communications. She is the author of Green Teams: Engaging Employees in Sustainability and is a regular contributor to GreenBiz.com, where she has blogged extensively on best practices for engaging employees. Her recent clients include the University of California San Francisco, Plantronics, Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI), Sonoma Open Space District and the Sonoma Land Trust. You can follow her occasional tweets at @GreenImpact, join her Facebook page or check out her blog Shades of Green.

“Good ideas for reinvigorating our team and expanding our reach internally and externally.”  … Webinar testimonial

When it comes to humanizing your brand in social media, nobody can do it better than your employees. The 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer found “conversations with employees” remain one of the most credible sources of information about a company – ahead of news coverage, online search, or ads.

Pepsico is one company that has done the social media math. On Facebook alone, average users have 130 friends. Multiply that times Pepsico’s 300,000 employees and you have potentially millions of trusted conversations.

With that vision, Sharon McIntosh, senior director of global internal communications at PepsiCo, set out last year on a methodical process to empower employees to share their pride in the company on their social networks. In the process, the PepsiCo intranet has become a key platform for delivering and tagging the content that gets shared outside.

In this unique webinar, Sharon will share her journey to empower employees to be social media brand ambassadors. It has taken a balanced combination of tools, trust. Every company needs to figure this out – get a head start by attending this important webinar with your team.

What You Will Learn:

• Where you should start; who needs to be onboard
• How do you sell a social ambassador program to management, and employees
• How do you create a voluntary, online training program to educate employees on engaging in conversations that are authentic, responsible and interesting.
• How do you decide on the right content for employees to share – and a seamless process to make sharing easy
• How to make sure your social media policy doesn’t scare employees away
• What about incentives? 

Presented by:

Sharon McIntosh is senior director of Global Internal Communications for PepsiCo, overseeing the internal strategy and channels for the company’s nearly 300,000 associates.  She previously worked in internal communications, corporate communications, marketing and media relations at a range of companies, including Sears, Waste Management and the Illinois Hospital Association. Connect with Sharon on Twitter: @mcintoshs.

Who Should Attend

• Social media is a team sport. Business professionals from all of these departments have a key role to play and should attend this webinar, preferably as a group: internal communications, HR ,marketing, corporate communications, public relations, customer service, legal and media relations.

“Excellent information … Great job Sharon!!”

Organizations have been trying to crack the code on employee engagement for at least 30 years, with pretty dismal results. Gallup’s October 2011 Employee Engagement Index reported only 29 percent of employees are actively engaged in their jobs, 52 percent are not engaged and 19 percent are actively disengaged.

Could these results be because we’ve been so focused on the how-to of employee engagement (tools and best practices) that we’ve glossed over the whys of basic human motivation and performance in the workplace?

This webinar is based on the principles and practices from the recently published business fable, Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement, by author Les Landes. The book starts with the somewhat provocative premise that employee engagement is powered mainly by the uniquely human qualities of imagination and free will – and how the two are inseparably connected.

According to Landes, when you combine imagination and free will with other key ingredients – security, self-esteem, responsibility and accountability – you create a virtual “human rocket” that propels and guides employees to extraordinary performance.

Building on that theoretical framework, Landes will offer a number of practical ideas you can use in your organization for policies, systems and processes to create the kind of culture where employees love to work and customers love doing business.

Bonus feature: The Q&A conversation at the end will be started by two internal employee engagement experts: Jim Shaffer, Jim Shaffer Group, consultant, author and speaker; and Roger D’Aprix, RPO Communications, consultant, lecturer and author.

Already a member? View Replay

What You Will Learn:

• The power of trust … What it takes and how to get it.
• Play, work and hell … Why you should STOP trying to motivate “your people.”
• Double-talk, distortions, and disconnects … How to keep employees tuned in and turned on using the principles of “Real-Life, Real-Time Communication.”
• The problem with employee suggestion programs … Why most of them get such dismal participation, and how to create a system that produces dramatic results.
• Getting to the heart of company culture … Why it’s critical to know where your culture is now before you start beating a path to where you want to be in the future.
• Faking sincerity … Why transparency and truth are increasingly critical in today’s workplace.
• The program trap … Why many corporate initiatives seem so phony to employees, and what it takes to make them “real.” 

Presented by:

Les Landes is President of Landes & Associates, a management consulting firm that provides services in team/organizational planning, marketing and public/media relations, organizational communication, employee engagement, performance improvement systems and, executive coaching, and meeting facilitation. The firm serves clients in various industries, as well as government and non-profit organizations.

He is the author of numerous published articles on topics related to communication and organizational performance. His articles and interviews have appeared in several publications, including Communication World, The Public Relations Strategist, Executive Speeches, Training, Total Quality Newsletter, Quality Progress, Strategy and Leadership, Journal for Quality and Participation and more. He also writes a regular e-column called Inside Out that focuses on aligning employee engagement with marketing communication.

His new book, Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement, opens the door to a fresh understanding and appreciation for human nature in the workplace, and it sets the stage for a breakthrough in optimizing employee performance. This unique business fable shows how tapping into the power and purpose of imagination and free can create the type of organization where employees love to work and customers love doing business.

Who Should Attend

This webinar is primarily aimed at professionals involved in helping their organizations improve employee engagement, including:

• Internal communications
• Public relations
• Human resources
• Executive communications
• Public affairs
• Investor relations
• Senior management 

“I liked the advice to avoid ‘flavour of the day’ by not naming a campaign or program and instead making it part of our everyday way of doing things.”

We are living in an era where social media not only impacts the way human beings interact with one another, but is influencing business decisions and customers’ perceptions of brands. By making employees confident in the fact that they can reach out to customers and by providing them with the necessary resources, you grow your external reach exponentially.

The Social Media Ninjas team at Sprint has done just that with their award winning employee advocacy program. Through the implementation of a training program that gives a fly-by of the corporation’s social media policy along with placing strong employee-facing support resources in a variety of channels, Sprint has created a program that drives employee engagement while protecting and enhancing its brand reputation.

Find out how internal communications is your best fuel for active advocacy and why a too formal social media policy can actually deter employees from joining your force. You’ll see how Sprint empowers its employees with real-time, company-approved, social media updates. 

What You Will Learn:

• How to align internal communications and social media goals
• How to create a winning cross-functional team
• How to communicate a policy that works for advocates and Legal
• What motivates employees to participate voluntarily
• What resources you can put in place to optimize success
• Various channel to stay connected with your employee advocates
• The effect that extra reach can have on your organization 

Presented by:

Jennifer Sniderman, Group Manager – Employee Communications leads news, editorial and social media for enterprise-wide employee communications at Sprint. She specializes in interactive multimedia engagement programs which have garnered numerous awards. Jennifer is the co-creator of Sprint’s Social Media Ninja program leveraging employee advocacy to bolster the customer experience and improve Sprint’s corporate reputation. She provides counsel to Sprint’s Human Resources team to deliver leader-focused communications programs. Prior to joining Sprint, she was Assistant Vice President, Corporate Communications at Zurich Scudder Investments in Chicago, IL. Outside of work, she serves on the board of Chameleon Arts & Youth Development, a non-profit organization providing arts education for homeless and under-served children.

Sara Folkerts, Internal Social Media Manager is passionate about sharing, communicating, transparency and being open-minded. This has led her to her current job as a community manager and social media evangelist at Sprint. In addition to her role as community manager, Sara co-leads the Ninjas program at Sprint. Sara has presented on internal social media strategies at several conferences and at other companies. Where can you find her? On Twitter, of course! @saramiller.

Nic Lazowski, Communication Specialist is driven to engage employees and deliver information that will result in action. His role is centered around employee involvement and advocacy. As a Communication Specialist for Sprint, Nic is responsible for helping to drive employee education and advocacy through social media with other members of the Social Media Ninjas lead team. 

Who Should Attend

• This webinar will cater to individuals who recognize the growing need for immediate and far-reaching contact with customers and potential customers. The information provided will allow you to start making your organization more nimble and approachable while improving reputation among customers.

Webinar attendee: “I appreciated all the information on how to put together a social media program for employees; the tools to use, the benefits of involving employees, how to set up the training program, etc.”