Communicating Diversity: A Field Guide

Ok, if we professional communicators would all come clean, we would admit we’ve been paying a lot more attention to the sexy new digital communication workplace tools than we have to that oldest but most important social medium, face-to-face communications.

Unfortunately, practice and research says ignoring manager communication is a bad idea. In the midst of so much change, workplace stress, confusion and mistrust, there is a powerful human case to be made for attending to this most basic kind of communication. Gallup research shows that “managers from hell” are creating active disengagement, costing the U.S. an estimated $450 billion to $550 billion annually.

According to ROI Communication’s annual benchmark survey:

• One in four managers is not considered a credible source of information
• Only 55% offer recognition and appreciation for a job well done
• Only 25% clearly understand their communication role (which coincides with the fact that only 27% receive communication training), and
• Only 18% are measured for communication performance in their performance reviews

Roger D’Aprix has been preaching the face-to-face communication mantra since he was a communication manager at Xerox in the late 1970s. He’s convinced today’s workers want and expects more than command and control, top-down communication. In fact, if face-to-face communication is failing, there is an excellent chance that all of the other forms of communication in the organization are also failing.

Drawing from his new book, Creating an Engaged Workforce: the Face-to-Face Communication Toolkit, Roger will arm you with the basic strategies and tools to either launch or reignite your organization’s manager communication program in ways that will prepare them to fulfill the all-important role of interpreter for their people. It’s time to fire up your face-to-face communication program.

What You Will Learn:

• Why human satisfaction with work and business success both demand a face-to-face strategy for delivering critical issues to employees
• How to build the business case and form the key team you need to seriously impact face-to-face communication in your organization
• Why too many face-to-face communication programs fail and the secret sauce of those that sing 
• The key tools and processes you need to make your face-to-face communication program a winner

Presented by:

Roger D’Aprix is internationally known as a practitioner in the theory, strategy and practice of employee communication. His ground-breaking work at Xerox Corporation beginning in the 1970s qualifies him as one of the pioneers in employee engagement. As a communication consultant, lecturer and author he has assisted scores of Fortune 500 companies in developing their communication strategies and designing their communication training.

In 1998 IABC named him ‘one of the most influential thinkers in the communication profession in the last 25 years.’ He was named an IABC Fellow, that organization’s highest honor, in 1978. For 15 years he held senior positions with two of the leading human resources consulting companies. He served as vice president and global practice leader for Towers Perrin’s human resource communication practice and as principal and service developer for Mercer Human Resource Consulting.

Before that, he led employee communication for Xerox Corporation and held executive communication positions at General Electric and Bell and Howell. Presently, in addition to his own consultancy, D’Aprix & Co., he is affiliated with ROI Communication as a member of its advisory board. ROI is a global consultancy that specializes in internal communication strategy and practice. He divides his time between residences in Rochester, New York and New York City.

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. 

Communicators have been using PR to deliver value for decades. What’s new is that a handful of leading professionals are now scientifically proving how they are generating measurable benefits from the public relations activities. The progress that this change represents is significant: rather than relying on subjective perceptions of what represents value, they are applying the concept of “return on investment” (ROI) and objectively measuring the economic benefits of public relations activity against its associated costs. In this perspective-packed web conference, Mark Weiner offers a research-based model for creating and implementing public relations programs that will generate meaningful results and improve an organization’s ROI. You will also learn how to speak to senior executives in a way that will improve communications and ultimately help strengthen PR performance and results.

What You Will Learn:

• The Difference between “proving value” and “delivering a return-on-investment.”
• The three elements of PR-ROI
• What some of the world’s greatest organizations are doing to prove and improve their PR-ROI (and how they do it)…including branded case studies
• How you can take your PR programs to the next level in clearly demonstrating ROI
• What’s required to go beyond “ROI

Real-world questions that will be answered:

• How do I prove the value of my PR?
• What is the difference between “proving value” and “delivering ROI?”
• How do I connect our PR to meaningful business outcomes and Return-on-Investment?
• What are the three forms of PR-ROI?
• What are companies doing now to deliver and improve their ROI?
• How do I get started?

Presented by:

Mark Weiner is the author of “Unleashing the Power of PR: A Contrarian’s Guide to Marketing and Communication,” published by John Wiley & Sons. Throughout his career, Mark has focused on providing research-based consulting to help clients improve their PR-ROI. Most recently, Mark was the SVP/Global Director of Research at Ketchum after having been president and CEO of Delahaye, the preeminent provider of research solutions for public relations and corporate communications professionals. Mark is a frequent speaker at conferences including those produced by The Conference Board, The American Marketing Association, The PRSA, The IABC and Bulldog Reporter, and he frequently contributes to publications such as Communication World, PR Week and The Daily ‘Dog and has appeared on PBS and CNBC. He is on the editorial advisory boards of PR News and PRSA’s The Strategist, and is an active member of the Institute for Public Relations, for whom he chaired the Measurement Commission in 2004.

Surprisingly, there is no defined background or career path for those who aspire to the position of global corporate brand manager. Public relations and corporate communications practitioners often believe they have the right to be the strongest voice in determining the brand. After all,among the responsibilities of the most senior public relations (PR) executive is that of promoting and protecting the reputation of the corporation.

But at a time when global brands are valued in the billions, there is a dearth of good practical advice on what business professionals from many areas could and should be doing to build and protect their organization’s brand. And everyone from designers to lawyers to marketers to advertisers and even HR professionals can and should be playing a role. Nothing is more important than living the brand.

This webinar offers a chance to hear Michael Morley discuss themes from his new book, The Global Corporate Brand Book. He will show how corporate brand value can be measured in finite terms and encourages PR people to aspire to the role of corporate brand managers. This way their own work’s importance will be recognized and funded. But before this can be achieved, they will need to widen their knowledge beyond traditional PR techniques.

What You Will Learn:

• The six critical elements of a global corporate brand
• Case histories of successful global corporate brands
• The role of corporate communications in corporate brand building

“Presenter was extremely knowledgeable, presented well and used some excellent examples. He dug far deeper into branding and reputation management than I have ever seen or heard. His laying out of the six Vs was creative, sensitive and well done.”

Presented by:

Michael Morley is president of Morley Corporate Consulting, a firm of management consultants in corporate reputation and branding. For nearly 40 years Morley worked at Edelman helping establish it as the world’s largest independent PR agency. He founded the agency’s first overseas office, in London in 1967. He went on to be named President of Edelman International Corporation and established other Edelman offices in Europe, Canada , Asia Pacific and Latin America . Since 1984 he has been based in New York.

Morley has managed multi-national PR programs for companies that include UPS, AMADEUS Global Travel Distribution, NCR, VISA International, British Airways, Ernst & Young, Hoffmann-La Roche, Schering Plough, Procter & Gamble , S.C. Johnson and Hertz Corporation. From 1995 to 1998 Morley was President of Edelman New York and from 1998-2001 was Deputy Chairman and President of International Operations. He served as Deputy Chairman of Daniel J. Edelman Inc until his retirement in 2006.

He is also Chair of the Senior Advisory Board Experts (SAGEs) of the Echo Research Group and adjunct professor teaching in the Master of Science in PR and Corporate Communications program at New York University.

Before joining Edelman, Morley had served as an officer in the Royal Artillery and after a period in journalism had been a director of another British PR firm for seven years. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, lectures extensively on PR, holds the CAM Diploma and in 1981 was elected to a Fellowship in the organization that is responsible for P.R. education and examinations in Britain . He served as Chairman of the jury of the IPRA Golden World Awards from 1999-2002. In June 2003 Morley was awarded the Alan Campbell-Johnson Medal for distinguished service to International Public Relations by The Institute of Public Relations. Later the same year he was one of the first six PR leaders named to the ICCO Hall of Fame.

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.

Online newsrooms have virtually replaced dual pocket, press kit folders stuffed with hard copy. But according to research, poorly designed online newsrooms damage corporate reputations. Find out if your online newsroom is hurting or helping your efforts to manage your organization’s reputation, and learn what you can do to improve the news and information section of your website through search engine optimization, RSS, email alerts, text notifications and GML. And find out how forward-thinking brands are engaging strategically with their stakeholders through social media, but converting those interactions to transactions on their own websites.

What You Will Learn:

• Best practices for online newsroom design and maintenance
• How to integrate social media into online newsrooms
• Reg FD compliance via online newsrooms
• Future trends in online newsroom design

Presented by:

Eric Schwartzman is a senior communications professional with broad experience in online communications, public relations, public affairs and marketing for leading brands, start-ups, non-profits and government agencies. I help organization develop and execute digital communications strategies and have extensive experience integrating emerging information technologies into organizational communications.

In 2000, I resigned from the Interpublic Group [NYSE:IPG] PR firm Rogers & Cowan, where I served as director of promotions managing a staff of nine, and went out on my own to specialize in online communications. Since then, I have developed online communications strategies, training programs and campaigns for Boeing, Brigham Young University, City National Bank, Environmental Defense Fund, Johnson & Johnson and many others.

Building on my experience managing pressroom activities at The Grammy Awards, and working in pressrooms at the MTV Music Video Awards, MTV Movie Awards, FOX Teen Awards, the People’s Choice Awards and other special events, I built the first online newsrooms for Cirque du Soleil and the Salt Lake Olympics to efficiently distribute press materials and high resolution photographs online. This led to the development and creation of online newsroom software as a service provider iPressroom, which I founded, and which today hosts online newsrooms for Target, Toyota, UCLA and others on a proprietary content management system designed specially to help nontechnical personnel practice online communications autonomously from IT professionals or webmasters. I remain the company’s chairman, participating at the board level, and advising on matters of corporate finance and business strategy.

My podcast, On the Record.Online, has received numerous awards including the Public Relations Society of America Bronze Anvil Award in 2007, the Marketing Sherpa Email Marketing Award in 2007, the MarCom Gold Award in 2007, the PR News Platinum Award in 2007, the Public Relations Society of America Los Angeles Chapter Prism Award 2007 and the Society for New Communications Research Award of Excellence in 2006. Complete bio

“This is the best seminar that I have attended in a long time. The speaker was thorough, pragmatic and interesting. He opened up a whole new vision of possibilities for a Newsroom.”

“It was a very meaty webinar – wish it could’ve been a little longer.”

“It gave me a solid overview of current thinking, trends and research regarding online newsrooms. We are an organization that relies on our online newsroom considerably, and we’re in the process of renovating it. This information will improve its offerings significantly.”

In this age of rapid communication, openness and transparency, it becomes more important than ever to find common ground and forums for dialogue with stakeholder groups beyond customers and shareholders. Mutually beneficial  alliances with environmentalists, health-care advocates and similar groups can  provide insights into markets, societal trends and public concerns. Done well,  such alliances can enhance the reputation of both the company involved and the advocacy group. Learn how McDonald’s and Tyson Foods have implemented  mutually beneficial alliances with advocacy groups and NGOs.

What You Will Learn:

• What works and what doesn’t in building alliances with advocacy groups
• NGOs as friends, foes and collaborators
• Best practices in forming productive alliances with advocacy groups

Questions Asked and Answered

• What are some of the criteria you use to select NGO’s?
• Do you see significant variance between the individuals within NGO’s?
• Does McDonalds carry on an open dialogue with PETA and other antagonists in the 9 and 10 zone?
• Can you talk more about using social networking for NGO engagement?
• CSPI and PETA are very antagonistic; what guidance can you offer for dealig with these specific entities?
• What’s the most effective approach for a national company with only 1 PR and 1 Community Relations employee and no agency?
• Is it best to focus on one issue like Tyson is doing with hunger, and establish leadership over long term, or try to be involved in many other issues on a lesser scale?
• Are there any examples faith-based organizations who have been good partners for you to work with?
• Social media engagement takes a lot of manpower to do. Are either of you adding to staff to engage online with NGO’s?
• Can you both give examples of how you have enabled local leaders to emulate your corporate strategies on a local basis?
• Who is the most important audience to hear about your commitment to hunger?

Presented by:

Bob Langert is Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility for McDonald’s. His responsibilities with McDonald’s include social responsibility efforts, including McDonald’s social responsibility reporting; Global environmental management systems and issues; Global supply chain issues (e.g., sustainable agriculture, biotechnology, animal agricultural and animal welfare programs); Issues management; and part of McDonald’s “Balanced, Active Lifestyles” team.

Langert joined McDonald’s in 1983, with management positions in logistics and packaging purchasing in the 80s; and responsibilities for environment, energy management, animal welfare, Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities, emerging issues’ management, and, most recently, social responsibility in the 90’s through today. He earned an MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois; a BA from Lewis University, Romeoville, Illinois, and a BS at Hamburger University.

Ed Nicholson is currently director of corporate community and public relations for Tyson Foods, Inc. He has been with Tyson since 1995, previously serving as the company’s director of media relations, and primary media spokesperson. Ed is part of a team that helps create and implement community relations strategies in the 100 U.S. communities in which Tyson Foods has operations. He is also responsible for managing relationships within Tyson’s primary area of philanthropic activity, hunger relief. He has been at the forefront of Tyson’s use of social media, which is focused on creating community around the issue of hunger.

Peter Faur, president of RightPoint Communications Inc., has been

on the front lines of controversies ranging from environmental spills and cleanups to industrial fatalities to allegations of animal abuse at marine theme parks. He is known for keeping a cool head, getting people from many walks of life to talk together, and helping people learn how to explore each other’s concerns so they can find mutually agreeable solutions to problems they face. Faur moved to Phoenix in late 2002 to head the communications staff of Phelps Dodge Corp., a copper-mining company acquired in 2007 by Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. As vice president-corporate communications, he was responsible for all the company’s internal and external communications programs. He designed and implemented a community relations and communications model now replicated in several communities in which the company is pursuing environmental remediation projects. While the issues are controversial, the company has been able to build bases of support and has kept strong, results-oriented dialogues in place.

Additional Resources:

• McDonald’s Corporate Responsibility homepage
• Tyson Foods Hunger Relief Homepage – Recent News Releases
• Peter Faur’s Common Ground Blog Post on this webinar

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.

Times have changed. In today’s world, communication moves at the speed of light. People want information, and they want it now. On top of that, they want it in more creative formats than before, thanks to the social media tools taking the world by storm. And your employees are no different.

In this webinar, you will hear from two internationally recognized companies – Monsanto and Sprint – that have taken major steps recently to meet employee expectations with major initiatives to improve their employee communication strategies, tactics and tools.

Katie Sauer from Monsanto will talk about the evolution during the past two years since they launched a complete overhaul of the company’s employee communications. Specifically, she will describe Monsanto’s online news publication and why it is now regarded as a best practice in the profession.

She will explore a number of provocative questions.

• Are your employee news publication and intranet meeting their needs?
• Are you giving them honest facts or corporate-speak?
• Are you sending them weekly or monthly publications, or are you giving them up-to-the minute information?
• Are you communicating things your way or their way?

Jennifer Sniderman from Sprint will talk about how the company decided to seize unprecedented opportunity to build on their efforts to revolutionize the customer experience and use the same approach to facilitate conversations among employees and help surface the “why” behind key decisions. By blurring the lines between Sprint Space (internal social media platform) and i-Connect (the company-wide intranet) Sprint continues to drive authenticity and engage key employee influencers.

In this presentation you will learn how Sprint’s News 2.0 strategy is:

• Activating our brand from the inside out, by making employees active participants in revolutionizing the customer experience; tapping collective wisdom, acting on what we learn
• Spreading optimism at new speeds
• Driving confidence in leadership at all levels
• Decreasing communications clutter and reaching employees in ways they’ve embraced outside of work

Both of these remarkable case studies underscore the need for a plan that allows you to communicate with your employees—and vice versa—in the honest, simple and fast way they expect. At this webinar, you will learn how to create an online communication mechanism that will become an integral part or your employees’ lives.

What You Will Learn:

• How to write and produce stuff your employees will want to read—and trust
• How to integrate social media tools into your employee communication strategy
• How to get legal and management backing you
• How to use your intranet publication to change your company’s culture

Presented by:

Katie Sauer is a communications manager for Monsanto, where she is responsible for writing content for both the company’s employee news site and corporate Web site. She has worked for Monsanto since earning her bachelor’s in communication from Truman State University in Missouri. She worked in sales and marketing for Monsanto before moving to public affairs in 2006.

Jennifer Sniderman oversees employee communications channels and editorial including Sprint’s corporate Intranet and Sprint’s social media platform. She is responsible for developing the news strategy and messaging architecture for enterprise employee communications.Jennifer leads the team responsible for Sprint’s IABC Gold Quill award-winning leadership communications program and is the managing editor of i-Lead, Sprint’s bi-weekly online newsletter. Jennifer is also the executive producer/writer of a recurring talk-show broadcast to the desktop of Sprint managers nationwide. In her role at Sprint, Jennifer has developed numerous multimedia campaigns and interactive communications solutions. She is currently working on Sprint’s social media strategy for employee communications and enhancements to Sprint’s integrated online leadership community.

 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.

“This is exactly the kind of specific, here’s how we did it, replicable information (that is often difficult to find) that we were looking for. Really great stuff. We got a lot of ideas and also confirmed that in many ways, we are on the right track as well.”

“Real-life examples of the inner workings of two companies’ intranets. Informative speakers. Good tips.”

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.

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

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.

With the passage of new laws and regulations to curb white-collar crime, executives are paying increasing attention to corporate governance and compliance programs. But what role do compliance programs play in employee behavior?

Research shows that compliance programs can actually do more harm than good when it comes to actual employee behavior. However, carefully designed compliance programs, supported by other elements of culture, can be instrumental in building an ethical culture that not only drives ethical employee behavior but also employee engagement and business results.

You will learn:

• Key research on the connections between ethics and employee engagement
• Four building blocks of ethical culture
• Elements of an effective ethics/compliance program
• Links between ethical culture and employee engagement
• Importance of ethical leadership and trust
• How character gets defined in leaders
• What is moral language, and how to use it
• Three strategies that can make a real difference in creating an ethical culture
• Three steps executives and managers can take to encourage ethical behavior within their organizations and departments

• Three audience segments you need to consider when designing ethics/compliance initiatives

Kate answers real-world questions on:

• Best practices in talking about ethics with employees
• How to reward employees’ for good ethical behavior
• Explaining the success of the hit TV show The Apprentice
• What channels work best when delivering the ethical rules of an organization
• Advice to those in an organization who have either observed or have strong suspicions of unethical behavior in their company

Presented by:

Kate Nelson is a consultant, Wharton professor and author specializing in ethics program design and strategic organizational communications. 

• Formerly a senior fellow in ethics at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, she currently teaches business ethics at Wharton Executive Education and to executive MBA students at the University of Delaware.
• Co-author, with Pennsylvania State University Professor Linda Klebe Trevino, of Managing Business Ethics (published by Wiley; 4th edition due in August 2006)
• Consultant on ethics and communications for 15 years
• Formerly a principal and communication practice leader for Mercer HR Consulting in Philadelphia
• Formerly vice president and head of worldwide HR communications at Citicorp in New York City; held similar positions at Merrill Lynch and Honeywell
• Guest speaker on ethics and values at many conferences and organizations, including the Conference Board, World@Work, Society for Human Resources Managers, Young Presidents’ Organization, the Ethics’ Officers Association and Wharton Executive Education.
• She has designed and/or conducted ethics training programs for numerous business schools, including Harvard, University of Chicago, Columbia, Vanderbilt, NYU, MIT, Temple and Northwestern; and for numerous organizations, including GE, Johnson & Johnson, J.P. Morgan, Prudential Securities, Morgan Stanley, Aviva, Degussa, Shell Oil, AC Nielsen, Glaxo SmithKline, Citibank, Dupont, Lockheed Martin and NASA.
• The ethics game that Kate created at Citicorp, The Work Ethic, was awarded the Gold Quill of Excellence by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) in 1987 and was featured in numerous media, including the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Fortune.
• Communications she created have been recognized by the American Institute of Graphic Artists, the Art Directors Guild, the IABC, and have been exhibited in the Whitney Museum of Art in New York.
• She received her B.A. from the College of Mount St. Vincent in New York City and has been affiliated with Wharton since 1991. Kate also is a 2002 graduate of Leadership, Inc., a Philadelphia organization that mobilizes the private sector on behalf of the community and trains executives to serve on boards of directors.
• She is a member of the Council of Communication Management (CCM).

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.