Social media poses some important new challenges for the internal communicator. On the one hand, the influx of new communications platforms has the potential of transforming how organizations work and communicate. On the other hand, as conversation channels expand and are available to everyone in an organization, how do you keep key messages from being diluted, and the corporate culture intact? Bottom line, what should the role of internal communications be in the age of social media? This panel continues the opening keynote discussion started at the Communitelligence Employee Engagement, HR & Social Media 2010 Conference in Chicago. Join this critical conversation and make sure you and your program stay relevant in this new age of internal communications.
Learning Topics:
- Key steps to ensure you and your department remain relevant and have the right impact.
- The role you should be playing: what is new and what remains the same
- Why clarity of message has become more critical with the decentralization of communication.
- What key skills communicators have that are the best antidote to obsolescence
- What are the best antidotes to obsolescence?
- “Excellent session! Worth the time investment!”
- Excellent high-level view”
- “I learned how important it is to know your intenal audience.”
- “The Avoiding Extinction piece by Cathi Killian was great.”
- “The greatest single benefit was learning about specific tools that were being using by other companies such as Yammer for “employee jams” and thinking like an intern by hiring a teenager.”
Presented by:
Gary F. Grates is President/Global Managing Director of Edelman Change and Employee Engagement, the organizational communications counseling practice of Edelman, the world’s largest independent public relations/communications counseling firm and the third largest overall. He has more than 25 years of corporate, marketing/brand, labor, and strategic communications experience with a particular expertise in change management/employee (internal) communications. Grates has counseled more than one hundred organizations including PepsiCo, Starbucks, Guardian, General Motors, Volvo, Nissan, Caterpillar, Shell, Visa International, Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, British Airways, ITT, GE Healthcare, eBay, and Dell, to name a few. Prior to joining Edelman, he served as Vice President-Corporate Communications/North America at the General Motors Corporation. In this role, Grates was responsible for brand, product, media, internal, financial and public policy communications for GM’s North America Region, the largest in the company. He was also the global process leader for internal communications reporting to Chairman/CEO, G. Richard Wagoner, and a member of General Motors’ North American Strategy Board, the senior most governing body in North America. In addition, he was on the teaching staff at General Motors University (GMU) and selected to join the company’s exclusive Senior Executive Program – a leadership development program.
Jill Feldon LaNouette is vice president of Internal Communications in the Public Affairs Department at Cardinal Health. In this capacity, she counsels senior executives in effective communication strategies and leads her team in developing and implementing communication plans and programs to support the company’s objectives. She also is responsible for crisis communications and issues management. Ms. LaNouette joined Cardinal Health in 2003 as director of Organizational Communication where she provided communication support on several major change initiatives and brand-building projects. In her 30 years of helping organizations effectively communicate with different constituencies, Ms. LaNouette has received numerous awards for marketing and communications from various organizations including the Gold Quill from the International Association of Business Communications and the Silver Anvil from the Public Relations Society of America. She has worked with companies from healthcare to Hollywood, including Victoria’s Secret, The Procter & Gamble Company, Kaiser Permanente, Lucasfilm Ltd., and public radio. Also Jill is a free-lance writer and consultant, has been published in several publications, and worked as a sports reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Cathi Killian is Vice President, Internal Communications at Walt Disney Company. In her role leading internal communications and corporate responsibility, Cathi is responsible for enhancing the reputation of the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts through strategies driven by excellence in internal communications, stakeholder engagement and community outreach. She develops the strategic plan for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts internal communications, which leverages communication to reinforce our values and brand and foster the visibility of executive leadership. She works with the internal communications teams at each business unit in taking an integrated approach to delivering relevant information to inform, motivate and engage Cast Members, Crew Members and Imagineers. Additionally, she leads our efforts focused on issues management and stakeholder engagement to identify issues, track trends and understand the impacts to our business, while developing allies that support our goals.
Tell me and I may hear. Tell me and let me add my 2-cents and now it’s our decision; I’m all in. Yes, one of the most powerful and proven catalysts to engagement is simply involving employees in generating ideas that address an organization’s most pressing challenges. By opening up these important conversations to employees, individuals feel like they’re part of the business, and not watching from the sidelines.
Attend this webinar to see how a diverse range of companies are using co-creation — also called crowd-sourcing and open innovation — to achieve significant improvements in both employee engagement and business outcomes.
Borrowing from his experience working with leading companies, Preston Lewis, co-founder and director of San Francisco’s Bonfire, will explain how to use communication co-creation and audience-centricity to effectively drive creativity, innovation and employee engagement within your company.
You will learn how to:
- Position communication as a catalyst for co-creation
- Build a holistic engagement strategy, supported by multidisciplinary communications
- Use emerging crowd-sourcing technologies to drive employee engagement efforts
- Increase participation (both employee and customer) in key brand initiatives
About the Speaker:
Preston Lewis is an expert in branding, employee engagement and internal communications. A sought-after speaker, Preston is an energetic and creative leader who helps companies understand how to solve complex problems through communication and design.
Preston and his team have designed and implemented communication campaigns for some the world’s largest and most successful companies, including Starbucks, Genentech, Nortel Networks, NASDAQ, and HP.
The profession of corporate communications is steeped with tradition. Though there are many new channels, we tend to use them to say the same old things. Employees have a multitude of ways to express themselves after hours, but at work, they tend to have much less voice. This imbalance leaves the unstated impression that all the important communications is done by the professionals.
Heather Rim, vice president of global corporate communications at Avery Dennison, and her team continually look for ways to expand employee voice and make communications fresh and fun. Blending simple ideas with the power of communication networks, her team is shaking up old ideas about what traditional communications looks like, includes and accomplishes. In this special webinar, she will show some of the unique Avery Dennison communication programs that are winning high marks from employees and leadership – and would be worth considering for your organization.
What you will learn:
- Starting with the philosophy – corporate communications should never be boring
- Behind “The Beat,” a global employee sounding board that just keeps growing
- Just launched: an intranet built on Google
- How a CEO video blog is sparking unexpected impact
- Blending formal and informal communications – Letting employees tell their own stories
- Less is more when it comes to social media policy
Presented by:
Heather Rim is vice president of Global Corporate Communications for Avery Dennison Corporation. She was named to her current position in January 2011. Heather joined Avery Dennison in 2010 as senior director, Internal Communications.
Heather is responsible for the strategic direction and management of all aspects of corporate communications for Avery Dennison including employee communications, corporate brand management, crisis communications, social media and digital communications, corporate media relations, and corporate philanthropy.
Before joining Avery Dennison, Heather held the position of vice president, Communications for the Disney ABC Television Group, where she designed and implemented global communications strategies to inform and engage employees across Disney’s entertainment and news television properties. Previously, she progressed through Corporate Communications, Marketing and Investor Relations roles at companies including WellPoint, Countrywide and KPMG.
Heather received a master’s degree in communications management from the University of Southern California and a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Azusa Pacific University. She serves on the boards of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the Pasadena Symphony, and is a member of the Arthur Page Society.
Kristin Wong serves as the lead for all corporate internal communications programs and channels. She drives efforts to ensure the company’s employer brand is activated throughout key employee touch points including the enterprise portal, global employee ambassador team, values and ethics programs, and corporate town halls.
Prior to joining the company, Kristin worked for The Walt Disney Company where she assisted in the development of internal communications programs for Disney’s ABC television business. She received a master’s degree in communication management from the University of Southern California and also holds a bachelor’s degree in media studies from Pomona College of the Claremont Colleges. Outside of work, Kristin is a blogger and pop culture junkie who’s passionate about the technology trends that will shape our digital future.
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.
A new generation of online tools can amplify the voice of business leaders and individuals and turn them into thought leaders with amazing speed.
Blogs, podcasts, digital video and social networks enable business people to bypass expensive advertising and media gatekeepers and take their messages directly to their stakeholders.
With expertise, dedication and savvy use of search engines and syndication, you can now reach a targeted audience with minimal cost and waste.
This webinar introduces the most popular social media concepts and provides step-by-step advice on how to put them to work.
What You Will Learn:
- How to choose from among more than a dozen social media options to fit the tools to your strategy
- Secrets of gaining traffic, search-engine visibility and business
- Why search engines love blogs
- How to use syndication to turbo-charge readership and awareness
- Debunking myths about ROI
- Matching social media to business strategy
- Packaging content for maximum visibility and search engine impact
- Read Q&A with Paul Gillin on social media marketing and becoming an influencer.
- Read excerpts from Secrets of Social Media Marketing
Presented by:
Paul Gillin is a veteran technology journalist with more than 24 years of editorial leadership. Paul was founding editor-in-chief of TechTarget, one of the most successful new media entities to emerge on the Internet. Previously, he was editor-in-chief and executive editor of Computerworld. Currently, he writes the social media column for BtoB magazine. His critically acclaimed new book, The New Influencers, is about the changes in markets being driven by the new breed of online publishers. Published by Quill Driver Books in spring, 2007, it is in its third printing. His second book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing, will be published in the fall of 2008.
Paul specializes in advising business-to-business marketers on strategies to optimize their use of online channels to reach buyers cost-effectively. He is particularly interested in social media and the application of personal publishing to brand awareness and business marketing.
Paul is an accomplished speaker and media spokesman. He has keynoted more than a dozen technology conferences, including annual user group meetings for IBM, Oracle, Cognos, Business Objects and J.D. Edwards. He has also spoken at scores of other events about technology trends and social media.
His ability to translate complex technology topics into plain English has made him a favorite source for journalists. He has been widely quoted in newspapers and on the airwaves, including appearances on CNN, PBS, Fox News and MSNBC.
Paul is a research fellow at the Society for New Communications Research and he chairs the social media cluster of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. He blogs at http://www.paulgillin.com.
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.
Sometimes it’s good to step back and have someone help you re-think your strategy.
That’s why we asked Christopher Barger, author of the new book, Social Media Strategist, to peel back the social media strategy onion. He has labored in the social media trenches at two big corporations (IBM and GM). He knows the potholes to avoid and the things you can’t skip over.
In this special webinar he will be sharing the critical questions, decisions and maneuvers you must choreograph to bring true business value to your social media efforts.
Don’t miss this no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase learning event, and if possible, attend with your entire team.
What You Will Learn:
- Who should own social media
- What internal potholes keep most social media efforts from truly taking off
- What departments and roles are critical to create a social marketing power team
- What are are the seven elements to a winning social media program for corporations and organizations
- Why organizations need to become content publishers to succeed in social media, and what that means
- How can a big company work effectively with bloggers to get social media results
- How to build a fire-proof social media crisis team and process
- How to create well-defined metrics and use the right tools to measure them
Presented by:
Christopher Barger is senior vice president of global programs at Voce Connect. He works with clients around the world to develop and execute social media strategies. Before joining Voce, he built and led GM’s social media program from 2007-2011 where he learned not only about how to build a corporate social program but about managing crises online. Before GM, he was IBM’s first “Blogger-in-Chief” for two years. His book, “The Social Media Strategist,” (McGraw-Hill, fall 2011) focuses on the unique challenges of building a social media program at a large brand or organization. Barger writes “The Social Media Report” for Forbes.com, where he covers the challenges companies are facing as they navigate the social web, trends and emerging technologies as they affect businesses and big brands, and how implementing social web tactics as part of your overall strategy can supplement and enhance your communications and marketing efforts.
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.
Should you roll your own social network? If yes, how do you build it so they will come, and take action?
Presented by:
Mike Bonifer, writer, director, producer and author of GameChangers. The author of GameChangers – Improvisation for Business in the Networked World, and the co-founder of GameChangers, LLC, Mike Bonifer has consistently been in the forefront of emergent media in the workplace.
A graduate of the University of Notre Dame with a degree in Business and Philosophy, he has been a writer, director, producer and creative executive in entertainment and the internet for most of his career.
Beginning with his work as the publicist for the motion picture TRON, and his association with Toy Story, through a stint as the Chief Storyteller for 2007’s Live Earth concerts for the environment, his work at the edges of emerging business cultures has given him tremendous insight into the creation of wealth in the Networked World.
Past and present clients include The Walt Disney Company, JohnsonDiversey, DreamWorks, Frito-Lay, Mountain Dew, Hot Topic, Smithsonian Online, and a host of smaller, innovative new media companies like Pandora, ignition, Twelve Horses and myPractice.
In creating GameChangers, he has produced a curriculum that helps organizations and individuals communicate, learn and transform.
Wendy Cohen, Director, Digital Campaigns & Community, Participant Media. Wendy led the social action campaign for Waiting for Superman.
Wendy Cohen joined Participant in November of 2007 as the Manager of Community and Alliances and the founding editor of the TakePart.com blog. Wendy has developed innovative online and mobile initiatives for Charlie Wilson’s War, The Visitor, Food, Inc. and The Cove. She shepherded the digital component of the social action campaign for Waiting for “Superman”
Wendy was born and raised in Montreal and graduated first in her class from Concordia University’s Communications and Culture Studies program. Prior to Participant, Wendy was the first Community Manager for The Huffington Post in New York City and she co-founded the Screening Liberally film series, of which she remains the National Director. A native of Montreal, Wendy began her work in film in 2004 as the Programmer and Outreach Coordinator for the Media That Matters Film Festival and Media That Matters: Good Food project.. She also worked as the researcher and creative assistant on The Art of the Documentary (New Riders Press) and served as co-chair on the Urban Pathways Young Professional Board. She has been the co-curator of the Netroots Nation screening series since 2007 and continues to be a guest lecturer and panelist at festivals and schools around the country. In 2009, Wendy produced “Every Third Bite”, an award-winning short documentary about bees hailed as a “better bee movie” by New York Magazine. Wendy is a recipient of the 2010 New Leaders Council’s 40 Under 40 Leadership Award.
Internal Social Networks are starting to appear inside some organizations. Early adopters are finding positive business results by helping employees connect through “internal Facebooks.” By effectively harnessing these new networks, organizations are seeing positive impacts on internal brand building, as well as employee engagement, satisfaction and motivation — which leads to higher levels of productivity, revenue, and profit.
But the world of the internal social network is the opposite of command & control. That said, reasonable guidelines, a group of informal influencers, and a posse of community managers who help keep the dialog lively and the network on track.
It’s clear that no matter where your company is on the social media ladder, social networks and Web 2.0 skills are becoming a part of today’s work landscape. All businesses need to be aware of how to deploy networks for higher ROI, collaboration, innovation and customer service.
Listen to this webinar replay to learn what works and what doesn’t in this brave new world of internal social networks from companies that are already figuring out the path to success.
What You Will Learn:
- How to avoid pitfalls and leverage opportunities as you venture into the world of building and managing social networks and a Web 2.0 savvy workforce
- How best to overcome cultural barriers and introduce social networks into traditional organizations
- How to handle the sensitives of employee privacy; governing participants’ behavior; and ensuring that participants balance professional and social time.
- How to set up strategic, internal alliances which mitigate concerns of Command & Control leaders and help build positive momentum
Reasons to Learn About Internal Social Networks
- Get more out of your existing resources by finding, unlocking, and engaging hidden employee intellectual capital Reduce company cost, waste, travel expenditures, and carbon footprint
- Establish, grow and maximize a culture savvy with social networks.
- Further your PR and Branding dollars by unleashing the silent experts that exist within your companies today
- Enhance your employees’ motivation and satisfaction in your company as a place to work
- Develop products and offerings faster, without regard to organizational silo or organization
- Build a more sustainable company which should well serve your shareholders for years to come
Lee Aase is manager of Syndications and Social Media for Mayo Clinic. His team’s focus is developing quality medical news resources for mainstream media, and using social media applications to create more in-depth, extended relationships directly with key stakeholders. You can see examples of Mayo Clinic’s social media offerings through the Mayo Clinic News Blog at http://newsblog.mayoclinic.org/
By night, Lee is Chancellor of Social Media University, Global (SMUG), a free online higher education institution that provides practical, hands-on training in social media for lifelong learners. Visit SMUG.
Prior to joining Mayo Clinic in 2000, Lee spent more than a decade in political and government communications at the local, state and federal level. He received his B.S. in Political Science from Mankato (Minn.) State University in 1986.
Polly Pearson is VP Employment Brand and Strategy Engagement, EMC Corporation.
Polly Pearson is an employment branding leader passionate about Web 2.0 engagement tools with nearly twenty years of FORTUNE 500-level experience spanning marketing, human resources, branding, investor relations, public relations, advertising, and professional speaking.
Her employment branding work has recently been featured in media outlets such as CBS News, National Public Radio, Financial Times, Boston Herald, Dice.com and in the new Penguin Press business book, “Closing the Engagement Gap; How Great Companies Unlock Employee Potential For Superior Results.”
Her leadership in Investor Relations contributed to EMC being the NYSE Stock of the Decade for the 1990s, when it outperformed all other listed stock and increased in value nearly 90,000 percent. Polly was the first woman at EMC to be promoted to Vice President. Polly writes a popular blog dedicated to careers, culture and cool.
Paul Pedrazzi heads a small team of professionals (AppsLab) focused on emerging technology and novel business practices. Most recently, his interest has been on Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and the transformation of the enterprise in light of these new modes of operation. Additionally, Mr. Pedrazzi spearheaded the creation of Oracle’s first two social network projects; Connect for internal users and Mix for customers, partners and media. Before heading AppsLab he ran product strategy for PeopleSoft’s Portal Product Suite, catapulting the flagship product into the leadership position in Gartner’s annual product evaluation. Prior to PeopleSoft, Mr. Pedrazzi held various other product strategy, marketing and consulting roles in organizations such as Deloitte & Touche LLP and Groundswell, Inc. Mr. Pedrazzi holds a BS in Managerial Economics from the University of California at Davis.
Who Should Purchase:
- Individuals responsible for employee communications, public relations, IT, corporate affairs, human resources, media relations, and issues management.
“The two case studies were excellent. Polly was a wonderful presenter; Paul was good too.”
“We’re in the process of developing a number of employee engagement communities so very timely.”
At Cisco, they’ve changed the way they use words. It’s saving them money and helping them work together better. It’s connecting the internal culture to the business in deeper, more meaningful ways. And that’s helping them serve customers better and sell more.
In this session, Mark Buchanan, program lead for Cisco’s brand language initiative, paints a picture of how Cisco is changing the way 75,000 employees are using words across a $130 Billion business. He’ll walk you through how the brand language team set the plan in motion and made lasting changes. He’ll include practical tips and share insights, successes, and challenges. And he’ll give you his thoughts about how the lessons from Cisco can make a difference for your business.
The session includes:
- Evaluating the opportunity
- Aligning your voice with your business
- Connecting with your audience
- Scaling the program
- Making it stick
Presented by:
Mark Buchanan is the program lead for brand language at Cisco. He’s helping the company use language that is simpler and more distinctive. And he’s helping bring empathy back to a technology company that has always cared about people, but has found those values challenged by rapid growth and increasingly complex technology. He’s worked with Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Services and Corporate Communications and has seen impressive results across every function. Together, Mark and the people at Cisco are changing the culture of language and communications, around the world for 75,000 employees, 50,000 contractors and vendors, across a $130 billion business.
The data is in!
- Diversity is a source of competitive advantage
- Diverse teams arrive at better, more innovative solutions than monolithic teams
- Diversity is not the same as affirmative action or any other government mandated equality program – it’s better
- 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
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.
How to wrap a blog into your overall content and communications strategy
Corporate blogging means the use of company-sponsored blogs as a way to connect with internal and external audiences. Interactive, instant, efficient, often revelatory, corporate blogs are no longer optional. With the total number of blogs surpassing 55 million, we’ve entered the era of Corporate Blogging 2.0. You need to know now how can you can use this new communications channel. Organizations as various as Dell, General Motors and McDonald’s are using blogs to spread their message, learn from stakeholders and create a body of knowledge encapsulated in a digital trail.
What You Will Learn:
- Who should write your blog and what the topic should be
- Case studies on what works – and what doesn’t in a corporate blog
- Blogging guidelines and other nuts & bolts of managing an internal or external corporate blog
- How to measure results
- How to assess whether your organization is blog-ready
Presented by:
Debbie Weil is a corporate and CEO blogging consultant and author of The Corporate Blogging Book (Penguin Portfolio 2006). She also writes BlogWriteForCEOs, considered one of the most influential blogs about business blogging.
As a consultant, she shows the big dogs how to use blogs as a next-generation marketing and communications strategy. She invites you to download Chapter 1 of her new book for a meaty introduction to the topic of CEO and corporate blogging.
Debbie has a unique background as a veteran journalist with an MBA and corporate marketing experience. She has worked as an Internet marketing consultant with startups as well as Fortune 500 companies (including HP and Wells Fargo) for over a decade.
She’s the publisher of award-winning WordBiz Report, an e-newsletter read by nearly 20,000 subscribers in 87 countries.
She has been quoted on the topic of corporate and CEO blogging in Fortune, the New York Times, BusinessWeek.com, the Washington Post and numerous other publications.
A graduate of Harvard with a degree in English, she has an MBA from Georgetown University and a Masters in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin. She is based in Washington DC.
http://www.debbieweil.com
http://www.BlogWriteForCEOs.com
http://www.TheCorporateBloggingBook.com
Launching a corporate blog takes more than an idea, it takes a plan. Successful business bloggers determine the needs of their audience, assess risks, get internal buy in and align the right resources for an ongoing dialogue with their customers. Get the tools you need to go from idea to action with two case studies from the pros. Learn how to scope a blogging project, get support for your initiative and manage a blog day to day.
What You Will Learn:
- Pros & risks of starting a blog for your organization
- Monitoring feedback & strategies for responding
- Strategies for including audio, video, photos
- Writing for authenticity and the right voice
- Managing multiple authors
- Policy dos & don’ts for employee bloggers
Questions that are answered:
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What should be included in a blogging plan?
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What resources will I need?
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What tools are available?
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How do I build internal support for a blog?
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How do I measure success? Determine ROI?
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What are the day to day best practices?
Presented by:
Nicki Dugan, senior director of corporate communications at Yahoo!, is editor of the company’s official corporate blog, Yodel Anecdotal. It launched in August 2006 as “Yet another self-serving corporate blog” with the mission of providing insights into the company, its people, its culture, and the things Yahoos think about in the shower. The blog covers emerging trends, behind-the-scenes commentary, employee profiles, user stories, guest opinions, and includes video, podcasts and photo essays. All this while attempting to faithfully avoid regurgitation of product press releases. Contributing voices range from CEO to summer interns and Yodel Anecdotal has been lauded for having the cahones to accept comments of all flavors.
Prior to joining Yahoo! in 2000, Nicki represented consumer internet brands such as Yahoo!, Mapquest and Reel.com at Niehaus Ryan Wong, the tech-only agency that presided over the halcyon days of the Internet boom (and may it rest in peace). She also served as editorial director at Sheila Donnelly & Associates of Honolulu and as senior editor at Travel Holiday magazine. Nicki received a B.A. in English from Franklin & Marshall College.
About Paula Berg
Paula Berg is a spokesperson and Public Relations Specialist for Southwest Airlines, the nation’s leading low-fare carrier and the largest domestic airline in terms of Customers carried. In addition to handling the company’s corporate blog, Nuts About Southwest Blog, Paula specializes in strategic communication, regional media relations, reputation management, and special event planning. Paula also supervised on-location production for three seasons of Airline!, Southwest’s reality series for the A&E Television Network, which filmed Southwest’s daily operations in four cities. After brief stints selling beer on Phish tour and working for the Colorado and United States Senates, Paula woke up and smelled the jet fuel and began her career at Southwest Airlines in 2001. Paula is a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder where she earned a bachelors degree in communication and a minor in Political Science.
About Brian Glover
As senior manager of market strategy for Biz360, Brian Glover is responsible for activities that support the company’s product direction and marketing communications efforts. He is the primary author of the company’s MarketIQ blog and has eight years of experience in marketing and public relations. Prior to Biz360, Brian was public relations manager for Documentum, acquired by EMC in 2003, and a Biz360 client. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley.
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.
Brands are living and dying on the 10-20 sites that come up in a Google search for your company, product, or executive names. This webinar will address two critical aspects of your brand’s dance with Google:
- Proactively — How do you create and place the type of content that will greatly improve the chances that you will be found on Google.
- Reactively — How do you react and manage issues that arise and sneak into your top Google results.
What You Will Learn:
- How everyone from celebrities to Fortune 500 companies are treating their “Google Homepage” as the key to their online reputation
- How top online players are combining search engine optimization (SEO) with social media to own all ten of their first page Google results
- Why PR is the right business unit to own search engine reputation management
- Simple tools to monitor your reputation through search engines
Presented by:
Paul Dyer is eMedia Director of WeissComm Group where he oversees social and new media programming for the firm’s healthcare and consumer brands. Paul’s experience includes leading social media and search engine strategy for a broad range of significant and Fortune 500 brands. Having built and managed his own web property to acquisition in 2003, Paul is adept at creating top to bottom web campaigns that incorporate SEO, social media, web development, media placements, and interactive assets. Paul’s current and former clients have included Virgin Megastore, IBM, Symantec, Coors Brewing, New Balance, Hansen’s Soda, Macanudo Cigars, Nature Made Vitamins, and Elan Pharmaceuticals. Paul is a frequent speaker on social media and SEO and authors the popular industry blog, Dyer Situations.
Sam Michelson is CEO of RepRelations. Sam’s first foray into Reputation Management came over 5 years ago when dealing with his company’s own reputation management crisis. Realizing there were no tools available to handle Reputation Management crises, he set out to develop a unique PR-based methodology, which is still the basis for the company’s RepRelations service offering. Prior to launching RepRelations, Sam created several online businesses, YouNeverCall (a leading cell phone website) CondominiumCentral (a licensed online luxury condos broker) and Five Blocks (a Search Engine Optimization firm). Sam is the inventor of two US Patents – one in text categorization, the other in interactive advertising. Sam holds a BA in Psychology from Yeshiva University and a Masters of Science in Management from Boston University.
Shana Costarella is Communications Manager, Community & Social Media at PetSmart in Phoenix, Arizona. PetSmart, Inc. is the largest specialty retailer of services and solutions for the lifetime needs of pets. Shana ushered PetSmart into the strategic use of emerging media for crisis/issue communication, reputation management and brand awareness. She oversees social media community and online reputation approaches for the retailer’s PR and marketing initiatives. In addition, she counsels business units on social media strategies for listening and engagement to achieve key customer service, recruiting, associate relations, loss prevention and philanthropy objectives. With more than a dozen years experience in marketing communications, Shana has spent the last 10 years honing and employing Web and web-based solutions to illuminate and involve audiences. In 2005, she joined PetSmart’s Corporate Communications department, responsible for developing and managing web-based communications projects for internal and external audiences. Shana holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Ottawa University.
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.