Putting best practices into practice: new IABC research highlights four key challenges in corporate communication Our panel discusses how those scenarios play out in real life.

Best-in-class employee communication addresses four business-critical challenges ranging from motivation to measurement. That's according to a new IABC Research Foundation study conducted by Right Management Consultants. Sounds good in theory, but how does it work in practice? And how can communication help bring employees in line with business strategy? Earlier this year, the IABC Research Foundation convened a panel of top communication executives to find out. Here is the report from that discussion.

Moderator: What business strategy would you say has been implemented effectively throughout your organization?

John Santoro: Pfizer went through two integrations in the past five years and effectively doubled our sales inside of five years. If you look at the internal reviews, generally speaking, people feel that they're treated fairly, that they're part of the company and that things have gone reasonably well--probably better than expected. As you probably know, the first integration between Pfizer and the member companies started off with a hostile takeover. But we really worked hard to preserve a very honest and candid line of communication, including saying up front that this was not a merger of equals and that Pfizer was going to be the overriding partner. We made it clear that if you want to stay in the neighborhood, you want to land with Pfizer. This was a hard message for employees. At first people had unrealistic expectations, and it was only after those expectations were managed that people recovered and started working for the resurrection of the company. There was a grassroots effort by colleagues who understood that the future of the company was at stake. So, in a sense, the real integration emanated from the bottom up.

Judith Jones: At The New York Times Company, we have an employee profile that's typical of a newspaper population: They're iconoclastic. They're not interested in being part of the room; they're not there to sing "Kumbaya" and hold hands. Our people--whether they work in any of our 16 regional newspapers, or at the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe or The New York Times, or our television or radio stations--are ultimately on the same page. They don't see their work as being about just the numbers. It has to do with enhancing society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment, and that is very big. So we've extended our brand, but we have not changed who we are and why we are here: excellent journalism. Now we deliver it in multiple media, but the core business will never change.

Moderator: In these days of mergers, outsourcing and distributed workforces, how do you motivate all those hard-to-reach frontline employees to align with the business strategy? Rob Hallam: When outsourcing is a big part of your business, it's a real challenge. You've got to respect the host company's culture, but you've also got to make sure that employees understand what's important to your company. Pitney Bowes recently won an outsourcing contract with Bank of America [BofA], which is a huge account that presented an interesting systems challenge. Suddenly we had all of these employees--most of whom are hourly and formerly associated with another BofA vendor--coming on board. We created an orientation to facilitate that integration, and next we're going to ask leaders to finish the sentence "Pitney Bowes is...." We've got to make sure they understand our strategic architecture and how it applies to them and their work.

Moderator: How do you avoid message overload?

Nancy Redmond: Sometimes there are subcultures within an organization that need to communicate their own way. For example, Pepperidge Farm has eight manufacturing facilities all over the U.S., and their employees, most of them hourly, make up a big part of our workforce. Their engagement is really important to our business, but their focus is mostly local. Each plant has its own culture to some degree--which allows them to have a very engaged population. As long as they're aligned with the values and goals of the company, you want to let them continue doing this. Otherwise, you can have so many levels of messages spinning around that people can't process them all. As communicators, the challenge is to figure out what is relevant and useful both for the company and for the people.

Ray Stevens: Staples' biggest challenge is also our biggest opportunity. It's consistency, consistency, consistency in communication, just like it's location, location, location in real estate. You lead the challenge of millions of customer interactions a day and want every single one to be a quick, hassle-free process. How does that happen each and every time in New York, California, the U.K. and Germany? We've done a lot of work toward that. We changed our corporate mission statement and retooled our values accordingly. We're still going through that process to make sure everybody understands the importance of consistency.

Moderator: Let's talk about open and realistic communication. How do you achieve that?

Jones: We're very open, and everything that's said inside the building goes outside too. We don't need to get employees on board with that approach-they're already there. But every single person in that company is a writer, and when I first joined the company, it was a shock, because when you'd write a memo, you'd never know who might get it. You'd start getting telephone calls: "I'm the metro desk editor, and I want to tell you about that comma you put in...."

Hallam: You've just described communications hell.

Moderator: Let's move to global communications. How does it work, and how does it not work?

Trudy Wonder: At one point in time, Merck did more "one to all" communication. Now we are shifting back to the "think globally, act locally" model. When we have an e-mail to be delivered globally, we'll send it to our North American employees, and then to divisional communicators in other regions to decide: a) Does it need to be translated? b) Is this the right delivery mechanism? c) Does it need some additional context to make it understandable in the local environment? d) Do we just take the content and repurpose it?

Santoro: It's that challenge of recognizing the true definition of diversity, which includes personality, working styles and problem-solving methods. We get these Ph.D.s and folks that are working in product development and research and design, and it is such a different mindset. If you don't celebrate that--not just tolerate it, but celebrate it--you'll lose those people, because most of them are very mobile, and they will go where they are most appreciated.

Moderator: In the best practices study, measuring the ROI [return on investment] of communication was rated lowest in terms of importance and effectiveness. I'd like to know, are surveys important in your organization, and are you finding some creative or effective way to do it?

Hallam: The Holy Grail for communicators is measuring understanding beyond the "smiles" test. My favorite question on employee surveys--and I've been guilty of this myself--is, "Did you understand?" Everyone smiles and nods. Who is going to answer that question no? As opposed to the acid test of understanding, use a multiple-choice question to identify the key message, where all five of the answers sound like they could be right. And now there is credible evidence that shows the linkage from communication to engagement, and engagement to productivity, to turnover, to all of these costs, either revenue drivers or cost reducers inside a company. We need to put our communications to that test, and make that linkage.

ABOUT THE STUDY

Meeting the Challenges of 21st Century Employee Communication provides hard data about the issues that organizations today are struggling with in employee communication, as well as stories and examples of how a wide variety of organizations are meeting these challenges,

For more information, visit www.iabc.com/knowledge.

ABOUT THE RESEARCHERS

Christine Gay, ABC, is a vice president and global leader of the Employee Engagement and Communication Practice for Right Management Consultants, headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Michelle Mahony, M.A., is a principal consultant in Employee Engagement and Communication at Right Management. Jamen Graves, Ph.D., is the North American leader for Organizational Research and Engagement at Right Management.

KEY FINDINGS

Communicating toward the business strategy

In this latest IABC Research Foundation research project, Right Management Consultants conducted a global study to explore best practices in meeting today's top employee communication challenges, Information was collected from current literature, case studies, interviews with 22 best-in-class communicators on three continents, and a survey of IABC members from 472 organizations on four continents, Of the respondents, 40 percent work at the director level and 55 percent have been in the communication profession for more than 10 years, Based on this research, the four critical employee communication challenges that emerged were:

* Motivating employees to align with the business strategy--creating a line of sight between employees and the organizational strategy.

* Leadership and management communication--educating and engaging leaders and managers in their role in employee communication.

* Managing information overload--breaking through the communication clutter.

* Measuring the return on investment of internal communication--linking communication to business results.

Motivating employees to align with the business strategy was by far the most critical of the four major communication issues, with 63.3 percent of respondents ranking it No. 1 and 82.8 percent ranking it either No. 1 or No. 2. More than a third of respondents, 37.4 percent, believe that they handle this area effectively. However, the 25.9 percent difference between perceived importance and how effectively this area is being handled indicates significant room for improvement.

Through multiple regression analysis, the researchers identified four key drivers that help motivate employees to align with the business strategy:

* Ensure that employees clearly understand how they can help achieve the business strategy.

* Build employee commitment to the business strategy.

* Leverage technology that helps employees understand the business strategy.

* Establish trust between leaders/managers and employees.

THE PANELISTS

The IABC Research Foundation and Right Management went through a collaborative process to assemble the panel, which met earlier this year.

Moderator

Christine Gay, ABC, Right Management Consultants

Panel participants

Rob Hallam, vice president of communication, Pitney Bowes Inc.

Judith Jones, director, benefits communication and employee communication, The New York Times Company

Nancy Redmond, director, corporate and brand communications, Pepperidge Farm Inc.

John Santoro, executive director, leadership communication, Pfizer Inc

Ray Stevens, director, learning technology and communications, Staples Inc.

Trudy Wonder, senior director of HR communication and operations, Merck & Co. Inc.