Talk Internal Communication

What a great honour to be asked to give a keynote address at the Public Relations Institute of Ireland's Annual Conference held on Thursday 20th October in the Ballsbridge Hotel, Dublin. Fantastic to hear great case studies and examples of best practice from colleagues across the industry. Laoise O'Murchu, Keynote Address: Leading from within: the secret to business communication. If you would like to get a flavour of the event and the atmosphere on the day watch the video below.

I had the honour of presenting at the World Conference of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) in New York last week. The theme of my session was 'How to change behaviors, attitudes and outcomes'. More specifically, it outlined how the key to behaviour change lies in understanding that people are 80 percent emotional and 20 percent rational. My session demonstrated how to drive performance and change behavior by connecting with employees on an emotional level. It outlined how to make employees feel good about themselves, and how to transform their thinking and attitudes. Here is the connection to the presentation for those of you who have requested a copy. Dr Laoise O' Murchu, PhD, presentation at IABC World Conference, New York, 2013 Thank you to IABC for inviting me to present. It was a privilege to speak along side such high profile speakers as former Marvel CEO, Peter Cuneo, Edelman PR’s Richard Edelman, Duarte Inc.’s Nancy Duarte,...

www. flick r .com Go to iabcireland's photostream As President of IABC Ireland I was delighted with the success of our recent event on best practices in social media, employee engagement and measurement held in April 2013. Thanks to the IABC event co-ordinators (Keith Hoare, Maxime Sattonnay, Marykate Collins and Catherine Lowe). Author of a leading book on employee engagement and measurement Susan Walker was joined by the digital communication strategy manager for the Council of the European Union Aurelie Valtat. Check out the photos which will give you a flavour of the event.

What happens when two leading communication experts invite you to an event designed for PR pros, corporate communicators, social media strategists and employee engagement execs? YOU PROFIT! The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Ireland and event partner Diageo have invited two leaders in the communications industry to teach an event in Dublin emphasizing best practices in social media, employee engagement and measurement.  Author of a leading book on employee engagement and measurement Susan Walker is joine d by  the digital communication strategy Manager of the Council of the European Union to present at this seminar. Event Details Date:  Friday 5 th  April, 2013 Time:  6pm-8pm  (Refreshments served 5.15 - 5.45pm) Venue: The Master Brewer Suite, “The Guinness Storehouse”, St. James’s Gate Booking:   http://iabcireland. eventbrite.ie .  If you are a manager wo...

This video by INVOLVE is based on statistics from the Harvard Business Review. It  summaries the importance of employee engagement and the impact it has on an organisation's bottom line.  I like it. 

Inspired by Suzanne Salvo at the EMELI European Leadership Institute in Paris recently I took this photo before returning home. Suzanne a multi-award winning photographer believes that quantity has won out over quality when it comes to photography and video production. She explained that, 'any image that can be had cheap and that vaguely resembles the who, what or why of a story - no matter how badly exposed, haphazardly composed, no matter how poorly lit - is being published.'  After showing us a sample of these 'poor' photos (many of which looked uncomfortably familiar to me) she provided us all with some useful tips on achieving more interesting photos.  Look at your subject from a more interesting perspective  Tell a story with your photos Inspired but not confident, I decided to start with inanimate objects in my quest to take more interesting photos! I'll let you know how I get on when I progress to humans.  Suzanne and her husband ...

I am delighted to be able to give you details about a text book on internal communications to which I have contributed, entitled Exploring Internal Communication. Chapter 5 entitled 'Auditing internal communication: four quadrants of internal communication success', is based on my PhD research and provides readers with a powerful tool to measure and improve internal communication quality. The tool helps build successful communication in a business. Edited by Kevin Ruck the book is both a companion for UK's Chartered Institute of Public Relations qualifications in internal communication and a general introduction to the fast developing fields of internal communication and employee engagement. It is relevant to people currently working in these areas, from either a corporate communication or human resources background, and also to operational managers seeking a better understanding of internal communication. The book is available on amazon.co.uk at  Exploring Internal Co...

Remember Gallup’s landmark research on the drivers of organizational success. Two of the twelve most powerful drivers were: My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person. At work, my opinions seem to count. Caring about what your employees have to say has a huge bottom line impact. Successful communication in a business a essential key to delivering bottom line results.  However, a word of warning, you must take action on the feedback you receive. People often ask me, do employees not get tired of being asked for their opinion and their feedback? The answer is no, not if their views are listened to and acted upon. If action is taken, asking for employee feedback is the easiest way of building employee engagement and morale.  Here's an interesting article from David Lee on this very topic  http://www.humannatureatwork.com/articles/employee_morale/Employee-Feedback.htm

I really liked this article I read recently by Paul Hebert from Bloomberg. The recession is no time to worry about employee engagement. Sure, go ahead and worry about employee engagement. After all, you’re in this fix because of a lack of engagement, right? The lack of sales, lack of new product and service innovation, and the high cost to build, produce, sell, and service are all engagement issues. If only you had engaged employees, all those problems would disappear. “Damn those employees. They should be engaged, and they’re not. We have to engage our employees to survive (cue dramatic fist pound on mahogany table in senior executive conference room.)” Everyone is focusing on the employee engagement problem. But in reality, now is not the time to worry about finding ways to engage employees. Now is the time to be reflective and address the real issues in business today. Let’s take a cue from the late Michael Jackson: I’m starting with the man in the mirror I’m asking hi...

Employee’s emotions and motivation change on a daily basis but according to recent Harvard research there is one tool that motivates employees more than anything else. Can you guess what it is? It’s not clear goals, it’s not incentives, it’s not even recognition for good work. According to lead researcher, Teresa Amible the biggest improvement in motivation will be seen if you focus first on helping your employees make progress. The researchers have named this phenomenon the progress principle and the implications of it for managers are laid out in the book The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work . The research, which took over ten years to complete, explains that while recognition and providing financial incentives for a job well done are still important, there are two questions above all else that help managers motivate their employees. The questions are: “What can I do to help my team make progress in their work today?” “What is g...

I read recently that many leading companies are printing employee communications on the office toilet paper! Thankfully that was a joke. However, it is a fact that more and more organisations are using the company restroom as an opportunity to communicate with employees. In an article entitled  ‘It's okay to 'stall' employees’ Employee Benefit News outlines how  you can boost communication by capturing employees attention while they are taking a break. They rationalise that i n most American homes, the bathroom is the library so it is logical that companies should use their restroom facilities to provide company reading material Among their suggestions to effectively use the restrooms for communication are: 1. Post communications at eye level for those seated in the stall. 2. Keep the in-stall info sheets to a single page. 3. Include images, since people are more likely to pay attention to messages with pictures. 4. Change the materials every two wee...

Motivated and engaged employees lead to improved results and higher levels of performance. However, many organisations struggle with engagement and many managers feel pressure to be the motivators of their teams. Many organisations would like some assistance in this area. This is why the Harvard Business Review article “How Customers Can Rally Your Troops” caught my attention. The article describes how a five-minute meeting motivated university fundraisers to increase their weekly productivity by 400% and how a photograph drove radiologists to improve the accuracy of their diagnostic findings by 46%. The interesting element in the article is that it wasn’t managers who motivated employees but customers. The article outlines the growing body of research which shows that end users—customers, clients, patients, and others who benefit from a company’s products and services—are surprisingly effective in motivating people to work harder, smarter, and more productively. The article prov...

No-frills employee focus groups can sometimes be the best way to get employee feedback. Below are five tips to help ensure you get the most out of your focus groups. 1. Keep it intimate. Invite only 10 to 12 participants to the session. The more people you have in a room, the easier it is for some of the more reserved participants to withdraw and keep quiet. If you have a smaller group, they will feel more a part of the discussion. 2. Mix it up. Work to have as departmentally diverse a representation as possible, depending on the topic. You want to get input from different workgroups in the organisation. 3. Set ground rules. The purpose of the roundtable is to gather input on a chosen topic. At the outset, let participants know that what they say is confidential, that you are there to listen, capture feedback and report on general comments. 4. Stay on track. Try to keep the session to one topic if you can. 5. Keep it short. Keep your focus groups to about 45-minutes. In my ex...

I was lucky to present at Bledcom in Slovenia, an International Public Relations Symposium that has been organized over the past 17 years to provide a venue for public relations scholars and practitioners from around the world to exchange ideas and perspectives about public relations in all its forms. This year the focus is on Internal Communication. It was a great conference and the debt of knowledge presented at the event shows how seriously internal communicaiton is now being taken. My paper, “Internal communicators who fail to talk the facts and figures of the corporate suite" was the first time I presented the main findings of my PhD research. Here is the abstract to my paper: Abstract Business leaders and internal communication managers inherently understand that effective internal communication is a business imperative. It builds staff morale, motivation and engagement. It also builds a healthy organisational culture and helps facilitate change, all of which delive...

I read an interesting article on insidedge recently and I really liked the analogy of employee communication being similar to selling a used car to a family member. If you don’t tell the truth, he or she will find out sooner or later that the roof leaks or the brakes stick; whatever might be wrong, or right, will always come out.  So, you have to tell the whole truth before you ask them to buy, because they won’t be going anywhere. They’ll be around for holidays, and they definitely know where you live. Full article here. 

Your next Town Hall meeting is marked in your CEO’s calendar – that in itself may be an accomplishment – but how to you make the town hall exciting. How to you get employees to leave their desks, come to the venue and engage in the session? Getting employees to actually want to attend is the role of manager’s throughout the organisation but you as communicator can help. Here’s are some tips: Plan ahead. Start planning about 4-5 weeks before a quarterly meeting. Identify front-line and middle managers who are opinion leaders and can act as communication champions. These managers are key to encouraging employees attendance. Outline the purpose of the meeting. Define the purpose for the upcoming meeting and set a participation goal – no less than 90 percent. Write a personalised email from the CEO to the identified managers about the purpose of the meeting. Canvas staff opinion. Canvas staff for key topics that staff would like covered at the town hall meeting. This ensures tha...

The Harvard Business School has proven the effectiveness of storytelling  to communicate even the most complex issues. But how do we create an effective story. This interview with McKinsey provides some valuable insights.  Good stories have three components: a strong beginning, a strong end, and a point of tension. Most people confuse stories with situations. They’ll tell about a situation:  X happened,  Y  happened,  Z  happened. But a good story takes  Y , the middle part of the story, and creates tension or conflict where the reader or the audience is drawn into the story, what’s going to happen next. Treating stories as assets is an underrealized idea right now. Stories serve as glue to unify communities. Stories spread from employee to employee, from consumer to consumer, and, in some cases, from employee to consumer or consumer to employee. Stories are much more memorable than statistics or simple anecdotes and are a mechanism that allows co...

Research by Angela D. Sinickas, demonstrates that front line supervisors are not always the preferred source of communication within an organisation. The preferred source for receiving communication changes depending on the information to be communicated. Sinickas outlines that a soundly designed communication audit should ask: Which source of communication is currently your primary source of company information on X? Which source of communication is your preferred primary source of information on Y? The X and Y should include but is not limited to company objectives? Department goals? Quality improvement? Benefits? Safety? Company financial situation? Reasons behind decisions? New products or services? What the competition is doing? News from other locations and departments? People changes and recognition? Other subjects that are important only at your own company? When the questions are asked individually by subject the choices of preferred methods of communication...

Do you feel you need some help listening to everything that is being said in the social media space about your company or clients? Do you feel a little at sea? This article might be exactly what you are looking for it details many the major monitoring companies, the services they provide and how much they cost. I very good read if you are thinking of moving into this space. http://www.socialmedia.biz/2011/01/12/top-20-social-media-monitoring-vendors-for-business/

Even if you have a brilliant new business strategy or communications strategy it is not likely to succeed unless your senior management and your organisation's employees buy into the idea. But with so much information coming at people in the workplace, how do you engage employees with a new proposal? In the information overloaded society in which we operate this is a very valid question. Leadership guru John P Kotter certainly has a novel approach to getting employees attention. Kotter's new book, Buy-In (Harvard Business Press), promotes encouraging employees to criticise your plans. This certainly seems a strange way to get buy in but Kotter argues that it can be a valuable way to get employees to engage with you. In his book he also explains how to deal with this criticism when it comes and how this can build engagement lead to successful implementation. criticism