Talk Internal Communication

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...

When a top team fails to function, it can paralyze a whole company. the stakes get higher with senior-executive teams: dysfunctional ones can slow down, derail, or even paralyze a whole company. This article by McKinsey outlines what CEOs need to watch out for.  http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Three_steps_to_building_a_better_top_team_2743