Also speaking of results I am not interested in results such as awards for well designed intranet sites, number of visitors to portals, the number of people that turned up to a CEO presentation or later said it was good or the worse I have seen, asking staff to recall what the key points were in a presentation.

And the reason why is that none of the above can directly be linked to bringing about results in terms of business outcomes, all they will ever do is measure the quality of your information strategies not your communication strategies and the difference is huge.

A bit provocative – let me explain why.  Let’s suppose you are meeting with the CEO of your organisation, his concern is that the value he is looking for from change communication is that you have been able to connect with the audience, that you have been able to engage them, bring them to that “Aha” moment when they finally understand why things are changing and what they can do differently to contribute to this, the what is the easy stuff, it is information, it engages no one it simply informs them about what is changing.  Even if you write stories, post interview videos online all about the why as well as the what, unless you design strategies that can be measured by business impact not by readership then your change communication strategies will not produce exceptional results.

Here’s a simple example.

The Business Objective:

This hospital wanted to cut costs while at the same time ensuring that its patients were not adversely affected by the changes.  The hospital was also a major provider of healthcare in a small community, so it was essential that its reputation of high-quality care was not reduced.

The Method:

The hospital wanted to ensure that its personal care remained at the highest standard.  So they sought feedback through focus groups, telephone surveys and directly contacting the carers.  Three key attributes in patient care emerged as the main contributors to patient satisfaction.  The hospital staff concentrated on improving these three areas while simultaneously reducing costs. Cross-functional teams were then established with employees who volunteered to take part.  An employee with strong project management skills was selected to lead each team.  They then presented management with a list of options to improve the experience of the patients, with details of the costs and timeframes for implementation.  Agreement was reached on the changes and the senior management team ensured line managers were not barriers to the implementation.

The Outcome:

As a result of the changes implemented, patient satisfaction rose to 98%.  This significantly high score contributed to a great lift in employee morale and increased motivation despite the cost-cutting activities. Employees were directly involved in implementing the improvements, and a staff survey indicated greater levels of job satisfaction.

Now the usual change communication approach would have been a CEO forum where the head of the hospital would have explained to employees why they needed to cut costs, then updates would be provided via email and the intranet on changes, there would have been face to face communication between team leaders and staff on cost cutting – all of this would just have been information.  But by communicating and engaging the audience, both staff employed by the hospital and carers a change communication strategy was implemented that could be measured by achieving the business objectives.

In my manual, The Future of Employee Communication – 50 Case Studies of Excellence you will find more ideas on exceptional strategies you can implement that can be measured by business outcomes.

I look forward to reading your comments on strategies you have implemented and how they contributed to business results.

Today we’ll explore a few case studies that illustrate how this can be implemented regardless of your industry sector.

Healthcare Sector Case Study:

The Objective:

This hospital wanted to cut costs whilst at the same time ensuring that its patients were not adversely affected by the changes.  The hospital was also a major provider of healthcare in a small community, so it was essential that its reputation of high-quality care was not reduced.

The Method:

The hospital wanted to ensure that its personal care remained at the highest standard.  So they sought feedback through focus groups, telephone surveys and directly contacting the carers.  Three key attributes in patient care emerged as the main contributors to patient satisfaction.  The hospital staff concentrated on improving these three areas while simultaneously reducing costs. Cross-functional teams were then established with employees who volunteered to take part.  An employee with strong project management skills was selected to lead each team.  They then presented management with a list of options to improve the experience of the patients, with details of costings and timeframes for implementation.  Agreement was reached on the changes and the senior management team ensured line managers were not barriers to the implementation.

The Outcome:

As a result of the changes implemented, patient satisfaction rose to 98%.  This significantly high score contributed to a great lift to employee morale and increased motivation despite the cost-cutting activities. Employees were directly involved in implementing the improvements, and a staff survey indicated greater levels of job satisfaction.

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

STEP 1:

Identify whether your customer research can indicate top three factors that will have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction.

STEP 2:

Involve employees in the implementation of some of these changes.

STEP 3:

Measure customer satisfaction and communicate this to employees.  It will be an endorsement of their efforts and thus improve staff morale.

Media Sector Case Study:

The Objective:

This media organization was concerned that as it grew, the level of customer satisfaction varied considerably across the businesses.  The organisation wanted to dramatically improve its service levels and to become more customer-focused, but they also needed to involve employees in the process.

The Method:

The first aspect of the project was to survey employees in focus groups about what they thought the level of service was.  The survey highlighted interesting results:  most employees felt that red tape hindered customer satisfaction; half the employees commented that excellence in customer service was not recognized; and, a large number of employees felt that managers did not focus on customer satisfaction.   The focus group results highlighted the areas for improvement.  The first was putting together cross-functional teams to identify opportunities for eliminating red tape and improving customer satisfaction.  Then, the employees designed what they felt were appropriate reward and recognition for excellence in customer service.  And finally to address the issue of managers not being focussed on customer satisfaction they were integrated into the cross functional teams and had accountability for making them successful.  The approach was driven by the CEO and the executive management team.  It created a focus around customer satisfaction that permeated every aspect of the customer experience and was the main driver of the organization.

The Outcome:

Over 150 ideas on ways to enhance customer satisfaction were received from the cross-functional teams. Nearly all the suggestions were implemented, which reinforced the support the organization had for the project.  Continued focus on customer satisfaction reinforced it as the key driver in the organization’s culture.

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

STEP 1:

Conduct some focus groups and find out what employees think about customer satisfaction levels.

STEP 2:

Implement cross-functional teams for employees to address some of the issues raised in the focus groups.

STEP 3:

When designing a rewards and recognition programme, give employees the opportunity to indicate what would be a motivator for them.

Leadership communication is so much more than updating intranet sites, organising CEO forums, company blogs and sending out information via email.  The true value is in finding ways to engage employees by doing something differently and seeing the direct impact of the decisions and actions that they take at work.  For more case studies click here.

1. Implement team briefing.

Ensure that regular meetings take place with consistent messaging that incorporate change with business as usual activities. You can easily dovetail messages about the system changes and the reason why they are happening by connecting to the everyday business transformation that is going on.  By ensuring consistency in messages team briefing allows you to ensure the focus remains on change and most importantly the reason why.

2. Link to customer service feedback and measures.

There are some powerful ways of linking the customer experience to innovation and change at the workplace. Access to market research on the customer experience can be a great starting point for wider business as usual transformation.  The changes implemented are then measured for improvement in the customer research taken again six months later.

3. Connect with the wider business strategy.

What else is happening in the organisation, what is the bigger picture of what is changing and why and how will the system change enable some improvements in achievement of the organisation’s vision.   By always connecting to the why the rest of the story will fall into place and the momentum for change will continue because there is always something happening.

4. Identify what employees know about the changes.

Measure feedback via focus groups to find out what employees are actually saying about the changes, what they know, identify what they don’t and what they want to know.  You will only ever find this out by conducting the focus groups – questionnaires will not give you the answers you are seeking. Once you have this information it is easy to continue to plan your strategy to keep the momentum for change going.

5. Celebrate milestones.

It is important to keep reminding leaders as well as employees of the milestones in any change process and why they are significant.  By integrating the general changes in business as usual activities and the specific system changes, this constant recognition of progress will keep the focus on movement towards the desired business goals.

If you keep the focus on business as usual and integrate messages about change and the project’s achievements then all you need to do is a subtle shift in balance when you get into implementation phase after the quiet of the build phase of your Information Technology system change.  To have all the detailed information at your fingers tips on how to do this visit  http://www.marciaxenitelis.com/products.html and order all 3 products and save 10% on the purchase price.

With most topics we communicate it logically from the top – CEO down and we think that we’ve done a great job because everyone at the front line is understands how their roles connects with the organisation’s focus. And in most instances we have feedback loops to check whether the audience understands what we have communicated.

However I suggest that the real value in employee communication is the horizontal conversations that we often neglect. For more examples of what I mean by horizontal communication that demonstrates the enterprise wide story click here. This is what gives an enterprise life because the focus in how the sum of each contributes to the whole.

Instead of focussing on silos by division everyone starts to focus on the enterprise as a whole. Here’s an example of what I mean in this case study from the motor industry.

The objective

This organization decided to use videoconferencing to reach five of its major corporate offices. The objective behind the selection of this media was threefold.

Firstly, the company was introducing a new vehicle line, and wanted to spread the news on how excited the employees were about it to their dealer network. Although they could have chosen a newsletter or DVD to get this message across, it would not have been as credible as this choice. One of the main target audiences was a 400-strong dealer network, and the organization wanted them to see first-hand how enthusiastic the 400 employees at the business headquarters were about this new line.

The Method:

So an interactive link was established between these two groups. The opportunity was there for conversation and direct answers to any questions the dealers might want to put forward. Another key factor to the success of this approach was the installation of television monitors at the organizations’ other four regional offices, which enabled 400 more employees to be included in the dealer meeting for the first time. Although they were not able to communicate with the other two groups, they were able to experience the essence of the company and how it sells its product.

This was the first time the employees had the opportunity to be a part of the organization’s “big picture.” Another reason for having the employees present was for them to hear the senior management’s speeches from their location. Therefore, the benefits of this operation were threefold: the dealers were able to feel and hear the employees’ enthusiasm for the new vehicle; the employees were able to see how the company communicated with its dealership to obtain maximum sales; and, the employees and dealers were able to hear the speeches of senior management.

The Outcome:

This approach is as example of a communication approach for companies that want to communicate the enterprise wide story and connect the dots for their audience. By demonstrating to employees the “other side” of the business, specifically marketing and distribution, all the elements that make this organization successful are clearly outlined.

No matter what size organisation the concept on communicating horizontally and not just vertically will make a significant impact on your organisations’ goals and achievements of the company vision. More examples of how many other sectors have implemented enterprise wide communication click here.

So here are a few examples of what I mean.  Let’s say as part of the change process you decide to undertake a stakeholder analysis.  There are two ways of managing this, the first is to get a template and circulate it via email and ask managers to complete it.  If they have filled out the form they will let you know who the stakeholders are, what their issues are likely to be, how they recommend they are communicated with and how frequently.  Another way of doing a stakeholder analysis is to use the same template but this time with the leadership group in the room facilitate a session where they have to discuss and reach agreement on all of the issues.  This is definitely going to create a more robust conversation and sense of ownership.  After the session as part of the signoff process you distribute the outcomes of the session via email and ask the leadership team to confirm via email that they are happy with the content of the stakeholder analysis. Both of these actions create a sense of ownership and responsibility that you would not have had if you used the first approach and just circulated the stakeholder analysis template via email or completed it by having brief one on one discussions.

Another part of the change process for any project is around risks and issues.  It would be easy for any change manager to sit down and complete on their own or with the HR manager the people risks and issues during any change process.  However you want the leadership team to own the people risks and issues, and even before this step to understand that there are risks and issues regarding employees and they should identify what they might be and what mitigation strategies they suggest.  And then after all of this they assign various members of their leadership team to have accountability to deal with the risk should it escalate as an issue.  So again if you facilitate a session with the leadership team to complete the risks and issues template you are creating another paradigm shift in thinking about their accountability for the change process to be successful.

And this is the difference, it is subtle but the results are significant. You will never achieve engagement with the leadership team for owning the people issues around change if you do all the work for them.  You need to get them thinking, talking, discussing, arguing and finally owning the people issues regarding change if you are going to have any level of real success.

As always I am interested in your comments and feedback about the approaches you have found worked in engaging leaders to own the change process in your organisation.

So the question with strategy is how do you communicate it so that it is a message that employees truly understand and feel engaged with, rather than yet another corporate communiqué with little  connection with anyone other than the person who thinks the message should go out.

In my experience, strategy is only communicated successfully when it is integrated with the way we do business at every level.  So what I mean by this is that you should not talk about strategy as if it is something happening over there, but rather integrate it with all your other communication and processes so that it becomes integrated with everything else we do at work.  Whether I am a member of the senior executive team, a supervisor or frontline staff member it is critically important to ensure that strategy is communicated so that each level understands how it relates to the everyday work that they do and therefore how they can contribute to it.

Think in terms of layers, there are many ways of communicating and integrating strategy within your organisation’s everyday processes.  Here are a few ideas that are easy to implement:

1.       Identify how can you integrate the message about your organisation’s strategy and achievements to date in the communication that is distributed by human resources, finance, marketing and operations?  You might consider performance measures linked to strategic outcomes (HR), financial business performance by business unit and state location (financial), marketing campaigns and response rates (marketing) and operational issues.

2.       Consider the key milestones achieved to date with the strategy and at regular team meetings discuss how the next milestones will be achieved based on team performance and contribution to the bigger organisational picture.

3.       Whenever you are communicating the strategy ensure that it is linked to the organisation’s vision and mission – think of it as “connecting the dots” don’t assume employees, even your leaders understand how it all links together. And more importantly always think how to make it relevant to the work people do every day.

If you think of strategy as yet another input into your leadership communication then constantly seek information on updates and achievements and how that can be contextualised in a message about the work employees do every day.

Senior management provide direction for the strategy, ensure that appropriate resources both people and dollars are available, are focussed and directly involved and aware of all the issues and risks of the project and most importantly provide updates and direction on an ongoing basis.  The role of the change manager is to support this by ensuring that all the other issues that could derail the project are dealt with so that the senior leadership do not back track on the strategy.

Finally to maintain commitment to change all projects needs to be integrated into the longer term strategy and vision of the organisation and for all employees from frontline to senior leadership to understand how the project and their role contributes to the overall vision.  Change is only successful when it is seamlessly integrated into the way the organisation operates, not as an appendage to the organisation.

Firstly it is important to note that by simply communicating information about change this will not change behaviour.  Secondly not everyone will come with you early on in the journey. Typically the ratio is 20% that are early adapters to change, 40%  indifferent and 40% had already decided before you even announced the change that they would not participate.

Finally process changes behaviour without a change in process no behavioural change will occur.  So by using this information how I would approach this?

 1.Identify the early adapters the 20% and ultise their support by engaging and involving them in your change process.  By leading by example and applying peer pressures and a bit of rivalry due to achievements it is a good way to start.  However this only works if the outcomes are meaningful to the other members of the team that you are aiming to bring on board.

 2.As part of your communications program ask the early adapters to be your spokespeople on the changes and to address any concerns or peers that the other managers have.  You might also ask that they participate in workshops with the next group in working on the changes – this moves the communication from information to engagement.

 3. And thirdly put in place a process to change behaviour.  So in this instance you might initiate a buddy system and regular reporting of the new group to ensure that the work is being done and the changes implemented.  If employees are required to do something different this new behaviour soon becomes a habit and the new way of doing things, so if you are introducing new values you might require each team leader to work through a different value at each team meeting and ask them to come up with what their team can do to bring that value to life.  This information would then be noted and then measured to see how effective it is.

Getting traction with change is difficult because it is about changing people’s behaviours.  Recognising the above 3 points will go some way to making your change initiatives a success. However there are two important things to remember to change behaviour and mindsets.  The first is that process changes behaviour, not information about what is happening so make sure that all your engagement efforts include a process to reinforce the change.  And secondly recognise that not everyone will come with you on the journey of change, segmenting employees into early adapters, the indifferent group and those that have already decided not to participate gives you structure to your engagement process.  The goal is to focus on the early adapters, utilise their support to engage those in the indifferent category and then focus on moving some of those in the group that have already decided not to participate to join the change process.

 There is only one question that you need ask yourself to find out whether your leadership communication strategies are going to engage employees, rather than simply inform. That question is: Can you establish whether the tools and methods you are using for leaders to communicate with employees are changing attitudes and behavior or providing information?

 Employee engagement is a shared understanding of the issues that affect the business, and that understanding leads to changes in employees’  attitudes and behaviors. Unless employees truly understand the issues and make a meaningful connection between their jobs and those issues, their attitudes and behaviors will not change. To achieve engagement, three things have to happen: The business issue has to mean something to the employee personally, the employee has to understand the issue (and I mean truly understand it, not just read about why it is an issue), and most important, each employee must be made to feel a part of the change process.

 As communicators, we have the opportunity to become creative in how we communicate and engage employees. The ultimate aim in leadership communication has to be to create the “Aha!” moment. This is the moment when employees have the necessary information and can say, “Now it makes sense,”  “Now I understand, ” “Now I can do something about it.”

Tools are important in this process but generally they just communicate information. What we need to strive for are creative communication methods to engage employees in the process of change.

 There are five steps for identifying what the “Aha” moment is and they include the following:

1.  Focus group research. Ask employees about their thoughts on the organization and its competitors.
2. Identify the largest gap between what customers think and what employees think customers think.
3. What would create a paradigm shift in employee’s thinking?
4. Can you measure the impact of the change in thinking?
5. How significant is it to achieving the business objectives?

 So let’s look at an example that would be familiar to communicators: the annual report announcement. Typically an online annual report would be made available to employees via the intranet. Some employees read it, but most tend to scroll down to the last pages to check the annual salaries of the senior executive staff and then close the document.

 Let’s imagine that the results in this annual report are very poor and the CEO is determined that employees understand the issues surrounding the poor results and become fully engaged to help turn the company around. Here’s how the organization accomplished this.

The company held four brown bag lunch meetings over four weeks—where employees could attend for free for one hour and hear from an outside professional about how to invest in the share market. Importantly, there was no obvious link between the meeting topic and the organization the employees worked for. At week three, they were analyzing annual reports and generally deciding whether they would invest in a particular company based on the information contained in the report. By the fourth week they were given another annual report and asked the same question, “would you invest in this company?” The answer was overwhelmingly no. And of course this last company was the one they all worked for, which brought them to the “Aha!” moment. Now the organization’s employees understood and were engaged and ready to become involved in turning the company around through teamwork and new initiatives.

 Here are some steps you can follow to ensure that you can come up with creative ways to communicate with employees and engage them in the process of change.

 To challenge beliefs that your employees have about your organization, you need to have facts. The marketing department is an excellent source of facts about the business, with research on brand image, customer satisfaction, customer and non- customer views on competitors and information about market segments. Each of these areas provide valuable information on opportunities to link employees with business issues that can be measured. For example, the organization should have facts about how customers feel about the service provided by the organization’s call centre. Employees will also have an opinion about how the believe customers perceive their service. By taking the results of the customer feedback and presenting it to staff this often creates an “Aha moment” because customer feedback is typically better than what employees anticipate. Once you have shared this information, the objective is to then explore ways that employees can become engaged in further improving that customer feedback. Focus groups are another excellent way to find out what employees think about different aspects of these areas and how their beliefs can be challenged as you need to help them better understand the issues that affect the business.

 Key sources of business data are customer experience data, business results by product or service stream, competitor customer feedback, and measures of the attributes of your brand. These are sources of data that you can use as a measure of improvement as a result of your employee engagement strategy.

 When selecting business outcomes as a measure for your employee communication strategy, you need to be quite certain that the strategy you implement can actually affect the business outcomes you have decided to focus on.

 Finally, when it comes to any employee engagement strategy, whether it be total transformation of a business or improvement in one aspect, you can rarely go it alone.  Partnering with other areas of your organization including marketing and human resources will ensure that the optimum outcome is achieved for your organization.

Let’s start with reviewing how most organizations manage technology based change.  If your organization’s approach to this type of change is new skills training and employee communication strategies that include stakeholder management (translated briefings), intranet and email updates then that’s not managing change, rather it is focussed on information. So what is the difference and why do we need to do anything more than provide information?

IT systems are not introduced for the sake of a new system itself, they are introduced because there are benefits to be realised from a business management perspective. This may include more information on customer profiles and identifying other products or services clients may be interested in purchasing, the changes might focus on back office systems such as greater information for human resources management or accounting or they may focus on the supply chain and logistics. Whatever the reason there is a business reason for change and this is what employees need to understand if the full benefits of any system implementation is going to be realised.

Let’s look at an example. This financial services organization was introducing a new back office system. In the past employees worked in separate divisions so customers were transferred from one area to another to process their request. The new system meant that all of the customer details were now available to employees and that they would now work in teams and “own” the customer from the commencement to end of transaction. It was a complete system and work style change so before specific system training was introduced a simulated work area was established and employees were taken through the customer experience. It was important that they understood the benefits to the customer by looking at the changes through the eyes of the customer. This way we created the “Aha” moment, employees got the message better than any intranet, information session or email bulletin could have conveyed it. And when employees went into system training they clearly understood the benefits and business reasons behind the changes.

The five key things to remember when communicating technology changes.

1.    Be very clear about the business reasons for the changes – who will benefit and what will those benefits be?

2.    Establish why those benefits are important?  What will the impact be on the organization?

3.    Decide the key messages for your information strategy – what will you need to communicate, to whom and when?

4.    Concurrently design an engagement strategy at key points in your project plan that will engage employees at all levels in the reason for the technology changes.

5.    Remember to ensure engagement the message is not about the system itself but about the business reasons for the changes.

Finally, as change management professionals can we take the same approach to managing system changes and apply it to every new organization? The answer is clearly no because as every organization’s culture is different, so it follows that every approach to change management and employee communication must be different to maximise the investment and potential of the system changes that are implemented.

For more information and examples of case studies visit www.thefutureofemployeecommunication.com