1. Employees look towards their leaders for direction – if they are not interested no amount of leadership communication efforts will change that
2. You need to change process to change behaviour – unless you put in place systems and processes which force the behaviours of leaders to change, any attempt at change management will fail
3. What gets measured gets done – clearly if the systems are focussed on something other than the focus of your engagement strategy there is no incentive for the leadership team to change

What makes transformational leaders different?

We should all remember that change is hard, and it is scary for individuals, no matter what level of leadership.  The other point is that just because someone has made it to a leadership role that does not mean that they have the skills to engage their teams.  People generally learn from role models and whilst technically people might be brilliant at their role and achieve outstanding results they may not bring out the best in their teams.

Here a few ideas of how process can change behaviour and therefore achieve employee engagement at all levels:

1. Focus on the leadership team and put in place a process for them to engage their teams. In one organisation the leadership team was unsupported of a new software system that was going to be introduced, and all communication with staff was left to the IT area.  By making one simple change and requiring the business leaders to find out how the system will work and impact on their area they have the confidence to speak about it.  Then put in place a simple format and support them in designing a brief presentation on the system to their teams.  Like a sports team, one win and momentum and enthusiasm increases but you need to make sure that they feel “safe” about taking this step and don’t set them up to fail.
2. Build on this momentum by identifying business decisions that need to be made and hold the leadership team accountable.  Bottom line is that once they feel that they have ownership they will be more comfortable and confident talking about changes.  By letting all team members know what is happening, the focus the leadership team has on the changes and the decisions they are focussing on requires the leadership team to come on board.
3. Open communication channels so that team members feel confident to ask questions about changes and make sure you provide real answers.  So again put in place a new process whether this is a dedicated email address, formalised team briefing  process or regular change updates.  Most importantly it is not only two way communication but across communication talking with their peers and conveying the merits of change.

Without change in process there is no formalised reason why behaviours will or should change.  The only way employee engagement at all levels will be achieved is when something in the way they reach decisions, do their work or are measured changes and requires them to behave differently.  Leadership communication on its’ own will not achieve the level of employee engagement that brings about sustainable change.

why is it then that there is such a high turnover of management staff?  One always assumes that these are skills that are inherent, however for most people they need to be taught how to use these skills in the workplace.  Sometimes it gets too hard and with the complexities of everyday life some people choose a role where they must be responsible in their job but not necessary responsible for leading a team.  There are leaders and there are managers and both are important in all organizations.

Do you have examples where this is true at your place of work?  Why do you think there is such a high turnover in Management roles?

leadership styles

o The competencies for being effective at both are the same

o Though they differ, both competencies share a requisite focus on power and goal achievement.

o The competencies necessary to increase leadership capabilities are an expansion of those required for interpersonal and conflict management effectiveness.

o The competencies necessary for interpersonal and conflict management have a requisite awareness of political issues that competencies for increasing leadership capabilities do not.

The key here it to examine customer satisfaction feedback and determine exactly which attributes customers value the most – for the banking sector fro instance it may well be convenience, friendly and helpful employees and ambiance of the branch.  If this is the case then the focus is on how to think outside the square and offer convenience in banking over and above what competitors do, which may not be about hours but might be about location. Similarly with friendly and helpful employees – how well do you staff understand what the customer experience is like, have they tested it as a customer?  And with regard to ambiance, are employees encouraged to become involved in design and facilities and comment on those little things that they have noticed would improve the customer experience?

It goes without saying that if you want to create a service culture you need to engage employees in the design of that culture.  So how can you do this for the least cost but highest impact? One way is to form teams across divisions and levels, communities of interest that come up with innovative suggestions for improvements. Tap into employees’ collective knowledge about the customer experience, what they have noticed, what customers have complained about to them, some of the best research is not the survey that researches customer satisfaction but the comments made to employees during their actual encounters with the organization.  If you take this information, divide it up into segments, pilot, evaluate and implement and then reward employees for their contribution you are well on the way to creating a culture focussed on service and not just focussed on turning up to work and not contributing.

An organizational culture will only change when you set up systemic practices that support the change. So you need to ensure the following is in place for to achieve optimum outcomes:

1.   That managers and team leaders have specific accountabilities in encouraging new ideas from their teams and understand the concept of communities.

2.   That a process is developed on how to decide which ideas to improve the customer experience can be implemented as a pilot.

3.   The evaluation process is determined against business results and that successful ideas ARE implemented.

4.   Employees are rewarded for those innovative ideas that customers truly value - the reward system may not be about money – it might be about dinner with the Executive team – therefore again reinforcing the culture of having access to people who make the final decisions and that innovation in customer service is valued.

5.   Finally the communication strategy needs to focus on the success of the program and continually reinforce the positive impact on the customer experience and business outcomes.

So, something to think about, how are your strategies in employee engagement and change management encouraging employees to make a positive impact on the customer experience and create a service culture?

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

What is needed is structure and process and team briefing which is a formal communication cascading process via management is a tool that perfectly fits the bill. It has three levels of cascading messages:

1.    The first is the CEO who at his executive team briefings decides which topics for that week he wants communicated to employees.

2.    This is then circulated out to his direct reports who then have to communicate those issues and decide the top 5 issues for their respective divisions and then finally the top 5 issues for their teams.

3.    So the only aspect of a team brief that changes is the last section which is how what is happening in the company and our division relates to the work we are doing in our team. This is the section that always changes depending on your team in the division.

The reason this works is simple.  The only aspect a manager has to think about is what is happening in the organization that will effect his team that week or month depending on the frequency of the team briefing process.  The rest of the information is already determined by the divisional head and the CEO.  The team brief should only take around 15 minutes so it can be incorporated into a regular team meeting.  And most importantly it is constant as the CEO has his Executive team meeting dates set for the entire year and this ensures that everyone from the Executive team to the frontline know what is happening in the organization.

The key factor to the success of team briefings is that they are driven by the CEO.  Whenever your CEO talks with managers and employees he should ask whether they had in fact attended a team briefing and how regularly they occured.This way if they are not he can say to his direct reports, “I am conducting my team brief with you now so there is no excuse for you not to do the same with your team members”.

So these are the keys to making Team Briefings work.

1. Make sure that you put in place a simple process
2. Make sure that the CEO drives it and that his direct reports understand the importance to the CEO – not you. Afterall you are not their boss, he is.
3. Ensure that the topics are the type of content that management are comfortable and knowledgeable about
4. Provide a feedback loop, again this is part of the process, if there is a question that management do not know the answer to, there must be a formal easy process for them to follow to quickly obtain the answer and respond to the employee.
5. Team briefings should only take 15 minutes, they can also be incorporated into regular weekly meetings.

When it comes to cascading information in a face to face format via management remember that as with anything, there will be some topics that employees want to hear directly from the CEO and other topics they are happy to hear from their manager. Generally when it comes to significant issues such as retrenchments, closure of offices and mergers or acquisitions employees generally want to hear this from the person at the top. Day to day, week by week and month by month operational issues they are comfortable in hearing from their manager who manages their daily work.

For more information on our team briefing kit and how team briefing works visit www.teambriefingkit.com

So here is an example of how managers and supervisors can still have accountability for specific messages and at the same time utilize your CEO as a key communicator during times of change . 

 During another “bad” economic time, during which the organization had 9 new competitors during one year the following strategy was implemented. 

 1.            Firstly it was arranged that the CEO would meet with each of the state managers of the business divisions in each state individually. The win for the CEO was to hear first hand how business was in each business division in each state and to meet with key clients at the same time.

 2.            He explained honestly to each State Manager the reality of the situation with the business and why he had to rely on them. 

 3.            He gave them specific actions of what he wanted from them and they in return delivered and stepped up and managed in some instances the total closure of state offices in true leadership style. 

 4.            We then held “Business Reality” workshops for one day in each state which all managers and supervisors attended.  The CEO was present at each and shared with them real business data and the issues facing the organization and asked for their input in coming up with options and innovative ideas to grow the business.

 5.            These ideas were then considered by the Executive team and the best were implemented in each business division and state.

 6.            The supervisors and managers now had something to share with their teams – specific action plans for their division.  And more importantly the key issues that the CEO had asked them to focus on.

The outcome was that despite going through extensive downsizing, restructures and everyone having to reapply for new roles, the business grew by 25% in that year.  Obviously the strategy was much more detailed than outlined above, but the purpose of this article is share why I think managers and supervisors are not the best face to face communicators during times of change and why the CEO has to take an active role in transforming the organization.

Let’s deal with inspiring confidence and innovation in your organization.  Well this boils down to a change management strategy that focuses on getting employees actively involved at all levels in understanding the business and how their ideas can have a positive impact.  Here’s an example of what you could do. 

1. Take real business data and share it with groups of employees at all levels that deal with customers in specific sectors. 
2. Ask employees for ideas on improving or innovating just one aspect of your service offering or product line and test in a specific market segment on a small scale, say a sales territory or state. 
3. Then after testing those ideas for a six week period ask employees to examine the business results. 
4. Take those ideas that have shown a substantial improvement in sales and implement either state wide or nationally depending on your organization. 
5. Design a reward and recognition program around the impact of these ideas on the business outcomes and start to energise your workforce. 

 It really is that simple, treat employees with respect, stop telling them what to do instead listen to what they have to say, put some rigor around the framework for ideas and reward outstanding results.  This is how innovation happens and how you can energize an organization to respond quickly to changing market conditions. 

Another key is to ensure that whatever the management strategy you implement it has specific activities and responsibilities for management. Often we forget that managers are just as concerned during tough times about their job security, but their team members are looking at them for direction and support.  So when we design change strategies ensure that there are key responsibilities and clearly defined activities for all levels of the organization.  So practically what does this mean with our example above?  Well you would design specific activities such as;

1.            Leaders would identify the real business data and share it with their teams

2.            Leaders would be responsible for selecting which ideas would be selected for testing in a specific market and they would decide which test market

3.            Leaders would obtain the business results at the end of the six week test period and organise briefings with their teams

4.            The hierarchy of managers would then decide which tests produced the best result and decide which to implement and project plan that implementation

5.            Together with human resources the management team would decide on a reward and recognition program and share it with their teams.

So what about employee engagement surveys?  I say save your organization the tens of thousands of dollars they cost and invest your time in a well thought out change management strategy like that outlined above.  This will ensure a climate where communication is open, ideas are valued and actions are implemented.  All these steps are indicative of a workforce that is focussed, has purpose and feels a greater level of confidence about the future of their organization and therefore their role because they are actively involved in designing the future, not being told what do and when to do it.  If you just change the paradigm from budget cuts, budget cuts and budget cuts to opportunities, growth and involvement your organization’s business results will be your barometer of employee engagement, no survey required.

Information is important and provides the support that employees need to find out what is happening.  Think of it this way. Smokers buy a packet of cigarettes, the health warnings are featured on the packet and yet we see intelligent, literate people continue to smoke, packet after packet. The only time they truly become engaged in changing their attitude toward smoking and therefore behaviour is when they are in the doctors office and are personally facing a health risk. And then Aha! they finally get it.

So how do we use this analogy when we are tying to communicate change? Let’s look at this example.

An organization wants to communicate the financial results to employees and the usual approach is to post the employee annual report on the intranet. But this time they need to do something different, they want employees to understand why the company needs to improve and what shareholders base their decisions on. So they decided to run free lunchtime information sessions for their employees on how to invest in the share market and held them for one hour each week for four weeks. The topics progressed from understanding the share market, categories of companies listed etc till the final week they examined annual reports. So in this final session they were reviewing annual reports and came to the last one for the session and after reading through the data the question was asked of employees, so who would invest in this company, few put their hands up. And you guessed it, the company was their company and with a collective Aha! the employees finally got the message.

As in this instance, a large transformation program including HR, training and operational initiatives was developed to build on this.

So here is the important message for any change program.  Information is important, employees need to know what is happening, when, why, who, what and by whom.  However, equally as important when it comes to organizational change, employees need to be involved in the process to be truly engaged.  This is where change professionals need to focus on the “Aha moments” and engage employees in the process of change.

There are many steps you can take to ensure that management understand the value of your employee engagement strategies and why they should be supported.  Very few managers have formal training in communicating with their employees and running team meetings, maybe somewhere along the way they were taught how to communicate one on one, but to a large team, particularly communicating complex messages about change it is unlikely. 

So just handing your management team a power point presentation or a script is not going to work.  And human nature being what it is, they will avoid delivering the message you have so carefully crafted or just mumble some general information about the team and the business without focussing on the real issue.  When implementing a transformation strategy it is vital that all employees have face to face communication with some level of management.  And this may be team members with team leaders, state managers with divisional heads, executive teams with their Company President or Chief Executive Officer.  Regardless, all levels of management have to be part of the face to face change communication strategy for it to be effective.

Here are a few tips to consider when faced with this dilemma.

1.     How can you make it easier for managers to communicate? Provide a sheet of key messages, meeting outline and allow them to talk to the key points using their own natural style.

2.    Provide support – you can always volunteer someone from the communications team to be present at the meeting or have a communication champion to attend.  Their role is to take notes on any questions that are raised that can’t be answered then and there and to “fill in the gaps” should the manager fail to stay on message.

3.   Make sure that what you are asking them to communicate is clear, concise and not too long.  A 15 minute meeting is much easier to get agreement to than a 1 hour meeting.

4.  Provide each presenter with some tips on how to manage communicating and presenting to large groups – 5 key points – again don’t overwhelm them.

5.  Finally you may wish to brief the management team at their regular meeting about what is required.  It is highly unlikely that they will raise questions at the meeting so follow up with an email or phone call afterwards to ensure that they know what is required.

Most importantly, one of the key reasons management don’t communicate is because they don’t think that they are responsible for the change message, they think the communications team is.  Clarifying the difference between everyone’s role and your expectations of your management team and their responsibility in communicating change is essential at the outset so there is clarity about what is involved.  Face to face communication is uncomfortable for many people, just because someone is in a leadership position does not mean that they know what to do, they need coaching, they need simple clear messages, they need support and they need to understand how what they are requested to do fits into part of an overall change strategy.