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The Future of Employee Communications
By S. Keith Burton
President, Insidedge
kburton@golinharris.com

Through 14 years of leading specialized teams in employee communications, change has been the watchword. Corporate re-engineering, cultural transformation efforts, waves of mergers and acquisitions, economic growth and decline, the introduction of new technologies, periods of recession and inactivity, layoffs and downsizing, labor relations campaigns, the globalization of business—all have dramatically influenced employee communications around the world.

Gone long ago are the days when employee communications practitioners were relegated to designing newsletter mastheads or video presentations. Our work is centered on providing strategic counsel in support of overarching business plans; creating information and tools to help align employee populations with business objectives; translating complex structural and organizational models so that front-line employees can deliver expected behaviors; and designing communications training programs to better engage employees in a client's business.

That's today. But what will our work become tomorrow?

I believe our future, just as our past, will show further evolution, additional refinement and continued advancement of the discipline to help influence the performance of corporations around the globe. To that end, following are the key trends we expect will influence the work of those who lead organizations:

New technologies will change employee communications as we know it. Is your company ready for the coming digital boom? AOL tells us it has more than 200 million registered users who send about 2 billion messages every day—and the workplace is increasingly the realm of IM users who employ the technology to work "real-time" together, regardless of geography or time zone. The further proliferation of technology—from e-mail to wireless devices to Podcasting to blogging and other electronic forms of communication—will dramatically alter ways we communicate internally. Today, communication is instant. It comes so forcefully and in such volume that many liken it to "drinking information from a fire hose." The ways we use new technologies to better filter information flow and to reach key groups such as sales and marketing professionals in the field, telecommuting employees and the growing world of contract professionals, will be essential to corporations. Doing so, however, will require rethinking our approach to content, customization and the adoption of new tools and electronic gateways to moderate and fine-tune information flow.
The age of specialization in employee communications will grow. A one-size-fits-all employee communicator is becoming a rare breed. Today's companies are increasingly seeking multi-disciplined professionals who can effectively leverage deep experience in employee communications with specialized knowledge gained from such areas as performance management, compensation and benefits, organizational design, labor relations and expertise in integrated marketing. Recently, a U.S. food producer asked for my help in identifying an employee communications specialist with packaged goods experience, clear knowledge in how to work with a large union population, expertise with the Stern Stewart & Co. Economic Value Added (EVA) model and an ability to create new models for leadership communication. Seeking this type of specialization and sophistication will continue as corporations increasingly leverage communications to achieve strategic business goals.
Diversity will remain front and center in our work. The true globalization of our economy is placing increased pressure on our discipline to finally solve its diversity challenges—both in terms of the professionals involved in these careers and in representing the true global nature of today's multinational corporation. Takeda Pharmaceuticals has adopted inclusion policies that welcome applicants from a multi-faceted segment of the population. These new policies will also seed Takeda with employees who can better translate and communicate the company's vision, culture, ideas and business plans. To effectively engage our global employees, we must ensure that our communications and communicators truly mirror the population and geographic locations of our people and can lead more customized programs for key internal audiences. As one client recently reminded us: "Just because our company is headquartered in the U.S. doesn't mean we want a U.S.-centric employee communications program."
The outside will increasingly influence the inside. For the past several years the Internet has grown in its influence of employee populations. Message boards at Yahoo, AOL and other websites are creating communities of employees and observers who increasingly, in an unregulated fashion, discuss and influence business performance, cultural practices, the flow of rumors in the corporate grapevine and both official and unofficial activities. Although the future role of blogs and bloggers has yet to be determined as a key internal communications channel, the external presence of these pundits is increasingly shaping our national and international dialogue. Beyond this, truly progressive companies will seek out ways to better leverage the "inside" to influence the marketplace as corporations come to realize that employees truly are one of their greatest assets.
Labor organizations will seek out new populations to organize—around the world. Labor unions have been losing power in American society for some time, and a smaller and smaller percentage of workers are members of labor unions today than has been true in many decades. Some analysts see these changes as temporary, part of the ongoing back-and-forth shifts in power in the workplace, while others see them as permanent and as indicating a major change in the workplace of the future. In many industries and sectors, the role of organized labor has been minimized to levels never before seen. To bolster membership we are witnessing—and will continue to see—labor reach out to new employee segments for membership. My prediction is that segments such as healthcare, professional services, software development and medical device manufacturers will experience increased organizing activity, as will places in the U.S. such as Baltimore (a healthcare hub for providers), Charlotte, Dallas, Kansas City and others as unions reach out to satellite UAW sites, aerospace centers, historic trucking hubs and traditional manufacturing centers now evolving in new ways. Look for union growth, as well, in international markets such as Mexico, Iraq, Cambodia and Australia, to name several, as multinational companies—Bechtel, Kellogg Brown & Root, Adidas, The Gap, J.C. Penney, Boeing, among others—seek to offshore jobs or expand global operations.
The struggle to reach manufacturing employees will improve. Front-line manufacturing employees have long been one of the more difficult audiences to reach and engage in corporate and internal communications. The sheer job demands of production cycles, "third-shift" operations and other time- and labor-intensive activities often pushes communications to the backburner. While face-to-face communications remains the most effective, successful companies are increasingly finding ways to reach front-line workers through wall displays, visual "performance dashboards" and, in some cases, through electronic channels such as interactive kiosks. The success that can be generated by increasing this audience's engagement and reducing turnover is a key to improving margins. As internal communicators, we must continue experimenting and piloting new programs that effectively engage this critical audience.
Audience-specific communications communities will become more prominent. The advent of intranet-based managers' communities—many call them "managers' portals"—has heralded a new age for audience-specific communications that many companies will turn to in hopes of meeting increasingly specific audience needs. Managers, sales and marketing professionals and others need information and strategies customized for their needs that are more direct and timely. Failure to do so will result in a failure of message cascading and bolster an impenetrable "Concrete Middle" as the river of communication flows around, rather than through, intractable second-level executives. How pervasive are the new intranet communities? At one location of a leading Federal agency, we found more than 2,000 web sites directed to the interests of special work groups. Rather than eliminate these sites, we sought to re-align and harness them with a more authoritative voice and in through a unified look and feel of a great organizational brand recognized globally.
The age of the celebrity CEO is dead. The past five years have proven firsthand that the age of the celebrity CEO is over. What the rise of corporate governance, corporate scandals, a focus on business ethics, securities laws and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 could not kill altogether, time and a new generation of leaders have evolved. These new leaders are less "spotlight" and more "flood-light" in style. They are leading by consensus, focusing on performance, and listening more intently to their managers and front-line people. They have humility. They are less "I" and more "we" in style. They may have learned business under the Welches, Fiorinas, Gerstners and Eisners, but they practice leadership with a new style.
U.S.-centric versus global communications models to realign. For years, global companies based in the U.S. acted as domestic companies with international operations. This will no longer be the case, as companies—regardless of where they are domiciled—must learn to and adapt to their local market needs, differences and opportunities. Specifically, we are witnessing European and Asian markets prove resistant to employee communications messages and programs that are not sensitive or respectful of culture and operating differences.
Metrics to evaluate employee communications effectiveness will increase. Measuring employee behaviors and actions against employee communications activities still trails other key metrics for finance, human resources, sales and marketing. Our own model for Trust, Leadership and Preference is being adapted to demonstrate how specific actions that come as a result of employee communications practices will change performance in more measurable ways that translate in terms of quality, productivity and economic value.
"Real-time" communications will be increasingly pervasive. Grapevines now are electronic as well as traditional, and we cannot suppress or control them. They operate 24-7 and we must adopt a "real-time" view that ebbs and flows daily.
Home-grown talent proves to be greater asset. Many companies are increasingly realizing that they cannot meet their growth objectives without fostering and developing leaders from within. For these companies, now not only is recruitment important, but so is moving your leaders through the system to best leverage their institutional knowledge and skill sets.

We have reached an important plateau in the practice of employee communications. Gains achieved in recent years through best practice models have been adopted by leading brands, and those slow to adapt will catch up in the next two to five years.

It's now time for new breakthroughs. These breakthroughs will come to us in the form of better personalizing brands, evolving business models to better "include" employees and creating "micro" programs that can be dialed up or down dependent on the ever-changing business climate. Further, we will adopt—or be forced to adopt—communications and business models that align all issues, cultures and differences against a common platform for growth. All-the-while the information proliferation and overload will grow, potentially leading to what we have dubbed "The Clutter Bomb." It will be the companies who can effectively balance this clutter with the evolutions in the practice of employee communications who will succeed—and we look forward to being a part of that future with you.


	The Future of Employee Communications By S. Keith Burton President, Insidedge kburton@golinharris.com Through 14 years of leading specialized teams in employee communications, change has been the watchword. Corporate re-engineering, cultural transformation efforts, waves of mergers and acquisitions, economic growth and decline, the introduction of new technologies, periods of recession and inactivity, layoffs and downsizing, labor relations campaigns, the globalization of business—all have dramatically influenced employee communications around the world. Gone long ago are the days when employee communications practitioners were relegated to designing newsletter mastheads or video presentations. Our work is centered on providing strategic counsel in support of overarching business plans; creating information and tools to help align employee populations with business objectives; translating complex structural and organizational models so that front-line employees can deliver expected behaviors; and designing communications training programs to better engage employees in a client's business. That's today. But what will our work become tomorrow? I believe our future, just as our past, will show further evolution, additional refinement and continued advancement of the discipline to help influence the performance of corporations around the globe. To that end, following are the key trends we expect will influence the work of those who lead organizations: New technologies will change employee communications as we know it. Is your company ready for the coming digital boom? AOL tells us it has more than 200 million registered users who send about 2 billion messages every day—and the workplace is increasingly the realm of IM users who employ the technology to work "real-time" together, regardless of geography or time zone. The further proliferation of technology—from e-mail to wireless devices to Podcasting to blogging and other electronic forms of communication—will dramatically alter ways we communicate internally. Today, communication is instant. It comes so forcefully and in such volume that many liken it to "drinking information from a fire hose." The ways we use new technologies to better filter information flow and to reach key groups such as sales and marketing professionals in the field, telecommuting employees and the growing world of contract professionals, will be essential to corporations. Doing so, however, will require rethinking our approach to content, customization and the adoption of new tools and electronic gateways to moderate and fine-tune information flow. The age of specialization in employee communications will grow. A one-size-fits-all employee communicator is becoming a rare breed. Today's companies are increasingly seeking multi-disciplined professionals who can effectively leverage deep experience in employee communications with specialized knowledge gained from such areas as performance management, compensation and benefits, organizational design, labor relations and expertise in integrated marketing. Recently, a U.S. food producer asked for my help in identifying an employee communications specialist with packaged goods experience, clear knowledge in how to work with a large union population, expertise with the Stern Stewart & Co. Economic Value Added (EVA) model and an ability to create new models for leadership communication. Seeking this type of specialization and sophistication will continue as corporations increasingly leverage communications to achieve strategic business goals. Diversity will remain front and center in our work. The true globalization of our economy is placing increased pressure on our discipline to finally solve its diversity challenges—both in terms of the professionals involved in these careers and in representing the true global nature of today's multinational corporation. Takeda Pharmaceuticals has adopted inclusion policies that welcome applicants from a multi-faceted segment of the population. These new policies will also seed Takeda with employees who can better translate and communicate the company's vision, culture, ideas and business plans. To effectively engage our global employees, we must ensure that our communications and communicators truly mirror the population and geographic locations of our people and can lead more customized programs for key internal audiences. As one client recently reminded us: "Just because our company is headquartered in the U.S. doesn't mean we want a U.S.-centric employee communications program." The outside will increasingly influence the inside. For the past several years the Internet has grown in its influence of employee populations. Message boards at Yahoo, AOL and other websites are creating communities of employees and observers who increasingly, in an unregulated fashion, discuss and influence business performance, cultural practices, the flow of rumors in the corporate grapevine and both official and unofficial activities. Although the future role of blogs and bloggers has yet to be determined as a key internal communications channel, the external presence of these pundits is increasingly shaping our national and international dialogue. Beyond this, truly progressive companies will seek out ways to better leverage the "inside" to influence the marketplace as corporations come to realize that employees truly are one of their greatest assets. Labor organizations will seek out new populations to organize—around the world. Labor unions have been losing power in American society for some time, and a smaller and smaller percentage of workers are members of labor unions today than has been true in many decades. Some analysts see these changes as temporary, part of the ongoing back-and-forth shifts in power in the workplace, while others see them as permanent and as indicating a major change in the workplace of the future. In many industries and sectors, the role of organized labor has been minimized to levels never before seen. To bolster membership we are witnessing—and will continue to see—labor reach out to new employee segments for membership. My prediction is that segments such as healthcare, professional services, software development and medical device manufacturers will experience increased organizing activity, as will places in the U.S. such as Baltimore (a healthcare hub for providers), Charlotte, Dallas, Kansas City and others as unions reach out to satellite UAW sites, aerospace centers, historic trucking hubs and traditional manufacturing centers now evolving in new ways. Look for union growth, as well, in international markets such as Mexico, Iraq, Cambodia and Australia, to name several, as multinational companies—Bechtel, Kellogg Brown & Root, Adidas, The Gap, J.C. Penney, Boeing, among others—seek to offshore jobs or expand global operations. The struggle to reach manufacturing employees will improve. Front-line manufacturing employees have long been one of the more difficult audiences to reach and engage in corporate and internal communications. The sheer job demands of production cycles, "third-shift" operations and other time- and labor-intensive activities often pushes communications to the backburner. While face-to-face communications remains the most effective, successful companies are increasingly finding ways to reach front-line workers through wall displays, visual "performance dashboards" and, in some cases, through electronic channels such as interactive kiosks. The success that can be generated by increasing this audience's engagement and reducing turnover is a key to improving margins. As internal communicators, we must continue experimenting and piloting new programs that effectively engage this critical audience. Audience-specific communications communities will become more prominent. The advent of intranet-based managers' communities—many call them "managers' portals"—has heralded a new age for audience-specific communications that many companies will turn to in hopes of meeting increasingly specific audience needs. Managers, sales and marketing professionals and others need information and strategies customized for their needs that are more direct and timely. Failure to do so will result in a failure of message cascading and bolster an impenetrable "Concrete Middle" as the river of communication flows around, rather than through, intractable second-level executives. How pervasive are the new intranet communities? At one location of a leading Federal agency, we found more than 2,000 web sites directed to the interests of special work groups. Rather than eliminate these sites, we sought to re-align and harness them with a more authoritative voice and in through a unified look and feel of a great organizational brand recognized globally. The age of the celebrity CEO is dead. The past five years have proven firsthand that the age of the celebrity CEO is over. What the rise of corporate governance, corporate scandals, a focus on business ethics, securities laws and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 could not kill altogether, time and a new generation of leaders have evolved. These new leaders are less "spotlight" and more "flood-light" in style. They are leading by consensus, focusing on performance, and listening more intently to their managers and front-line people. They have humility. They are less "I" and more "we" in style. They may have learned business under the Welches, Fiorinas, Gerstners and Eisners, but they practice leadership with a new style. U.S.-centric versus global communications models to realign. For years, global companies based in the U.S. acted as domestic companies with international operations. This will no longer be the case, as companies—regardless of where they are domiciled—must learn to and adapt to their local market needs, differences and opportunities. Specifically, we are witnessing European and Asian markets prove resistant to employee communications messages and programs that are not sensitive or respectful of culture and operating differences. Metrics to evaluate employee communications effectiveness will increase. Measuring employee behaviors and actions against employee communications activities still trails other key metrics for finance, human resources, sales and marketing. Our own model for Trust, Leadership and Preference is being adapted to demonstrate how specific actions that come as a result of employee communications practices will change performance in more measurable ways that translate in terms of quality, productivity and economic value. "Real-time" communications will be increasingly pervasive. Grapevines now are electronic as well as traditional, and we cannot suppress or control them. They operate 24-7 and we must adopt a "real-time" view that ebbs and flows daily. Home-grown talent proves to be greater asset. Many companies are increasingly realizing that they cannot meet their growth objectives without fostering and developing leaders from within. For these companies, now not only is recruitment important, but so is moving your leaders through the system to best leverage their institutional knowledge and skill sets. We have reached an important plateau in the practice of employee communications. Gains achieved in recent years through best practice models have been adopted by leading brands, and those slow to adapt will catch up in the next two to five years. It's now time for new breakthroughs. These breakthroughs will come to us in the form of better personalizing brands, evolving business models to better "include" employees and creating "micro" programs that can be dialed up or down dependent on the ever-changing business climate. Further, we will adopt—or be forced to adopt—communications and business models that align all issues, cultures and differences against a common platform for growth. All-the-while the information proliferation and overload will grow, potentially leading to what we have dubbed "The Clutter Bomb." It will be the companies who can effectively balance this clutter with the evolutions in the practice of employee communications who will succeed—and we look forward to being a part of that future with you.