Nearly three quarters (71%) of HR professionals recently surveyed by Heyman Associates Executive Search believe they are getting the right amount of information about the current state of their organisations during the downturn. Still, many are looking for more opportunities to use social media and have face-to-face communications with company leaders.
HR may be getting the right messages but they don't necessarily filter through to the staff on their watch. In another piece of industry research, more than half of the workers surveyed by Weber Shandwick found communication from their corporate leaders about the impact of the financial crisis on their company lacking.
Knowing that employees want to be up to date on corporate news and are looking for more informal communication from their employers, HR may need to review its communication strategies and integrate new techniques. By improving the communication workflow, morale and engagement can remain high during the downturn.
How companies reach out
However, organisations have been slow to adapt to new media options. According to Marketing Sherpa, an online resource centre for marketing professionals, some of the most effective communication tools are now company blogs and forums. Other useful sources of information for employees include town hall and staff meetings, newsletters and teleconferences.
Ravi Bhogaraju, Global HR Operations Director, Jones Lang LaSalle favours incorporating new technology-based communication tools. "I like the idea of having information on podcasts," he says. "Employees can download it on demand. Having information like benefits policies available so that they can listen to the information is useful. If they have questions, they can approach the (HR) service centre for more information." New tools do need to be compatible with your employees however. "One needs to be careful with the format. With handheld devices, blackberries and iphones, we have to ensure that the materials work across the different platforms."
Technology buffs can go even further. New applications like RocketOn allow HR to hold town-hall style meetings across multiple offices, with real-time interaction in an open and less constrained format.
Steve Hoffman, CEO of RocketOn, believes the product will significantly change the way employees work together. "Employees can also use RocketOn to explore the web together," he says.
"By dropping 'doors' onto websites that lead to other sites, large groups of people can travel together across the web and discuss what's on each site. These could be competitor sites or marketing sites or sites involved in research. There's enormous potential for collaboration and exchange of ideas relating to content on the internet."
What to share
The medium is one question, but what actual information HR provides to employees is another. Most experts advise full and frank disclosure. The last thing HR wants is for employees to hear bad news like retrenchments or forced restructures through the grapevine or mainstream media. Rather, employees need to receive such information about the organisation's status, strategies and challenges from an official and credible internal source.
Not only should they receive information about what is currently happening, they should receive regular follow-ups. It is essential that companies avoid portraying an overly optimistic long-term scenario, provide meaningless communications with no real value or offer staff conflicting information. If the quality of its communications is substandard, employees will begin to mistrust the information HR is providing.
Changing the medium
Although many employees acknowledge receiving electronic and mass communication from their employers, Heyman's survey stresses the importance of in-person and face-to-face interaction.
One local company chose to use face-to-face communications during a recent restructuring. "Instead of sending out a formal notice, the Vice President for our department personally called each employee to share the information," an anonymous employee tells HRM. The personal touch helped to maintain the engagement and motivation of the majority of staff who were kept on, he adds.
Some employees see in-person communication as the most credible source for feedback and questions, while others prefer to have an email so that they can think about the information and have time to formulate their responses. Knowing that format depends on the communication style of employees, HR will often need to utilise several formats to ensure that all employees are engaged in the communication process.
Employees in control
Employees resoundingly support the use of social media tools within a company to promote interactions with their colleagues and bosses. Employee-to-employee communication happens faster than any official communication and it emphasises that in today's technologically advanced world, companies can no longer micromanage information. Realising this new reality, some companies are using this model to tap into employee concerns, ideas and opinions.
Using social media tools requires planning and a change in typical corporate communication policies.
Determining what information employees need to know, what employees need to do to get that information communicated, and what tools will be used now and in the future to achieve a cutting edge corporate communication strategy are just some of the issues HR needs to determine before implementing its ideas.
It may seem a bit overwhelming but HR shouldn't be concerned about losing control over how information is internally communicated. Companies are realising they are no longer the gatekeepers of information and the most forward-thinking organisations are embracing employee participation and multiple information avenues.
In the end, HR needs to consider all stakeholders in any new communication model it proposes.
Executives need to be able to use it easily, HR needs to be able to monitor its effects, and employees need to take to it quickly. For many companies, online social media tick those boxes but the analysis will be different for every organisation.
Importantly however, these new technologies are unlikely to just fade into obscurity. Just because an organisation may not be ready to fully embrace the use of blogs and forums does not mean HR can afford to ignore their existence all together.