3 crucial—yet painful—steps in fostering employee engagement

The mainstream portrait of employee engagement is a utopian scene where smiling employees work harmoniously and collaborate effectively as productivity skyrockets.

Related: 10 Examples of Companies with Fantastic Cultures

But the sobering truth is that creating true employee engagement within your company is a painful process that is often both messy and difficult. I’ve focused an inordinate amount of time on my company’s culture over the last two years. I’ve listened intently, signed onto software programs to collect and analyze data on employee engagement and sent out hundreds of emails asking for anonymous feedback.

The process has been painful at times, but that pain has led to a better culture for our nationwide mortgage company.

Don’t believe all the hype about company culture being all rainbows and sunshine. If you want a truly world-class culture, you have to go through some difficult times and endure some pointed criticism. But those painful moments are the key to authentic employee engagement.

Here are three difficult—and sometimes painful—steps every organization should take to create true employee engagement within their cultures:

1. Listen to the good—and bad.

Employee engagement is painless during the good times. Employees love you. Their feedback is positive and affirming. Company culture is almost effortless.

But even great companies go through difficult periods, and fast-growing companies find that growth spurts come with growing pains. During these times, true, transparent communication and employee engagement can be painful. The employees who were praising you suddenly begin criticizing you. If you have an honest and open employee engagement structure, feedback can be brutally honest and pointedly direct.

This is the most important time to listen. If you listen to praise but ignore criticism, you do not have true employee engagement. It takes a thick skin, but listening to criticism will give your employee engagement program a depth and meaning that is lacking in more superficial engagement programs.

2. Peel back the layers with intriguing questions.

Every manager knows that employees express themselves in different ways. Some don’t need prompting to share their opinions and ideas. Others need to be invited before they feel comfortable giving their feedback.

Asking questions is a great way to make sure employee engagement includes all employees, even the quiet ones.

In employee surveys, I often ask short, thought-provoking questions like, “If you owned the company, what is the first thing you would change?”

Asking questions is an invitation for employees to express their feedback, but it also channels opinions around important topics. Unstructured feedback can be so broad and disorganized that it becomes useless. If you are trying to get employee feedback on the company’s training program or management structure, the last thing you want is employees complaining about the dirty dishes in the company kitchen sink.

Structure feedback by sending out pointed questions that will generate thoughtful and useful feedback on specific programs or procedures. Then add one or two open-ended questions to allow staff to express what is on their minds independent of your direction.

Related: 5 Ways to Survey Employees About Company Culture

3. Pan for gold in engagement data.

Just about every company collects some level of data on employee engagement, even if it is only survey answers. But like many other forms of data, the information is often collected and then warehoused, never to be seen or used again.

Many executives are obsessive about analyzing and monitoring financial data, productivity levels, efficiency figures and other forms of data. But when it comes to employee engagement, they often ignore data altogether and launch programs based on personal opinions or gut feelings.

When employee engagement data is collected regularly, it reveals trends and can pinpoint problems within the company before they balloon into full-fledged crises. It can signal that a certain department of the company needs more resources, training or manpower.

I recently reviewed our internal employee net promoter scores, looking for month-over-month variations and trends. The data clearly showed some of our lowest scores coming in for our company’s training program, something we had already been planning to expand and strengthen. The data, however, spurred immediate action to bolster our training for all employees.

We hired a senior vice president of training and set a company goal to conduct 2,000 hours of training for the quarter. The data, and early detection of a trend within that data, helped us make an immediate company decision as a direct result of regular employee engagement, and helped avert a long-term training problem.

Consistency is key here. When you collect data consistently, the data-analysis possibilities really open up. You can see morale dipping from month to month, or dissatisfaction with certain programs rising or leveling off. Make sure surveys contain some consistent questions month over month and year over year so you can analyze trends.

Data should be an important piece of employee engagement, but don’t let it overwhelm your employee engagement program. Keep the human heart and personal connection of employee engagement while still using the power of data to make it more efficient, effective and democratic.

Related: How to Have Amazon’s High-Performance Culture Without the Backstabbing

Darius Mirshahzadeh is CEO of The Money Source. A version of this article originally appeared Entrepreneur.com. Copyright © 2015 Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Why internal comms and marketing should work together

The internal communications team needs eyes in all corners of an organization.

Internal communications supports every business function from IT to HR to finance to research and development. It connects employees and ensures they’re aware of the issues that affect them.

When internal communications and marketing unite, they’re remarkably powerful. Sadly, these departments often act like estranged family members.

Why? Are they too busy? Do they have too many conflicting priorities?

It’s frustrating when these teams miss opportunities to connect the dots between customers and employees, but it happens all too often. Consider this situation:

To reposition an organization’s brand, the marketing team created an integrated external campaign. It was an exciting campaign, but the marketers didn’t mention it to the internal communications team until two weeks before launch day.

Amazing customer service and employees’ personal touch constituted the foundation of the repositioned brand, but no one told the customer service team. How can the campaign’s external messages reflect the customer experience if frontline teams aren’t aware of them?

Where does internal communications live?

Internal communications departments’ structures differ hugely from one organization to another. Some departments sit within HR, others within PR-some even share a space with IT. Internal communications only occasionally exists as a standalone department.

There are advantages to each of these setups, and there is a lot of debate over where internal communications should live.

To help internal communications pros stay current on their organizations’ happenings, they should embed themselves within other departments. They’ll stay up to date on their given department while staying connected to the rest of the internal communications team. They’ll understand what each department needs from internal communications, and vice versa.

Whether it’s a permanent arrangement or a close working relationship cultivated over time, when internal communications maintains strong, consistent communication with marketing, the departments form a powerful partnership.

But it’s not always a bed of roses.

Here are some obstacles to bridging the departments:

• Executives always seem to approve external campaigns at the last minute, which makes it difficult to share details internally until the campaign is close to going live.
• Marketing has its own unique focus, and it’s easy for them to overlook the internal implications and time needed to engage employees.
• You must consider how marketing’s initiatives fit with internal communications’ priorities.

A few tips:

• Build relationships within the marketing team so you’re involved as early as possible. You probably already do this, but keep cultivating those connections.

• Stay focused. Be clear about whom the campaign affects most, and concentrate on that audience. It’s easy to fall into the “This affects the entire organization!” trap.

• Send updates to employees. Tell them marketing is developing a campaign, and explain the purpose behind it. Give employees a timeline, and let them know you’ll provide more details as necessary.

• Plan briefings with employees when the campaign goes live externally. Explain why the campaign is running, as well as employees’ role in it. Provide background on why the organization is taking the approach it is, and gather feedback on how employees want to support it.

• Reinforce the behaviors needed to live up to the campaign’s core messages. Bring these to life with scenarios and training.

• Reinterpret the campaign internally. Don’t simply roll out a few posters that ran externally and expect them to work. Capture the essence and spirit of the campaign, and make it relevant internally.

• Seize the moment. This is your opportunity to demonstrate how internal communications adds value. This could be the start of a beautiful relationship.

Implement the actions above, and the benefits could be significant. Broader benefits of marketing and internal communications’ collaboration include:

1. Your organization will speak with one voice.

Reputation begins inside your organization. Employees represent the company on social media, so it’s essential to keep your messaging consistent both inside the organization and out.

Employees are brand ambassadors. They’re the most powerful way to share a consistent story with customers. Collaborate with marketing to agree on core messages and build internal advocates, because if your employees don’t buy into the campaign, neither will your customers.

Download this free white paper, “Auditing your Internal Communications,” for a step-by-step guide to assess which communications channels work best for your organization.

Employees have to be involved in your story. They should live and breathe it-not just be on the receiving end of yet another message telling them to “get behind the business.”

2. Your organization will show it’s smart with internal skills and resources.

Internal communications has a lot to offer marketing, and vice versa. Smart organizations encourage knowledge sharing and the cross-fertilization of ideas.

Internal communicators have many skills—copywriting, creativity, content curation and management, event planning, and the list goes on. It’s an efficient use of time and resources to maintain strong connections with departments that share similar skills—marketing, for instance.

3. Internal support extends marketing’s reach.

A brilliant way to show you trust your employees is to enlist their support rather than forcing them to rely on external marketing channels.

Involve them from the beginning. Your internal advocates should be well placed to support the campaign through social media and word of mouth. This will demonstrate confidence, cohesion and consistency—from the inside out.

Wherever your internal communications department lives, continue to cultivate relationships with marketing and all other departments to ensure you’re involved in the planning and integration of business objectives. After all, the best relationships thrive on strong communication, mutual respect and teamwork.

A version of this article originally appeared on the Alive With Ideas blog.

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What communicators can learn from Wikipedia

When I reported for a major newspaper we’ll call The Daily Planet, I once dropped by the newsroom library just as a researcher was irritably emailing an editor to complain that a staff writer had cited Wikipedia.

Look! she said. Again! Wikipedia’s not a source.

Editors would agree. Like any good newsroom, The Daily Planet had a policy against sourcing information to Wikipedia, which can be about as reliable as writing, “According to some guy I overhead on the train.”

Yet a database search reveals that the phrase “according to Wikipedia” has sneaked into that newspaper paper 12 times since 2005. Other major news organizations have slipped up as recently as this week. Plus, even when reporters aren’t citing Wikipedia, they often draw their first impressions of your organization there.

What is it about Wikipedia that appeals to information-seekers—and what can you learn from it? Think from the perspective of a frantically Googling reporter who has never heard of your organization, doesn’t know what you produce and has 20 minutes to crank out a brief about a fire at your plant.

Here are some lessons from the site:

1. Wikipedia summarizes essential information.

Yes, you put a lot of thought that “about us” section and its multiple sub-pages, making sure we know about your organization’s commitment to sustainability and niceness. But did you write it with the assumption that everybody knows who you are and what you produce?

I won’t name and shame, but consider a real corporation that goes by an abbreviation. I’ll dub it XYZ Co.

Click on the website’s “about” tab, and you will find this message: “[XYZ] is a critical link that connects consumers with the global marketplace. For more than 160 years, [XYZ] has played a vital role in building and sustaining this nation’s economy.”

Great. So, is it a bank? A shipping company? A telecom with a history dating to the days of the telegraph? True, there are photos of trains and a drop-down subsection on “our railroad,” but reporters need the information in words.

Under “our railroad,” by the way, there are no figures beyond a brief history. The “financial information” drop-down refers to “Forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K” but doesn’t mention annual revenue.

By contrast, Wikipedia’s first 116 words reveal that XYZ is one of the largest freight railroad networks in North America and that it has 48,000 employees, more than 8,000 locomotives and 32,500 miles of track in 28 states.

2. Wikipedia doesn’t make reporters click around to different pages.

In fairness, XYZ links to a helpful fact sheet from the right-hand margin of the “about” page, but that is easily overlooked in a list of links.

Likewise, consider the website of Backless Gown Hospital Corp. (not its real name). A reporter on deadline goes to the home page. There it is—the “about” link! The drop-down offers further options. Let’s click through to “About [Backless Gown].” This page offers information on the year in review and how the hospital gives back to the community, but no summary of the organization.

Wait! There’s a newsroom link. Although that leads to some interesting-looking headlines on topics such as the connection between maternal weight and infant death, I’m not finding general information on the hospital.

Back to the drop-down. “Facts and stats”? Scrolling down the page, I find the information I was looking for, but compare the opening of this page with Wikipedia:

• Company website: “[Backless Gown], a world-renowned health care provider and insurer based in [hometown], is inventing new models of accountable, cost-effective, patient-centered care.”
• Wikipedia. “[Backless Gown] is a $10 billion integrated global nonprofit health enterprise that has more than 62,000 employees, 21 hospitals with more than 5,100 licensed beds, 400 clinical locations including outpatient sites and doctors’ offices, a 2.3 million-member health insurance division, as well as commercial and international ventures.”

3. Wikipedia gets updated.

Unreliable though it may be, the Wikipedia page for any major organization gets a lot of scrutiny—not only from fans and critics, but from communicators themselves. I know of one chief executive who would phone communicators at home and ask them to change the Wikipedia entry when an error cropped up (a practice Wikipedia frowns on). Clearly, some executives and PR pros watch what the website says about them.

Are you prepared for a crisis? Learn how to build a world-class crisis communications playbook in this free guide.

By contrast, how often does the CEO check your own “about us” page? As a reporter I once had to correct outdated information I got from an organization’s own “about us” page.Yes, you’re right—I should have called to double-check. Still, this raises the question of why the company thinks journalists should consider its website more reliable than Wikipedia.

4. Wikipedia makes it easy to find further experts.

Even knowing that Wikipedia is unreliable, reporters often use it to dig deeper into a topic.

If a Wikipedia contributor offers an interesting fact, you can click on the footnote and check out the source, whether it’s a newspaper article or academic study. This often leads reporters to industry experts or people with advanced degrees in a given subject area.

How easy is it for a reporter seeking expert sources to find them on your website?

Now, don’t even get me started about that “contact us” form.

@ByWorking

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The best time to send a press release

In early 2013, Shift Communications published a blog post sharing the worst times and days to send press releases.

More than two years later, that blog post is one of the most highly trafficked pages on Shift’s website.

Why?

When you should—or shouldn't—send press releases over the wire is a popular topic.

We found that Monday, Tuesday and 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern were the most popular times to send a press release. Our advice was to publish releases later in the day and week so your news didn’t get lost in the commotion. Remember, all this is from 2013.

This year, we took our research a step further. First, we analyzed the distribution of more than 100,000 press releases published via Marketwired, PRWeb and PR Newswire in 2015. Second, we determined how many times each release was shared across nine social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

[RELATED: Learn new, innovative ways to escalate your social media game at our Social Media Conference for PR, Marketing and Corporate Communications in Walt Disney World.]

In 2015, Tuesday is generally the most popular day to publish a release, followed closely by Wednesday.

Regarding timing, most often, 9 a.m. Eastern held the top spot, followed by 8 p.m. Eastern.

Here’s where it gets interesting: In 2015, the average press release was shared only 18 times. Below, you can see how that stacks up. The gray boxes represent the average releases, and the white boxes represent outliers.

These outliers denote press releases worth engaging with, reading and sharing. The top 10 most shared press releases represent 14 percent of total social media shares. That means 0.009 percent of all releases got 14 percent of total shares.

The chart above shows just how large the disparity is between the top 10 press releases and the rest of the press-release population. The top 10 press releases did something right—they shared news that was interesting enough to elicit a response from the brands’ audiences.

We’ve learned a thing or two in the past two years. It is no longer enough to try to get your press release in front of the right journalist by sending it at the right time; it’s about creating content your audience cares enough about to share.

Tori Sabourin is a marketing analyst at Shift Communications. A version of this article originally appeared on the Shift Communications blog.

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Babbler seeks to be the social network for media relations

Niche social media platforms are nothing new, but nothing has really taken hold as the social media platform exclusively for media relations.

Help a Reporter Out, Muck Rack and other similar services have certainly come close, but there’s no function within them to maintain a network.

Babbler says it’s here to change that.

Previously available only in France, Babbler already boasts “300 customers worldwide and 5,000 reporters that use it everyday” in that country.

On Tuesday, the organization announced that it’s available to PR pros and reporters in the United States.

Here’s the selling point for the network, said via press release:

Babbler helps create, manage and engage media communities by providing them the best way to interact with their network of sources, content, and story ideas, all in one place.

Brand managers and PR pros can set up profiles and upload press releases and other pertinent information. Then, they ostensibly connect with reporters and editors that matter to their line of work.

Download the free white paper, “How to be a brand journalist,” to learn how to tell your organization’s compelling stories.

Babbler’s CEO and founder, Hannah Oiknine, says that Twitter is a decent way to source stories, “but Twitter it is not designed for media relations.” “That’s why email is still used to interact after getting in touch via Twitter,” she says.

The service already has some hefty clients using the service, like Nestle and Edelman France.

You can check out a demo of the service here:

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Infographic: Avoidable mistakes that too many bloggers make

To a newbie, managing a blog may sound easy. You just write about whatever you want whenever you want, right?

As veteran bloggers know, that’s so very wrong.

Managing a blog is hard work, and even seasoned bloggers can fall victim to some deadly mistakes. An infographic from Start Blogging Online lists eight horrible blunders that new bloggers make, but every blogger should keep an eye out for them.

Here are a few:

1. Setting an unrealistic publishing schedule: When you first start blogging, you’re full of ideas. Publishing a new post every day seems easy. Though you’ll easily churn out posts for the first week or two, you’ll quickly use up your ideas or get busy with other projects. Space out your posts, and set realistic expectations so you can continue to publish consistently.

Download the free white paper, “How to be a brand journalist,” to learn how to tell your organization’s compelling stories.

2. Using “click here” for hyperlinks instead of real words. Hyperlinking “click here” seems spammy. Hyperlink real words to tell readers exactly where you’re sending them and build trust.

3. Not answering commenters. When someone comments on a post, he or she is starting a conversation with you. Respond to build a relationship with that person. Plus, when other people see that you value readers’ insights, they may be more inclined to stay on your site and contribute to the conversation.

4. Not featuring recent or popular posts. Highlight your most popular posts to make it easy for readers to find your best material. Plus, new readers will want to see your top posts right away to determine whether you’re worth following.

Check out the full infographic for more:

(View a larger image.)

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10 ways your intranet can boost employee engagement

Employee engagement is essential for any organization to thrive.

A recent article by Ivey Business Journal identified issues surrounding engagement levels in the workplace. We’ll condense those findings below and suggest how your intranet can foster and boost engagement.

The Gallup Management Journal’s Employee Engagement Index revealing the following:

• Only 29 percent of employees are actively engaged in their jobs. These employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. People who are actively engaged help move the organization forward.
• More than half (54 percent) of employees are not engaged. These employees have essentially “checked out,” sleepwalking through their workday and putting time—but not passion—into their work.
• One-sixth (17 percent) of employees are actively disengaged. They act out their unhappiness, undermining what their engaged co-workers are trying to accomplish.

On the plus side, a Towers Perrin Employee Engagement Survey extracted these statistics:

• Five out of six (84 percent) highly engaged employees believe they can enhance their organization’s products, compared with only 31 percent of the disengaged.
• Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of highly engaged employees feel they can improve customer service, versus 27 percent of the disengaged.
• More than two-thirds (68 percent) of highly engaged employees believe they can have a positive impact on costs in their job or unit, as opposed to 19 percent of the disengaged.

So, how can you reap the benefits of an engaged workforce? Make the most of your intranet by applying the 10 C’s of employee engagement. Employees are the heart of your company; ensure they have the right tools to be engaged with your organization and brand.

1. Connect

For employees to feel connected to an organization, leaders must show that they value those employees. Employee-focused initiatives such as work/life balance are important, but any fractured relationships with management can reduce engagement.

Consider this example: WestJet’s CEO, Clive Beddoe, arrived late to a speaking arrangement. He explained that a discussion with WestJet employees had taken longer than expected. He took the time to answer questions and explain the corporate strategy.

All in all, employees felt connected to the top boss and rewarded him with engagement. An internal blog on your intranet can help executives communicate the company vision and build company culture.

2. Career

A good leader can find the balance between challenging employees and instilling confidence that career challenges can be met. If a company doesn’t provide the knowledge or the right tools to reach (or exceed) their goals, employees can lose motivation, decreasing engagement.

By having an e-learning and onboarding site on your intranet, you can empower employees to gain the knowledge and confidence to do their jobs and overcome challenges.

3. Clarity

An organization must enunciate a clear vision so employees can understand how their personal goals can help achieve the company’s objectives. Why put players in the game if they don’t know what their playing for?

You invest heavily in your employees and provide the tools to succeed, such as your intranet, so make sure those tools include the proper instructions. Create a site on your intranet dedicated to communicating company values.

4. Convey

It’s important to convey expectations about employees and provide feedback along the way. A good leader will work with employees daily, analyze strengths and celebrate small advances that inspire ongoing improvement.

Download this free white paper, “Auditing your Internal Communications,” for a step-by-step guide to assess which communications channels work best for your organization.

As employees grow, they learn more and more. Online tests reinforce workers’ expanding knowledge; any unanswered questions or wrong answers become a learning opportunity.

5. Congratulate

Employees feel they receive poor feedback often and almost immediately, whereas praise or recognition for strong performances is less common. As the Ivey Business Journal article states: “Exceptional leaders give recognition, and they do so a lot; they coach and convey.”

A post in an employee recognition section can deliver immediate kudos. Within moments it can be created and promoted on the home page or team/department sites of your intranet.

6. Contribute

A study found the following:

• When employees understand the connection between their work and the goals of the company, it improves job performance.

• An employee’s attitude toward the organization affects customer service.

• When employees have a positive attitude, they improve at doing their jobs.

Those factors result in better customer satisfaction and revenue growth. So, how can you use your intranet to help employees understand their impact on the company? Add a company news application on your intranet’s home page, and have top leaders manage it. There they can celebrate milestones and achievements.

For major company announcements, use the company news feature on your home page. For localized achievements use that feature on your team/department sites.

7. Control

Company decisions that affect the way people do their jobs can make them feel they are losing control over their work. Letting staffers participate in making decisions bolsters engagement, increases trust and results in employees’ taking ownership of problems and solutions.

Create an online survey about changes that may affect day-to-day work; for big-picture items, solicit staffers’ opinions with an idea share exchange.

8. Collaborate

Teamwork builds trust and cooperation and enables employees to outperform their disengaged counterparts. Team/department sites on your intranet foster a community, and employees gain access to information, team members and project updates, helping them achieve key goals.

9. Credibility

Employees want to work for an organization they are proud of—one that is credible, has a good reputation and maintains high ethical standards.

How can you convey your company’s credibility to those who helped build it? Use your intranet as a brand building tool. A company works hard to build a brand for its customers. A simple design builder makes it easy to incorporate brand-focused colors, logos, language and more.

10. Confidence

Confidence needn’t be applied; it’s more a result of implementing the points above. When you have engaged employees, clear company goals, a method to convey appreciation and the credibility of a brand, a sense of confidence will follow.

A version of this article originally appeared on the Intranet Connections website.

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