Reassuring employees during turbulent times
Susan Ainsworth |
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In light of well-publicized reports of corporate misconduct and epidemic downsizing efforts, the public is scrutinizing businesses in all industries more closely. Indeed, public distrust of big business may have reached an all-time high. And the volatile Middle East situation and uncertain economy only serve to heighten those anxieties.
Consequently, it is more important that companies have an acute understanding of how they are perceived—especially by their employees and prospective employees.
Now more than ever, companies may want to find better ways to both express appreciation for employees and strengthen internal perceptions of organizational credibility and reputation. With human resources professionals providing the primary line of communication between top management and employees, they—along with their corporate communications counterparts—may be called upon to jump-start these efforts.
HR professionals need to “take proactive steps to maintain their organizations’ ethical and professional credibility through open, honest communication,” according to the authors of a recent survey, Corporate Credibility and Employee Communications from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
“This is especially apparent when most HR professionals and employees have indicated that there is a link between corporate reputation and employee job performance,” the survey’s authors add. Strong employee communication programs have the potential to positively impact employee morale, productivity, performance and retention, they conclude.
To determine just how well organizations are demonstrating their commitment and credibility to their employees, SHRM teamed up with the Council of Public Relations Firms to survey 671 human resource professionals in SHRM’s membership and 609 employed individuals throughout the U.S. The Council hired RoperASW to survey employees in its OmniTel survey, a weekly national telephone omnibus service.
Using the survey results, SHRM wrote a report that compares and contrasts the responses of HR professionals and employed individuals in an effort to understand how these two groups perceive employee communications and organizational reputation.
In most instances, the groups agreed with one another. Responding to a question about how honest companies are in communicating to employees, the majority of both HR professionals and employees (95% and 82% respectively) indicated that their organizations are always or usually open and honest.
Appreciating employees
A majority of HR professionals and employees surveyed also agreed that their organizations do a respectable job of showing appreciation for employees. Nineteen percent of HR professionals and 30% of employees say their companies are “very” good about showing appreciation, while 44% of HR professionals and 29% of employees say their organizations are “good.”
“The fact that employees appear to be satisfied with organizational efforts in this area indicates that communication programs associated with showing appreciation are working,” according to the survey authors.
That employee satisfaction may stem from more creative programs that show employees just how much they are valued. For example, Air Product and Chemicals (Allentown, Pa.) publicizes what it calls “bingo moments,” stories about employees who have “gone the extra mile to solve a customer’s problem,” says Betsy Klebe, the company’s director of corporate communications. In addition to gaining notoriety within the company, some of the bingo moment’s employees end up “starring” in Air Products advertising along with their story.
Best communication vehicles
Survey results show that employees want to be informed as well as appreciated. Both groups of respondents were asked to choose the best methods for companies to use to communicate with employees in order to strengthen their credibility in the face of corporate financial scandals. For HR professionals and employees, sharing good news and bad news as promptly and as fully as possible emerged as the top choice (75% and 84% respectively).
Many companies are already doing this well. With the advent of electronic communication channels such as the Internet even very large companies can disseminate information to everyone in their global workforce with lightning speed. “We provide general communication tools to the company’s leadership teams,” says Anne M. McCarthy, DuPont’s director of employee and management communications. “We keep them abreast of important news events or key corporate actions that they might want to factor into their daily communications” with their direct reports.
Likewise, Air Products says the Internet has helped the company deal with the challenge of communicating with its widely dispersed employee population. “We have about 250 field locations in the U.S. alone, and 70% of them employee fewer than 10 people,” says Klebe. The Internet “has enabled us to deliver communications to the field in real time, allowing those employees to be part of the dialogue.”
Indeed, employees do want to be heard as well as just informed. A majority of survey respondents said that increasing two-way communication between management and employees (70% of HR professionals and 78% of employees) was the second best method by which companies could strengthen organizational credibility in the eyes of their employees.
As one part of its “comprehensive employee communications strategy,” Air Products has set up a number of programs that give employees more opportunities to converse with senior management. For example, the company has set up roughly two dozen “Ask Management” Web sites through which employees can submit questions to members of senior management and receive personal answers, Klebe says.
Alternatively, Air Products employees around the world may email or call in questions to Chairman John P. Jones III during his “coffee talks.” These speeches are held live on a quarterly basis and webcast or broadcast via satellite feed.
Some corporate programs query employees from the top down as well. Air Products, for example, has set up a leadership Web site, which provides a forum for Jones to solicit advice from his managers. For example, he recently asked what actions the company might take, in light of economically challenging times, to become the best company to work for. About 200 managers responded with suggestions ranging from focusing on managing change and communications to revisiting compensation, benefits and employee recognition systems, according to Klebe.
At DuPont, it is not uncommon for its leadership teams to canvass groups of employees for suggestions in a wide range of areas. By going to those employees who are on the front lines of the business, “we get a lot of good suggestions, many of which we try to implement,” McCarthy notes.
And the company plans to improve further on that feedback mechanism. This quarter, DuPont plans to start polling its employees in a manner “similar to what CNN does,” says McCarthy. The company will send daily news feeds out to employees and ask for an instant reply. “We will poll them on everything from world news events to happenings within DuPont to find out what is on their minds,” says McCarthy. “So we are really working hard to upgrade our electronic communications from the corporate office out and then back again.”
For its part, Air Products has set up a program by which it conducts informal surveys through the company’s intranet. Called AP Pulse, the survey provides a snapshot of employee opinions on a variety of questions, “including everything from what’s most important to you and your job to how long a meeting should last,” says Klebe.
While electronic mail has been a boon to employee-management communication, it can’t take the place of face-to-face conversations, McCarthy points out. “If you want to influence employees and really make a connection with them, you have to be able to sit down in the same room and converse,” she says. DuPont, for example, often holds town hall meetings and roundtable discussions between employees and management.
Reputation and Performance Link
When employees enjoy open communication with their managers and feel reassured about the company’s reputation, are they likely to perform better on the job? Survey respondents seemed sure that they would.
Almost all respondents (98% of HR professionals and 91% of employees) indicated that they agree there is a link between a company’s reputation and employee job performance. “Clearly, these results indicate that both HR professionals and employees believe that company reputation is a key ingredient in motivating job performance,” say the survey authors.
“If you have employees who are reassured and engaged in what they are doing, it stands to reason that they are going to be happier and more motivated,” says DuPont’s McCarthy. “They are going to hold themselves to higher standards and they are going to provide better customer service.”
Air Products’ Klebe echoes that sentiment: “Through better communication, you gain more dedicated and motivated employees.” However, she warns, employees must perceive communications as sincere and credible. To build that kind of trust, requires careful planning and a commitment from top managers, who must be willing to invest their time and the needed resources to maintain an ongoing, effective communication program, she adds.
Greatest worries
But even the best communication efforts cannot entirely eliminate employee anxiety in today’s business environment. Virtually no employee is immune to the effect that corporate scandals, layoffs, the battered stock market, the weak economy, the threat of war and terrorism have had on the workplace.
When asked to choose the most pressing of employee concerns from a list of worries, both HR professionals and employees indicated similar first and second choices: fear of losing their jobs (49% of HR professionals and 19% of employees) and fear of losing their employee retirement savings (16% of HR professionals and 12% of employees).
The survey authors found the difference in perspectives of both groups in terms of job security to be interesting. Only 19% of employees indicated that they are worried about losing their job, yet almost half of the HR professionals indicated this as their employees’ top concern, they point out. “It is difficult to know if this difference is due in part to HR professionals’ misinterpretation of employees’ interactions with them, or, if HR professionals are simply applying a wider knowledge of the realities of the current job market to their interpretation of how employees are feeling.”
Other worries listed in the survey included losing employee benefits such as health care insurance, physical security at work, employers going out of business or employers relocating.
While allaying fears within its employee population, companies must also work to compensate for unfavorable publicity in recruiting. “Our best defense to unfair publicity, and possibly inaccurate information, are knowledgeable and informed employees who can be our ambassadors in their communities,” notes Air Products’ Klebe. “For the chemical industry, it is especially important to tell ‘the other side of the story’ to recruits who are not familiar with our business and may have developed negative stereotypes.”
Indeed, the smartest companies are acutely aware of employee and prospective employee concerns and are using communication tools to keep them relaxed and focused. “Whether in good times or bad, we try to stay consistent and emphasize our core values—safety, health and environmental stewardship, integrity and high ethical standards, and fair and respectful treatment of people,” says DuPont’s McCarthy. “That, in itself, seems to be a source of reassurance for our employees.”
Susan Ainsworth specializes in writing about chemical industry topics and is based in the Dallas, Texas area
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