This blog is about the relationship between organizations and the people who work for them. And, it’s dedicated to the millions of people around the world who go to work every day wanting to do a great job.
Union
Worker health and safety and you
It’s a shocking fact that according to Canada’s health and safety website, “… every year work-related injuries and diseases cause nearly 1,000 deaths” in Canadian companies and organizations. That is nearly 3 work related deaths per day! That’s in a country with a relatively small population and well-publicised and enforced worker rights.
So, even though the two recent worker disasters in Bangladesh:
- a fire killed at least 112 garment workers at Bangladesh’s Tazreen factory who were locked in
- the building collapse at Rona Plaza that has reportedly killed nearly 400
The question remains what is the real cost of fast fashion and our seemingly insatiable demand for stuff? How many Bangladeshis are dying as a direct result of health and safety issues that could and should be changed? We don’t know. What we do know is that these deaths are avoidable.
Time to think about the impact of the story of stuff on workers…
What does health and safety and workers rights look like in your organization? Your supply chain? What role can we, as leaders and professional communicators, do to change this very human disaster?
Random Posts:
Random Posts:
Labour Day: A moment of reflection
Labour Day. It’s the last long weekend of the summer here in North America. It’s a day of reprieve for parents who’ve spent the last few weeks helping their kids get prepared for their return to school. It’s last wonderful summer day at the cottage. Bbq’s and friends and family.
And, it’s an opportunity to reflect on the millions of men and women [and children] who are working to produce the things that feed us, make our lives easy, frivolous and sometimes fun.
And, people who are increasingly in developing countries. People who have few if any choices. People who may or may not be able to read or write. People who are working with their hands and their bodies. People who aren’t supported by a labour union movement or even their own governments. People with rights they don’t even know they have.
One minute. A little reflection on this Labour Day.
Random Posts:
Learning from our past
“Will the [internal communication] function be needed? No, and that’s a good thing. In fact, that should be our professional aim – to restore our organisations’ ability to communicate to the point where our services are no longer required.”
So said Adam Hibbert in a comment on my last post.
I love this aspiration [although I’m not sure about "restoring"]. And, I know it’s shared by many of you who are following the discussion on CommScrum where our frustration concerning the function is often the basis for “the scrum” and on Kevin Keohane’s blog – “Death to internal marketing” – where the blog’s name speaks for itself.
I think we all agree that – good, bad or indifferent – employee communications have and do happen with or without a function called internal communications. So, when did the function come into being? Why? And what was work life like before and after?
We actually don’t need to go back very far to find a time when the function didn’t exist.
According to my resident economic historian, Michael, since the multi-divisional corporation was only invented in the U.S.A sometime in “the 1920s” when it was first introduced by Alfred Sloan at General Motors (“Sloan’s Revolution”), the employee communication function, as a function, couldn’t have existed before that.
A quick look at Sloan’s book “My years with General Motors” and the organization charts that are produced there show something very interesting. The beginnings of a human resources function are there as early at 1921. At that time, General Motors had a position called General Advisor Staff. This position reported to the VP in charge of operations and was responsible for 15 functions wide ranging functions from the cafeteria to real estate. One of these which was called Organization – Line and Staff and another called Personnel Services [Welfare, medical and San. Serv.]. The beginnings of Human Resources are there. But nothing that suggests a specific employee communications function.
By 1963 the biggest corporation in the world still did not have a Public Relations function. The closest thing to that seems to be advertising and market research function that reported to the VP Sales and Service. Oh those Mad Men! That’s the biggest company in the world. That’s 1963!
By that time the Personnel and Labour Relations function with its own VP. And, there are three places within this function that start to look like employee communications. The first two are the General Motors Suggestion Program and Employee Research functions [both reporting to Personnel Relations] and the second is the Appeal Hearings and Arbitration [reporting to labour Relations]. Perhaps even more interesting from a communication point of view is that they all are potentially about listening. They certainly don’t sound like mass communications.
To understand our present and prepare for our future I think we need to understand our past. This brief look into the past has made me more curious.
- When did organizations decide they needed to influence employees with more than hours and wages? Was it when employees began to unionize and take action against their employers?
- What motivated the creation of an internal communications function?
- When did the first internal communication function show up on an organization chart?
- What impact did internal communications have? Did the work of the first internal communications functions improve the workplace or not?
- When did internal communications become a professional communications function rather than a Human Resources specialty? Or did it?
- When we expect the function to be a humanizing force in our institutions are we asking it to do something it was never designed to do?
If you know the answer to any of these questions, I’d love to hear from you?
Is it time to scrap the current structure and start from nothing? I know where you and Kevin stand Adam. Anybody else?
For more you might want to check out:
Micklethwait and Wooldridge, The Company, 2003, pp. 104-109
Alfred Sloan, My Years at General Motors, 1964
Alexander R. Heron, “Sharing information with employees” , 1942 is considered the first book on employee communications
Random Posts:
Spin is still in
Today’s article titled “Air Canada raises number of stock options for execs” raised my hackles. Not because of the specific case, but what this story really tells about the state of communications today. We talk in our bubble about transparency and authenticity, but almost daily reports tell another story.
In this case, the company’s shareholders decided to quadruple the shares available for stock option plans for senior executives. And, you can imagine that if the stock option plan at Air Canada had been wildly out of whack with the market there would certainly be a business case for doing this. You can imagine that getting and keeping good leadership in an industry as challenged as the airline industry isn’t easy. And you can even imagine that total potential compensation is the key attractor for senior executives.
And then, the CEO said: “There will be no change in compensation plans for senior executives.” What? If increasing the number of available stock options doesn’t change compensation plans then why are they doing it?
Now, I’m not naïve. The company has negotiated an agreement with their union that says there will be “no change in compensation plans of senior executives.” And, I understand that going back and renegotiating with them on this point might not be an option. But, falling back on a statement that is technically accurate without being true is just not right.
Every time any CEO does this they [and their leadership teams] lose credibility. Every employee and every person reading the article knows that the total potential compensation for senior executives has most certainly changed.
What do you think? Do you think spin is still in? And if so, where do you stand?
Do you see this kind of thing in your organization? If you’d been at the table when the decision to announce this change was made, what advice would you have given?
Sign up for mailing list
Recent Posts
- Building a brand experience is just not that complicated…
- 100 years of brand building wiped out in one walk
- Communication failure in Montreal. Sir Richard Branson dies.
- Not all stakeholders are created equal. Now what?
- Why you need to master the art of segmentation
- The single most important question you can ever ask
- “We didn’t know…” Now what?
- Worker health and safety and you
Authors
Recent posts
- Building a brand experience is just not that complicated…
- 100 years of brand building wiped out in one walk
- Communication failure in Montreal. Sir Richard Branson dies.
- Not all stakeholders are created equal. Now what?
- Why you need to master the art of segmentation
- The single most important question you can ever ask
- “We didn’t know…” Now what?
- Worker health and safety and you
- Innovation. You gotta be a little bit crazy!
- In search of great communicators