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.
Workplace
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?
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Our preoccupation with innovation. Is it just “lipstick on a pig”?
I was walking through the McGill University campus the other day and noticed a poster that described the invention of the Kellogg cornflake. It reminded me again of how chance has led to some of the most innovative creations of the past century: vulcanized rubber [think tires], Post-it notes, Teflon, mauve [yes, and a must read on this], the x-ray, superglue, stainless steel, and microwave ovens [for more]. But, there’s more than happenstance and chance or even serendipity, to these breakthrough events. There was the ‘accident’ and then there was insight.
Virtually every organization I know is trying to find ways to encourage and capitalize on innovation. Big and small, customer or operationally-focused innovation is the new ‘silver bullet’; a “key growth lever”.
What are they doing organizationally to increase the potential for ‘chance’ and insight?
Well, they’re benchmarking. They’re designing new workspaces to support innovation – atriums and agoras, open offices, whiteboard walls and basketball hoops. Mimicking the Google and Apple campuses in the hope that they will inspire new ways of thinking. They’re giving employees access to more and more collaborative tools and creating opportunities through internal innovation challenges.
But most of these same organizations – whether they are white collar knowledge workers or blue collar labourers – are designed to produce widgets. It’s the nature of the work and the day-to-day deliverables. The design of the overall business operation is more like a production line in a sausage factory than a research and development team in a laboratory.
Are we just “putting lipstick on a pig”? Or are these changes – especially in older traditional businesses – really delivering the promise?
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A workplace with soul
I first heard about Building 20 at MIT when I read Jonah Lehrer’s article “Groupthink. The brainstorm myth” in the New Yorker just over a year ago. According to Lehrer this huge ["two hundred and fifty thousand square feet, on three floors"] and un-designed, temporary WWII building was “by the time it was finally demolished, in 1998, … a legend of innovation, widely regarded as one of the most creative spaces in the world. In the postwar decades, scientists working there pioneered a stunning list of breakthroughs, from advances in high-speed photography to the development of the physics behind microwaves. Building 20 served as an incubator for the Bose Corporation. It gave rise to the first video game and to Chomskyan linguistics.” Wow, that’s an incredible list of innovation!
In a commemorative publication, to mark the demolition, one of the headlines: A building with soul, caught my eye.
If we’re going to ask employees to stop telecommuting and come back into the office, then what kinds of places are we inviting them back to. Are they workplaces with soul? If not, is there anything we learn from Building 20?
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Telecommuting. The promise and the reality.
“We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”
What? With that short message to all employees last week Yahoo opened the door to some pretty strong feedback from the blogosphere. Immediate reaction from outside has been pretty negative. And, one can imagine even stronger negative reaction from affected employees.
I think we can safely assume Yahoo has strong business reasons – beyond what was stated in the employee memo – for making what is a very bold announcement. From the business side of things, we know we’re never going back to 40 hour work weeks so one might wonder how Yahoo is going to pull this off. And in the coming days and weeks the implications of the decision on the business will be clearer.
In the meanwhile, let’s take this opportunity to think about telecommuting – the promise and the reality of telecommuting from an employee point of view.
Social technologies have made it easier and easier to work where, when and how we want. And that can be a very good thing.
But, is the choice of where, when and how to work really our choice? When you’re accessible 24/7/52, are you expected to be available 24/7/52? I certainly know of organizations where that is the expectation no matter what any handbooks say.
Are your human relationships – work, family and friends – enriched or diminished by the technology?
Is it easier or harder to get/be part of teams working to create meaningful outcomes for yourself, your organization, your community?
The Yahoo! policy, opens up the opportunity to think about the kind of places, choices and ways of working employees really want.
It’s just not as black and white as the initial reaction would have it. What do you think?
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The fall of the cubicle wall
First it was the Berlin wall. Now it’s the cubicle wall. Workspaces even in the most traditional environments – banks, insurance companies and law offices are changing. And they are changing in pretty radical ways. Shared work stations, open space and windows, tables, couches and banquettes instead of cubicles and enclosed offices. Even though the initial motivation of these organizations is cost cutting, according to an article in today’s Globe and Mail employees report an overwhelmingly positive experience and increased productivity.
Perhaps even more interesting, given the focus of this blog, is the implication for communication and change management. One would hope that there would be something equally inventive, but when faced with some issues “10% of negative comments are about noise and work behaviours that become distractions, the bank is doing training and distributing tip sheets about having consideration for others.” Good grief! I think the walls just went back up.
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“How do we shut Twitter off?”
Reportedly this was a question asked by a senior marketing executive at HMV when some head office employees went rogue on Twitter after learning they were losing their jobs.
Here are my questions:
- Given the importance of social media today, how responsible is it for senior executives not to have even a basic understanding of what social media are? How they work or don’t work? Isn’t it time for executives to get online and start partipating in the social media revolution? [BTW I would ask the same thing of concerned parents whose children will inevitably be on social media]
- Will your culture protect you from rogue employees if/when the going gets tough? If not, what needs to change.
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Is doing good good?
Companies, all kinds of companies, are getting more involved in “doing good”. But, why? What’s the primary motivation? Building the brand or creating a better world?
Flash back to the mid 1840s, Titus Salt a woollen manufacturer had already made his fortune. He was planning to retire. Instead, he decided to consolidate his 5 mills on one site and improve the lives of his workers. He had already begun to try to improve the living conditions of his employees and would take 2,000 workers {and their families] on day trips out of the dirt and grime of Bradford and into the fresh air of the country around it: by train into the Yorkshire Dales, to his own estate or the seaside at Scarbourough.
He was not alone in taking action to improve the social needs of his workers, but his vision was bigger and more comprehensive. He would open one huge woollen mill, Salts Mill, outside of the heavy pollution of Bradford in Shipley. He would create a healthy place for workers to live and work.
They would have access to a dining hall across the road from the mill. Workers homes would be built in a ‘village’ near by with a church, schools, a library, a hospital, a park, allotment gardens. Everyone would have access to water, drainage, gas and a backyard with a private toilet. The main street would have shops to provide for all of the tenants needs. He would build almshouses [in the end 45] and a chapel for the infirm or aged on one edge of the village near the hospital. And he did. He built Saltaire – named after the mill/founder and the river that runs beside it.
The cynical would say this was all paternalistic and self-serving, but when Titus Salt died 100,000 people thronged the funeral’s processional route. And, 100,000 people can’t all be that wrong.
Titus Salt was a man of his time. He was a man who wanted to create a better world. And in making a better world for his workers he did better business and created a brand that endured well into the 20th century. Today Saltaire, the town Titus Salt built, is a UNESCO heritage site. A monument to a man and a time of incredible social vision.
Flash forward 160 years. How many of today’s brands will be remembered for the good they did? What will their legacy be?
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The Times Square effect
It’s that time of year. Every retailer moves into the black in a flood of promotions and sales – online and off. Fundraisers and not for profits raise the most money for their causes and make their last big push in a flood of messages designed to make us feel bad and hopeful. Everyone is selling. The visual cacophony reaches a crescendo at this time of year. But, visual noise is something we live with throughout the year and in lots of different settings.
At a large local hospital yesterday I got off an elevator in search of the transportation office so I could get a wheelchair for my friend. I ended up having to ask three people for directions before finding the office. The third said, “The signage is pretty poor”, pointing back at a wall plastered with posters. All different sizes, colours, messages and slammed on the wall with no apparent rhyme or reason. The result: I saw nothing.
Two hours later when I was returning the wheelchair I took a closer look and realized that with a little thought about who the messages were for the impact would be totally different.
Most of the posters were messages for staff about health and safety – three were the same poster. I guess it was an important problem – slipping and carrying issues. Two were for visitors, patients and staff: one on cellphone usage that no one – staff, patient or visitor – paid any attention to; one with directions to the transportation office.
The posters were visually different – sizes, colours, fonts, approaches – all competing for attention. The result was that I didn’t see anything even when I was looking for it: the Times Square effect!
Our organizations are just as bad. In-boxes, bulletin boards [online and off], chatrooms, newsletters, powerpoint presentations, videos not only create information overload but all of this is amplified by the visual noise.
Are your internal communications creating the Times Square effect in your organization?
[I suggest you turn the sound down and go to full screen to get the Times Square effect.]
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Layoffs. When the right way is the wrong way.
I was speaking to a senior HR professional a few weeks ago. They’re going through their 6th or 7th global restructuring in as many years.
We all know that when you have to do it, the right way to lay people off is face-to-face. It’s the human thing to do. Much more human than how my friend, one of the most senior people in their organization, found out they’d lost their job when they weren’t invited to a key strategic planning meeting. Or another who learned by reading the announcement in the weekly newsletter.
But what if you’re spread out geographically and, as in the case of my HR colleague, are working in an organization that is down to barebones HR staff. The decisions have been taken. The list is made. And, because there’s not enough HR staff to go to every location and be there with the responsible executive , it will take a month or more to move across the country.
Now imagine you’re an employee in this company. You know – there’s been a public announcement – that 25% of your function will lose their jobs. And, you have to wait a month or more to hear if it’s you so that you can meet face-to-face for a couple of minutes with your exec and an HR person you may, or may not, have ever seen before in your life.
I don’t know. It just doesn’t sound very human to me.
What do you think? Isn’t there, just maybe, a better way?
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The problem: “It’s our CEO!’
“She doesn’t understand what communication is.” ”He doesn’t get the value we can add”. “She thinks cause she can talk and write she understands communications.” “All he wants is somebody to right the news release.”
The thing is that conversation about the communication professionals role often comes down to… ”If only we had a smarter, better CEO then we could really do our job.”
And, if you work in or for large organizations, you’ve probably heard something similar from people in almost any support function.
The implication is that these CEOs are
- stupid. They don’t get what we can do.
- irrational. They see what we can do and they choose not to let us do it.
But CEOs may be many things but stupid and irrational aren’t qualities that would have gotten them to where they are. If they don’t know what communication professionals can to to further their interests for the business or their careers, the things that matter to them, then the problem might just be us.
Maybe it’s time to take a good long look at ourselves. What are our professional aspirations? And what role do we want to play in bringing those aspirations to life?
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Recent Posts
- 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
- Our preoccupation with innovation. Is it just “lipstick on a pig”?
- Anatomy of an internal announcement. Top 3 lessons from Yahoo!
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Recent posts
- 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
- Our preoccupation with innovation. Is it just “lipstick on a pig”?
- Anatomy of an internal announcement. Top 3 lessons from Yahoo!
- Google Glass at work!?
- A workplace with soul