#mslconnect11 live blog: ServiceMaster's Pete Tosches

Rather than bother everybody's Twitter stream with updates, I thought it would be better to provide presentation thoughts here (and serves as good note-taking for me).

Pete Tosches, The ServiceMaster Company: "'Who Uses That Website Anyway?' Communication Secrets from the Front Lines"

Under the ServiceMaster umbrella are brands like TruGreen, Terminix, and merry maids.
They have 24,000 full-time employees & another 5,000 seasonal, with no work PCs, no email and no office phone.
Producitivity drives revenue, which is why it's a tough conversation to invest in employee communications.
Only 58% of employees agreed that leadership communicates a vision that motivates them.
Face-to-face communication is vital to internal communication at ServiceMaster. They have a mandatory monthly branch meeting for one hour "on the clock."
The meetings were key for employees to be able to share what the customers were telling them. The feedback loop became very important.
Like Volkswagen, ServiceMaster still sends home quaterly newsletter mailing to sales and service employees' homes. This highlights the "spouse factor."
The company is dipping its big toe in the social media water. They are encouraging employees to listen to the online conversation as part of improving communication. Yammer is also part of the strategy.
In a company that's operation-focused, they need to provide basic communication tools (ride-alongs, town halls, podcasts, etc) to hear back from employees.
They rely on 3-way communication, and the the most important "way" is employee to employee conversations.
ServiceMaster has to use paper-based communication and face-to-face to tell employees about the information available online.