Workplace Communication

A constant challenge of corporate communicators is determining if the messages they're sending out are making a difference. Often they aren't. Often times they are. Marketers have various data points they can point to but employee communications is a challenge. 

It's not operated in a vacuum and many variables come into play. This is one of the reasons I'm not a fanboy for employee engagement surveys. Many companies will point to these surveys as a barometer of success for internal communications activities. The surveys are a necessary evil but...Read More »

Corporate communicators know this. Determining ROI in employee communications is a tricky calculation. Whether you're investing in new technology like digital signage or launching a brand new intranet, some people will always ask, "What's the ROI?"

Now here's your answer.  Just this month, Watson Wyatt released their 2009/10 communication ROI study. You might be wondering who took part in the survey. Well, 328 companies from around the world representing nearly 5 million workers. Pretty impressive. Straight from the report:

• Effective employee...

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I'm going to take a side step from my usual digital signage discussion and focus on the most basic and primal of internal communication: the employee newsletter.

Sure we live in a digital world and employees are bombarded with messages in and out of the workplace. But I feel the people who say the employee publication is dead have actually never put one together themselves. It can be a huge pain in the ass, but it's also a labor of love.

Think about the value the employee publication provides. It is the one true mobile communication platform...Read More »

For internal communicators, this is easier said than done. Due to time limitations or technology constraints, communicators tend to broadcast messages across the board through newsletters and emails. And many times, workplace communication should be broadcast across the board, so to speak, if the message hits everyone.

But there are times when you need to better define your message audience and even dictate when that message "appears." With MediaTile digital signage, you have the ability to broadcast to large groups of screens at once, create...Read More »

I'm out at MediaTile HQ in Scotts Valley, CA, this week so I'm a bit tied up in meetings. I thought it was a good time to pull together another list of my "clicks that click." These are a smattering of news items I've picked up over the last week or so that are related to communication in the workplace, social media AND/or digital signage.
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At last June's IABC World Conference, I was asked about the trends I was seeing in corporate communications and what did I see around the corner. My response was that eventually communications would...Read More »

I've been writing posts for this blog for more than a year now, but I've hardly seen anybody else writing about digital signage for employee communications. But there's hope out there.

Mark Allen, like me, is convinced that companies are scrambling to keep employees in the loop. In his post, Mark goes through a variety of helpful lists regarding content and hardware to make sure you're properly evaluating a solution.

So many digital signage products out there have one main server that "pushes" content to the screens. But what happens if...Read More »

Last month, I wrote about how Melcrum was looking to find out who "we" thought was the most influential internal communication expert today. Here's where the vote stands:


I'm not at all surprised the "Other" is leading the way. I know I've voted for a few who AREN'T on the list. If you want to add in your two cents, the voting is still open. I'm not sure when they plan on shutting it down.

It's certainly an interesting question to ask, but is prone to a lot of critical comments. I've seen some comments on Twitter indicating some confusion over...Read More »

I remember when I started this blog last year that I was excited the first weekend to see that a whole six people read the blog. Six! And that number could probably be attributed to my family.

Now several months and more than a 100+ posts later, I thought it would be interesting to see which posts were the most popular according to the readers.

Here's the Top 6 visited posts:

1. The cost of poor internal communications (March 3, 2009)
2. Security is important, with or without zombies (January 29, 2009)
3. Do you rely on line managers for...

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Attending last week's IABC World Conference provided a wealth of content. Here's the rundown...

Monday, June 8
Day 1 recap from the IABC World Conference
Day 1 is about to officially come to a close and it's been a strong first day. Though it shouldn't come as much of a surprise given that it is a world conference, much of the content and sessions is focused on communicating to a global audience. Global communication is a challenge for any organization with people scattered about time zones and geographies. Just when some employees are showing...Read More »

For the employee communications expert panel at this week's IABC World Conference, I was asked to talk briefly about a communications trend I've seen recently. Aside from the obvious one (social media), the only thing I've seen is internal communicators getting beat up on a daily basis. For the last six months they have been in crisis mode because announced layoffs, business cuts and other fun news.

So what I presented to the group was more a curiosity that I had. I'm really interested to see that as the economy moves from recession to recovery,...Read More »