You have to wonder how Halliburton employees reacted when their
CEO called on them to write letters to the editor of local
newspapers defending the company in the face of various misconduct
allegations. Dave Lesar wrote the memo last October 17, telling
employees that critics were distorting the company's efforts and
offering talking points for the letters he hoped employees would
write.
It's one thing for employees to rally to a company's defense.
It's another for employees to feel that perhaps their jobs depend
on it.
This short-term public relations ploy (of the worst kind) could
have long-term repercussions for employee relations. The message
Lesar sent to his employees may well have come from his heart, but
perception being reality, many could have interpreted it as
intimidation. An erosion of employee commitment could be the
consequence.
Employee commitment and job satisfaction are the twin holy
grails of employee communication, often overlooked in the tactical
rush to produce knockout publications, intranets, events, and other
internal communication tools.
Commitment is the rational choice employees make to dedicate
their energies to supporting organizational goals and initiatives.
Similarly, job satisfaction is different from happiness. An
employee can be thoroughly satisfied with his job even if he's not
happy. Nobody's happy during a layoff, for instance. There are four
criteria for achieving job satisfaction and commitment:
Involvement - Employees want to believe that the company will
involve them in decisions that affect them.
Role knowledge - Employees need to be able to connect the work
they do to the bottom line. They need to understand how their
day-to-day work efforts relate to the big-picture initiatives and
announcements that seem to routinely emanate from the executive
offices.
Connection to the marketplace - Employees need to understand the
forces that impact the organization, from the economy to customers
to competitors. This connection usually heads off any shock or
surprise when marketplace factors force the organization to
announce a dramatic change.
Trust - It is trust that Lesar jeopardized when he issued a memo
compelling employees to help defend the organization. How does that
differ from former Aetna CEO Richard Huber's appeal to employees to
sign a petition? The key difference is that Huber appealed to
employees to get involved while Lesar used employees to further the
company's PR efforts.
Here's the Huber story: During the election cycle in 2000,
several congressional candidates bashed health maintenance
organizations (HMOs) as part of their campaigns. Huber, in a
streaming video presented to employees on AetNet, the company's
intranet, argued that Aetna employees were proud of their efforts
on patients' behalf and that the company did not appreciate being
painted with the same brush as other HMOs that focused on cost
savings at patients' expense. He told employees there was an online
petition they could sign that said, essentially, "We work for an
HMO, we're proud of what we do, and we vote."
So many signatures were gained that Aetna was able to buy
display advertising in newspapers in key regions, listing the names
of local employees beneath the ad's narrative text. The effort
quelled the HMO bashing in most of those markets.
Employees rushed to sign the online Aetna petition, but there
was no equivalent rush of Halliburton employees to send letters to
their local newspapers. While Lesar's letter to employees came out
of the blue, Aetna had been promoting employee advocacy for a long
time. There's even a section of the intranet dedicated to keeping
employees informed about pending litigation, legislation and
regulation, a link to Capitol Connect (an employee advocacy
resource tailored to each organization's industry and issues), and
a host of other material that built trust by keeping employees up
to date and kept them involved at a grass-roots level.
When Huber issued his call to action, it was part of an ongoing
bond between employees and the company. When Lesar issued his, it
was an aberration, a bolt from the blue insisting that employees
help the company solve problems that most of them were unaware of.
The fact that Halliburton's employees learned of the company's
alleged abuses through traditional media channels and not from the
company only worsened the situation. While Aetna built trust,
Halliburton eroded it.
To put it another way, organizations cannot effectively employ
internal communications as a one-time effort, nor can it be viewed
merely as news reporting to employees. Employee communication is an
ongoing effort with clear and measurable objectives. And there is a
payoff. Companies that improve the effectiveness of their internal
communications experience a related increase in their market value.
According to a study conducted by the human resources consulting
firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide, organizations that communicated most
effectively with employees experienced a return to shareholders of
26%. Those organizations that communicated least effectively
produced a -15% return. That's a 41% swing in returns between
companies that communicate well and those that don't.
That's an enticing incentive for investing in communication that
builds relationships and addresses the needs of the audience. And
make no mistake. Employees represent a constituency every bit as
important as media, the financial community and customers, and
maybe even more important.
By Shel Holtz, ABC, principal of Holtz Communication +
Technology and author of "Corporate Conversations: A Guide to
Crafting Effective and Appropriate Internal Communications"
(Amacom, 2004; $27.95). He can be reached at 925.673.9896, [email protected]