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I admit, I am probably a bit overly sensitive to stories like this at the moment, but regardless, I am appalled by the article I read this morning about six employees at a NYC hospital. These employees have all been fired or suspended for misconduct and negligence in the emergency room which resulted in the death of a patient. In addition, it was found that hospital staff falsified documents related to the death, getting caught by the surveillance video that captured the entire incident and contradicted the reports that had originally been given by the employees.

Unfortunately, I have spent a lot of time in hospitals lately, but I have been lucky to be greeted by caring and attentive people who all work together with the mission to help and care for patients – most of all with the intent to keep them alive. But that’s when I was physically there. Reading an article like this makes me wonder what happens when the family isn’t there, or worse, when patients don’t have family who can be there. And are the employees alone to blame? How accountable can we hold organizations like the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, the group that oversees this hospital and ultimately disciplined these particular employees?

While an immediate reaction is anger and outrage, I have to take a step back and think about each individually. It calls to mind the corporate scandals in which the organization itself may not have known what certain employees were doing, but were still ultimately affected, and sometimes held accountable. How can an organization ensure that its employees are ethical, compassionate, engaged and supportive of the company’s mission and values? This is crucial – sometimes, apparently, it’s even a matter of life or death.

It seems like every business publication – from The New York Times to BusinessWeek to HR Magazine – has run a major story in the past few months on sustainability and the business of going green. Sustainability is more than a mega-trend, it’s a new way of doing business. And chances are, your organization has already gone green or is looking into it. But just like branding, sustainability won’t stick unless organizations take an inside-out approach. You can paint your buildings as green as you like, but if your employees don’t buy into sustainable practices and “walk the talk,” it will look like your company is simply giving lip service to the cause.

I recently read about how Xerox (which, coincidentally, underwent a significant brand overhaul earlier this year) has aligned its green initiatives with its company vision and uses its team-based culture and internal communication to keep every employee abreast of what is happening across the organization. I know from the experience of our Insidedge team that internal communications can play a pivotal role in successfully embedding sustainability within the culture of an organization. 

How is your organization turning sustainability into a sustainable business practice?  How do your employees stay informed about your firm’s sustainability efforts? Do they walk the talk?

Summer time means summer interns.

In our New York office, I am among several non-managerial colleagues tasked with leading the annual intern program. At the beginning of the week, I spent some time thinking about the projects I would share with my intern, Christine. I thought about what words of wisdom I would impart to her, about how I would teach her the ropes and give her a great experience. But I realized before the end of week one that I would also be doing some learning.

For instance, Christine put me on to Megabus, a low-cost bus service with cool amenities like Wi-Fi access in the coaches. Even cooler, if you book early enough (like her friends who came up to visit last weekend) you might pay as little as $1. And just like that, I was enlightened to the latest in affordable inter-city bus travel!

Christine’s presence has also enabled me to live the importance of manager communications from a manager’s perspective. As Lee Smith pointed out on his blog, meaningful conversations between managers and employees still play a huge role in employee development and engagement. While I advocate this sentiment with our clients, practicing it has given me a fresh and useful perspective on the importance of managers as communicators. For Christine and many other employees, their managers have a huge impact on their workplace perceptions. Managers who communicate well can connect with employees and motivate them to do their best work.

Thank you, Christine, for teaching me about not only an inexpensive travel option but for also teaching me an important facet of being a good manager.

My office neighbor recently forwarded a few articles he thought I’d find interesting. One was an article from The Conference Board that was both interesting and terrifying.  The author proclaims that many of today’s workers are in what she calls a “psychological recession.”  Based on what I know of countless friends and associates, the author is on to something. Her perspective reinforces numerous studies (including one of our own at Insidedge) that claim our most valued asset – our employees – are either already on their way out the door or are just merely “punching the clock” rather than engaging in their work or their company. You can attribute this morass to a lack of loyalty, fear of job loss and a host of other issues negatively affecting employee attitudes and performance.

Scary stuff, but from what I’ve seen, eerily true. So as an employee communicator it’s important to take a step back and realize the implications on what we do.

Is it time for more ice cream socials and pizza parties? No.  It’s time to listen and lead.  For leaders today, these two skills are more critical now than ever before.  First, it’s incumbent on organizations to listen to their people.  Sure, the annual or biennial all-employee kahuna of a survey still has its place.  As a tracking tool and a resource for understanding nuances to individual groups, locations and businesses, annual surveys can be a great resource.

Increasingly, however, we at Insidedge are spending more and more time actually getting out in the field on behalf of our clients to truly listen to their employees.  What are the real issues facing employees?  What are their perceptions of their work?  Their managers?  The company’s business plans? Or even the company itself? By having a candid discussion and asking questions like these, you can get actionable information that, when used effectively, can help overcome this reticence.

But then what?

As a colleague of mine recently said, “it’s a time for leadership and a time to lead.”  For years we’ve all sung the praises of a visible leadership team actively engaged in communications. Still, too many leaders don’t make employee communication a priority. Now, leaders who want employee engagement and performance results must take the time to listen to their people and really understand what’s driving their attitudes. It’s time for leaders to hold themselves and their colleagues accountable for providing the leadership and stewardship to weather this storm that’s engulfing so many people.  We’re all in this together.

As I travel this week in Ireland, where Insidedge in 2008 established a new presence to serve clients, I’m reminded of the importance of our work in employee communications globally. In the public and private sectors here, organizations struggle as they do everywhere to build trust with employees, to retain key associates and to create greater commitment among their front-line workers. It’s particularly important for employers in Dublin and Belfast to keep their best people because the market for talent in key business sectors is limited.

In the spring, we conducted a study among 600 employees in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to better understand how they see their work and to gauge their trust levels. We found that employee trust in senior management is alarmingly low, with one in every three employees in both Northern Ireland and the ROI recording active distrust or low trust in their employers. In Northern Ireland, 38 percent and in the ROI 32 percent of those surveyed said they expect to leave their current employment in the foreseeable future, while an overwhelming 74 percent of all Northern Ireland and 80 percent of ROI interviewees indicated that an improvement in communications would positively influence them to remain with their employers. And while one could argue that dissatisfied workers may be less likely to leave their employers in a tighter economy, they “leave” their jobs in other ways — showing less commitment and pride, delivering reduced levels of service and manufacturing products that may be of a lesser quality. In the end, the corporate brand suffers.

In our conversations here with employers, we’ve found that the issues US and UK employers struggle with prevail in Ireland as well: Aligning employees with the organizational mission, instilling pride, and equipping front-line managers and supervisors with the skills and information required to direct increased performance and a heightened discretionary effort, being chief among the needs. When we look at the ills that afflict companies on the internal communications front, we find that organizations are strikingly similar, regardless of geographies or cultural differences.

As the global economy continues to shift under the titanic weight of soaring energy prices, rising food and commodity costs and spiraling financial markets, the tension among business leaders here, as elsewhere, is palpable. For many, the question is not “Are we in recessionary times?” but rather “Will the recovery begin in 2009 or later?” We should expect staffing and capital spending to be suppressed in the foreseeable future in many world markets. As one multinational client here asked this week: “As we reduce headcount, how do we retain the people we need when the recovery begins?” Past downturns and history remind us that a very key action is timely, candid and transparent communications regarding the plans and expected steps employers must take to move forward in less certain economic times.

From IBM in 1992, during its wrenching reengineering, and through successive waves of restructuring and cultural change among great corporate brands, we’ve learned one lesson that we cannot overlook: People can handle more than we give them credit for, even during the worst of times, when we tell them the truth and communicate in ways that build trust.

Now is the time.

Today in Dublin I’m reading that the price of oil is just over $131 a barrel in world markets. With prices at historic highs and possibly climbing further, consumers are beginning to draw a line in the sand – and a circle around where they may be willing to commute. The real story about higher fuel costs may not be the affect on our budgets and world economies; rather, it may be how changing commuting and telecommuting habits will affect the ways we work and communicate with one another.

The Chicago Tribune last week cited a Robert Half survey indicating that 44 percent of professionals had altered their commutes because of higher gas prices – up from 34 percent a year ago. While companies are adopting different strategies to deal with the affect of higher commuting costs on their employees – providing greater mileage reimbursement and public transit subsidies, locating some employees in centers closer to where they live, for example – many are pushing employees toward work-at-home-programs. We’ve long wondered when the promise of greater mobility and telecommuting would become more prominent, or even mandatory, for many workers. That day is fast arriving.

Social and economic change tied to the new sustainability and fuel costs will drive corporate culture change as never anticipated by Deal and Kennedy when they penned Corporate Cultures in 1982. While it is customary today that we work with a colleague in Madrid or Mumbai by email and phone, without the stimulus of face-to-face contact on a regular basis, now our co-workers in a Minneapolis suburb may fade into this mosaic, too, though removed by only an hour drive rather than a transcontinental flight.

In the end, we will be forced to sharpen the internal communications channels and vehicles we use to manage increasing numbers of remote employees. We’ll actually have to think carefully about messaging and clarity of communication. We’ll have to consider the sheer volume of what we communicate and when we deliver it. We’ll need to equip those who manage people with better skills to listen and communicate with their reports. And we can be assured that new technologies will arrive on the scene to take digital and social media – and the communities they serve – to new levels.

Will we be ready for the Brave New World? Think about it when you fill up your tank this week.

The world is shrinking and the looming war on talent is real, yet many companies have yet to wake up to the fact that more and more skilled laborers in today’s global workforce do not approach nor have the same mindset about “work” that was prevalent 30, 20, even just 10 years ago. 

Work is an activity, not a place. Long gone are the Ward Cleaver days when dad would head out the front door at 7:45am and return on the dot at 5:15pm cheerily calling out “I’m home.”  Work today is on an airplane. It’s in the car. It’s at the kitchen table. It’s in the bed at 2:00am. 

Work is in Singapore, in Sydney and in San Francisco—all in the same hour on a single videoconference. Work is heads down, heads up, in front of a meeting, in the middle of lunch, and in the back of cab. It’s on a blackberry, the phone, the lap and at Starbucks. Work is a 14-tab Excel spreadsheet, a 7-day email trail, a 48-slide Power Point deck, a 30-minute podcast, a discussion thread, and a blog.

But it is never a cubicle.  Work is not an office or a boardroom.  It’s not a mahogany desk overlooking Central Park or a 28-person conference table on the 62nd floor.  It is tasks, ideas, conversations, discussions and action, not space or location.

Will companies embrace this idea in time?

As we become a globalized, technologically savvy, results driven workforce, work is less and less tied to a desk. Teams are comprised of people in different cities, states, countries and time zones. Technology is the premier enabler of teamwork and is what drives business results. The proverbial hallway and “water cooler” are now replaced by intranets, internal networking sites and webcams. Companies that still require employees to drive or ride public transportation into the office and plug away on desktop computers are missing this important point, losing valuable productivity gains and potentially losing the ability to attract and retain top talent.

As the war on talent gears up and 80 million baby boomers prepare to leave the workforce, Generation Y and the Millennials are ready and waiting. They are wired and seamlessly connected through technology, expecting information and knowledge-sharing five minutes ago. For these young gunners, work-life balance is not a privilege, it’s an entitlement. They expect more from their employers than their parents did, and they aren’t apologetic for being picky or looking for greener pastures. They are global and mobile, and the idea of an 8-hour day in a cubicle has most of them running for the nearest resume building software.

Realistically, I’m not saying bolt the doors and send everyone home, and obviously there are many job functions that aren’t appropriate for a virtual environment.  But a lot of technology and a little flexibility go a long way—for worker engagement, satisfaction and productivity.

The workforce is rapidly changing. Are companies ready? Will leaders let go of the idea that work is a place?  If they want their companies to compete for talent and win in today’s global business environment, they better.

I was in the audience recently when the president of a multi-billion-dollar healthcare subsidiary told his top 100 leaders, “I don’t use email anymore.”

As the room went silent with surprise, the president conceded he was exaggerating to make a point: It’s far too easy these days to “communicate” by email, eliminating any opportunity for personal dialog or a personal connection. The president wanted his top leaders to know that he expected them to play an active role as communicators around an aggressive new growth strategy that most acknowledged would ruffle more than a few employee feathers.

Cheers to him for making the push. Every time I meet with groups of computer-equipped employees – regardless of the size or nature of their organization – they tell me they hate managing their email in boxes. Some admit that they read as few as one of every five emails they receive. And that means you’ve got a one-in-five shot at capturing their attention if you’re relying on email as your primary communications vehicle. As Matt wrote in an earlier post, more than seven in ten workers feel completely inundated with information.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating that anyone abandon email altogether. I’m just urging business leaders and the communicators who support them to try a little harder to be personal when it comes to communicating important news. Hold your managers accountable. Arm them with information and ask them to meet with their teams. If they want to reinforce key messages by email, that’s fine – as long as they are making the effort at face-to-face communication as a rule and not an exception.

The healthcare subsidiary president has quite the challenge ahead. He’s got to get a change-resistant organization to either accept change or fall further off the pace in a highly competitive business environment. Do you think he has a prayer if all he does is send out an email in hopes that people respond? Neither does he.

Memo to all companies: Mind Your Business! That was my first reaction today when news of Deutsche Telekom’s spying surfaced. Clearly, electronic communication in an increasingly networked world leaves the option to track and trace extremely accessible. But just because companies can doesn’t mean they should. And so Deutsche Telekom is learning this lesson the hard way like HP a couple years ago. If there is a need to eradicate a harmful business practice, launch a formal investigation. And use legal tactics to gather evidence of wrongdoing. Both rules of thumb are also applicable when using technology to investigate suspicious employee activity.