NevOn

Trade unions can demonstrate relevance

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the relevance (or otherwise) of trade unions in the UK workplace. This was commenting about a lengthy article in the Financial Times that included interviews with a number of former trade union officials who had made the switch, so to speak, to the 'other side,' taking management jobs with companies.

In a comment to that post, Stuart Bruce pointed out the examples of two UK trade unions who have taken a practical approach to the realities of change in many industries and have modernized themselves, especially this example:

[...] Community now does what it says and is focused on supporting communities in areas that have been hit by the decline of traditional manufacturing industries. This even includes working in partnership with "employers" to bring new jobs into those areas.

Stuart's comment added some good balance to my post, illustrating that in many areas of the labour movement in the UK, some good things are happening today to the mutual benefit of employer, employee and union, and thus local communities.

Yesterday I read a story from BBC News, focused on painful changes required to reshape Germany's business and industrial landscape, regarding a situation in Germany where a trade union played an instrumental role in, literally, rescuing an entire community.

The story concerns a plan by Grohe Water Technology to cut 3,200 jobs from its German workforce of about 4,500 and move production to China.

According to a representative of the IG Metall union quoted in the BBC report, this would have ended Grohe's industrial production in Germany and dealt a devastating blow to the people of the town of Hemer in north-west Germany, where the company is headquartered, who have even named their town square 'Grohe Platz.'

The story has some major complications (political, with a general election soon in Germany; recommendations on the closure from the McKinsey management consulting firm; plus the ownership of Grohe being two foreign private equity firms) and you can read the full details of that in the BBC report.

What I found most interesting was the successful outcome resulting from the key role the union played and how they played it:

[...] Rather than launching industrial action, IG Metall proposed a compromise - accepting almost 1,000 job cuts and one factory closure, in return for fresh investment at remaining German factories to secure future employment. Grohe - wary of negative publicity - swiftly took the union's recommendations onboard and sorted out the dispute internally.

There was praise for IG Metall's efforts in the dispute and the union's membership, which had been slipping steadily for years, was given a much needed fillip. "It is always difficult to call it a victory when several hundred jobs are lost, but compared with the alternative it was a victory," insists [regional IG Metall union representative Joerg] Weigand.

Relevance indeed in the face of some hard reality.

Let transparency enter your company

Before you next try and explain to your colleagues or your clients why they should pay attention to business blogging, read a terrific pitch from Loic Le Meur that sets out some of the key reasons.

Example:

[...] One of the reasons why you should open your own blogs is now to participate in this conversation, to have your own voice and let the transparency enter your company. We want to hear your project managers, the people who do research and your employees, not only the corporate message that your websites send, not only the voice of your management and your press releases. We want you to be just a click away. We want to give you suggestions on what you should do better and give you feedback, no need for panels anymore to get our feedback.

But not only read - you can also watch Loic in action (Quicktime, 5.1Mb).

As the guy who runs Six Apart in Europe, Loic should know a bit about this stuff, and he does.

Great thinking, Loic.

The giant street market

An email from James Cherkoff alerted me to yesterday's edition of Shop Talk, a weekly BBC Radio 4 business programme, in which he was one of the studio guests talking about blogs and blogging.

Together with Adriana Cronin-Lukas of Big Blog Company, Simon Phipps of Sun Microsystems, Azeem Azhar, a writer and analyst, and Heather Platts of Eiflud hand-made toiletries, they discussed blogs with show presenter Heather Payton.

The 28-minute show also included a recorded interview with Tom Mahon, the Savile Row tailor who has had some impressive business success as a direct result of his blog, English Cut.

Some very good discussion in this programme that should help any listener get a clearer understanding of what blogs are and how they can be a powerful business tool. I was especially impressed by Simon's simple explanations of the benefits Sun gains from employees blogging (great quote from Simon: "you can't argue with the authentic voice of individuals telling the truth"), and Azeem's commentary on the value and potential benefits to organizations from CEO blogging.

The programme also illustrates how an effective presenter/anchor is key to an engaging and entertaining listening experience. Heather Payton is such a presenter.

The last word from James (early in the programme, actually) on defining what blogs are - a giant street market. From a marketing perspective, that's as good a description as any.

The only jarring note was when everyone spoke about the size of the blogosphere - 14+ million blogs. That's the generally-accepted number in the English-language blogosphere, a number used by Technorati, PubSub and others. Although no one seems to really know, you should add at least 30 million to that for blogs in other languages, especially in Asia.

Nevertheless, a terrific job by everyone to help simplify and demystify what blogging for business is about.

Listen to the programme. That link is just to the current show, so after this week it will be to the next edition. (It's Real Audio format, unfortunately. If you want to avoid having to install Real Player with its ads, stealing file associations and trying to connect to the net all the time, try Real Alternative, an outstanding free replacement.)

New blogging white paper from Edelman and Intelliseek

Edeman and Intelliseek have just published their latest white paper on word-of-mouth marketing called "Blogging from the Inside Out: The Rise and Effective Management of Employee Bloggers."

The 22-page PDF document is a rich source of information that includes:

• Original data on the role employees play in shaping corporate reputation and on the frequency with which bloggers discuss their employers
• Examples of how companies around the world are leveraging CEO and employee bloggers for internal purposes
• Perspectives to consider when crafting your organization’s own employee blogging guidelines
• Excerpts from existing employee blogging guidelines and policies
• A glossary of often-used terms in the blogosphere
• A list of must-read blogs for communicators

I don't yet see a link to download it on either Edelman's or Intelliseek's website, nor in Employee Engagement, the blog penned by Christopher Hannegan, director of Edelman's Employee Engagement Practice.

I'll update this post with a download link as soon as that link is available.

This white paper is the second in a series of such papers from the two firms, the first being Trust MEdia (PDF download), published in April.

[UPDATE 9 Sept] The white paper is now available for download here (PDF). I notice a text change - the paper is entitled "Talking From the Inside Out: The Rise of Employee Bloggers." A different focus than the title of the PDF I received by email from Edelman on Sept 6.

Disaster planning, consequences and inevitabilities from Katrina

Two thoughtful articles in as many days from the Financial Times examine broad consequences of the Hurricane Katrina disaster from the business, economic, political and social standpoints.

In the first, a feature on disaster planning, the FT says the consequences of Katrina for businesses worldwide are likely to be significant. Insurance claims are expected to run to many billions of dollars, and the closure of oil refineries is already causing a surge in fuel prices in the US.

The FT quotes from Why Some Companies Emerge Stronger and Better from a Crisis, a seminal work on crisis planning and management by Ian Mitroff, published last January:

[...] Prof. Mitroff argues that businesses should develop emergency operational procedures, but these must go hand-in-hand with methods for coping with the shock and grief employees may feel, particularly if they and their families are among the victims. When planning for contingencies, managers must think creatively.

It is generally agreed that those companies that plan for and manage major crises such as natural disasters have a competitive advantage over those that do not. They are able more quickly to replace damaged stocks, find alternative supply sources and transportation routes and resume profitable trading.

The FT's article discusses examples of what some US companies have done in past crises and concludes with these five steps to disaster planning:

• Accept that disasters and crises are inevitable, and must be planned for
• Assess threats from as many quarters as possible - not just the particular hazards of your own industry, but also universal and complex threats
• Disasters affect a company’s stakeholders in different ways; take all their views into account during planning
• Because disasters can affect every part of the company, look at the whole business and consider what role each unit or department can play in planning and recovery
• Recovery from disaster is not a process or problem-solving exercise; steps to deal with shock and grief, not just among employees but in the wider community

Financial Times | Softening the blows of disaster (paid sub) 4 September

It's clearly apparent that many businesses in the US (and elsewhere) have moved with alacrity to mobilize their employees and marshal organization-wide efforts to provide help and assistance, either directly to those in the disaster zones or indirectly through stimulating donations to aid organizations, or both.

No such alacrity by top-level political and other public leaders is illustrated in a lengthy and critical opinion piece on the political repercussions for the US government arising from Hurricane Katrina, published yesterday:

The (ir)relevance of trades unions

If trade unions had relevance, people would join them. But the world has moved on and unions have not. The UK workplace today is a significantly better place than it was in 1972.

So says former trades union official Rory Murphy in a lengthy article in the Financial Times which discusses changes in attitudes and approach when union officials switch sides, so to speak, and take management positions with companies where their relationships in earlier roles were often confrontational.

For students of change in the UK workplace, the FT's article is very good and worth reading.

Many of the points in the article are thoughtful, especially the quotes from ex-union officials now in management jobs, how they are able to see the changing workplace and how that has had a major effect on their perceptions of employer-employee relationships especially in unionized workplaces.

Some highlights:

Patrick Eraut, employee relations manager, British Airports Authority (previously a negotiator with Unify, the finance union, now part of Amicus):

Two months into the job, he had to advise on the dismissal of a union representative. While as a union official he had “represented people who deserved to be dismissed”, he nevertheless felt a conflict in helping to oust a trade unionist. “I was clear that the grounds were solid, but I couldn’t help thinking that if only there had been more dialogue years earlier, it wouldn’t have been necessary.” Today, he has no doubt that he is there to represent the interests of BAA; what is more, he no longer feels instinctive sympathy with workers when he reads about industrial disputes. “There is so often fault on both sides,” he says.

Webinar: Blogs and internal communication

If you have responsibility for internal communication and want to find out how you can use blogs effectively within your organization, you might want to consider participating in a 90-minute webinar on Wednesday 31 August in which I will be one of the speakers.

Blogs and their implications on internal communication - are you ready for that call? will address the following issues:

• Understand what you want to achieve with blogs - internal blogs serve very different purpose than external blogs
• How to address the concerns of managers who may be nervous about legal issues and lack of control
• Understand what a blog is in communication terms - how are they different from other interactive media you may be using?
• Learn and set the rules for blogging: you'll be the person who is asked to draft the blogging policy - would you know what to write?
• How to get them right from the start and avoid embarrassing and humiliating mistakes
• How to overcome the concerns of your legal department and senior managers
• Understand the legal ramifications of launching a blog and how to establish guidelines so that executives and employees understand what material is off limits

My fellow speakers will be Victoria Mellor, CEO of Melcrum, the publishing and event management company who have organized this online event, and David Berger who manages strategy communications for IBM. David helped create IBM's blogging point-of-view and employee blogging guidelines. In addition to his work on blogs, wikis and syndication for IBM, he is responsible for communicating IBM's corporate strategy to their 320,000 employees.

Date : Wednesday 31 August
Time: 2:00pm to 3:30pm US Eastern time
Cost: $295

More information and registration here.

They shall be heard!

Big news in Canada during the past few weeks has been a major labour dispute at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) which has seen programming disrupted as CBC has locked out many of the journalists and presenters from the workplace.

So what's this about? Not much on the CBC website to clearly explain it. As good a description as any I've found with a simple Google News search is the "No winners in the CBC lockout" article on the andPop website.

What's very interesting is how both sides have embraced online communication to pitch their different points of view in a dispute where the positions of both sides currently look to be entrenched and inflexible. The CBC has a website called CBC Negotiations in which the broadcaster's management set out in considerable detail their points of view, such as this:

[...] In the flood of communication from both union and management over the last weeks, you will have gathered that there seem to be two central issues at the core of the dispute: contract employment status, and the concept of demonstrated occupational qualifications as the criterion for redeployment during workforce adjustment.

While I'm not making any opinion about the dispute itself, that last bit is fuzzy corporate-speak if ever I read it!

And what about the locked-out employees? Blogs and websites galore as grassroots efforts to communicate about and comment on the dispute from the employee viewpoint.

It gets even more interesting - many of the radio programme producers have started podcasting versions of their shows. CBC Unplugged has an RSS feed for all podcasts (plus iTunes subscription link) as well as a growing blogroll of CBC employee blogs, and says this about what's happening:

Missing your favourite CBC Radio show? Now, re-connect with their favourite personalities and shows. Some producers are making unofficial replacement shows and you can listen to them here. This site is neither affiliated nor endorsed by either the CBC or the CMG. Look, we all love our jobs and want to be back at our jobs soon and put the programming you love back on the radio. In the meantime, I hope this helps.

Some of the podcasts aren't just programming but comment and opinion about the dispute from the presenters' viewpoints.

The future of labour relations? If you're in the broadcasting business at least, this is not the future at all.

[UPDATE] In today's edition of For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report podcast, we include an interview with a CBC reporter on the 'picket line' in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The interview was conducted this morning Halifax time by FIR listener Howard Harawitz. Shel blogged it.

What price British Airways' reputation?

In last Monday's edition of The Hobson & Holtz Report, Shel and I spent a good 15 minutes in the show discussing the communication and employee relations challenges facing British Airways and Gate Gourmet following last week's flight cancellations fiasco.

The broader consequences of that fiasco will be pretty far reaching, starting with financial aspects according to the Financial Times:

Corporate travel managers and agents face extra work and expense following the strike that grounded British Airways flights last week. Some UK travel management companies will charge customers for time spent booking travellers on alternative services, finding them hotels or organising refunds for unused tickets. Others will not charge but will seek compensation from BA.

BA have said they will consider financial claims on a case-by-case basis, and I'm sure many people will get refunds or other forms of compensation.

Yet the real cost to BA could be their reputation as travellers' trust is badly dented by the events of last week, no matter who or what was the cause, as it's the third year in a row that BA have had serious disruptions to their entire operation because of labour problems. Where dented trust could have the biggest impact, though, will be with business travellers and those corporate travel managers the FT mentions.

While some commentators say that the events of last week won't have any lasting damage to BA's reputation, I'd say that view assumes nothing changes either in travellers' perceptions of service, the organization and structure of BA, or the airline business itself.

I wouldn't bet at all on nothing changing.

So on my next UK trip, will I fly British Airways? Well, yes, I do intend to - unless I get even a slight inkling of any problems with flights. Then I'll choose from KLM, BMI or Easyjet, whichever one I perceive as being reliable. If that happens too frequently, that's when you start thinking about switching your brand loyalty.

Smart companies stimulate disruptive thinking

How do large companies continue to innovate and respond rapidly to new opportunities as if they were start-ups, asks the Financial Times?

By developing a corporate culture in which innovative opportunities are spotted, nurtured and championed in an entrepreneurial manner, the paper says. In short, a culture that is "intrapreneurial".

In a lengthy feature, the FT gives some great examples of companies who have been highly successful in large part because of their intrapreneurial approaches. Apple, for instance, and its iPod:

Apple seemed to produce the iPod out of thin air in 2001 – at the time, a personal digital music player was not regarded as the obvious progeny of a personal computer manufacturer. Yet the company has since re-entered the FT Global 500 ranking of the world’s largest companies after a four-year absence. The iPod now accounts for one-third of Apple’s revenues and its "halo effect" has contributed to a 35 per cent increase in sales of the company’s Macintosh computers over the past year.

The iconic music player has also given critical mass to an entirely new market – the selling of digital music online. Even with his expertise in marketing, Steve Jobs, Apple chief executive, could never have predicted such success.

The FT article says individuals could act like entrepreneurs within a large organization to the benefit of both employee and employer, provided they were willing to risk something of value to themselves – a portion of their salary, for example. Such intrapreneurs could exchange a completed project for a cash bonus or capital to invest internally in future projects.

The article gives other examples of this intrapreneurial spirit, including two equally-iconic ones - IBM's development of the personal computer which came to fruition in the early 1980s, and Apple's first Macintosh:

[...] During the 1970s, [...] units were set up inside many organisations to think "disruptively" – to look at products or markets outside their usual offering. One of the most famous was Project Chess, the 12-man team at IBM that developed the first personal computer in 1981. Similarly, after the Macintosh computer was launched in 1984, Steve Jobs described its development as an "intrapreneurial venture" within Apple since the machine would compete with the Apple II, previously the company’s core product.

The FT quotes recent research by Clark Gilbert, a professor at Harvard Business School, who suggests the best innovations result from thinking about external forces:

"Intrapreneurial" ventures should be "opportunity-based rather than resource-based", he says, explaining that most large organisations try unsuccessfully to develop new ideas from their existing resources and competencies, rather than look outside for ideas. "The problem in so many existing markets is that product lines have already overshot what most consumers can absorb," he adds.

In such an environment, companies should be aiming for “disruptive” ideas of the sort described by economist Joseph Schumpeter when, in 1934, he described the “creative destruction” of established businesses by entrepreneurs.

“We find big firms are interested in disruption only when they think it will overlap or attack their business,” says Prof Gilbert. “Yet it always leads to growth in the overall market. The personal computer did disrupt the mainframe but it caused the total market for hardware to grow.

Financial Times | Smart companies show 'intrapreneurial' spirit (paid sub required)