Happy new year from Geneva Communicators
Happy new year to all communicators from the Geneva Communicators team. Look out for our 2011 welcome apero in January 2011 (exact date and venue to be announced).
Melitta, Patricia, Vincent and Glenn
Last push to donate Free Rice to WFP
During her presentation on 16 November, Emilia Casella from the World Food Programme challenged GCN members to see how much free rice they could donate by the end of 2010 via the WFPs innovative fundraising platform: www.freerice.com.
There is still time to complete this fun but worthwhile challenge. Simply take a few minutes to sign up to the Geneva Communicators Network group and start playing and generating free rice!
Melitta
Swisster English-language Geneva news service closes down
Swisster, the English-language online news service set up in 2008 by Edipresse, the largest media publisher in French-speaking Switzerland, is shutting down after two-and-a-half years.
As GenevaLunch, the community online newspaper reports:
“Swisster was launched in March 2008 during the boom phase of Internet media, but shortly before the financial crisis hit the industry. In a statement published 22 December in Cominmag, a publication for the communications industries in the region, Edipresse noted that the site was not able to “take advantage of synergies to develop optimally and thus reach a point of critical mass” during a difficult economic period and in an extremely competitive niche market, despite having doubled its readership between January 2009 and December 2010.” (reproduced with permission)
Read the full article on GenevaLunch>>
H&H Webranking 2010 Switzerland: Swiss companies at standstill
A study conducted by Hallvarsson&Halvarsson (H&H) is a leader in financial communication in Sweden shows that Swiss companies are at a standstill with online communications. H&H Webranking is the largest study assessing corporate and financial communication online of more than 900 companies from around the world. 14th European edition of the H&H Webranking research and 7th in Switzerland.
Swisscom retains the top position in the H&H Webranking 2010 Switzerland Top 50 with UBS and Credit Suisse rounding out the top three. The results show Swiss companies have failed to improve and continue to lag behind the European average. The gap between the information supplied and what the market is requesting has widened just as technological developments and social media create new challenges to confront.
The H&H Webranking survey, now in its 14th consecutive European edition and 7th Swiss edition, represents the most in-depth analysis of online financial and corporate communications in Europe. The study evaluates the English language version of corporate websites, excluding commercial sections. The H&H Webranking is a valuable instrument not only for measuring the effectiveness of a company’s online communications but also as a comparison with domestic and international competitors.
Latest Job Opportunities
Looking for a fresh challenge for 2011? Take a look out some of the latest career opportunities on the GCN Careers page. Recently posted positions include:
> Deputy Head of Internal Communications, Geneva
> Senior Internal Communications Manager, Geneva
> Communications Manager, Zurich
Good luck!
CEOs misunderstand employee engagement
As in this blog we have spoken a lot about Employee Engagement in the past, I found a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit on the subject most enlightening. It clearly signposts a disconnect between the boardroom and the rest of the organisation when it comes to understanding and acting on engagement issues.
According to the report, more than 80% of top executives across Europe and the Middle East view disengagement as one of the three biggest threats to their business. Yet, during the survey, almost half of these executives (47%) admitted that they do not discuss staff engagement issues in the boardroom.
Perhaps even more worrying was the report’s finding that many senior executives appear to have a fundamentally flawed view of what – and who – influences the levels of engagement within their organisations. For example, just 13% of C-suite executives believe that line managers and middle managers are chiefly responsible for staff engagement – this despite the raft of evidence pointing to line managers as being the key to morale and productivity.
Perhaps the most enlightening statistic to emerge from the report is the fact that nearly half (47%) of the senior executives surveyed believe that they are personally responsible for generating the levels of employee engagement in their firm – a view that is shared by only 16% of senior directors outside the C-suite.
Paul Lewis from the EIU, who edited the report, said: “this research strongly suggests that many, though certainly not all, CEOs retain an unrealistic and over-optimistic view about their own impact when it comes to staff engagement.”
An important point to bear in mind when building a business case for engagement related campaigns.
Melitta
Report stresses the need for better communications in the banking sector
Authors of a new report warn financial services communications professionals that they cannot rely on regulation alone to restore trust in the sector.
The ‘In Banks We Trust?’ report reveals how the UK financial services sector believes it needs to further re-build the confidence of the general public and evaluates the role of communications and the media in achieving this goal. To investigate the issue, 164 people in the sector were surveyed and a number of high profile financial sector professionals interviewed.
The results show 60% of respondents believe that regulation will not be enough to restore confidence and pride in the UK banking industry, demonstrating the need for financial institutions to take a proactive approach to turning around negative sentiment.
Despite a lack of certainty around the value of transparency, 58% feel that corporate communications is key to improving the reputation of the sector. Only 3% believe financial services companies have done a good job in communicating their dual responsibilities to shareholders and customers to date. The research also revealed that the majority of respondents (65%) feel the media plays an active role in fuelling and encouraging negative sentiment towards the sector.
If you would like more information or a copy of the report, you can send you request to: alysha.smith@hotwirepr.com
Melitta
Popularity does not equal influence, survey finds
To discover how popularity and influence correlate, the Social Computing Lab at Hewlett-Packard’s research arm analysed 2 million messages on Twitter.
While measuring popularity proved straightforward: it’s simply a case of looking at the numbers of people signed up to follow a specific person’s or organisation’s messages, determining influence was more tricky.
To measure influence, the researchers hypothesised that users of Twitter are the more influential the more they manage to get their followers to pass on messages. Surprisingly, the results showed that the correlation between popularity and influence is weaker than one might expect.
If you want to know who has the most influence in the digital world, you can
read the full article on the Economist Blog >
Melitta
“We’re going mobile” – the future for Intranets
In a recent article, William Trout, director of internal communications at the U.S. bank BBVA Compass, raised some interesting questions about the future of the Corporate Intranet given the emergence of collaborative Web 2.0 technology and mobile ‘smartphone’ devices that enable the distribution of content remotely.
In the article, Trout suggests that to keep in touch with employees, organisations need to free the bulk of the Intranet from the desktop and work towards creating the exciting and engaging experience that corporate users deserve.
Melitta
Lost in Translation, the challenge of multi-cultural communications
Ahead of tomorrow’s Round Table: Doing business in India, of which we are the media partner, I found an interesting entry on the Melcrum blog about communicating with a global workforce, with a focus on cultural differences between Asia and the West.
In another interesting article on the subject of multi-cultural communication, Domna Lazidou, visiting lecturer in culture and communication effectiveness at Cranfield School of Management, shares her recent research into the issue and highlights the importance of being able to identify cross-cultural issues in the workplace, especally for communicators.
Read Donna’s insights and advice for communicators >
Melitta