An interesting article in the New York Times about the challenges of following comings and goings in the media industry…

News About News, in 140 Characters
By JENNA WORTHAM

With staff changes and reductions across the media industry, even a blog post can be too time-consuming a way to announce who is in and out of a job. That is why a public relations employee turned to the instant-blogging platform Twitter to create The Media Is Dying, a Twitter feed that documents media hirings and firings in one-sentence bursts of text.

For those who are interested, here is a copy of the article about the new GCN, which appeared on the Swisster platform this week.

During times of crisis or change the desire to bury your head in the sand and try and ignore the changing environment can be overwhelming.

If you are a senior manager, however, failing to face-up to facts and continue to communicate openly, honestly, and regularly with your team can have a significant impact on your business, adversely affecting morale and productivity, for example, as fears for the future are escalated by the communication ‘Black Hole’

In addition, a lack of structured internal communication, particularly during hard times, can lead to distrust, as a failure to communicate with employees will lead them to feel that they are no longer valued by the leaders and companies that they work for, and will push them towards the ‘Rumour Mill’ for answers and information.

This is just the situation that is occurring across the UK, as a recent survey commissioned by executive recruitment and development consultancy Endaba, has shown that UK CEOs and senior managers are losing the battle for trust from employees.

The 5,114 employees who responded to the survey, listed the the top three reasons for this as:

• CEOs and senior managers don’t care about employees (chosen by almost 50%).
• CEOs and senior managers don’t mean what they say (chosen by around 40%).
• CEOs and senior managers don’t value the contribution employees make (chosen by around 40%)

If these facts alone aren’t enough to prompt leaders into action, then maybe this one will: 90% of respondents in the survey said that they believe that trust is impossible, or at best difficult, to rebuild once it’s lost!

For more information, read the full Endaba report: Why Trust Matters

Melitta

Communicating effectively across different cultures and demographics is always a hot topic for communicators in international business, as it represents a very real challenge and part of our daily lives. So I was interested to see that this was the subject of the latest event by ASPIC (The Association for Strategy and Planning in Internal Communications).

During the event, speakers outlined that there’s no such thing as ‘common meaning’. People derive their own meaning, in their own context, from the messages you send – so the potential for misunderstanding is huge.

Culture, which also includes all forms of diversity, matters for every business as it can exaggerate misunderstanding, though speakers warned that we mustn’t assume that a person’s culture completely determines their communication choices and responses.

So how can we tackle cultural diversity? Well there was plenty of food for thought as speakers shared the various ways they have overcome the issues relating to culture:

•    At telecoms company O2 they adopted a ‘Talk don’t tell’ culture where employees where given several ways to communicate back to management, who in turn listened, learned and reacted to staff, right across the business.
•    At TFL, they have instilled a socially inclusive environment that ensures that all policies are appropriate to all staff and that there is no ‘tokenism’.
•    They have also adopted Plain English in all communications, excluding all jargon and unnecessarily complex language to help comprehension.

Reassuringly, the conference highlighted that two of the most prominent tools for communicating effectively across cultures are: knowing your audience and how they see the world; and measuring and evaluating your communications and learning from the results – something that most competent communicators are already doing.

Melitta