Plaintalk

New Year, New Job

For those of you keeping score, I'm proud to have joined MS&L Worldwide in Atlanta. I'll be responsible for developing and managing employee engagement and internal communications initiatives for our clients.

It's nice to be back among familiar surroundings and friends!

Good Morning, ALI!

About to present at the ALI Social Media for Government conference in Washington. Should be a great group of folks!

Training Goes Social

Training within the organization is starting to go social, catching up with other parts of the company that have been social for a while including external communications and, in many cases, internal communications. Check out these examples from the USDA and Best Buy. Thanks to Becky Ericson at Fleishman-Hillard for uncovering these!

USDA upgrades to a social e-learning platform

Best Buy has gone social with their training through Learning Lounge:

Storefront: https://www.bestbuylearninglounge.com/

Best Buy's Learning Lounge discussion on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StifXdtYMaw

The Destructive Power of a Jerk

We've all known them. The jerk of a manager who has a chip on his or her shoulder and lives to make life suck for everyone in close proximity. I've known a couple of people like that in my career. And, from personal experience, let me tell you it's no fun having to deal with that kind of a person in the workplace.

In one instance years ago, this one leader was so tough on her team that we all joked that the candy dish on the front desk should be filled with Prozac to help us all cope on a daily basis. I've never experienced more frustration, angst and literal crying in a workplace before or since. A typical day would start out with a team meeting tirade that did more to demoralize the team than help the company succeed. Weekly tongue lashings were commonplace, with every minor error exploded out into ridiculous proportions. All we could do was take it and wonder when it would end. Unfortunately, leaving became the only way to escape all of this and most of us eventually did. Those that remained became jaded about work in general and, in my opinion, never really recovered. And those of us who did escape took a long while to recover from such emotional abuse in the workplace. It sucked.

Tom Davenport, a blogger on the Harvard Business Review website and an expert on organizational process and productivity, has an excellent post today about how jerks in the leadership ranks can really ruin an organization. He points to a couple of recent examples from the financial crisis as proof that the wrong people in the wrong jobs can have a devastating effect on a company (and, in these two cases, on the whole economy).

At the firm where I work, we talk about the eight drivers of employee engagement, which are drawn from years of experience in the employee communications business. One of those drivers is having senior leaders who care. Time and again, employees point out that it's important to them that they have senior leaders in the organization who care about them, the business, the competition and the company in general. This caring approach is the exact opposite behavior that corporate jerks exhibit. And that behavior can crush employee engagement and, ultimately, the bottomline results of the organization. I've been amazed at how long this behavior is tolerated within many organizations, as if somehow the results are more important than the methods. Sure, being an ass might lead to short-term gains, but that approach will do a ton of damage over the long haul.

After I left that company with the intolerable boss, the company eventually folded. I have no real idea why it folded. I can only take refuge in the thought that it was driven into the ground by someone who didn't understand what it is to be a leader in an organization. Nobody wants to work for, around or with a jerk. I guess karma finally caught up with her.

Good for karma.

Interesting Jobs News

Seems that one of the biggest concerns Fortune 1000 execs have right now is employee retention. This, in the face of some of the most wide-reaching layoffs in our history. Check this story for the details.

It strikes me as odd and a bit contradictory that employers are hoping for loyalty and commitment from their employees at a time when thousands of employers aren't demonstrating the same in return. As if, "we want you to stay, but only as long as we want you here." I wish there was a bit more to that article explaining the why behind the what.

Also noteworthy in the article is the concern about morale. Again, seems contradictory in light of the current environment. Though, from our experience, most employers do worry about morale after a layoff event. In a previous post here, we talked about the morale issues of those employees who are left behind after the layoff and how many of them, while relieved, feel guilty that they were able to keep their jobs while others didn't. Tighter communication, more coaching and more team-related events and activities can help bring the remaining folks closer together.

Anyone facing similar experiences? I'd love to know how these things are being handled by your company. Share your thoughts through the comments function.

Is It 2008 or 1978 Where You Work?

I give workshops for the Advanced Learning Institute, a group out of Chicago who offers training, conferences and workshops on various topics. One of the workshops I give is all about social media and its impact in the workplace.

Prior to the workshop, I send out a survey to registered participants asking them about their own experience with social media, both from a work perspective and a personal perspective. I ask things like are you familiar with Facebook and use it, do you know what a blog it and how to create one, have you ever used a wiki, do you subscribe to podcasts, etc. I ask them to rate themselves on a scale to determine their level of experience: freshmen, sophomore, junior, senior, teacher, principal.

I've conducted this workshop a number of times and invariably the majority of people rate themselves as freshmen and sophomores when it comes to social media with a few at the higher levels. Meaning, most folks don't think they have that much experience with or know that much about various social media tools. Which isn't surprising given the demographic make up of most of the people who are attending these sessions: most of them are at least 35 years old and it goes up from there. Those who tend to be younger than 35 rate themselves higher on the scale, maybe juniors, seniors or teachers. And a few folks, mostly IT types, rate themselves as principals.

Most interesting is the usage of social media at home vs. at work. When you look at the numbers, there's almost a 4:1 ratio of usage of social media at home as opposed to its usage at work. More people use it at home than they do at work, except in the email category. There's more email usage at work than at home, as you might expect. But every other category (blogs, wikis, podcasts, texting, LinkedIn, Facebooks, etc.) is higher on the home scale than it is on the work scale.

Slowly but surely, social media tools are making their way into Corporate America. Some companies and industries are much further along than others. And some will have to be brought along kicking and screaming before they'll participate. But the opportunity is there to make social media more pervasive in the workplace because of the widespread adoption of social media in people's personal lives.

At home, people are used to a more modern way of communicating. But when they come to work, it's still 1988 (or 1978, depending on your circumstances!).