Plaintalk

Psychology and Motivation Are Part of the Mix

I have a hard time getting my five-year-old son, HL, to keep his playroom clean. Inevitably, we'll fight about it, then it'll get cleaned up and it'll stay that way for maybe a week or so. Then it's back to the same messy state it's usually in: dinosaurs and Hot Wheels cars strewn all over the floor. No matter how much I try, I can't get him to pick things up every day when he's done playing with them so that it stays relatively clean and neat. I have yet to unlock the right motivator that will help him see the value of doing things a different way (short of being a command and control parent, that is).

So much of what we do in internal communications is tied to organizational behavior and psychology. The more we understand about what makes humans tick the better we can frame the business conversations necessary to move the organization forward.

There's a great interview with Guy Kawasaki over at The New York Times recently. He talked about the need for college graduates to be better communicators, to learn to say what needs to be said in five sentences in an email or 10 PowerPoint slides. "What you learn in school is the opposite of what happens in the real world. In school, you’re always worried about minimums. You have to reach 20 pages or you have to have so many slides or whatever. Then you get out in the real world and you think, 'I have to have a minimum of 20 pages and 50 slides.'"

He also had some great insight into what makes a good manager. "Maybe it was just my education, but much of education is backwards. You study all the hard stuff, and then you find out in the real world that you don’t use it. As long as you can use an HP 12 calculator or a spreadsheet, you have the finance knowledge that you need for most management positions. I should have taken organizational behavior and social psychology — and maybe abnormal psychology, come to think of it."

A great new book about psychology and motivation is Drive by Daniel Pink. Pink talks about the real motivators of human behavior and how using these motivators can change the workplace dynamic in meaningful ways. I won't give it away by listing these motivators but you'll be surprised how simple and basic these are to understand and implement: at work, at home, with your children, in any kind of relationship.

The next time you're plotting internal comms strategy, give a really tough look at what motivates and drives your employees. Set up the conversation around these drivers and watch how the results may change. Because when you're talking their language and giving them a reason to act, people will usually do what needs to be done.

In the meantime, I'll work on motivating HL to do what he needs to do to keep his playroom clean, using some of the principles from Drive. I'd hate to have to resort to what used to motivate me to keep my room clean. My backside hurts now just thinking about it.

Employer Brand: Fishing for the Right Talent

I like to fish. I mean really like to fish. I go every chance I get, especially during the spring and fall. And while I fish a good bit, I wouldn't say that I'm a great fisherman. I catch my share of fish. But sometimes I do get skunked and return home without the first bite, much less a catch.

But what I've learned over the years is fishing is all about presentation and frequency. I have to put the right bait or lure in the right place repeatedly if I want to increase my odds of catching a fish, particularly a big one. If I'm using the wrong lure or my presentation is too fast or slow or if I'm simply not casting enough into the right places, I'm doomed to having a long day. The fish are smart, but fairly predictable in their behaviors. I have to use that to my advantage if I'm going to have any success.

The same is true of your employer brand. I define employer brand as the face of the company you're putting forward in the marketplace as it relates to hiring the best candidates for your open positions. It's similar to, but not the same as, your external brand or internal brand. It's based on the same value propositions as your external and internal brands, but the messaging and presentation are different. And just like with fishing, a successful employer brand is based on presentation and frequency.

How you present your company to employees-to-be is critical. If you don't take a highly strategic and aggressive branding approach to the recruiting process, you're much less likely to be successful. Don't leave your employer brand to be defined simply by your external communications activities such as marketing, advertising or community relations. These are only telling part of the story that employees-to-be respond to. You need an effort that involves recruits in the process by engaging them and telling a story about your firm and what it's like to work there.

A great tool for doing that is a careers website. Sure, most companies have a careers section or tab on their websites. But having a separate careers website is a much more aggressive path to follow. Freed from the constraints of living on the external brand's website, recruiting activities and materials can have their own look and feel and speak to a completely separate audience than is typically looking at your external website. Liberal use of video, especially of current employees telling their own stories about working there, will go a long way in attracting and engaging your recruits. And having a separate website helps in popping up on career searches on Google, Bing and the other search engines.

What else can you do to increase your presentation and frequency? Plenty, such as:

• A Facebook page about your careers opportunities
• A Twitter feed with updates on job openings at your company
• A widget that people can place on their desktops that lists job openings and career information
• Partnerships with certain colleges and universities to participate in their career fairs, and
• Text messages about current openings people can opt in to receiving

These are just a few of the tools you should consider when establishing an employer brand. Obvious other choices include printed collateral, educated and engaging recruiters, placement ads for newspaper classified sections, placements on job boards, advertisements on blogs and discussion boards and direct mail to qualified candidates you've kept in your database of potential hirees.

Using a variety of lures and baits and placing them in the right places over and over increases the odds you'll land a fish. Nuture your employer brand in similar fashion and watch as your pipeline of potential recruits fills up with the kind of folks you really want to hire. All you have to do then is set the hook.

How to Make Employee Communication "Automatic"

Nestled at the bottom of a hill on the outskirts of downtown of Athens, Ga., is a tiny, unassuming restaurant called Weaver D’s Delicious Fine Foods. For years, the owner, Dexter Weaver, has cooked up quality soul food fast for his legion of loyal customers. His success as a business owner is built on a simple motto: he makes his food “automatic for the people.”

What exactly does that mean? From hungry college students dropping in between class to construction workers taking a lunch break, Weaver D provides every customer a quality product and quick service,  “automatic.”

Since Weaver D’s Delicious Fine Foods is mostly made up of Weaver D at the cash register and one cook in the kitchen, employer/employee relations go something like this: Weaver D takes the order and yells it back to the kitchen. When things get backed up, he’s been known to bellow in that sweet and low baritone voice, “Communication!”

If only all employer/employee communication was that easy. From large corporations to small businesses, communicating with employees is a challenge for any organization. As the business world grows and changes, it’s becoming increasingly important for companies to communicate effectively with the lifeblood of their operation: the employee. Here are a few simple tips to get your employee communication vehicle moving in the right direction.

Whether it’s a quarterly printed newsletter, a weekly e-mail, or the latest social media implementation, “automatic” internal communication should be a clear, fast and easy read. Employees don’t want to spend a lot of time wading through useless information so give them a quality product that’s easy to digest.

Never assume that employees aren’t interested in the business aspects of your company (they are!) or that they don’t need more info about issues affecting the company (they do!). Employees want and need to know how their jobs fit into the big picture. This is especially true in these wanky economic times.

Employee communication tools should answer five questions: the standard who, what, why, where and how. Here’s an example:

Who:
• Who made the decision?
• Who does it impact?
• Who’s in charge?
What:
• What is the decision?
• What does it mean? And what’s in it for me?
• What is the context?
Why:
• Why is it important?
• Why is it the right decision or direction?
• Why is it being decided now?
Where:
• Where is it taking place?
• Where will it take us as a company and me as an employee?
How:
• How will it be implemented or introduced?
• How does it affect the individual employee?

Employee communication is, quite simply, all about aligning employee expectations and behaviors with the companies’ goals. Letting the employee know the goals of the company helps them work more effectively to achieve them. Now that’s automatic!

Monkey See, Monkey Do; Or, How to Avoid Throwing Cold Water on Innovation

Every day we hear stories passed around, without a clue where they originate or who started them. I guess it’s all part of our country’s rich storytelling heritage. It's certainly a by-product of the rush to social media and constant conversation. Many of these stories aren’t worth reading, much less repeating. But sometimes one of those stories makes a light go on in your head and you say, “A-ha! Now that makes sense!”

That’s how I felt after reading the following story sent to me on email. I have no idea where it originated or how it got started. My apologies if you’ve read it before or if you’re the original author! If you have a clue where it came from, let me know so I can give the proper credit.

Start with a cage containing five apes. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. Before long, an ape will go to the stairs and start to climb toward the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the apes with cold water.

After awhile, another ape makes an attempt with the same result -- all the apes are sprayed with cold water. This continues through several more attempts. Pretty soon, when another ape tries to climb the stairs, the other apes will all try to prevent it.

Now, completely shut off the cold water and don’t use it anymore. Remove one ape from the cage and replace it with a brand new one. The new ape sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the other apes attack him. After another attempt and an attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be attacked.

Next, remove another of the original five apes and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer obediently takes part in the punishment, as well. Keep repeating this until all of the original apes have been removed and replaced with new apes.

After replacing the fifth original ape, all the apes originally sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no ape ever again approaches the stairs.

Why not? Because that's the way they've always done it, and that's the way it's always been around here.

How many times have you heard that refrain around your office? “I don’t know. That’s the way it’s always been around here.” Nothing can sap the life out of your business than the attitude that regardless of how things are done, you are powerless to change anything. It robs your company of the entrepreneurial spirit necessary to respond quickly to changing business conditions and contributes to an apathetic workforce.

Instead, what you want is an environment that is conducive to new ideas and innovation. An environment that is always thinking and coming up with ideas and suggestions for doing things in a new and different way. You want your employees – regardless of their position on the org chart – acting like owners of the company and constantly thinking about ways to improve the business and enhancing the long-term value of the company.

There’s no real mystery in how you get to this kind of innovative environment.

• Genuinely ask for and listen to employee feedback. Who better to tell you how to improve a process than the person who performs the job everyday?
• Constantly and consistently communicate company goals and objectives and your progress toward meeting them. You can’t win the game if your players don’t know the score and what they need to do to win.
• Reward innovation publicly. If someone makes a break-through process improvement or initiates something totally new and different, reward that employee in front of his or her coworkers and peers, whether or not the idea is a roaring success. It’s the innovative spirit you’re rewarding, not necessarily the results.

If you follow these three suggestions, you can create an innovative environment where new ideas are proposed with amazing frequency. Best of all, they come from your employees, a group that genuinely wants a more rewarding relationship with you and your company anyway.

Do everything you can to avoid throwing cold water on your best source of innovation – your employees. Keep it up, though, and pretty soon no one will approach the stairs, no matter how big the banana is.

Time Out! Regular Employee Meetings Keep Everyone on The Same Playing Field

I settled in on the sofa this weekend to watch some football games on television. As I was watching, I was struck by the number of timeouts called in critical play situations. The players would then come over to the sideline and together with the coaches discuss what to do next. It got me to thinking about how the same is true in the world of business. That is, there’s a lot going on at any given moment which needs attending to, better known as “work.” But we also need to call a few time-outs, check the score and discuss the next plan of action. And one of the best time-outs in business is regular employee meetings.

I know, I know. You're wondering, “OK, where do I find the time to have these meetings? I’m too busy working and so are my employees.” But, as with anything, you make the time for those things that are important to you and your business. And you’ll be pleasantly surprised to learn that the majority of employees consider these meetings important and are willing to come in early or stay late to attend them, so long as you give them worthwhile information and allow them to participate.

A typical meeting schedule for your company could look something like this:

• Weekly – a very informal get-together to review current projects and deadlines and to discuss next steps on pending projects and other short-term issues. Use the last weekly meeting of the month to review that month’s company performance and to talk about next month. 15-30 minutes, tops.
• Quarterly – a somewhat more formal gathering to discuss company performance, projections for upcoming quarters, customer service issues, new clients or prospects and other longer-range type issues. 30 minutes to an hour, at most
• Annually – a yearly review of the company’s accomplishments and shortcomings, wins and losses and a time to celebrate and retool for the coming year. They’re usually more highly regarded in an off-site location, away from the phones and emails. An hour, plus a meal or other event.

Also, when scheduling these meetings, it’s important to schedule them on a regular schedule – well enough in advance for everyone to plan to attend – and stick to the schedule. Nothing frustrates employees more than managers who don’t follow-through.

Now that you know when to have these meetings, let’s discuss a few of the things you can talk about.

• Financials – The taboo subject! Many companies are afraid to share financial information with employees for two reasons: 1) they think employees won’t understand it and 2) they’re afraid that it will get into the wrong hands. Just like the football team that needs to know the score to know how to execute, your employees need to know the financial score of the company to be able to do something about it. The more you treat them like team-members with a stake in the company’s success, the more they’ll understand about how to make it more profitable. You have to trust that they, too, want the best for the company. As for the info leaking to competitors, again, you have to trust your employees to do the right thing. (And, if you don’t trust your employees, you have a bigger issue than just your financials leaking out.)
• Accomplishments – Begin an employee recognition program and highlight efforts they have made during the year. Cash awards are good; but the simple act of recognizing them for a job well-done in front of their peers goes a long way to cementing your relationship with them.
• New Business Ideas – You’d be surprised how many employees have great ideas about how to generate new business for your company. They’re just waiting for someone to ask them.
• Operations and Procedures – Henry Ford once said that no one knows better how to improve a job than the person who does it all day long. During your meetings, discuss ways to make operations more efficient or how to improve product or service quality. Most of your employees may not be “managers,” but a lot of them have “management” thoughts. Ask them what they think!

These are just a few of the topics you can cover. I’m sure you can come up with other items of interest that can be discussed, as well. And at the end of each meeting, ask for feedback so the next meeting can be even better.

Regular employee meetings are the best way to keep the issues most important to you and your business on the table and up for discussion. And having everyone focused on the same business issues could mean the difference in a mediocre season and a championship one for your business.

It’s up to you, coach.

Direct Mail: Dead, Dying or Still Relevant?

Over the holidays, did you do most of your shopping from a printed catalog or over the web? Your activity has a lot to say about the state of direct mail as a marketing tool. Over at Hubspot, a recent post about the death of direct mail has generated a lot of interesting conversation.

Comments fall into three categories: yep, it's dead; nope, but it's dying; and not at all, it's still a useful part of the marketing mix. Those who tend to work for companies which have a chiefly online model primarily think direct mail is dead. The other end of the spectrum is comprised of those with non-online kinds of business models who think it's still relevant. The group in the middle is torn about how to feel, unsure whether it's dead or dying or relevant. It's kind of a loaded question, depending on where you are in your use of online and social media tools and how relevant these new media are to your company.

One thing they all agree on, though, is that it's the execution of direct mail (and any marketing tool) that makes it effective. A crappy brochure sent to a bad list with wrong messages and no call to action is a sure-fire way to miss your audience entirely, if not alienate them and relegate your piece to junk mail status. A well-done brochure sent to a qualified list with relevant information and a call-to-action that makes sense for the audience has an excellent chance to succeed.

What does direct mail have to do with your efforts in employee communication? Plenty. If you're like most of our clients, you still send home a lot of communication pieces, be they newsletters, HR notices or benefits information. Some things to consider:

• Have you stopped to analyze all of these pieces to see what's effective, what isn't and how you can close that gap?
• Do you have input into all of the things HR mails home in an effort to work together and provide your counsel on what they're doing?
• Are you tracking usage of these materials once they are received to determine if your employees think they are relevant and helpful?

From my perspective, direct mail will always be a useful tool in the marketing mix. Some stuff just needs to be printed and sent to employees' homes. We haven't evolved to the point where employees want work information emailed to their private email accounts for consumption at home. And many companies still keep their intranets behind firewalls that preclude access from home. So direct mail continues to be a way to reach employees and, almost as important, their families. But just like any other marketing tool, it needs to be done well to be effective. Even the sexiest social media tool (a blog, Yammer, WorkLight, discussion boards, texting, etc.) is worthless if not well executed.

I think the death of direct mail is being prematurely reported. Rather, it's the death of junk mail that seems to be happening. Most of would agree that that death can't come soon enough.

Move Over, Maslow?

Many of you are familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. If not, you can Google that phrase or Dr. Abraham Maslow and get back a number of entries that talk about this idea. Here he is, looking all professorial.

In a nutshell, people have certain needs that have to be met before they can achieve happiness and they are ordered from your basic needs on the bottom to those less survival-critical at the top. Starting from the bottom, you (we all) have these needs:

• Physiological: hunger, thirst, sex, sleep
• Safety: from threats, danger, the elements
• Social: a sense of belonging, acceptance, association, love/intimacy
• Esteem: of self, from others
• Self-Actualization: personal growth/development, realizing potential

If I could draw a pyramid, Physiological would be the base and Self-Actualization would be the top. Your basic needs start with satisfying things like hunger and thirst and then build upward from there.

Without satisfying these needs, ideally in this order, we can't be satisfied or content or happy. Disruptions in achieving these needs cause unsettling ripples to flow outward through our lives and keeps us from becoming the person we strive to be.

With all due respect to Maslow, some new theories are emerging about human motivation that are based on modern brain science and other more contemporary methods of exploring human behavior. These have some interesting concepts which directly impact how we as internal communicators should approach our jobs.

In particular, there's an article in the July/August issue of Harvard Business Review that is based on the 2002 book, Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices. The article, Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model, discusses four basic emotional needs or drivers, that shape what we do. These drivers are:

• Acquire: obtain scarce goods, including intangibles such as social status
• Bond: form connections with individuals and groups
• Comprehend: satisfy our curiosity and master the world around us
• Defend: protect against external threats and promote justice

These four are not building blocks on top of each other but are all equally a part of the foundation that motivates everything we do.

The article then goes on to say that for each of these drivers, an organization, i.e. your company, has a lever to use to take advantage of that driver. For example, the drive to acquire can be satisfied by your firm's reward system. Rewards in this context mean everything from total compensation, bonuses, and pay for performance, to differentiation from good performance and average performance, and how well your pay scale stacks up against your competitors. In other words, to impact someone's drive to acquire, you can pull the rewards lever.

Think about your own organization for a minute and how it can use these natural drivers to shape employee behavior. What levers can you think of that will push the bond driver? Social media comes to mind, as does team work and allowing employees to create groups. What about the comprehend driver? The defend driver? I'd be interested in your comments about what levers and actions might work at your company.

The article went on to show how improvements in each of these driver areas translated to the bottom line of the company through employee satisfaction, engagement, commitment and reluctance to quit.

Each of these has a role in determining how your employees act and react in our workplaces. Figure out the right levers to pull to engage these drivers and you'll be on your way to satisfying your employees' most basic of needs.

Wearing a sweater like Maslow is optional.

What Do You Say?

Here's a staggering figure: over 240,000 jobs were lost in the first three months of this year.

Worse, though, is that every one of those jobs had a face. A name. A person attached to it. Someone who was counting on that job.

Having to communicate layoffs and closures and downsizings is the least satisfying part of our jobs as internal communicators. We struggle with the human side of the issue, with knowing that the conversations we're having are difficult to say, much less hear. We try to soften the blow with nice words and phrases that look good on paper but will always ring hollow no matter which words we choose.

It's a difficult business, this communicating layoffs. The New York Times ran an article Sunday about the language of loss and how the jobless are treated by those around them. It was an insightful look at how life changes for those who have lost their jobs while it seemingly goes on for their coworkers. But the truth is that those who keep their jobs feel just as awkward, guilty even, for having survived the cuts. This in turn leads to treating their once close friends almost as strangers, not knowing what to say or how to act. It takes time for people to go through the same grieving process as they would in any other kind of loss. It's difficult having to figure out new roles, new relationships, new ways of thinking about old things.

When you're faced with having to communicate job cuts, remember that each of those jobs has a person attached it. And that person is going to go through a change that will impact every part of life, including the relationships with people who have kept their jobs. It's a fine line to walk, being empathetic while also outlining the business reasons behind the decision. But there's a right way and a wrong way to do it and your instincts as a person, moreso than those as a communicator, will help you figure out how best to proceed.

When it's time to handle these difficult conversations, what do you say? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.

PR and HR: Where's The Love?

Throughout my nearly 20 years in the communications business, I’ve heard this one phrase more than any other: we need a seat at the table. Which implies that big decisions – meaning the important, strategic ones – are being made without input from one of the most strategic functions in the organization. Practitioners lament, and rightly so, that if only they were involved in those decisions, corporate issues could be better planned for and managed.

Sound familiar? Probably so. But the “we” in this example isn’t the we you think it is. It’s the Human Resources department, not Public Relations. Yes, that’s right, folks. Professionals in human resources, one of the most vital departments in any organization, feel just as left out of the strategic decision-making process as we have felt in public relations. Just like us, their sense is they could add much more value to the organization if only they were truly asked for their counsel. They are tired of being treated as the Personnel department, in much the same way we get tired of being treated like the Arts and Crafts department. Both feel under appreciated.

So if HR and PR share many of the same issues, why don’t the two get along any better than they do in most organizations? Why is it that both suspiciously eye each other when it comes to who’s responsible for supporting the company’s brand and how to go about doing that? Why should the relationship be any different from how PR and Marketing get along? Can the relationship be strengthened? In the words of The Black Eyed Peas, “where is the love?”

Because my career has been spent entirely in internal communications, I learned early on about the uneasy peace between HR and PR, though I didn’t have much of a sense about why things seemed to tenuous, at least at first.  Only after a couple of years of being the liaison between the two departments would I find out why there was a half-healed rift.

I discovered then, and continue to discover, that most of the reasons fall into three broad categories. They are:

• Reporting Structure. Sitting in PR, I’ve reported up the org chart through Marketing, Sales, Legal (of all things), Human Resources, and Corporate Communications. Obviously, in the situation where PR and HR were both under HR, the relationship worked well. It worked less well when both PR and HR were under Legal, as that created a competitive situation. But it worked even less well when PR and HR reported through completely separate channels, as there was little, if any, incentive to play nice. There were fewer attempts to try to work together and less interest in finding the common ground upon which you could build a relationship.

• Personalities. In several instances, the rift was caused by personality differences between both the senior leaders of the departments and their teams. As you’re no doubt aware, different departments have different personalities. PR, Marketing and other “creative” departments tend to have a totally different personality than Accounting, Finance and other “buttoned-down” departments. Because of their roles, PR and HR both straddle the line between creative and buttoned-down and so have dual personalities. This ought to increase the chances they’d work together well. But in my experience, it is a hindrance to a better relationship because the primary personality for PR (creative) isn’t naturally compatible with the primary personality for HR (buttoned down). (editor’s note: please see a related article in the XX issue of PRNews about the power of personality testing in creating compatible work relationships).

• Competing for Attention. In a couple of instances, the dust-up was caused by jealousy brought on by the two functions competing for attention. Either the HR department or the PR department had the ear of the CEO and the senior leadership team. Sometimes HR was on the senior leadership team and PR wasn’t. And even on the rare occasion when both had seats at the table and equal access, the perception was that one function was getting the short end of the deal when it came to providing strategic counseling and being listened to. It didn’t matter whether the counsel provided was any good or whether they were actually listened to or not, the perception was that one had the upper hand and the other didn’t like it.

Now that we have some ideas about why things might be strained, what can we do to change things for the better? As a leader, it’s your responsibility to help find that common ground and work toward building a more rewarding relationship. Rarely does waiting for the other person to act lead to anything. Here are 5 things you can start today that will help build and strengthen a rewarding relationship with HR.

1. Assign an “account executive” to HR. Name one person, usually the internal communications person, to be the liaison between HR and PR. This person is now the point person for all that goes on in HR and can represent both functions to each department. It’s advisable that this person attend HR team meetings on a regular basis so they stay in the loop.
2. Join SHRM, the Society for Human Resources Management. Think how impressed you’d be if the senior leader of HR was also a PRSA or IABC member. That would signal to you how serious that person was in finding out more about your industry, the issues, the challenges, the excitement. Once you start reading their publications and notices, you’ll have a new understanding of HR and how the function works. You’ll also begin to see that their plight and yours are similar, giving you plenty of incentive to bond with someone so you both can help solve common challenges.
3. Pitch collaborative projects between PR and HR. Once you have your liaison in place and a better understanding about the issues facing HR, develop a handful of ideas for projects your two departments can work on together. Good examples include relaunching the 401(k) program with a company-wide campaign or introducing a new kind of employee recognition program. HR plays a crucial role in both of these areas and would appreciate a collaborative effort to make them successful.
4. Identify opportunities to work on and support HR’s initiatives. A great example is benefits communication. How many times has HR sent out a giant book that is obviously provided by the insurance underwriter written by lawyers for lawyers. Your employees can’t understand language like that. Helping to write or edit that information, along with helping to provide an overall campaign for launching the annual benefits enrollment, will go a long way toward showing HR that you want their initiatives to succeed while ensuring they follow the same communication standards you’ve set for your own materials.
5. Mingle the two departments. Familiarity breeds trust. The more you’re around someone, the more you know them and understand them. Better understanding leads to trust. And trust leads to stronger relationships. All created by the occasional pizza lunch, afternoon coffee break or evening bowling match.

Despite the core differences that will always remain between the two functions, HR and PR are ultimately responsible for helping to manage an organization’s two most valuable resources, its brand and its employees. Through these five simple steps, you can help move these two departments closer together and find ways to strengthen both in the process.

The Black Eyed Peas would be proud.