The following article appeared in
Strategic Communication Measurement, December 2001/January 2002
Melcrum Publishing Ltd., London

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Tough measures for tough times

By Angela D. Sinickas, ABC

 
While it's important for all of us to be focused on the right communication activities in the best of times, it's even more critical to do so in times like these. Any communicator who is not perceived as critical to an organization's survival is likely to be cast adrift. Here, then, are some ideas on re-focusing where to spend your time to eliminate low-value activities and replace them with projects that are focused on using communication to help make or save money.

Examining channels

Inventory all the communication channels you're currently managing, and then consolidate or eliminate channels that overlap. For example, if you have multiple printed publications, convert them into a single one. However, be sure that the remaining publication is as frequent as possible. Eliminating all but a glossy, four-color magazine on high-level strategy is probably the wrong way to go. More concrete operational results are likely to be achieved by a frequent newsletter filled with timely and specific information. It may not look pretty, but you'll be able to tie items you've published to specific amounts of money saved or earned.

For example, one weekly employee newsletter at a home IV therapy company published best practice suggestions from its 23 branches around the U.S. Afterwards, the communicator called a few branch managers to see how many of the published ideas they had adopted in their own branches and how much money that saved them. She was then was able to multiply the average savings per branch times the total number of branches. Just one of the best practice items she identified and publicized saved the company enough money to pay for her salary and newsletter budget for the entire year. The phone calls took about a half hour.

Prioritizing projects

Be ruthless about changing where you are currently spending your time. Work on supporting only projects that are designed to generate or save the company large quantities of money. Say "no" to other projects and recommend that your current internal clients hire free-lance help to replace your own involvement. For instance, working with Human Resources on a project for employer branding is not a good use of your time when employee retention strategies are less important than staff reductions. If you're spending a lot of time working with a business unit that is doing so badly that it's up for sale, let them sink on their own. Focus instead on projects for units that are expected to save the company and work with executives who are still seen as star performers. Let their "glow" rub off on you.

Delegate responsibility for ongoing programs to operating units and staff. Your time is best used in developing communication programs, not necessarily administering them. For example:

• Talk with operational management about having their own staff maintain ongoing local Town Hall meetings.
• Once you've developed an employee recognition program, suggest that a committee of past honorees be appointed to manage the program as a way to increase employee involvement. They can use your own well-documented event planning files.
• After you establish an anonymous feedback program, suggest that maintaining it become the responsibility of an administrative assistant in HR who is looking for greater responsibility.

You can remain available as a consultant for these programs, but stop using your time for managing the myriad administrative details these projects entail.

Initiate operational projects

Initiate operational communications with the time you save in the previous steps. Once you eliminate the low-value work that has been taking up too much of your time, find organizational projects and initiatives that are highly valued by senior management and volunteer your help to support them with communication.

Don't wait for an invitation. Learn all you can about a project and take the project's executive leader or sponsor to lunch. Ask a lot of leading questions that will help identify how communication will make the project go more successfully, more quickly at lower cost. Focus on how communication will be directed to changing the behaviors of the target audiences so that their actions become aligned with the project goals.

Once you have a successful operational project underway, ask your project leader to identify other executives whose projects could use your type of communication support and ask for a recommendation.

Don't forget to market your results internally by presenting the return on investment obtained by a relatively small investment of company money on you and your communication expertise. Then you'll become irreplaceable.

High value areas for communication:

Call centers. In most organizations, call center managers are solely focused on reaching goals for productivity, call volume, average call length, accuracy, number of callbacks, etc. In most companies, this results in managers deciding they don't have the time to communicate with their customer service representatives (CSRs). Spend some time with CSRs in focus groups and also sitting in during a few hours of phone calls. This will more than likely suggest a number of communication interventions that will improve operational results. Manufacturing-plants. Industrial operations measure productivity, quality and safety. Changes in communication can very often improve each of these measures as well. Follow the same approach as with call centers using pilot locations to prove your worth. Shift changes are often a golden opportunity for improved communication that can result in better quality and productivity. To prove the value of your contribution, try the changes in one or two call centers or plants to monitor the improvement in their metrics versus the locations where no communication changes were made.

Angela Sinickas, ABC, is president of Sinickas Communications, Inc., a communication consultancy specializing in helping corporations achieve business results through targeted diagnostics and practical solutions. You can visit her new website, CommToolbox.com, to see the automated planning, measurement, and benchmarking tools she has developed based on her manual, How to Measure Your Communication Programs.