Approaching Christmas is a time for communicating whether it be with close family, distant relations, friends of long ago, current clients, lost clients, employees, business colleagues and so on. The interesting question is how to do it well and the even more interesting answer is – there is no one best way.
Many of you may have read about an approach taken recently by UBS. The global bank, with 64,000 employees, has recently announced 10,000 redundancies across the globe in reaction to losses of £1.4 billion. The communications approach it took to tell investment bankers in London they had lost their jobs was to electronically cancel their security passes so they could not get into their offices.
Admittedly, HR staff were on hand to lead them off to other areas to advise they were putting them on special leave on full pay while the terms of their redundancy were worked out. Apparently the decision to communicate this way was to prevent employees squandering vast sums of the company’s money in ‘kamikaze’ spending sprees if they knew they were about to lose their jobs. I am sure the approach taken by UBS will leave some readers appalled and others in awe.
Communications, therefore, may fall under the ‘horse for the course’ (or more likely ‘horses for courses’) approach. This may not fit well with the illustrious academics and human resource purists who base good communications around the need to win or maintain trust and support, but in the ever changing and challenging environment that we work in today, approaches to communications need to be dynamic, appropriate and meaningful. The message needs to be timely, demonstrably clear and relevant to circumstances.
Unusual or unorthodox methods of communicating as used by UBS are probably far more likely to be seen as relevant where companies are involved in regular and clearly understood communications programmes providing both good and bad news and using multi-media methods. Just don’t rely on emailing as recipients may not read it, misinterpret it or even disregard it. In my opinion good communication systems normally rely on communicating the same message by at least two media and try and make one of them a more exciting event to match the circumstances. Choose and use different communication methods. Some well-established methods include: face to face meetings; group or team meetings; block emails; notice boards; personal letters to employees at home; management briefings; one-to-one meetings (mini performance and welfare reviews); newsletters; intranet site; focus groups/quality circles; working parties; consultative committees; negotiating committees and Works Councils. But there is nothing wrong with beer and sandwiches in the pub after work, using Skype where distance may be a barrier, or formally cascading messages down the hierarchy.
Just remember communication is both a critical event and sometimes a necessary evil.
Dr Hugh Billot
Deputy Chairman
HR GO Group of Recruitment Companies
HR GO Recruitment offers solutions to all your staffing needs, temporary and permanent, please call 0845 130 7000
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