How Social Recognition Breeds Talent Retention and Employee Engagement?

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the number one reason people leave their jobs is lack of appreciation.

• 54% of organizations involuntarily lost high-performing employees during the first half of 2010.


• 88% of employees surveyed cite lack of acknowledgment as their top work issue.

These figures speak to the challenge of talent retention and employee engagement, illustrating that a troubling percentage of employees who feel undervalued move on to what they hope will be "greener pastures".

So it´s time to the internal communications team to work with HR area and build up a recognition program to make recognition as a cultural asset, infusing the social intranet with stories of success and achievement.

Read more at: TemboSocial and HumanResourcesiQ.com

In search of a job? Choose the country!

Jooble is a search engine specialized in job search. It works as Google, Yahoo or Bing in a very fast and easy way. So above is the logo of the running rabbit positioning the company attributes. Who knows when we will need it?

Talking Matters (from Ogilvy PR).

" Engaging employees through effective communication is what smart organisations
do. Communicating effectively means being open and transparent, proactive and visible in
sharing the organisation’s strategic course, and explaining what’s taking place and why, and
always addressing the ‘What’s in it for me?’ imperative."

More informations? Visit: http://www.ogilvy.com

Behaviour talks louder than speeches.

Following a discussion about internal communications and credibility recently at the LinkedIn website lead by Alejandro Formanchuk (President of the Associación Argentina de Comunicación Interna - AACI) I realized that people follow examples and atittudes more than words.

And that´s how internal communications can become like a beautifull package in the outside, but completely empty inside. The name of the game is credibility and when leaders loose their credibility everything collapses. Moral, team building, purpose, ethics. People is tired of being seduced by words and internal "advertising" - workers need good examples from the bosses. Behaviour talks louder than speeches and great companies must have coherence as the main base to build internal communications systems.

Trust and twitter.

"What are you doing?" asks the slogan of Twitter. It seems a great tool to connect people by microblogging inside and outside the companies but it is also a way of controlling employees productivity hour by hour. As a digital time sheet, as a corporate kind of George Orwell´s Big Brother - isn´t it?

So, what do we do in our office? Talking to a client, making a business plan, attending a conference call or a business meeting...or having a cup of coffee, talking with friends, going to the bathroom. Imagine a company where Twitter is used to guard employees on a daily basis. If someone goes to the bathroom too much, for example, the boss will know it. Isn´t possible to happen in some companies? Private or state ones?

On that account, it is not the tool, it is the way the company operates that would make difference in using this amazing channel in a positive way. Not for controlling, watching or guard over but for productive dialogue, colaborative work and instant search for solutions. Therefore the company´s culture is the one responsible for the best or the worst management of Twitter as an internal communication tool.

That´s why by the end of the day the main question in human relationships and employee communications, using Twitter or not, is trust. If you have to watch people´s behaviour it is because you don´t trust them. And that will result in problems: burocracy will blossom, employees won´t feel confortable in working together, productivity will be affected and the team motivation will suffer serious damage. Thus if an organization´s culture is based on command, control and prohibition it is better to work with robots than with human beings.

What I am trying to explain is that trust always makes the difference and people need to talk, to dialogue and to communicate in every possible, clear and transparent way.

Reputation Institute's 14th International Conference.

Reputation Institute's 14th International Conference on Corporate Reputation, Brand, Identity and Competitiveness will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from May 19 to May 21, 2010 at the Sofitel hotel at Av. Atlantica, 4240 on Copacabana Beach with generous sponsorship from Cemig, Itaú, Nestlé, and Petrobras.

This year's theme is "The Sustainability Imperative: A Strategic Role for Reputation Management."

Visit:www.reputationinstitute.com/rio2010

People follow behaviours or words?

People follow behaviours - I have read this in Didier Marlier´s blog (http://blog.enablersnetwork.com).Didier is a leadership engagement expert who has worked with some big companies in the world and I do always visit his home page.

My opinion on this is that the "walk the talk" coherence is also a question of perception: what we do is much louder then what we say. And leaders are in the spotlight - the hole nation, the hole organization and the hole company is looking at them. They are role modelling examples and behaviours.

It is important to notice that in many organizations the internal communications are just producing more and more information without a chance to make the dialogue really happens inside the companies and that´s why in my opinion acts and facts are much more stronger than words.

Because who is listening? A few ones. But who is watching, seeing, perceiving? Everybody!