Today’s Workplace: In Desperate Need of Better Communication

A recent survey took the emotional pulse of the American workforce, and the results are not encouraging. In fact, downright dismal would not be an overstatement. According to Gallup's 2013 State of the American Workplace Report, 70 percent of U.S. employees consider themselves either "not engaged" (52 percent) or "actively disengaged" (18 percent).

Gallup says its research shows a strong correlation between employee engagement and the key measures of business success, including productivity, profitability, and customer satisfaction. The price of disengagement is high—the company estimates that actively disengaged workers cost the U.S. economy a half trillion dollars a year.

Better communication alone can't cure structural employment problems or strategic blunders, but it can surely help in many ways. Consider just one example: According to the survey, "Only 41% of employees felt that they know what their company stands for and what makes its brand different from its competitors’ brands." Wow. Talk about an opportunity for internal communication to make a difference. (Of course, company leaders themselves need to know what their companies stand for and how their brands are differentiated, which isn't always the case.)

Of the six steps Gallup suggests for improving company performance (page 11 of the report), five of them are virtually all about communication, and the sixth (selecting the right managers) emphasizes the need for managers to be effective communicators.

Of course, managers don't need to take all the blame for this situation. Employees with better communication skills are likely to connect more successfully with their managers, their customers, and each other and therefore feel more engaged with their work.

On the plus side, these results confirm the importance of the work you're doing with students, helping them understand the value of effective communication and what it means to communicate in a professional context. More than ever, students who enter the workforce better informed and better prepared will be more likely to succeed in their own careers and to lead successful companies.

With that, we wish you a relaxing and productive summer, whatever your plans may be. We look forward to exchanging more ideas with you in the fall.

 

Image credit: hawk684

Thanks, But We’ll Keep Saying “Thank You”

A recent opinion piece in the New York Times on new etiquette norms in the digital age caused a minor stir when the writer asserted that simple "thank you" messages are often rude because they waste the recipient's time. The writer's point was that there generally is no need to acknowledge receipt of information sent via email or other electronic channels—and doing so only contributes to the deluge of messages that many professionals are forced to wade through every day.

Wasting people's time by sending unnecessary messages is indeed thoughtless; we don't dispute that. However, a blanket condemnation of thank you messages betrays a misunderstanding of communication etiquette and communication in general.

First, thank you messages often serve as confirmation that information has been received, and this feedback is particularly important when the sender assumes that some follow-on action will be taken after the message is received. Between overstuffed in-boxes and overaggressive spam filters, email messages don't always reach intended recipients, and knowing information was delivered successfully removes one element of uncertainty from the process.

Second, relationship maintenance is often as important as information transfer, and even in this new age it seems safe to say that many people still appreciate being thanked for their efforts, no matter how minor. Moreover, not saying thank you would be awkward for many people as well. In other words, saying thanks can be emotionally significant for senders as well as receivers.

What do your students think? Do they tend to say thank you when they receive messages from you or each other? Do you expect them to say thanks?

 

Image credit: Jon Ashcroft

Hall of Fame: Consultant-Speaker Gregg Fraley Builds Credibility Online (with PowerPoint Slide for Classroom Use)

Gregg Fraley is a highly regarded expert in the field of creativity and business innovation, but because his services are intangible, potential clients can’t “test drive” those services before making a purchase decision. His website shows the care he takes to build credibility as part of his communication efforts.

Bovee and Thill blog – Hall of Fame – Gregg Fraley

Hall of Fame: Creative Commons’s Effective Use of Plain Language (with PowerPoint Slide for Classroom Use)

The ability to explain complex topics in clear terms is one of the most important skills a business communicator can have. This example from the Creative Commons website, explaining three levels of content licensing, demonstrates the power of plain language.

Bovee and Thill blog – Hall of Fame – Creative Commons website

A Few Flickers of Hope in Employment-Related Communication

The sluggish job market isn't going to reignite overnight, but we have recently noticed a few positive communication developments that could eventually help more qualified candidates land the jobs they want.

1. The growing realization that auto-screening applicants is not automatically a good idea

When companies complain they can't find qualified applicants for unfilled openings and qualified applicants complain they can't get any interviews, something is clearly wrong with the system. Wharton's Peter Cappelli identified the overuse and misuse of automated screening software as one of the causes of this perplexing stalemate. As this article in Workforce explains, resource-strapped HR departments too often rely on screening software that is either poorly tuned to specific jobs or mindlessly automating a process that doesn't work well in the first place. As a result, screening criteria are sometimes set absurdly high or include irrelevant checks that needlessly filter out promising candidates.

Fixing this problem will require fine-tuning processes and software, but at least more companies should be now aware of the problem and recognize the upside of using these software tools more effectively.

2. The decline of brainteaser questions

We have long been skeptical of the value of interview questions such as "How much would you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?" or the classic "Why are manhole covers round?" Unless the job involves answering bizarre questions in a pressure-packed setting, it's hard to see how these questions lend much insight into a candidate's ability to perform. William Poundstone, author of numerous interviewing books, is quoted in this article in Time as saying "there’s very little solid evidence that tricky interview questions work." And not only are these questions of questionable value, they can turn off good candidates who don't respond positively to being put on the spot in this artificial way.

The article suggests there is conflicting evidence about how extensively these puzzle questions are still being used, but any evidence of their decline is good news.

3. The increasing scrutiny of social media profiles
 
The fact that more employers are reviewing the online media presence of job candidates is usually—and rightly—presented as a cautionary message. Clean up your social media profile or risk getting booted out of the selection process. Why then do we consider it a positive development for job hunters that more employers are doing these background checks? Because a person's online presence is one of the very few aspects of the job search process in which the candidate has total or near-total control. It's an opportunity to creatively present your value package outside the narrow constraints of a résumé, an applicant tracking system, or the interview structure. Every job seeker at every level can take advantage of this revolution in the hiring process.
 
 

 

Image credit: Newtown grafitti

 

Hall of Shame and Fame: Apple Statements Regarding Apple Maps (with PowerPoint Slide for Classroom Use)

Within minutes of its release as part of an operating system upgrade on Apple mobile devices, the Apple Maps feature began to generate howls of protest. Compared to the Google mapping feature it replaced, Apple Maps had numerous problems, from egregious errors to missing functionality.

Users accustomed to finding just about anything through the Google app flooded the Internet with examples of mapping blunders. A railway station in Helsinki showed up as a park in Apple Maps. A farm in Ireland appeared as an airport. The Washington Monument was misplaced by several hundred yards. Driving directions steered one user down a railroad track. A search for the huge John Lewis department store in central London yielded nothing, even when the user was standing on the sidewalk outside the store. (This Tumblr blog offers dozens of examples—some amusing, some frightening.)

Beyond the errors and omissions, the removal of real-time mass transit schedules upset people who had been relying on this feature to plan journeys.

Two responses from Apple caught our eye during the aftermath. The first merits our Hall of Shame award, but the second gets into the Hall of Fame.

The Hall of Shame Example

An article on CNN.com highlighted the many problems Apple Maps was displaying soon after launch and quoted this response from Apple’s Trudy Muller:

Customers around the world are upgrading to iOS 6 with over 200 new features including Apple Maps, our first map service. We are excited to offer this service with innovative new features like Flyover and Siri integration, and free turn by turn navigation. We launched this new map service knowing that it is a major initiative and we are just getting started with it. We are continuously improving it, and as Maps is a cloud-based solution, the more people use it, the better it will get. We’re also working with developers to integrate some of the amazing transit apps in the App Store into iOS Maps. We appreciate all of the customer feedback and are working hard to make the customer experience even better.

There are five major problems with this response:

First, there is no acknowledgment of any problems, even though people all over the world were having problems and sharing them all over the Internet.

Second, there is no element of apology. Many users were furious, particularly given that they had no choice in the switch from Google to Apple Maps. (Of course, you can’t apologize if you don’t admit you even have a problem.)

Third, the upbeat tone adds insult to injury. Yes, companies need to put a positive spin on things whenever they can, but when customers are angry, they really don’t want to hear that you’re “excited to offer” the very service that is driving them nuts. Yes, Flyover and Siri are cool features to add to mapping, but if the map sends you astray, they aren’t all that helpful. And promising to make customer experience “even better” is tone deaf in this context. Something has to be perceived as “good” before it can get “better.”

Fourth, angry customers also don’t care that it’s a “major initiative” or that you’re “just getting started with it.” They care that a major feature on their expensive phones was suddenly replaced with one that was unreliable and in many instances simply unusable. Plus, this aspect of the message risks coming across as “give us a break; this is really hard and we aren’t finished yet.”

Fifth, with “the more people use it, the better it will get,” the message comes close to blaming users, or at least suggesting that they share the responsibility for fixing the problems. And what are people supposed to do the meantime, keep driving down railroad tracks or walking across lakes?

All in all, it’s a classic. But not the kind of classic any company wants to be known for.

The Hall of Fame Example

About a week later, Apple CEO Tim Cook responded with an open letter to Apple customers that acknowledged the extent of the problem, apologized for the frustration Apple created, and, most impressively, explained how to put alternative mapping capabilities—including Google—on affected Apple products. (Click here for an annotated slide.)

Cook’s letter does repeat the “the more people use it, the better it will get,” which we believe is an ill-advised message point. Mapping is an important feature on an expensive product, and it is Apple’s responsibility to fix the problem, not customers’, even if customer input can help. However, the letter has enough other helpful information conveyed in a respectful way that we still think it offers a worthy example.

 

Vexatious Grammar: What’s Your Rule About Rules That Aren’t Really Rules?

 When those who spend their lives writing and evaluating the writing of others don’t always agree on the rules of grammar, it’s easy to empathize with students who want to get it right but aren’t always sure what “right” is.

It’s one thing to not know or not follow a rule. It’s quite another when Expert A asserts “You must follow this rule,” but Expert B says “Not only do you not have to follow that rule, it’s not really a rule.”

Consider three classic examples of this conundrum: Never begin a sentence with a conjunction, never end a sentence with a preposition, and never split an infinitive.

One can occasionally argue style when it comes to these “rules,” but none of the three has a logical leg to stand on. (Yes, we know what we just did there!) Not splitting infinitives in order to make English look like Latin—a language in which infinitives cannot be split, of course—is the silliest of the bunch. (English grammar differs from Latin in numerous ways; why did the Victorian grammarians jump on this particular point?)

Uncritically following these “rules” can produce clumsy or stilted writing, and following them just to avoid the derision of people who are convinced these rules exist is a waste of creative energy. Worst of all, these distracting tempests-in-teapots make writing seem more difficult than it is and trivialize the real rules that really do need to be followed.

Having said that, it’s impossible to ignore the potential consequences of not following these “rules” in academia or the business world. Perhaps we can only hope that one day the misguided ghosts of grammarians past who created these problems will finally fall silent.

How do you advise your students to resolve these dilemmas in their writing?

 

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What Do Your Students Think About Generational Conflict in the Workplace?

Generational differences can be a source of workplace conflict in the best of times, and in today's workplace, the potential for conflict seems particularly acute. Between a sluggish job market, structural changes in the employment landscape, and a logjam at the top caused by Baby Boomers who can't or won't retire, many younger workers feel like they're not getting the same opportunities as those who came before them. In this climate of dissatisfaction, recurring issues such as media preferences and communication styles can become magnified, as the generations get snarkier and snarkier with one another. ("Baby Boomers are preachy and technologically obsolete!" "Millennials have no work ethic and need constant handholding!")

On the plus side, these conflicts and controversies can provide some great opportunities for exploring the factors that influence communication success in the workplace. Here are some thought-provoking questions to trigger discussion with your students:

  1. Do students feel like they "belong" to their generation? For example, people born in the early 1960s are often classified as Baby Boomers based on birth year, but not all of them feel a strong sense of kinship with that generation.*
  2. How do students perceive the next-older generation (those likely to be holding the jobs they want to get) and the next-younger generation (those who will be eyeing their jobs)?
  3. Do students perceive intergenerational conflict to be a real problem in the workplace? In society as a whole?
  4. How important are personal appearance (including body art), technology and media preferences, and communication style—three issues that come up frequently in discussions of generational conflict?

Workforce Management has just started an interesting series of articles about changes in the workplace from one generation to the next, starting with the 1950s. These articles would make good reading material to support a class discussion on intergenerational conflict.

*While there are no official labels or year boundaries for the generations, we find the following definitions to be useful:

The Radio Generation (born between 1925 and 1945)
Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964)
Generation X (born 1965 to 1980)
Generation Y or Millennials (born 1981 to 1995)
Generation Z or the Net Generation (born 1996 and after)

Employment References: Automated, Anonymous Reference Checks Are Changing the Game

Employment references have been one of the more volatile areas of business communication in recent years, and the situation is often frustrating for everyone involved. With the threat of lawsuits over negative references, many employers now offer nothing more than confirmation of dates of employment. On the other side of the equation, recruiters are frustrated by the time and work it can take to track down anyone willing to provide balanced feedback on candidates, and candidates are sometimes frustrated by their inability to provide meaningful references.

In response to the challenges faced by prospective employers, a new class of software is helping recruiters get the information they need to make informed hiring choices—and the implications for job seekers are huge. These systems essentially automate a confidential online survey of a candidate's references. The candidate provides names and email addresses of a specified number of references, and the references then respond to a standardized questionnaire. As this article in Workforce Management explains, employers who use the systems report dramatic increases in the quantity and quality of information they're able to get on candidates. Given an opportunity to provide confidential feedback, past employers and other references are much more willing to offer candid assessments.

Now for the implications for job seekers, particularly less-experienced workers who might not appreciate just how long a bad reputation can follow one throughout a career. Employers who use these systems require candidates to provide references, and those references are protected by anonymity (and liability waivers, in at least one of the systems we looked at). The chances of botching up a job and moving on with no damage to one's career are going to shrink as more employers adopt these tools. Students should be aware that even those part-time and entry-level jobs they can't wait to escape from could come back to haunt them if they leave behind a negative reputation.

On the plus side, these systems should benefit employees who exhibit professionalism and dedication to the job, because their former managers will be free to provide in-depth information to future employers.

Should the Business Communication Course Change to Reflect the Media Preferences of Generation Y?

One of the more intriguing aspects of age diversity in the workplace is the degree to which technology has shaped the communication habits and preferences of each generation. For instance, Generation Y (roughly speaking, those born between 1981 and 1995) has a well-documented preference for electronic media, from texting to IM to social networking. Coupled with a generally more casual approach to information privacy, this reliance on electronic media can clash with the habits and expectations of older workers and managers.

As Generation Y continues to move into workplace and up the managerial ladder, these cultural mismatches are only going to get more common. Moreover, as a recent article in Workforce Management ("Gen Y Execs Shake Up Office Culture") points out, this generation's embrace of entrepreneurship is creating new organizational cultures built around electronic media.

The differences in technology preferences can be significant on their own, but the changes run much deeper than just the tools themselves, of course. Here are some of the issues to consider:

  • Lean versus rich media. Lean media, those with the fewest informational cues and least potential for feedback or personalization, are at the core of this culture clash. For example, Baby Boomers accustomed to walking down the hall to a colleague's office or using their phones for actual voice communication are sometimes dismayed at the tendency of younger workers to fire off a terse text message in situations where they believe a more nuanced live conversation would be more effective. Gen Yers, for their part, can sometimes wonder what all the fuss is about, having grown up texting and IMing.
  • Synchronous communication with real-time feedback. Richer media, including phone and face-to-face conversations, can make it much easier to resolve misunderstandings and negotiate shared meanings. We've probably all had the experience of getting stuck in time-consuming email loops where neither side seems to be getting the message, only to resolve the confusion with a quick phone call.
  • A comfort level with distributed, virtual team communication. As networked and even unstructured organizations become more common and traditional employment gives way to independent contracting for many workers, the ability to communicate without a fixed organizational framework is becoming increasingly important. For all their perceived shortcomings in other areas, Gen Y communicators have a big head start here—and could be developing information encoding and decoding methods that work well in this environment but are perhaps underappreciated by older communicators because they don't fit established patterns and process models.
  • Illusions of communication efficiency and effectiveness. Every mode is vulnerable to the illusion that communication efforts are successful, of course, but email and other asynchronous modes are particularly prone to this because it is so easy to fall into the trap of believing that hitting the "send" or "publish" button is the same thing as communicating.
  • Attitudes about privacy and sharing. These concerns range from publishing sensitive company information (or inappropriate personal information) to treating information as a resource to be shared, rather than as a "power lever" to be hoarded and used selectively.

Given the range of important differences involved in media choices, how far should the business communication course move toward reflecting these emerging preferences? There is never enough time to cover everything we'd like to cover, naturally, so how do we find the optimum balance? For instance, many instructors like to devote time to telephone skills, and understandably so, but should some of that time be shifted over to skill development with instant messaging (as one example), given the shifts in workplace habits? On the other hand, one can argue that the very lack of practice and finesse with phone conversations makes this mode even more important to cover in the business communication course.

We'd love to hear your thoughts, particularly if you've already made changes in your topic coverage or teaching style to accommodate these evolving habits and preferences.

 

Image credit: woodleywonderworks

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