Aren't these interesting times? The banks are gripping the sides of their chairs as they plunge on their roller-coaster ride; redundancies all round; bonus - let's not mention that! The great looming cloud of recession ahead to cheer us all as the evenings draw in! Let's face it, we have been here before and we survived, some better than others but, the sky did not fall.
What about Communications in these challenging times? Organisations still have to communicate, especially when they are making changes and announcing redundancies and losses. Somebody has to tell the full story. Yes it's been a bad year but what about all those not just good but fantastic years of profit? Where did all that go? There has to be someone to tell how we plan to get out of this mess and turn things around.
There are likely to be mergers and acquisitions as organisations
shore up. Big changes for much-buffeted employees - the grapevine turns into a lighted fuse flickering its way towards the keg. They need to know what's going on - where they stand - what's going to happen - when, where and how. They need to know this before the fuse is lit. Internal communications is vital in these situations and it needs to be well in place at the beginning or even before the beginning. This takes experienced change communicators. So what if you need to bring in someone who has more experience than your current internal comms team? Head count freeze makes that difficult so the solution is the independent consultant. Someone who has been through this before, often many times and in different organisations.
There are a number of highly experienced independent consultants around. These are people who have been in house and become disenchanted with 'business as usual'. They thrive on challenge and enjoy nothing more than a meaty project to focus their energies on. The contractor can often save the day. Not, however to be confused with the Consultancy. Internal communications and change communications consultancies are relatively few and their function is very different. This is when the business needs to take the whole thing apart and examine how to reassemble in a sleeker smarter way to relate to the business as a whole and continue going forward. The Consultancy comes in, makes the diagnosis, goes away and puts together the recovery plan and then monitors and directs the treatment.
One thing for sure, the next 6 to 12 months will see many changes and those who take the positive approach will be most likely to stay afloat through it all.

The need for Communications will vary from organisation to organisation, depending on reputational or strategic issues, organization size and footprint, product sensitivity, culture and method of operation.

Internal Communications

This is an essential practice for most companies, especially those going through change such as restructuring (involving redundancies), strategy changes, divestments or mergers and acquisitions.

The responsibility of Internal Communications is to ensure that the company’s vision and values are not only understood by the employees but ‘bought into’. The need to engage people is increasingly important, in order to make them more productive and to maximize internal support for an organisation’s strategic direction.

Internal Communications puts together a strategy to keep every member of the organisation from top to bottom informed of the company’s aims and business plans. This involves coaching middle and senior managers on how to communicate with their own teams – ensuring that there are regular team briefings and facilitating these where necessary.

Internal Communications takes the ‘pulse’ of the company with regular focus groups and engagement audits.

Internal Communications is often the facilitator of the ‘voice’ of the CEO/Chairman to the rest of the company.

Practitioners frequently come from a journalistic background and have very strong networking, organizational, writing and oral communication skills. They are persuasive and intuitive.

In some organisations the Internal Communications teams are quite large and include in-house editors, copywriters, journalists and intranet managers and editors.

• We recruit communications professionals from Manager to Head of and Director levels.
• We are strong in both Corporate Communications and Internal Communications and make it our business to understand our clients’ businesses and the particular issues they need to address.
• As part of a large international network we can provide a solution that takes into account the business as a whole as well as the part the role of communications plays within it
• We take time to get to know our candidates and, in many cases, will have an already established relationship with them. This ensures that the skills and aspirations of the individual match those of the client company providing a platform for success and minimizing risk

So, if you're looking to move or looking to recruit, please give us a call.

Contact: Micheline Walsh – m.walsh@alexanderhughes.com 020 78725854

The increased use of social networking sites such as Facebook as a recruitment tool has again been called into question in a new report published by the ICO (Information Commissioner's Office).

'The ICO (Information Commissioner's Office) has warned that millions of young people could be jeopardising their future careers by revealing too
much about themselves on social networking sites.'

As an increasing number of employers are turning to the Internet as a recruitment tool, should people be more vigilant about the information they reveal? Why do young people use social networking sites in the first place? The majority of them, at least to start with, join these sites as a means of extending their network of friends, chatting to people with similar
interests. But just how much information should they reveal about themselves? The personal details that attract friends aren't necessarily the same as those that attract potential employers.

Should we as employers even be using these tools to recruit potential employees? True they're a great way to canvas for possible candidates. But do we have the right to be intrusive? Surely if people post personal
information on social networking sites, and make that information public, they're doing so because they WANT others to read it.

The Facebook website states 'At Facebook, we believe you should have control over your information and who sees it. So in addition to the basic visibility rules - only your friends and people in your networks can see your profile - we also give you granular control over the information you post to the site.' Should we in fact simply be educating social network users to utilise their privacy settings.

There are two inescapable facts concerning information that everyone is going to have to come to terms with. Published information belongs to the
public and private information belongs to private individuals.

The Information Commissioner is currently in the process of drafting guidance for individuals who are using or thinking of using social networking sites. This guidance will be published in the coming months, once comments have been received from the social networking sites involved.

It will be interesting to read the commissioner's guidance and see what effect, if any, that guidance has on the growing use of social networking sites in the recruitment industry.

Societe Generale posts 4th-quarter loss of $4.91 billion after trading fraud
was the headline in the Star Tribune in the wake of the $7 billion trading
scandal. The French bank took a 4.9 billion euro ($7.18 billion) hit closing
the unauthorized positions of futures trader Jerome Kerviel, who is being
held in a Paris prison and has been questioned by investigators for a third
time.

An internal report said bank officials failed to follow up on dozens of
warnings about questionable trades. The report commissioned by a committee
of three independent board members detailed 75 warnings signs in Kerviel's
exchanges, such as a trade with a maturity date on a Saturday or a missing
broker name. The signals weren't always flagged to superiors and "when the
hierarchy was warned, they didn't react," the report said.

Kerviel told investigators that he believes his bosses were well aware of
his risk taking but turned a blind eye as long as he earned money. "I can't
believe that my superiors were not aware of the amounts I was committing, it
is impossible to generate such profits with small positions," according to
excerpts of his police testimony published in Le Monde newspaper. Kerviel
also insisted that his top concern was "earning money for my bank. As long
as I was earning cash, the signs were not that worrisome," he said. "As long
as you earn money and it isn't too obvious, and it's convenient, nobody says
anything."

Nick Leeson, the rogue trader who brought down Barings Bank told the BBC
that he was not shocked that the latest fraud had taken place - only its
scale. "Rogue trading is probably a daily occurrence within the financial
markets," he said.

This case obviously raises certain questions from a recruitment consultant's perspective:

If he had gone through the executive search and selection route would a consultant have spotted this dangerous aspect of his character during the interview?

We've read that this guy is smart and because he had worked in the back office he knew how to cover his tracks, but he was also a Walter Mitty character and was provided with counsellors by the bank.

"Sometimes people don't know the size of what they are getting into," Jean-Pierre Mustier, the head of the investment banking arm, said. The bank said it was baffled as to his "irrational" motives. But there is a suggestion that he did it to prove the system could be broken.

Should we be making more use of personality profiling during the recruitment process?

As a recruiter, I am not keen on this approach as it creates obstacles to recruiting talented people. How many of us do not have certain personality/behaviour defaults that differentiate us from the norm? Often
the most talented people are on the extreme side of thinking. Somehow we need a way to separate these from the seriously deluded.

How could he have been managed/controlled better?

I personally think some products are so new and complex that the risk management teams are always lagging behind. Just like drug testing in sports, some get caught out but many are always 1 step ahead.

What are the answers? How can we avoid situations like this happening again?

As ever we'd welcome your comments and thoughts.

Because it is a ‘soft skill’ the value that Internal Communications adds is difficult to measure in financial/profit and loss terms. You can’t say at the end of each quarter ‘here is the amount of profit attributed to Internal Communications’ – or can you? More intelligent business leaders are beginning to see a wider variety of influences that can impact on the bottom line.

It doesn’t take a genius to recognise that business is run by people – without people there would be no business. Small and large businesses rely on their people to make the venture successful. In a small business everyone pretty well knows what is going on and events and changes are discussed regularly. It is up to the business leader to enthuse and engage everyone and this is what makes each member of the team more productive.

In a large business, or one where people are scattered across number of different sites, the need for communication is greater. Just as in the small business, the CEO/leader of a large business needs to enthuse and engage. This not so easily done with a large or dispersed workforce and this is where Internal Communications comes in. They must interpret the words, vision, message of the leader and enthuse and engage the people within the company to feel and act in a positive and energised way to achieve the business goals – it must matter to them. Good Internal Communications can make this happen.

Where there is no communication throughout a company many people feel cut off and unimportant, they don’t understand where the business is going, and worse, they don’t care. They become lethargic, content to pick up a salary and while the days and months away focusing on holidays and weekends. The more ambitious will become restless and start looking for a greater challenge.

On the positive side, with good communications everyone knows what is expected of them, what the business is trying to do and what’s in it for them. There is a greater understanding of the big picture and because they are constantly informed on progress and changes and they feel part of it. Internal Communications allows a business to tap into the very valuable knowledge and ideas of those on the ground who see the problems and frequently come up with ideas to solve them. This can save a business a lot of time and money in consultancy fees.

Here at Alexander Hughes we have a deep understanding of the Internal Communications sector - if you're looking to recruit Internal Communications talent, or are looking for your next move, please contact me (m.walsh@alexanderhughes.com) today.