Posted By admin on April 20, 2009
Ron Shewchuk says this is the third time he has seen an economic downturn during his communications career. Today he shared some lessons from the past and ideas for the present at the IABC/BC Sun Speakers Series lunch at Steamworks in downtown Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
“When you are communicating change, it’s not just your employees – it’s also their families and clients and community,” Ron told us.“You’ve got to tell real, human stories of change.”
In 1992, Ron won a Gold Quill award for a memo he wrote on behalf of Petro-Canada CEO Jim Stanford. The memo, dated August 6, 1991, communicated an important message to a group of nervous employees awaiting the next round of job cuts after the company had just lost money for the second quarter in a row.
“This memo is not to bring you bad news, because you already know it. And it is not to unequivocally guarantee that no one will lose their job, because over the next year and a half a few people may,” reads the memo. “It is to ask for your support in this stressful time. We need to work together to bring Petro-Canada quickly and painlessly back into the black.”
Eighteen years later, times have changed – but many important values have not.
“The overall image of corporate leaders today is so much worse than it was 20 years ago,” Ron says. “And we have lost the ability to reach everyone at the same time, even though there are many more channels.”
Ron lists some values that remain important in the employee communications community: leadership; sound planning; timely, open, honest, clear, accurate communication; humanity; respect; and accountability. These values can be used within the modern context of social media – and he describes how today’s new tools have great potential for encouraging dialogue, collaboration, information-sharing; creating communities; strengthening relationships; providing feedback; and preserving institutional memory (which will be especially critical during the coming years when large groups of senior people will be retiring).
And let’s not forget the importance of good writing.
“A good piece of writing is bullet-proof,” he says. “Words do matter.”
Ron is an Accredited Business Communicator who in 2002 was named Master Communicator for lifetime achievement by the Canadian branch of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). Only 35 Canadian communicators have been honoured with this designation since it was established in 1980.
He’s also the author of: Writing and Editing the Internal Publication: Delivering Employee Communications with Impact, Integrity and Style and Barbecue Secrets: Recipes, Tips & Tricks From a Barbecue Champion.
Ron blogs at: For Your Approval.
Category: IABC, employee communications |
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