Employee Communications in a Brave New Organization
By Baxter Jolly
Managing Director Singapore and Malaysia
GolinHarris

In a world where change is the only constant, companies are no longer the safe havens they once were. Corporate restructuring and mergers and acquisitions are now the order of the day. Asian companies have also begun to expand beyond home shores.

This evolution has resulted in some remarkable changes, which in turn have rocked the traditional employer-employee dynamics. The paternalistic and Confucian local work environments are increasingly replaced by hard-edged business school management styles that are driven by performance and the bottom-line. Intra-Asia corporate expansions have resulted in a migration of Asian managers across markets, each with their own local management styles. Both parties also have to grapple with potential minefield issues such as retrenchments and outsourcing— previously sacred cows for Asian employees.

The question is, "How does a corporate communicate in this evolutionary process and what is the right approach?" Is the top-down approach better than the bottom-up? Should the Asian model be less valued than Western organizational philosophies? While corporations can't predict the future, they can be ready for whatever it brings by adapting "hybrid—best of both worlds" employee communication applications as a strategic tool to inform, educate, motivate and align their workers to meet these new operating realities. The overriding element to consider in employer-employee relationships in Asia is that "one size does not fit all." Companies must show that they understand their diverse workforce by tailoring communications to meet the operational and emotional needs and expectations of employees.

As a guide, the GolinHarris proprietary employee tool "Insidedge" has tailored some critical success factors for effective employee relations in an Asian context. Below are some "good to have tips" when navigating employee communication in Asia.

Focus on long-term results over short-term gains. Whether change is manifested as a reengineering effort, a merger of distinct cultures or a consolidation of existing units, companies must position and communicate change as an ongoing process before it begins.
Gauge and understand employee issues. Companies must first understand their employees before they seek to communicate the new corporate agenda. Implement "listening tools" to better understand employees' deeply held beliefs relative to the company's vision, the change efforts and specific cultural issues. Use these key findings to develop communication strategies and messages.
Evaluate current communication channels and create new channels where appropriate. Look into the timeliness, reach and effectiveness of channels and vehicles, and the consistent manner in which messages are delivered. Ensure that all external messages are consistent with messages being delivered to employees.
Visit "best practices" companies and benchmark. Develop a list of those organizations known for best practices and visit them. Integrate their key learnings, practices and winning approaches into your planning and strategies for change.
Consider all audiences. Understand that front-line employees are key conduits to customers, competitors and other important constituencies. Ensure they are appropriately armed with current and factual information, are communicating key messages in credible ways and are serving as effective ambassadors for the company.
Remember the role of local operating decisions in shaping employee communication. Before establishing a new communication effort, carefully evaluate local operating policies to determine their effect on employee attitudes and behaviors.
Have a plan for employee communication, and use it. Identify and appoint a cross-functional, geographically diverse work team to help communicators plan, build and support the employee communication outreach. The plan must be specific, practical and measurable.
Leverage senior management as a communication vehicle. The onus is on senior management to communicate the goals and progress of the change program. This includes listening to employees and incorporating their views, perceptions, issues and concerns into ongoing strategies.
Reinforce key messages. During a change program, key messages must reinforce the business strategy. Management—particularly front-line managers who must be empowered as "privileged carriers of information"—must be trained and conditioned to deliver these messages. Secondary channels and vehicles should be used to reinforce critical face-to-face communication on a continuing basis.
Educate employees that change is here to stay. Inform employees that change has no end point. Foster their understanding of the company's strategic direction, the competitive environment and customer needs driving the change process.
Establish milestones. Keep employees in the loop, show them the road ahead and tell them when milestones are reached. Create momentum by sharing success stories that will reinforce new behaviors at critical junctures.
Gather feedback. Build informal and formal feedback channels to elicit employee views and perceptions of the change effort. Assign responsibility for personal, timely responses to employee concerns. Demonstrate that employee input is valid.
Develop mechanisms to track performance and measure results. Employee communications are often undertaken for one purpose: to improve performance. The ultimate goal is to educate, align and motivate employees to help support a change initiative. Clear business objectives must be used to establish employee communication objectives.
Build relationships to gain trust. To win over the Asian employee, they must trust you. This is built over time and through extensive relationship building exercises and tests.
Watch tone and manner. Lastly, do not forget the Asian value of giving face and respect. Despite changes, ingrained generational beliefs and customs cannot be compromised. When in doubt, seek local advice, as sometimes the danger is that we can be too oversensitive at the expense of performance and simple professionalism.

Superstars: Not Necessarily the Solution
By John Morgan
Managing Director Hong Kong

 
So, you’ve gone through all the strategy sessions, and like it or not, you realize you need a celebrity to help Client A make some waves to build their brand – particularly since Client A is a multinational with no real advertising budget and little resources on the ground in your pocket of Asia Pacific.

 I’m not going to debate the use of celebrities in consumer PR. We all know it works well in some cases and not so well in others. Let’s focus instead on the challenges many of us face today when the decision is made to use celebrities: limited budgets and the resulting need to be extremely practical yet creative in which celebrity we choose to endorse products; and then how we use said celebrity.

 By both necessity (reduced budgets) and general disappointment, I’ve moved away from A-grade celebrities. Today, I’m a big fan of well-known personalities not quite in the A-grade celebrity mix – ambitious sorts with names strong enough to attract attention who also realize they need effective, long-term partnerships to help them advance their own careers. I hesitate to give this group a title like B-grade or Tier Two because that downgrades this underrated breed that can do an incredible job of building brands and selling products. But since we have to call these folks something, let’s call the A-Graders the “Superstars,” and their counterparts “Stars.”

Here’s a focus-on-the-fundamentals approach we’ve used with our "Stars":
Solid negotiation to ensure an effective partnership. First, we interview the Stars like we would any new hire to get a good feeling of how well they would be able to deliver key brand messages. Second, we ask them to commit to learning about the brand and product – the emphasis here is that we need more than photo ops. We work hard to make sure it’s a win/win situation from the start for both sides.
Hong Kong client ZESPRI International began its relationship with celebrity spokesperson Alex Fong as his career was taking off. Now, as his popularity rises, so does the profile of ZESPRI kiwifruit.
Familiarization Trips to Corporate HQ. We speed up the learning curve by taking the Stars to the client’s base, where they learn all there is to know about becoming an effective spokesperson. Very often, we can package this experience with a media familiarisation trip to simultaneously generate media coverage. This works particularly well when the client is based in an interesting locale and can showcase manufacturing or R&D.
Advertorials. We generate plenty of photo ops during the familiarisation trip, which can be re-cycled in a variety of ways, particularly advertorials.
Cross partnerships. Most Stars are diligently working their careers over a number of directions such as sports, recording, film, etc. We leverage our existing relationship to create new opportunities by sponsoring our Stars’ other activities, as appropriate.
Extend the budget. You obviously save cost by not using the Superstars. We leverage these savings to do more activities throughout the year.
Stay the course. We’ve had Stars become Superstars during the course of our multi-year partnership. We then simultaneously enjoy the benefits of both a Star and a Superstar.

There you go. My apologies to the Superstars I’ve worked with over the years (not that any of you remember me), but the Stars are just not the second choice any more … and for good reason.