ICYMI - 36%, Lowe's, and Dolly Parton

Four comms things and one non-comm thing you might have missed

Good morning, afternoon, and evening. There are 11 days left until the U.S. election.

• 🗳️ Mister Editorial’s special election edition.

• Here’s where Trump and Biden stand on workplace issues (HR Dive).

• 🚨 U.S. companies will hire more if Biden is elected. According to the latest PWC Pulse Survey of Chief Human Resource Officers, 42% anticipate hiring more under a Trump administration. If Biden is elected that number skyrockets to 72%.

In case you missed it…

1. U.S. Employee Engagement Reverts Back to Pre-Covid-19 Levels

A Gallup poll released this week shows that 36% of employees are engaged with their company, the highest engagement rate in 20 years. Engaged employees are motivated and enthusiastic about their job and workplace.

Which means…

• 51% of employees are psychologically detached from their company. These ho-hum employees are probably looking for other jobs. 

• 13% of employees are actively disengaged. This unhappy lot is spreading their misery around to teammates and their social networks. 

When the murder of George Floyd happened, engagement dropped to 31%, an indication (to me) that employees were distracted by “bigger matters.” 

• Read more on Gallup.

💭 Internal Comms can help increase and retain employee engagement—to move that 36% to 45% or 50%—by creating content that tackles “bigger” ideas. 

• That doesn’t mean that every intranet story or executive video needs to address racial injustice or climate change or gun violence. 

• It means that your stories need to talk about real people doing real work that has real consequences on the company’s perceived and actual value. 

As I see it, since the Black Lives Matter movement exploded into our collective consciousness in 2014 with the deaths of Michael Brown (Ferguson, MO) and Eric Garner (New York City), the trend in internal comms storytelling is two-fold:

• A conscious layering of a diversity and inclusion element into company news and storytelling.

• A clarification of and internal advocacy for a company’s values that then extends to external campaigns.

These trends are not going away.

• A Biden administration will make storytelling around values even more difficult. Why?

I’ll answer that question and say a little more about these parallel and complementary tracks in a forthcoming article for paid subscribers.

2. Offices Have a Future — But What About Other Workplaces?

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We need to pay more attention to the millions of people who don’t work in offices.

Factories and warehouses aren’t being given the same consideration on the “future of work,” argues Daniel Susskind, author of A World Without Work.

Susskind writes:

• It is true that white-collar workers have often been able to retreat to the comfort of their home offices. For other workers, such a move is a luxury they have not been able to enjoy. Blue-collar workers in particular, who spend their lives in shops, restaurants, and factories, for instance, have either had to go to their traditional place of work and risk catching the virus, or simply not work at all. 

• There is a great deal of reflection about the future of the office, but far less about the future of the warehouses, factories, and meat-processing plants where Covid-19 has so often flourished and spread. 

Go deeper on the Financial Times (free).

3. ‘I wanted to be stretched.’

For Ragan, Ted Kitterman (@tedkitkat) interviews Ben Boyd, VP of internal and external communications for Lowe’s.

• “It’s hard to believe that we’re living at a point in time when facts are seemingly fluid,” [Boyd] says in a nod to what some are calling the “infodemic.” He says that communicators have a responsibility to be stewards of truth and accuracy.

• “If that’s in corporate messaging and we’re talking about our levels of commitment and the specificity around what we’re doing, the premium on trust has never been higher.”

• When speaking to associates and employees, customers or external partners, Boyd says prioritizing specificity and transparency is crucial.

Read the interview.

4. Spotted on #internalcomms Twitter

📺 Sam Edwards, comms manager at Royal Papworth Hospital in the UK, has a side gig:

Sam Edwards@edwardssport

Strong video bomb from me on episode 2 of #Surgeons on @BBCTwo on Tuesday. I can confirm I contributed absolutely nothing to that operation’s success.

10:15 AM · Oct 16, 2020

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33 Likes

🇨🇦 🍾 Congrats to Andrea Greenhous and Vision2Voice on 20 years in business!

Andrea Greenhous@Vision2Voice

Twenty years today I set out on my own. I've grown, I've learned, I've changed. I've also found my purpose: to help people thrive because when that happens, organizations thrive too.

12:23 AM · Oct 22, 2020

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9 Likes

Join us on Twitter.

5. Dolly Parton Made Stephen Colbert Cry

“Like a lot of Americans, I’m under a lot of stress right now. You got right under my tripwire.” — Stephen Colbert reacting to Dolly Parton singing a folk tune

Carolyn Clark, GoDaddy’s Senior Director of Internal Communications, turned me on to the “Dolly Parton’s America” podcast, which I devoured over two days. Parton is a master storyteller; she just happens to tell those stories through emotional, provocative, and catchy songs. When I saw that Parton made an appearance on Stephen Colbert’s show, I had to tune in.

11:29 worth your time — watch the video.

Dolly Parton’s America podcast