Canadian HR Reporter

Canadian HR RepoRteR September 8, 2014 8 News NATIONAL PAYROLL WEEK Canada's payroll professionals are responsible for ensuring that $860 billion in annual wages and taxable benefi ts get paid to employees, accurately and on time. PAYROLL PROFESSIONALS – KEEPING CANADA PAID. VISIT PAYROLL.CA #NPW2014 SEPTEMBER 15-19, 2014 PAY CHEQUE CHEQUE on time? CHEQUE What if you didn't receive your things can go south very quickly. If information is not shared or is guarded, workers will start talking to each other — and cus- tomers, according to Melanie Peacock, associate professor at the Bissett School of Business at Mount Royal University in Calgary. e key is for human resourc- es to be transparent, even when details aren't available, and that includes providing timelines and getting back to people by those deadlines. "We struggle, while being pro- fessional, to still show the hu- manity, for lack of a better word, or emotion," she said, adding it's important to be genuine and find a balance. It's about transparency and winning back the trust of employ- ees, said Sarah McEvoy, senior account director at public rela- tions firm Edelman in Toronto. "Your communications have to be honest, they have to be re- ally straightforward, using that plain, accessible language so that people feel like they're part of the conversation," she said. "CEOs, CHROs, all senior ex- ecs need to be pretty honest with themselves and take a step back, step out of all the corporate jar- gon and say, 'How would I want to receive this news?' and be hon- est with themselves and be hon- est with their teams and really take a long, hard look at it." If a company's in a crisis and the internal communications are weak, employees will start ques- tioning why they should stay, said McEvoy. But if the employer can talk to those employees about how it's encountering a tough time and how it's dealing with that, it makes the workers part of the process. "If you don't let employees talk about it at work, they're going to talk about it anyway — you're just not going to be part of the con- versation," she said. "Engage them as much as you can… If you can get that 'We're all in this it together' feeling then in- stead of breaking apart, you band together and make it through." Employers can be lacking when it comes to making internal communications a priority, said McEvoy. "Companies have often a very effective external communica- tions strategy, they know how to deal with their stakeholders, their shareholders, if they're going to issue a news release — that's a big focus for them, what- ever corporate announcements they're making — and they don't often think about employees or employees are sort of a secondary thought. "So what we say is… make them central to your external communications too. If you're making a big announcement, let employees know first." But sometimes the HR depart- ment isn't involved in the process when it should be, so a CEO or another executive sends out a message that should have first been vetted from an HR perspec- tive, said Peacock. "As HR professionals, it's our obligation to make sure that long before we're needed, we've estab- lished ourselves as credible com- municators and people that can coach and assist." HR can certainly add a great deal to the communications be- cause it has its finger on the pulse of the organization, the culture, and it knows that certain em- ployee groups may need different messaging than others, she said. But HR also needs to recognize it's not made up of professional communicators, so it may also need outside help to craft the message, said Peacock. Newer trends in communications A lot of employee communica- tions is moving away from HR to an internal team designated for that particular task, according to McEvoy. Employers are also being en- couraged to move to more of an employee news model and look at how employees want to receive their information, how they get information in their day-to-day lives and how to make that in- formation more interesting, she said. "Our advice is (to move) away from that top-down HR com- munications and be more with the employees, employee-to- employee style, less formal and trying to just keep them in the loop, not just about HR policies but about everything that's going on in the company. "And you can weave in the HR messages and the HR policy into that in a more compelling way," she said. "It's far less a top-down approach now — it's more a peer- to-peer approach." If there's a way for employees to provide feedback, that also makes sense. ey can then pro- vide suggestions or express how they're feeling and what would help them feel better about their job and supporting senior leader- ship, said McEvoy. Two-way communication can certainly help with any concerns around condescending or insin- cere messages, said Patricia Mc- Quillan, president of Brand Mat- ters in Toronto. One employer, for example, was managing a time-sensitive acquisition that needed to be communicated to all staff, so it al- lowed employees to feed in their questions electronically to better manage the announcement. "(is) just helped reduce the fear and we did it in a way that helped them remain anony- mous… and we had manage- ment in the room helping with the communication, and it was like a live broadcast via web, it was like a webcast, with an inter- active feed," she said. While logistically challenging, town halls can also be very effec- tive for communications, said McQuillan. "(Employees) always love town halls — that's their opportunity to talk with the CEO or the leaders." e top issue for employees is management not walking the talk — it's as simple as that, she said, and the internal brand is important. It's about threading an employer's mission, vision and values throughout the communi- cations, from the phrases to the style and tone. "Any organization should be thinking of their employees also as their customers," said McQuillan. BBC < pg. 2 'It's about transparency and winning back trust' "you can weave in the HR messages and the HR policy in a more compelling way... it's far less a top-down approach now — it's more a peer-to-peer approach."

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