Why they hire professional communicators, Reason #453

So a guy starts a discussion in a LinkedIn forum on employee communication.

"What's the best employee newsletter you've seen/used/created?" he asks.

A safety manager at a Fortune 50 company answers:

John, the most effective newsletters I've seen are laid out like this: Page 1 is a message from the president or boss on the state of the company. Pgs 2-3 are photos of the employees who are driving the business results. Page 4- are the business results (revenue, cost, profit).

Wow, sounds like an irresistible read!

The straight-ahead safety manager reminds me of the story about the company where surveys revealed employees didn't trust management, so they launched a monthly newsletter called, Trust. Or the company I consulted with that hoped to turn employees into ambassadors for the organization, and so created an employee newsletter called, The Ambassador.

Remember your Emily Dickinson, people!

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Cirrcuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

Comments

[Rueben]

"The Truth must dazzle gradually." I'm not a religious man, but O Lord, that's lovely.

[Slywy]

Define "best." Define "effective."

Define "purpose."

[Nick Wassenberg]

Great stuff, but it seems like Roethke sways a different way.

Pickle Belt

The fruit rolled by all day.
They prayed the cogs would creep;
They thought about Saturday pay,
And Sunday sleep.

Whatever he smelled was good:
The fruit and flesh smells mixed.
There beside him she stood,--
And he, perplexed;

He, in his shrunken britches,
Eyes rimmed with pickle dust,
Prickling with all the itches
Of sixteen-year-old lust.

-Theodore Roethke

Maybe some workers prefer pickles (wink nudge) to poetics? And find their gradual dazzle for things other than the company newsletter?

[David Murray]

Thanks for that, Nick. I'd never read it.

[Commercial Mortgage Lender]

A fellow mortgage lender named Blackburn has built his entire business on newsletters. He inlcudes jokes with mortgage info and gets a very high precentage readership.
According to him silly little jokes are the key to a good news letter.

[Yossi Mandel]

Wow, David, you're being stalked by a spammer! (not me, of course - the other guy)

This perfect newsletter is the most effective because it is the easiest to produce. Spew the guts of the chief on page 1, photographic mess of poorly taken snapshots on two pages, and a numbers dump on page 4. Give Crescenzo a few drinks and have him produce a satiric version of one of these, his genius is needed.