What's the purpose of employee communication?

This is the first of a series of posts on Sharing Information with Employees, a 1942 book I've found that I believe is the first ever written on the subject of employee communication. I hope these posts, and the discussions they may inspire will amount to a white paper on employee communication. —DM

So as we stipulated yesterday, corporations are by definition social organizations, because they affect so many areas of our social life. So Boots readers agree with author Alexander Heron, who sets out to name the purpose—not of "employee communication," a term that I don't believe appears in this book—but merely of "sharing information with employees."

The first purpose, he says, is to inspire employees to take a sincere interest in their work, which appears to have been as difficult a problem 67 years ago as it is today.

Why aren't employees interested in their work?

Because organizations are big and work is so specialized that workers don't feel a sense of ownership. And since 1942 was closer to the Industrial Revolution than 2009 is, Heron could see the real and psychologically devastating shift in "ownership" that the typical worker had endured.

"Instead of his grist mill, the miller's son owns a number on a payroll," Heron writes.

Employers had failed to recognize that "a place on our payroll, a job in our plant, is the only 'property' the average worker possesses from which to derive his livelihood," Heron writes.

We deplore the fact that he does not seem to take an interest in his job; we overlook the fact that he has an interest in his job—a possessive interest, if you please. Until he can recognize this possessive interest, he is not likely to take an interest in the job in the sense of putting himself into it, protecting it and fostering it in all its relationships.

Employee engagement, anyone? And here's how Heron says it relates to employee communication:

If we had fully recognized the interest in the job which belongs to the worker, perhaps we should have done much more to tell him about the features of his job which do not come to his attention in his highly specialized function—perhaps the function of watching four automatic machines turning out twenty units per minute of the precision-tooled cam which eventually goes into position 23A.

Perhaps we should have given him a chance to see, or at least read about, the structure of the finished product and the place and importance of his specialized piece or part. Perhaps we should have let him know the important characteristics of the steel he handles and where it is made. Perhaps we should have told him the market outlook and how much 'livelihood' his job promises for next year. Perhaps we should hope to have him know the burden of taxes borne by his job, what the highly paid executive does to insure the existence of each job in the enterprise and a hundred other facts.

Heron's a good writer, isn't he?

It's amazing to read the above, because it's an at-once sepia-toned and freshly expressed echo of what employee communication consultants espouse now.

But in our next installment, which I'll post next week, what's amazing isn't the familiarity of Heron's ideas, but the jarring strangeness of his claim that employers "must recognize our inescapable obligation to manage the enterprise in such a way as to furnish middle-age security for those who spend their years of youth in the enterprise as wage earners."

How in blazes is he going to prove that point? Don't touch that dial ...

Comments

[Ozzybeef]

As a salesman at a machine shop here in Chicago I found this an insightful post.

Putting the parts that machinists make into context - where it fits into a machine, what the equipment does - shows where the employee fits in the larger scheme.

And the dignity that comes from knowing what we do all day has purpose.

[Yossi Mandel]

David, as a novice in employee communication, I've been following your blog (among others) for your thoughts on employee communication and writing in general. Having switched from a completely different field, it's very inspiring to have veteran writers and communicators sharing their thoughts and practices so openly.

I noticed you've been trying to find some background on the author. There is a 20 page preview on Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=HmSmAAAAIAAJ which includes the back flap of the dust cover, it gives some of his background. I'm curious about your decades-long search, though: Were you looking for this specific book and author, or were you looking for the first book every written on employee communication?

On your question of corporations being social institutions, perhaps there is or was a tech company of such socially unskilled workers that they had no social interaction, but 99.9% of workplaces have social interaction, and these social interactions create a corporate culture unique to each. You can argue that corporate culture means corporate social culture - how the work gets done, not just what work gets done.

[Roger D'Aprix]

Yossi misses the point. Not social in the sense of what we think of today as 'social media' or social interaction at work but social in the sense of the corporation's obligation to the society of which it is a part.

This was an acknowledged component of corporate life in 1959 when I first joined General Electric in my initial corporate communication job. There was a philosophy called 'Boulwareism' after a GE executive named Lemuel Boulware. (How's that for a Dickensian name for a corporate leader?) In any case, Boulware declared the philosophy that GE lived by for decades. Namely, that the corporation had a balanced responsibility to four constituencies--its shareholders, its employees, the commmunities in which it did business and its customers. The interesting thing is that the leadership truly believed this and did its best to live up to that philosophy. In practice, if truth be told, the employees sometimes came out on the short end of that obligation if and when push came to shove in balancing those sometimes competing interests. But for the most part these were the guiding principles the company tried to live by.

The result was a great company that earned the loyalty and affection of most employees. When companies sought to become 'multi-nationals' and 'too big to fail,' much of this went away. When Ronald Reagan (ironically once a GE spokesman)and others expressed the philosophy of a mean-spirited and unregulated capitalism, the die was cast for the cowboy corpoate leaders who have taken us down the road we're now experiencing. And so the 'middle-aged security' that Heron advocates has become a mockery as companies make the workforce pay for leadership recklessness and irresponsibility.

Here's my prophecy: it will take us a long, long time to recover employee trust and leadership credibility when this crisis is finally over. That will be the challenge facing today's corporate leaders and their communication professionals.

[Yossi Mandel]

I didn't get into that because I see corporations doing a much better job of assuming social responsibilites to the community outside their walls than to their own employees. In 1942, philanthropy was the social conscience of corporations and their exectives, and they saw themselves as having social obligations outside of their company. It was in internal business practices that they overlooked social obligations to employees.

[Ron Shewchuk]

Your first excerpt reads like it was carved into stone tablets and carried down a mountain by Larry Ragan. Keep 'em coming, David!

[David Murray]

@Yossi, thanks much for the steer, and your comments. To answer your question, what I've been looking for is any discussion of this subject that predates the "original" discussion. Roger has been one of my guides in looking for such stuff, and he's the reason I plowed a dozen years ago through a biography of Fredrick Taylor, the first modern management consultant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor

But to find a well-written thing on this subject before it ossified at hundreds of IABC conferences and in a million communication trade newsletters

@Roger, thanks for that perspective. My grandfather was head of industrial relations and public affairs at once-mighty Armco Steel, and the social ethic there mirrored the G.E. philosophy. Not that we'll ever quite find that place in history again, but it's useful to know that"sustainability" and "corporate social responsibility" is not entirely a new thing, but very much an old thing.

@Ron, that's almost what I feel I've found here, and why I'm so excited.

[David Murray]

And @ozzybeef:

"And the dignity that comes from knowing what we do all day has purpose."

Yes, this must be the focus of us all.

[Kristen]

This was a very interestin post, and I too am looking forward to future excerpts and the discussions.

In particular I was struck by: "his claim that employers "must recognize our inescapable obligation to manage the enterprise in such a way as to furnish middle-age security for those who spend their years of youth in the enterprise as wage earners.""

We are now dealing with an employment environment demonstrating the results of the intentional and systematic dismantling of that unspoken agreement between employees and employers - that if they were loyal to the company, worked hard and put in their time, they would be rewarded with a pension that would allow them to spend their golden years somewhere other than a refrigerator box and working at McDonalds so they can eat.

So, it will be most instructive to go back and see how that contract was initially created, because it may help us understand what happened in the interim that got us to the point where it's now considered okay - even smart business practice - for many employers to treat employees like disposable office supplies, but still expect them to behave loyally, work hard and sacrifice their own best interests in supporting the company

My breath is bated for that next installment, David!

[David Murray]

"My breath is bated for that next installment, David!"

I know I've drawn the right audience when, to you, a forgotten book on employee communication is a cliff-hanger.

Back at you next week,

David

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It is a matter of opinion, I dont share that much information with my employees, they only know what they need to know.

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