• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Technology comes in handy for huge corporates to reach out to their employees across branches and countries in a better way.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, nine members of the Philips India Management Team strolled into a conference room fitted like a studio, and settled down to face cameras and a large screen. They were a relaxed lot, eager to get started on the third in a series of internal communication programmes called Let's Chat.

The 70-minute interactive session — there were three of them that day — spanned 11 locations across the country, linking many of the company's over 4,000 employees with updates, questions and answers, and even a quiz with prizes. Questions came in via e-mail, or were pre-recorded, and ranged from the company's advertising strategy to restructuring, handling extortion threats to improvement of margins and profitability. Launched in August 2002, the sessions have proved so popular, that an employee even created a jingle, which was played as members of the IMT waved cheerfully into the camera to wrap up the session that day.

From hand-written announcements on the notice board to typed memos to e-mail, video conferencing and Webcasting, companies across the country are using a host of advanced methods to connect with employees across even remote locations. Senior management is engaging in dialogue, taking a no-holds-barred approach to questions and adopting an `open door' policy.

While the basic objectives remain the same — provide accessibility to information at every level, make every employee feel like a part of the company, communicate the company's goals, and encourage a sense of trust, pride and belonging — the modus operandi of internal communication has changed significantly, thanks to technology and globalisation. Options such as videoconferencing and Webcasting have changed the very face of communication, while globalisation has brought a more casual, open culture into the workplace.

Also, the explosion in electronic media has meant that communications personnel have to be on their toes to disseminate important information to employees before they see it on the evening news or read about it the morning papers.

Philips' Project Honeycomb — named so because someone compared the company to a honeycomb, which depends on the teamwork of bees — comprises five projects, all aimed at making employees feel they are a part of one company. It was developed on the basis of feedback from young brand managers. Let's Chat is a big success: a co-production between unit heads, HR, IT and three external service providers, each day-long programme comprises three 70-minute sessions via streaming-video every three months. The first Let's Chat last August evoked 250 advance questions, and a Gallup internal poll revealed that close to 80 per cent of respondents felt is was a useful initiative.

"The power of Lets' Chat lies in employees seeing their management share a platform that cuts across boundaries ... and investing a full day every quarter to connect with our people," says Chief Executive Officer K. Ramachandran. "The mission was to make a brand ambassador of each of our employees — and their families — and get people involved and charged up."

An exercise like this is needed because Philips has six businesses across 40 locations, and an employee in the Bulbs division would have a very different perspective of the company from an employee in the software business, he adds.

"But when you can communicate on one platform to the entire company, it's like singing in a choir — there are several individual voices, but they all come together in unison," he says. With each Let's Chat session, the management team has also become more comfortable with addressing employee concerns directly; the way forward now is to get second-line managers also involved, and attempt two-way interfacing.

Still, Let's Chat will only support other internal communication mechanisms, and will not replace any of them; particularly in a time of crisis, or in a situation where important information must be conveyed quickly, the task would be left to managers at individual locations, Ramachandran says. "When there is a crisis, so much depends on the choice of words, the emotion, the tone — everything has to carry conviction, and it cannot be done with a one-way mechanism," he emphasises. "It is best done by middle management because they know the day-to-day workings, and individual concerns."

Even at a company such as Tata Steel — which has 30,000 employees — or Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which has 24,000 employees across more than 100 offices in 55 countries, there is an emphasis on getting information out not just quickly and consistently, but in a manner that connects with people. The Tata Group — which comprises more than 90 companies in seven business sectors, and employs over two lakh employees — places a great deal of importance on communication, which takes many forms: from glossy Tata Tea newsletters to Webcasts with the Managing Director at Tata Steel to online contests and CEO chats at TCS.

"With technology, you have everything going for you, although the most effective method is still face-to-face interactions," says Homi R. Khusrokhan, Managing Director, Tata Tea. "Accessibility is a part of the communication process, and more, rather than less, is the direction for the future."

At Tata Steel, besides at least six print journals, there are e-mail and Intranet-based systems, `Dialogues' between various levels of the organisation, and the recently introduced Webcast of the Managing Director across all centres on the first of the month. At TCS, the monthly magazine, @TCS, is extremely popular, besides e-mail, posters, teleconferences, videoconferences and online chats. There are also frequent contact programmes, because the bonding is important, says Atul Takle, Vice-President - Corporate Communications, TCS.

"It is hard to retain the human element in a company of 24,000, but bonding is important because it helps us gauge what an employee is feeling, and hear about issues that may not come through otherwise," says Takle, who freely gives his mobile number to people in the company and encourages them to call him. "So while communication is enabled by technology, it is driven by the employees' needs."

So to help everyone in the company get a better idea of Chief Executive Officer S. Ramadorai - "if this man is going to drive you into the future, there has to be some understanding of him", Takle reasons — a 10-minute long home video was made, catching him on a walk, reading John Lennon's biography, and listening to Hindustani vocal music. The effort was well appreciated, he adds.

Going forward, the challenge is to be proactive about disseminating information, and keep employees feeling good about the company: "In Information Technology, everything is black and white, but communication is all in shades of grey," Takle says. "And news has to be from within, because if there is a vacuum, then others will fill it."

At ICICI bank, too, pre-empting news about the company in the media, and informing employees on critical developments even 15 minutes before the news is released to outsiders, is a priority.

The senior HR personnel make regular visits to the various centres, meeting 100-150 employees at each centre. The team does not carry a canned presentation, and does not insist on meeting only with a certain level of employees, but leaves it open to them to frame the agenda, says K. Ramkumar, General Manager & Head of HRD. The team visits 30 locations and handles about 120 meetings in a year. Besides these, employees can also e-mail questions or call the Employee Contact Centre, which functions 12 hours a day, six days a week.

"We have these options for customers, so why shouldn't employees have the same access," he says. Speed is critical in communicating important information, and the frequency of communication is also important — so one annual visit by the team from headquarters is not enough, there have to be more interactions with `local leaders', he adds.

There is also recognition of the fact that communication can be rational or emotional; while people want information, they also want their concerns to be heard, and may sometimes be more comfortable talking, rather than putting something down on an e-mail, Ramkumar says. "When something is rational, it can be communicated via e-mail, but when something is emotional - like a merger — it needs face-to-face interaction," he says.

So when the ICICI Board approved the merger between ICICI Ltd and ICICI Bank in 2001, the HR team put together a video presentation overnight for its 500 branches, featuring Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer, K.V. Kamath's remarks to investors and to the media. One version was posted online, and one was presented as a video film, and followed up with personal interactions. The company used a similar strategy during the recent run on its branches in Gujarat.

More, not less: that certainly seems to be the direction of internal communication in organisations.

Graphics by K. Balaa

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication

Stories in this Section
Hi-tech bonding

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line