Much ado about salary hikes? Help staff find meaning at work

There has been a lot of media attention to recent salary hikes and freezes at a few IT organizations in India and I wanted to reflect on the issue, the role of leaders and internal communicators in clarifying line of sight. It began with Infosys freezing salaries and cutting back on variable pay for staff [...]

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Planning, Managing and Communicating a Successful Leadership Team Meeting

Internal communicators may be involved directly or indirectly in organizing and communicating internal leadership forums that connect and energize  the community. It is a crucial activity since a lot hinges on how well the leadership team converge ideas, coalesces as a group and moves the company agenda forward. These forums are coined different names at [...]

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Who Own Your Engagement?

Employee engagement is a frequently discussed topic at organizational forums and like a hot potato the ownership seemed to oscillate between a reluctant group of people including human resources, communication teams and company leadership. I have also discovered new, improved designations of professionals in various capacities carrying the ‘engagement’ tag! At a recent Communicators in [...]

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Engaging the ‘Young & Restless’ Generation

Never before has the challenge of keeping our younger staff engaged greater that now. According to recent reports the population of India will be much younger than China’s in 2050. With more young people being part of its workforce (median age of 25), India is expected to enjoy a huge economic advantage. A recent study [...]

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Interviewing for an Internal Communication Role and Tips to Get Your Job

This week I have been interviewing communicators for an internal communication role.  I wanted to pen down my impressions from talking to a set of talented people, share do’s and don’ts and what I look for when it comes to hiring someone for a communications job. These ideas and recommendations I believe can apply for [...]

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Best Companies to Work in India Study – New Approach, Different Perspectives

The Business Today -Indicus-People Strong Survey is out (February 7, 2010) and the top names sound familiar. Infosys ranks numero uno followed by Google. TCS, Microsoft also feature in the list. Noteworthy names missing are NetApps, Adobe, Cisco, Intel and HCL who were ranked highly in other studies last year. With an all new methodology [...]

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Lessons from Launching and Reviewing an Internal Leadership Blog

After over a year, the leadership blog (internal corporate blog) aimed at employees is gaining momentum at my organization. I wanted to share insights on how we began, progress we made and personal learning. In case you are planning to champion a blog in your organization (training, business, engagement, CSR among others), I hope these insights [...]

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Internal Communicators as the Company’s Historians

About 8 years ago my supervisor at a previous employer handed me a list stating my roles and responsibilities as an internal communication professional. In that, I recollect was a line which read ‘the company’s historian’. Then, as a junior member of a growing communications team it only meant ‘collating and updating’ company news. The [...]

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Grassroot’ Employee Engagement Way Forward For Organizations

Over the last few months I have observed closely as employees took ownership to drive various engagement initiatives across the organization I work in. Unlike other organizations where dedicated teams are assigned to create a fun place, employees here leverage their ‘collective wisdom’ to uplift the mood in the offices. What started as a ‘community [...]

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Culture Deep Dives and Focus Group Facilitation Ideas

I recently sat in on a focus group session on ‘culture’ that sought employees’ perspectives on the organization’s traits and thoughts on how to retain or strengthen the organization’s DNA.  The forums held across the organization are an attempt to gauge the role ‘culture’ plays on engagement and align employees based on an action plan. [...]

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