Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Lucy Nixon

Lucy Nixon

Freshening Up

Spring is here–which encourages thoughts about new growth. So here are some updates and extras relating to previously planted posts, plus two new seedlings.

Following up on Silver Linings, the post about a grassroots employment campaign that took root on Twitter:

  • Job Angels now has a website—minimal, but helpful if you want to pass the story along to others. It contains a brief version of how Job Angels got started, along with links to the various social media implementations of JA.
  • Nice news: The number of Job Angel participants (following and being followed) on Twitter has more than doubled in the month since my original post.
  • In a similar spirit, David Szary at Recruiter Academy offers food for thought about recruiting and life, with a post that starts off by asking “Are we forgetting what we do for a living?”

Recalling three recent posts that took a deep dive into Fortune’s 100 Best Places to Work—it was fun to see a segment exploring the list on the CBS News program Sunday Morning for March 15. “In Good Company” focuses on Fortune’s #15, W. L. Gore & Associates. (The “associates” are the employees, every one of them.) If you missed it, it’s not too late to watch!

dan-schorr-21Just after All Atwitter was posted, a delightful segment on National Public Radio program Weekend Edition captured veteran journalist Daniel Schorr (now 92!) discovering Twitter. Schorr—who began his career in 1946 as a foreign correspondent and has covered every noteworthy event since—still appears weekly as a senior news analyst for NPR. And his Twitter following is coming up on 6,000.

And two new items worth taking note of:

  • Job Radio. I won’t lie! I had fun channel-surfing this clever site, which offers assorted audio content about job-seeking, career-building, and more. And while there, I discovered—
  • Jobs in Pods, a product/blog that focuses on “jobcasting.”

(And by the way . . . if you’ve been wondering how things are going for Skittles—no one has yet analyzed the longer-term outcomes of their radical website makeover. But I’ll keep watching!)

Bad news, transparency and the corporate website

It’s not often that my two lives intersect: work and domestic … but late last week they did exactly that.

free-fromAlerted by email from the Food Standards Agency that one of our major supermarket chains had recalled an own-brand product due to a labelling error resulting in a potential allergen risk, I wanted to find out more. The Food Standards Agency site was down (no, probably not because of massive public interest in this particular allergy alert) so I went to the supermarket site.

Nothing. Not in the press release section, nor in the customer-facing sections.

I know this is a very small issue from the supermarket point of view, but the impact on the individual shopper can be significant.

I also know that very many companies would deliberately not post bad news about their product on their own site.

However, many companies have a page in their media section that provides coverage of the company in the papers, which could be good news or bad. A few (very few) companies post information about recalls too. The one that comes to mind instantly is HP, who have a page about recalls and replacement programs.

Since the supermarkets are sending information to the Food Standards Agency to let them know about a product recall, you’d think it would be easy to send the same information to the web team – and an easy job for them to post the information online when it arrived. And it’s not as though the information is secret, either, as the supermarkets usually put this information on posters in the shop, and on the shelves, as well as online at the Food Standards Agency.

Think how you could spin it: Supermarket X keeping you informed about the safety of our products; Supermarket X keeping you healthy and safe; Supermarket X is honest enough to tell you when we make a mistake.

That’s not so very far from the recent announcement from SC Johnson of their new website informing consumers of the ingredients of their cleaning products. Very transparent …

Places I want to work (Surprise #2)

pearson-lead

Actually, example #2 turns out to be less surprising than #1 (Home Depot), since I have quite a bit more experience in communications than in home improvement. But I was in the publishing industry for several years at the beginning of my career, and wouldn’t intentionally look for an opportunity to return.

So the appeal of Pearson’s site actually was unexpected.  And the site is certainly a complete 180 from the sturdy look-and-feel of Home Depot, with an “employer brand” character that might best be described as beguiling. The tone is direct and sincere, the design is casual (even artless), and the information is simply but adequately presented.

There isn’t a great deal of practical detail, because Pearson is made up of several different components (Pearson Education, Financial Times Group, and Penguin Group) that hire independently. So the parent site focuses on a basic presentation of the company philosophy—and there it has great success.

The key message is stated on the landing page: “We have a simple but ambitious goal: to be the best company to work for in the world, so that our people have the skills to leave, but choose to stay.” Variants of this message are repeated frequently, and are backed up with a sort of detail that is frequently missing in recruitment rhetoric: qualities of the company, and the qualities they are seeking.

Pearson uses words that are not typically found in company self-description. Example: “At the heart of everything we do are three core values: bravery, decency and imagination. These define the culture of our organisation and have always underpinned the way we do business.” Although there are sections on the site that cover the usual matters (benefits, diversity, training, etc.) what comes across most powerfully is the sense that “core values” is not just a bit of jargon, but a real description of their operating philosophy.

Here’s one more quote from a section titled “What we look for in Pearson people.” That’s a very helpful topic to present, I think, and the first item on the list is: “We are in the information business so we expect people to be forward-looking and creative in their thinking. We also assume that they will have a genuine passion for our business.”

And that last sentence actually forms a bridge for my own thinking. One of the strengths I pointed to on the Home Depot site was an image placed squarely in the middle of the Careers landing page—a blackboard with the phrase “What’s your Passion?” written across it in a bold hand.

Not that every Careers site needs to sneak in the word “passion” somewhere! But in both these cases, the idea of passionate engagement is integrated into the messaging (visually in one, verbally in the other), and strengthens an overall impression that the company really cares about making a match that works for both employer and employee.

Delivering a meaningful message won’t overcome lack of functionality or nonsense navigation. But it will make a good site much better.

Corporate websites and the case for accessibility

I recently asked Helen Baker to give us some advice about accessibility and the corporate website.

Helen provides a range of freelance web content services, with a focus on accessible, usable copy in plain English. She started out in technology PR for a global firm before moving on to the corporate communications team of FTSE 250 engineering company Balfour Beatty, and was responsible for http://www.balfourbeatty.com, when she was first introduced to the issues surrounding corporate websites. Find out more about her on www.concisecontent.co.uk.

Over to you, Helen:

Corporate websites and the case for accessibility

accessibility

As more and more companies provide and actively encourage their stakeholders to access corporate information online, accessibility is becoming an even greater issue.

Accessible websites benefit everyone, both visitors and business. But research shows that many corporate websites are still failing to reach even minimum accessibility standards.

Accessibility is a legal requirement for many businesses

Service providers in the UK have been legally required to provide accessible websites and applications since 1999. According to the Disability Discrimination Act, businesses have a duty to make reasonable adjustments to enable a disabled person to make use of its services, including those provided online.

A website’s design should make sure all users can have full and equal access to both services and information. If not, they run the risk of being accused of discrimination against people with disabilities, followed by being sued and receiving a lot of negative publicity.

All visitors benefit from more accessible websites

However, an accessible website isn’t just for people with disabilities. All visitors benefit from more accessible websites, from faster loading times through to easier-to-read text.

Accessible websites also benefit visitors with changing abilities, such as age-related issues, or people accessing information using both older (dial-up internet) and newer (mobile handsets) technologies.

Corporate websites serve audiences with diverse needs

Corporate websites provide information ranging from shareholder resources through to job vacancies. Consider two typical, very different audiences that would benefit from a more accessible website:

  • Retired employees: many older visitors suffer from age-related issues, such as poor vision and mobility difficulties (where using a mouse may be a problem). They also often use older equipment or browsers to access information.
  • Institutional shareholders: analysts often need to access financial information quickly via, for example, mobile handsets and platforms. They might also be using a slower internet connection reliant on a good mobile signal.

Accessibility provides tangible business benefits

Organisations with corporate websites that meet minimum accessibility requirements experience a number of business benefits. For example, the website will have an greater audience reach, it will be ‘future proofed’ as technologies change and its content will be optimised for search engines.

A popular case study is Legal & General, which launched a new website in 2006. It saw a massive increase in conversion rates (people asking for quotes), its search engine rankings significantly improved and it experienced a 100 per cent return on investment (ROI) within just 6 months, among many other benefits.

Corporate websites need to do better

In March 2006, Nomensa conducted research that showed ‘almost 75 per cent of businesses in the FTSE 100 list of companies fail to meet the minimum requirements for website accessibility’, as set by the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Why are so many corporate websites failing on this front? There are a number of reasons, many of which may be practical but certainly aren’t an excuse. These range from under-resourcing through to a lack of in-house knowledge.

Some simple fixes for the short term

Convinced but not sure where to start in the short term? Try some of the following simple (but not necessarily quick) fixes. This is by no means a definitive list.

  • Make sure your text is presented in short paragraphs, using plain English, lists and descriptive headings
  • When you add the headings, make sure you use header tags and put them in the correct hierarchy
  • Add and use appropriate alt text for all images, where applicable
  • Check for good colour contrast between the text and the background
  • Check that links are descriptive and easily distinguishable from other text (e.g. underlined and in a different colour)
  • Ensure that body text is a reasonable default font size and can be increased by the reader
  • Provide text transcripts for any video or podcasts.

The following websites also provide some good starting points and quick reference documents:

Where to go for more information

Thanks, Helen!

A Vision of Tomorrow, Where Money Isn’t Everything

mallen-bakerA fascinating blog article from CSR maven Mallen Baker caught my eye last week.  I’ve been chewing away on it ever since.

In Time To Redefine Ethical Investment he strikes directly at the root of what’s widely seen as the flaw in today’s business operations: responsibility.

Not the responsibility of managers and executives: the responsibility of investors.  Not socially responsible investment, but responsible company ownership.

In among everything else we’ve lost the fact companies are owned by their shareholders.  It’s not just an issue of finance; it’s an issue of management and governance as well.  Investors are owners.

. [Read more…] about A Vision of Tomorrow, Where Money Isn’t Everything

Stand Out—or Fit In?

skittles-collage

There’s no doubt that Skittles created attention with their extreme makeover! Not only here at Corporate Eye (Media and Brand), but all over the web—discussed and debated by bloggers, social media mavens, and even the relatively staid Wall Street Journal (which provides an interesting analysis).

An interesting part about this: the Skittles site was already more than a little bizarre. (If you don’t recall–or never saw–the “before” version, visit the Wayback Machine. ) So the change may be more noteworthy for its wholesale embrace of postmodern media than merely for novelty per se.

Of course my investigation has to focus on the Careers aspect, which leads to Skittles’ parent company, Mars. And switching to the Mars site is like going back over the Skittles Rainbow to land in Kansas again:

mars-careers

It’s a pleasant design and the site has pleasant functionality. In short—it fits into a visitor’s expectations. But it doesn’t stand out.  (Even when you discover that you can drag the M&Ms around.)

If you are planning a makeover of the Careers site, or even starting from scratch, one of the fundamental design decisions is whether to play it safe or spice it up. A Careers site that looks like 85% of all others runs the risk of boring visitors—or at least, not getting their attention. On the other hand, a site that is radically different from the mainstream is open to one of several visitor interpretations:

  • These guys don’t know what they are doing.
  • This company looks interesting!
  • This site is confusing/awkward/unfriendly.
  • I feel right at home here!

And so on. Individuals bring their own assumptions and motivations to the site with them, and (at the risk of over-generalizing) visitors who are looking for security may favor something safe and traditional, whereas visitors looking for a challenge may be attracted to something adventurous and creative. Age may also be a factor—though not necessarily in a predictable way, since older-somethings could be ready for a big change while younger-somethings may be looking for a safe place to get started.

There’s no pleasing everyone, of course, so it’s important to consider the target audience for your industry and your company, as well as the main types of jobs to be listed. And of course, it’s important to maintain a constructive connection to the company’s brand image. But as food for thought, here are three principles that would hold up pretty well across the board:

  1. A site that looks as if it were made with a Careers-shaped cookie cutter leaves the impression that no one cared very much about the site.
  2. A site that looks great but doesn’t work well leaves the impression that no one cared very much about the visitor.
  3. A site that makes the visitor jump through hoops to get information (or to send a resume or apply for a job, etc.) leaves the impression that no one cared very much about recruiting.

(For an example of the middle ground–mainstream done with pizzazz–visit Umpqua Bank.)