Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

All stakeholders

Slaying the Dragons: Social Media in a Corporate Context

Are you worried about wild beasts lurking in the thickets of social media?

Here be dragons

Some companies seem to have been waiting behind the defensive walls of their own territory for the all-clear, before venturing out into the wilder reaches of social media. There be dragons!

Exploration can be unnerving, and sometimes it can be difficult to know which path to follow, but luckily there are some experienced guides around – and here’s one way of following them.

Communicate magazine staged their first Social Media in a Corporate Context conference back last June, and so naturally it’s high time for another. I thoroughly enjoyed the last one, and this one looks just as interesting. The theme is:

“How to Use Social Media Strategy and Web 2.0 Tools to Engage all Your Audiences”

And that is, surely, what we all want to know – because it isn’t an easy task.

Some companies are doing a great job at this; others are looking to learn from those pioneers who have broken a trail (sometimes by acquiring some painful blisters) for others to follow. It’s never easy to learn in public – and social media is very public indeed.

If you’ve not set foot on the trail yet, and are rather anxious about the dangers lurking in the trees, here’s an opportunity to learn from some experienced guides.

Once again, Communicate have put together an impressive list of communicators from across the patch: public and private, internal and external, corporates and agencies. These people are out there hacking down the brambles and clearing the paths – and they’ll be talking about topics spanning the corporate interests: the media site, the investor relations site, corporate blogging, managing social media, internal communications and technologies.

Right up our street in fact – are you surprised I’d think this was fascinating stuff?

Book this week for a double discount

Make a note in your diary: 28 April, at Chelsea Football Club, Stamford Bridge in London.

We’re delighted to be involved with the Social Media in a Corporate Context conference, and we’ve negotiated an additional £50 discount over and above the early bird discount for friends of Corporate Eye (that’s you!). Just so you know, the early bird discount ends 1 April.

To book your place, call Felicity Stewart on 020 7498 7008 or email felicity.stewart@communicatemagazine.co.uk quoting reference number 606.

More details available here, including the programme and summary video from last year – speaker biographies will be going up later this week.

Revealing Corporate Culture via Diversity

Board diversity is a hot topic at the moment: FTSE 350 companies have been asked to announce the percentage of women they plan to have on their boards in 2013 and 2015 by … well, now.

Of course, diversity isn’t simply about male/female: there are many more ways in which people can differ from each other, such as in age, background, education, experience, nationality… there are as many ways of being different as there are people. So the male/female issue is only one thing to think about, but it is probably the easiest place to start.

Lucy P Marcus of Marcus Ventures argues that it is good corporate governance and good business sense to have a diversity of thought and experience on the Board, particularly international diversity. Moreover, she says that:

“diversity is a matter of organisational culture, and to a significant extent this is set by example from the top. A diverse board demonstrates that diversity is a value that the company holds throughout its business”

Diversity matters – crucially, as a way of avoiding the risks of ‘groupthink’ – and as a topic deserves to be brought out of the Careers section, where discussion is often reduced to a bland statement about recruitment policy, and discussed elsewhere on the website. The corporate attitude to diversity is indeed part of the company culture.

If you’re going to make an announcement about Board diversity targets, putting this statement on the corporate website is an easy option, with the (potential) benefit of demonstrating your commitment to diversity from the top down.

Such a statement would, of course, need to be updated with progress against the target each year. Additional diversity targets could be added in future, if needed, and some explanation of how the Board takes diversity into account in their nomination procedures would be interesting too.

Is yours up yet?

See, for example, Barclays who have a statement on Board diversity available from their CR section (note the stamp of authority conveyed by the Chairman’s signature), and RBS who link to theirs from the Board page (note the reference to their Global Women’s Network).

However, see also Balfour Beatty’s interesting response, which is not to target a precise number of women, but to redouble its efforts “to encourage more women to stay within its workforce and progress through the ranks to senior positions.” This is, of course, another important point, and one discussed by the 30% Club, and by the Institute of Directors, which points out that the low female participation on boards is a symptom of the underlying problem of low female presence in senior executive management. (See Big Picture March 11).

There’s a very interesting McKinsey article about how some major companies are dealing with this (Changing Companies Minds about Women – registration required), including Shell, PepsiCo and TimeWarner.

A follow-up question then: how are you managing this problem – do you know what your talent pipeline is, and how are you communicating your efforts on the corporate website? Shell, for example, reveal the percentages of women in supervisory/management/senior leadership roles over the last 10 years in their online annual report, and link to this from their Diversity page on the main corporate website.

This, like discussing your plans for diversity at the very top level of management, is a good way of communicating what the corporate culture really is.

……..
You might be interested in:

TNT: third party comments available

TNT in the news

Are you confident that all the news published about your company is good news – or, at least, that there aren’t going to be any unpleasant surprises?

TNT display confidence in themselves as they publish reports written by external sources about themselves on their own site.

Provision of this kind of third party news and comment about a company can be a useful source of information for both investors and other journalists, and certainly makes their research easier.

TNT will naturally review all mentions of themselves in the newspapers and other journals, and I trust that there is no veto on publishing critical third party news articles on the TNT site.

Just as important as reviewing the newspapers and financial journals for mention of your company is review of what is being said online. Does your company have someone who monitors what bloggers and other online commentators are saying? Did you pick up this post through a Google Alert?

Please contact me if you would like more information on how best to monitor what is being reported about your company online.

Your People Are Your Competitive Advantage

What is the best way to get out in front of your competition?

  • high tech development
  • access to financial assets
  • R & D
  • industry boundaries

These approaches may have worked in the past – but they are becoming increasingly ineffective as technologies merge, regulations are relaxed and companies form powerful strategic alliances. Savvy, fast-growing companies understand this; that’s why they are developing new ways to achieve competitive advantage through their own people and organizational capabilities.
[Read more…] about Your People Are Your Competitive Advantage

Once Again It’s Leadership Integrity

Despite Sarbanes/Oxley, business schools ramping up Business Ethics courses and lofty Corporate Codes Of Ethics, the Mortgage Market crisis indicates that we still have problems with integrity and ethics. While the mortgage crisis focuses on financial services companies, it is yet another wake-up call.

Leadership integrity and ethics continue to be lacking. For example in The 2007 ETHICS RESOURCE CENTER’S NATIONAL BUSINESS ETHICS SURVEY® (registration needed but worth it) indicates —

  • Ethical misconduct in general is very high and back at pre-Enron levels – during the past year, more than half of employees saw ethical misconduct of some kind.
  • The number of companies that are successful in incorporating a strong enterprisewide ethical culture into their business has declined since 2005. Only nine percent of companies have strong ethical cultures.
  • Many employees do not report what they observe – they are fearful about retaliation and skeptical that their reporting will make a difference. In fact, one in eight employees experiences some form of retaliation for reporting misconduct.

In the report the Center indicates “The Ethics Landscape Is Treacherous – Corporate America Is at Great Risk.” This is very sobering, however since 2002 and Sarbanes-Oxley, there have been similar cautionary tales apparently with little effect. Some may indicate a need for more regulation. But this is not the answer since rogues will always find ways to get around these. The solution must be a serious effort from senior leadership tobuild an organization wide ethical culture.

The Ethics Resource Center offers some useful suggestions.

Consider these additional suggestions as you build integrity within your leadership team. They are aimed at integrating Integrity within the organizational culture. You must address “the way we do things here in company x”, or the norms governing how people make decisions each day.

  • Integrity starts with the Board of Directors who develops an ethical practices statement and demand adherence. Violators must be publicly admonished similar to what Jack Welch did at GE
  • Ensure these practices flow easily throughout the culture and embedded in the formal and informal company practices
  • Stop the scoundrels at the gate – when recruiting leadership positions, use new approaches to reviews and assessments designed to surface integrity issues. Bristol-Myers, Pfizer and smaller companies such as Spartan Stores are using innovative approaches to filter out candidates with Integrity issues. Yes it is possible to interview for integrity see “Can You Interview For Integrity?”
  • Put Integrity components in compensation/incentives programs for all not just executives.
  • Communication between leaders and people in the organization deteriorated despite polished multimedia techniques. Your message may be lost in the technology. Tell stories about authentic leaders at company meetings, publish them in company newsletters. Tell them about company performance. Avoid fancy slides, just tell them the facts.
  • Leader development programs must include a first course/seminar in Integrity.
  • Be seen by your people. Let them see and talk with you in a relaxed place. If you “hide” in your office, it’s difficult to build Integrity.
  • Turn bureaucracy on its head.
  • Tough decisions always challenge Integrity. Such times require courage to do the right things. Don’t waste time over analyzing. Embrace integrity and you’ll know what to do.
  • No more “yes men/women”. Surround yourself with trusted people with diverse viewpoints who tell you what they really think about your ideas. Building Integrity takes time and continuous vigilance to maintain.

I will be interested to see what, if anything, will happen to improve corporate ethics after this latest scandal.

Importance of Navigation

navigation

Great looking website—Shame I can’t find what I want

The company was proud of its new corporate website. And the new pages certainly looked modern and fresh, thanks to the time and money that had been spent on development. But there was a problem, and it wasn’t discovered until the site had gone live. Put bluntly, site visitors couldn’t find what they wanted on the site and the reason for this was simple – the website was hard to navigate.

The above example is hypothetical, but I often come across issues like this. I used to think basic navigation issues were confined to creaking sites long past their use-by date, but brand new sites can have the same problem. The reasons for this can vary. Sometimes a company is so eager to revamp an old site, or so keen to include all the latest web ideas, they overlook the not-so-exciting nuts and bolts of good site navigation. And this can be a big mistake, because if a visitor can’t find what they’re looking for (and fast), they’re not going to find all the stuff companies want them to see.

So how can you find out if your website is easy to navigate? For this purpose of this post, I’m going to focus on stakeholder areas and share some brief tips on how to ensure visitors have a good navigation experience.

1. Don’t forget first impressions – Are the main stakeholder sections clearly signposted on your home page? I know this may sound obvious, but put on the shoes of a site visitor and take a look at your home page and compare it with something like Allergan’s homepage.

2. Keep everything where it should be – Don’t split stakeholder content. If a visitor is looking for core “About Us” content, they’re going to expect to find it in one place (and not spread over separate stakeholder areas, like a website I reviewed recently).

3. Don’t confuse the site visitor – It may sound like an original idea to call your key stakeholder sections something other than “About” or “Media”, but whatever you call them, it must be a recognisable pointer for the site visitor. Remember – a confused site visitor is going to be a past visitor very shortly.

4. Don’t hide your strengths – If your company has a great innovation story to tell, don’t hide it with a brief reference in your “About” pages. Invest in a specific section that stands on its own in the home page top navigation menu (like Eni). The same applies for businesses with an impressive corporate governance record.

5. Make a list – Pick a specific stakeholder section (e.g. “About”) and then write down what you’d expect to find there (don’t cheat and look at your own site first). Best practice recommends a broad range of useful and engaging content. Then go up back to your own website and compare what’s on your list to what’s there. If visitors can’t find everything they expect to see in a stakeholder area, they’re likely to look elsewhere on your site. And if they can’t find it elsewhere, that might be the last you see of them!

6. Avoid navigation jolts – Many companies use links to company reports (either in HTML or PDF) to provide additional stakeholder content, in sections like CSR or corporate governance. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this approach, provided the report content at the end of the link is of good quality. If it isn’t, this can create a jolt in the viewing experience of the visitor. And if the report content doesn’t look very good on the screen, it can look unprofessional.

I’ve only scratched the surface here regarding best practice for stakeholder navigation. And I’ve not even touched on all the other aspects of making a website easy to get around. The good news is that we’re happy to share what we know about all these things at Corporate Eye. So if you’re not sure if your website passes the navigation test, drop us a line and we’ll let you know!