Click this link to listen to a 14-minute interview of Claire Leheny on the final day of the Sept. 22-24 Strategic Communication Management Summit 2009 in Chicago.

I interviewed Claire, who is Melcrum’s Director, North America, to discuss:

• Findings from a recent Melcrum global survey of communication professionals
• How the current economic market is impacting internal communications, and
• Changes within Melcrum, including the reason behind Melcrum’s recent relocation of its headquarters from Chicago to Washington, D.C.

I’ve attended many conference sessions and training courses during the past few years that tried to explain the significance of generational differences in the workplace, and why Baby Boomers like me were going to have to adjust our thinking and actions as “Gen Yers” begin to work alongside us.

The topic has become so overworked, in my opinion, that last September, I nearly skipped the Keynote Session at the Melcrum Strategic Communication Management Summit in Chicago. All I saw was its title: “Unlocking Gen Y’s Loyalty, Creativity, and Performance.” “Not again,” I thought. After all, I had just participated in a training course at work on the topic of generations in the workforce, and the presenters at a pre-conference workshop at the 2008 Melcrum “Summit” event in Chicago had included the same discussion as part of their session.

What else could I possibly learn?

It turned out that I could learn a lot, and am very glad that I decided to stay at the Keynote Session. The speaker was Jason Ryan Dorsey, author of books including “Graduate to Your Perfect Job” and “My Reality Check Bounced.” Dorsey is funny, well-spoken and in-touch with the latest generation to enter the workforce because he is a member of Gen Y. In fact, I learned a couple of things about Gen Y that I want to share with you, and you can learn more by visiting Jason’s website.

First, don’t believe anyone who tells you that you can instantly tell everything about a group of employees simply based on their birth dates. That’s too much like Horoscopes, and most of us know to keep a skeptical eye on something that is generalized to such an extreme.

Jason will tell you that. He pointed out to the Melcrum Summit audience how Gen Yers are said to be technically savvy–after all, they were handed laptops right after their first pacifiers, and latched onto text messaging long before they completed DARE training in middle school. Yet, the reality is that someone who knows how to operate a device such as a mobile phone and its texting option is not necessarily a technical savant.

“Usually on the first day of a new job, some Baby Boomer comes up to us and says that he couldn’t figure out how to hook up the PC to the printer, but he figured that we would know how to do it,” Dorsey said. “Well, we have no clue, but we can look at the pictures in the user manual and try to figure it out.”

Another generalization about Gen Y that Dorsey discussed was the lenth of time they are willing to wait until deciding to leave a particular job. Whereas the World War II generation expected to be at the same job for an entire career, and Baby Boomers typically gave a new job 1-2 years before deciding to move on, “Gen Yers know by lunch whether we’re going to come back the next day,” Dorsey said.

Well, I’ve hired and worked with people from a range of generations who held that same attitude. And a little thing we call the “economic meltdown” probably has skewed that job-hopping statistic a bit.

Age isn’t the only measuring stick, and it isn’t one of the more reliable, in my opinion.

Melcrum has announced that it is shuttering The Communicator’s Network, the standalone online community for professional communicators that Melcrum launched in May 2007. The site, which went live about three weeks after the official launch of MyRagan, Ragan Communications‘ social networking site for communicators, has not been a vibrant community for some time–at least not in terms of active commenting and new posts to the site.

I heard rumblings about the pending decision to close TCN some time ago, and had mixed feelings. Certainly, I didn’t visit the site enough to contribute to its vitality–and I’m not alone by a long shot. It wasn’t for lack of interest as much as lack of time. It’s the same reason for my infrequent visits to MyRagan, which also has seen busier days in the message and blog sections. (I do credit Ragan staff for their continual efforts to add content and to spark conversations. A recent contest to come up with the best caption for photos was fun.)

Melcrum actually has moved the online discussions and some other content from TCN to LinkedIn, which has become more than just a website for networking. LinkedIn still requires people to register and log-in before making connections, but it has a large user base and recognition. Best of all (in Melcrum’s favor), LinkedIn won’t require Melcrum to cover the overhead of running the site.

I don’t see a groundswell of people shouting for more online communities. (Although developers will continue to try to be the next facebook or LinkedIn.)

Time and energy are finite resources, and communicators will benefit from consolidation of sites over time. Competition is good for generating ideas, but in an increasingly crowded field, I think that Melcrum wisely decided that it was time to cash in the chips in one area, and find a new place to join in the conversation.

Read the announcement from Melcrum here

I don’t think that Bob Nelson, Ph.D., was quite expecting my question at the beginning of the Q&A portion of his presentation at the Sept. 22-24, 2008 Melcrum Strategic Communication Management Summit in Chicago.

Mine was the first question he received, and it was: “Is employee recognition like heroin, where you have to have more and more to achieve the same effect over time?” I was serious, and I later learned that another participant had an “aha” moment when she heard my question. Dr. Bob, on the other hand, had more of an “Oh, no” moment.

Rather than directly addressing the point that employers may be concerned about having to escalate the value of recognition programs as employees grow accustomed to certain levels of reward, Dr. Bob reiterated some points about the value of recognition programs in general.

Although I didn’t feel that my question had been answered adequately, as the first person to ask a question, I was presented with a copy of Dr. Bob’s latest book, “The 1001 Rewards & Recognition Fieldbook.” That turned out to be a good thing both for Dr. Bob and me, because while I was browsing through this very informative and feature-packed book, I discovered that Dr. Bob had answered my heroin question on page 329. Here is the question as it appears in Dr. Bob’s book, along with his answer.

FAQ Can too much recognition lead to constantly escalating forms of recognition or unfulfilled expectations on the part of employees?

A Employee motivation today is a moving target. You’ve got to be in constant contact with your employees to determine what they most value and then find ways to systematically act on those desired forms of recognition and rewards as they perform well. You need to vary your forms of recognition, adding new ones and experiment, but you can also stop doing other things that have run their course and are no longer very motivating to employees. If you keep doing the same things years after year, you’ll likely end up with a very boring workplace. Variety is the spice of life, and as you try new programs–especially ones your employees are interested in–your rewards will be higher morale, productivity, performance, and retention. Certainly that should provide some motivation for you to stay the course! By the way, the one form of recognition that never seems to get old is effective praise. If you are timely, sincere, and specific in thanking employees when they have done good work, this form of recognition will never become stale.

Dr. Bob’s presentation was similar to his book, in that both provided specific examples of effective and misguided recognition programs. I say, “misguided,” because as Dr. Bob explained, companies should find out what their employees consider to be good recognition and rewards–not what company leadership blindly considers to be good recognition.

Here’s a quick example from Dr. Bob: According to several studies over the past 80 years (including a study conducted by Dr. Bob in the 1990s), here are the top three things that employees most want from their jobs; first, according to managers, and then, second, according to employees.

Top Three As Ranked By Managers
1. Good wages
2. Job security
3. Promotion/growth opportunities

Top Three As Ranked By Employees
1. Full appreciation for work done
2. Feeling “in” on things
3. Sympathetic help on personal problems

Managers looked at things that had a financial cost. The employees cared about things that, ironically, had no direct financial cost.

I mentioned an “aha” moment that occurred for a participant at the Melcrum summit. This communications leader had been troubled for some time by a situation that had developed with a person hired by this leader. She told me that the man she had hired performed wonderfully, and she recognized his professional successes with notes of affirmation that were entered into his personnel file and greater responsibilities that resulted in a promotion (with salary bump).

Then one day, the man complained that this leader didn’t reward his efforts in a meaningful way! “When you mentioned heroin during the Q&As, I thought, aha! That’s it! It was like heroin–nothing I did was enough. He always wanted more.” When the man first complained to the communication leader, she quickly arranged a meeting with the man, and included an HR representative. During that meeting, the leader reiterated all that she had done to mentor this individual, and pointed out how his performance had been recognized by glowing performance reviews, compensation and a promotion. He remained angry, and said that she didn’t seem to like him. “What did he expect me to do, have sex with him,” she exclaimed to me. “I’m a married woman and I certainly wouldn’t want the sexual harrassment charges!”

After reading Dr. Bob’s book, and reflecting on his presentation, I’m thinking that the man was looking for some form of recognition that differed from the laundry list that the communications leader shared with me. (No, I’m not including sex in there!)

Maybe she would benefit from reading Dr. Bob’s book. I certainly recommend it to you. Share it with your leadership, and you have a good chance of offering recognition programs that are measurable, repeatable and enjoyable for employees–without any artificial stimulants or harrassment charges!

When I was growing up, many of us we were convinced that aliens really did exist and would eventually reveal themselves to us. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that life could exist on a few of the billions of planets spread across the universe. When we acted out that first contact, the person playing the “alien” would typically say, “Take me to your leader.”

Now older and perhaps wiser, we don’t look for spaceships descending from the sky—and we wouldn’t automatically consider our company’s senior leadership to be the best people to manage an interstellar meeting, if we had the opportunity to arrange one. In fact, survey results seem to indicate that at least one-third of us would beg to be taken away in the space ship, rather than remain behind in a work environment that had failed to engage us.

But let’s talk about how to improve communications within an organization. Primary takeaways of a preconference workshop at the Melcrum Strategic Communication Management Summit 2008 in Chicago included:

Communication expert Roger D’Aprix, a vice president at ROI Communications, and fellow ROI VP Michelle Glover led a workshop that was titled, “Improving Employee Engagment through Effective Leadership Communication.”

D’Aprix stated that a company’s leader is the single most effective communication tool professionals have to engage the hearts and minds of employees. He pointed to separate research findings from Melcrum and Towers Perrin that indicate the top driver of employee engagement to be the actions of senior leaders.

[See my podcast for an interview with Roger D'Aprix that centers on the third driver of employee engagment--social responsibility--and a preview of his soon-to-be-published book, "The Credible Company. Communicating With Today's Skeptical Workforce."]

D’Aprix and Glover shared results of a survey that ranked the level of engagement of various reporting levels within organizations. The results are:

- Senior executives (53%)
- Director/Managers (25%)
- Supervisors (16%)
- Salaried workers (14%)
- Hourly workers (12%)

Their take was that people closest to information were the most engaged. The need is to bring information effectively to supervisors, salaried and hourly workers. “Engagement is just one factor for success, but it is a very powerful factor,” D’Aprix said. “People will go the extra mile and bring more energy when they are engaged.”

To promote greater employee engagement, pay attention to the communication behavior of your leaders, he said. One key to engagement is to have effective and engaged leadership at the top, Glover and D’Aprix emphasized. D’Aprix added that employees no longer are a “cost of doing business,” they are the means of doing business–particularly in service-oriented markets like the United States. Therefore, organizations should demonstrate their interest in employees by researching the needs of their employees as thoroughly as they do their customers’ needs.

D’Aprix said the old-fashioned “command-and-control” management style, where leaders demand more and expect constantly better results, is not going to work with today’s workforce.

“Lead people well, keep them involved and you will improve the retention and performance of your organization,” he said.

Melcrum’s Strategic Communication Management Summit 2008 in Chicago was exceptional. I’ve already posted a podcast interview of communication expert Roger D’Aprix that was recorded on the first day of the summit, and I’ll be summarizing some of the information I gathered during the three-day event in Chicago.

The summit was held at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago, about one block from my high school. That gave me additional photo opportunities and ideas for blog posts.

I particularly want to compliment the Melcrum staff, led by Vicky Burch, Annie Waite and Rick Spratley. They went above the call to be welcoming, helpful and instrumental in encouraging networking among the participants and speakers.

More to come, as I get to it.