No kidding huh?

Sometimes I regret subscribing to Google Alerts.

You sign up to be told whenever Google thinks something interesting has been said in whatever area you ask it to look.  At first I went mad and signed up for alerts about all sorts of things including my favourite bike rides and cakes (I'll explain why one day).

After being swamped with my very own personalised junk mail I deleted a few of the alerts and just stuck with 'Internal Communications' as my preferred category.

Although this does throw up some odd things - including a great deal of really geeky stuff about the inner workings of Cisco equipment - there are a few gems in there.  Including one that at first I found a bit irritating.

It was a link to a piece of promotional stuff from the Irish operations of one of the biggest PR agencies.  It breathlessly told me that their latest survey has revealed:

"that employees rank trust and open, honest internal communications as major contributors to their job satisfaction, organisational commitment and decisions whether to stay with or leave their employers. In Northern Ireland 38 percent and in RoI 32 percent of those surveyed expected to leave their current employment in the foreseeable future, while an overwhelming 74 percent of all Northern Ireland and 80 percent of RoI interviewees indicated that an improvement in communications would positively influence them to remain with their employers."

Rather snottily I thought "Well knock me down...I never would have guessed that..". 

But then again, there's a good justification for repeating this stuff. 

Many of us have seen the work of companies like Watson Wyatt and Mercers over the last few years trying to prove the linkage between good communication and employee retention, effort and advocacy.  For years all we had to point to were hoary old case studies such as the Sears model but now people are getting closer to showing causal linkages.

Yet - much of this evidence still seems to be unknown outside our field.  It's worth repeating this stuff simply because so few people actually know it.  I couldn't put a figure on it, but I wouldn't mind betting that a significant proportion of managers still doubt the vale of good communications apart from those involved in dishing out orders.

I think the sad truth is that this stuff is still news to a great many people...sometimes we're too clever for our own good!

Liam

Comments

[Mark Ragan]

Liam,

I just signed up for Google Alerts. I keep getting its e-mail notices whenever the racecar driver David Ragan is mentioned on the web. I see what you're talking about.

But here's a great tip for media relations pros.

David Pogue, the famous New York Times technology critic, told an audience at Ragan's Social Media conference that he uses Google alerts.

A very smart blogger in attendance decided to try an experiment the next day.

He wrote a post saying, in effect, "hey David Pogue, did you see this reference to you?"

Pogue then wrote back, "clever way to get my attention. It worked."

Hmmmm....interesting way to pitch reporters.