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Hi and welcome to my first blog! I'm Rosie Mowatt and I’ve been let loose on the Black Belt Dojo as July’s guest blogger – thanks, Sue, for a great learning opportunity!

Last month Jeffrey talked about the different routes to market for internal communications professionals …. And so by way of introduction, this is my story. I love languages – always have and studied French, German and Spanish at school, uni, college before getting my first job at an international bank in Switzerland and then I discovered I loved skiing, too (with chocolate a close third). When I left 12 years later (having added Italian and Swiss German to my language belt, along with far too many tales of diplomatic incidents to recount here), I had to start my career again in the UK. I didn’t realise at the time how often I would draw on that early experience – all about internal communication, I recognise now with hindsight!

So my love and technical training for translating languages to seek shared understanding is a different perspective that I bring to internal comms – and is invaluable on a daily basis when “translating” business jargon and industry speak. I started my first "proper” internal comms role in 1995 and I’ve never looked back (along the way I also discovered I love change – phew!). For the past year, I’ve headed up the UK internal communications team at RWE npower (great opportunity to use German!) and I’m based in Swindon, Wiltshire - please feel free to look me up on Linked In to fill in the gaps.

Reading Lee Smith’s blog post about the launch of “My BT” and comparing that to an article in the UK weekend press (Sunday Telegraph) about how Google and Intel are seeking ways to protect workers from email overload, it struck me (not for the first time!) how at odds we are in different organisations with our approach to the advent of social networking at work. And I believe that the gap will get ever wider between those companies that embrace new social networking techniques in their internal communications and have the spend to do so and the companies that will have to hold back because of any number of multiple choice reasons - culture, infrastructure, budget to name a few.

As an internal communicator, how does that make me feel? Do I see it becoming a deciding factor in any future career decisions – of course! Along with the more obvious factors, I think it’s certain that future recruits will want access to the same communication tools that they’ve been brought up with (and any other parent of teenagers, who are simultaneously texting, IM-ing, emailing and webcam-ing would tend to agree, I think!).

And just as in dealing with any truculent teenager, if you’ve had the good fortune (and believe me, it can be fun!), I just can’t see much success with “telling” employees that they can’t use that technology on “no email Fridays” and on Tuesday mornings because it’s “quiet time” … would love to hear from anyone at Intel on this – does it really work in practice?

Back to that article – based on findings from a Basex think tank report, 28% of an office worker’s day is spent dealing with email and other messages. Few would disagree that email can have an invasive impact on productivity but it’s never that “black or white” or about “good” or “bad” email – I have to assume that a proportion of the 28% is made up of “grey” transactional email, such as contract and document exchange, which would take days by snail mail. Don’t get me wrong, as someone bombarded on a daily basis and drowning in emails, I totally support all efforts to get the right balance in place, so we can appreciate email exchange as the major advance in communication it was and still is … after all, we didn’t even have email when I started in Switzerland – unimaginable to me now! What did we do? It’s certainly made me pause for thought and reach for the many guidelines on email etiquette I’ve compiled over the years – once again, it’s all about behaviour and having the right basics in place.

Looking forward to exchanging more ideas on the subject – but don’t email me on Tuesday mornings – I’ll be having my quiet time!

Rosie

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