Every company has an employee handbook, and usually their HR department struggles to create one that anyone will read or remember. For the opening of our last casino, I challenged my employee communications team to get innovative and create one that everyone would want to read. First off, someone asked ‘what are the best instructional/reference books on the market’? Another answered: the For Dummiesbooks. And right there you could see the spark and sparkle in everyone’s eyes. The first thing we came up with were the characters that lived and provided commentary in the margins. There was Ben Thinken (the guy thinking about the things that affected everyone), Freeda Ask (with the supervisor’s point of view), Willie Knowsit (who knows it all), WIREman (always pointing out where things were on the employee portal), and Mom (who always knows what’s best). Lots of great graphics, caricatures, pictures, and colors, simple, to the point, and fun. When we passed them out there were employees sitting and laughing and talking together as they read their handbooks, commenting on both how they were written and what was in them. Mission accomplished. And it felt great to be able to make something out of that sudden idea. Communications are the most important as well as the most challenging management responsibility. The lesson here: focus on both what you want to say andhow you should say it. Get creative and make your employee communications effective today.
Beverly Cleary (1916 – 2021): American writer of children's and young adult fiction.
No comments:
Post a Comment