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Archive for November, 2011

Why Engagement Surveys Neither “Engage” Nor “Inform” in Any Meangingful Way

By: Gary Grates on Wednesday, November 30th, 2011 at 7:40 am

The Holy Grail for global business executives today is employee engagement. Recent studies indicate that close to 85% of employees believe they can positively impact quality of their organization’s products and services.  The sad truth though is that those same studies indicate less than 1/3 of employees globally are actively engaged in their jobs. Engagement is about individual behavior. People who have both an emotional and intellectual bond to the organization.  Disengaged employees not only exhibit less than satisfactory behavior as it relates to performance, they actually produce less revenue for the business. It is for these reasons that leaders and communicators ...

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The Employee Communication Paradox

By: Bruce Berger on Thursday, November 10th, 2011 at 9:05 am

The fourth annual Grunig Lecture, presented by the Institute for Public Relations, the University of Maryland and the Public Relations Society of America, is available in full on this website.  Dr. Berger has authored the following executive summary. The great employee communication paradox is this: We know what needs to be done to create excellent internal communication programs and communication cultures, but too few organizations do it. They fail to move from knowing to doing. As a result, employee levels of trust, commitment and engagement remain distressingly low. Extensive research, dozens of award-winning case studies and a rich ...

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Framework, Standards, and Metrics: PR Research Priorities Part 2

By: David Geddes on Tuesday, November 1st, 2011 at 9:53 am

Last week I made a case for the need for an action-oriented set of priorities for the public relations research, measurement, and evaluation function. Our goal at the managerial level, is to quantify public relations’ contribution to meeting organizational goals and building organizational value. To achieve that goal, we – research measurement, and evaluations professionals  – need to attend to issues of a measurement framework, standards, and data quality. This week I address three the first related topics: a measurement framework, metrics, and standards. 1. A measurement framework. First, we must adopt a common measurement framework based communications theory and public relations theory. ...

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