Human Resources: How Smart Companies Make Their Business Work Better

Boy-O-Boy is the world ever changing! It seems like it was just a few years ago that communication meant looking someone in the eye, or at least calling on the phone, and engaging in a two way exchange of information or ideas. In the telephony world this required a “duplex” communication device. Today, the Blackberry, SmartPhone, and the IPhone rule our communications processes.

It seems that there is no place to hide in this new world, even if you wanted to hide. Then there are the social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, and FaceBook to name just a few. The question, I think, is how do we, or can we, measure the effectiveness of our new “communications?”

I occasionally get an email with an imbedded “read receipt” so that person has decided that the associated issue is important or critical enough so that they want to ensure that I have at least looked at their message. I admit to using the “read receipt” function occasionally but try to use it sparingly.

When I first started this letter, my thoughts were leaning toward suggesting that more face-to-face communications might be the right answer as we come out of the recent (or current depending on your circumstances) recession. But as I got further into this topic, I began to realize that the current generation has grown up with texting and instant messaging and would probably rebel if their Blackberries were confiscated or rendered ineffective.

So, electronic communications is probably here to stay, at least until the next generation of technology arrives, which means that there are certain facts that we must consider in our management and personal business operations. Here are some of the issues I think we need to monitor and hopefully develop strategies to address.

Permanence or the fact that the email you just sent will probably exist on some hard drive on in the cloud until the end of time. We continue to hear of the individual convicted of child abuse because of a 20 year old kiddy porn site found on his or her computer.

Then there is the somewhat paranoid employee who never deletes anything that crosses their “desk.” I recently met and worked with an individual who had been contradicted by her boss on enough occasions that she was forced to keep asking for more and more storage on the company website to archive previous messages. While I was there she spent one entire morning searching those files to find the old message from her boss that was exactly the opposite of what the boss was now stating and that she had just been criticized about.

There is something really sad about what that statement says about the management of that organization but it should also send us a very clear message about how we should treat and recognize our own employees.

Confidentiality or the lack thereof which means that while you might consider a message confidential, the recipient might not and could forward it to someone else without your knowledge. Conversely, even if your recipient also believes that the message is confidential your company’s email policy might allow the system “administrator” to review your, or the your recipient’s, files thus exposing your “confidential” message to general scrutiny – an event that you may not want.

Social Media which many say is the new marketing media and a capability each of us should have and utilize. I remain a little more cautious because I am reminded of my daughter’s comments. She is a high school English teacher who has avoided Twitter, FaceBook and the like because she is afraid that some upset student (no, she doesn’t give everyone an “A”) will get into her site and post some things she doesn’t necessarily want to be public knowledge.

This is a real issue that you should research and analyze before you make the leap to one or more of these social media sites. Didn’t we just hear about the candidate or individual who had to withdraw from some competition when some pictures that they had previously posted were unearthed?

So, as I have made my way down this path, my thinking has changed a bit. I have come to the conclusion that in today’s world we probably need both forms of communication – electronic and face-to-face -- electronic for its speed and omnipresence, face-to-face for its honesty.

This reminds me of an attorney I worked with at a company where she was in-house counsel. She relayed her angst over the speed of change by talking about how, when she started in practice, a client would call and she could listen to their comments and then request some that additional clarifying information be sent. This, she stated, would give her a couple of days to think about the situation before she had to finalize a decision and respond. When we worked together a couple of years ago she was lamenting the fact that a client would call and then fax or email the supporting information and expect an answer by the close of business that day. Today, concurrent texting has probably reduced that time gap to hours if not minutes.

Then there is the face-to-face communications. I still believe that ultimately we need to be able to effectively deal with others in the first person. I personally cannot see anyone buying my thoughts or services by looking at my website or my response to an email, text, or LinkedIn posting. Granted, I might be able to spark some interest, but I don’t think that any of those communication modes will motivate final action. Possibly, after the trust is established we will be able to communicate and implement changes based on email communications but I don’t think pure electronic communication will work to establish the requisite level of trust on both of our parts initially. Therefore I believe that both means of communication will be necessary for the foreseeable future.

I also think this supports our need for two skill sets – personal and electronic communication skills, and we need to be proficient in both worlds. Good luck as you master the one of these two that you are most uncomfortable with today. If you are great with texting, how will you improve your interpersonal skills or conversely if you hate emails and texting how are you going to get over that roadblock?

While 2010 may be signaling the recovery, it is also a year where we will need to develop multiple proficiencies of communication to remain relevant and vibrant and I didn’t even approach the whole issue of social media. I wish you well and maybe we can look at that area in more depth in subsequent issues.