World PR Forum Pt.2: Global Internal Comms & Design Thinking
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The second in the series of specials on behalf of the World Public Relations Forum, that took place in Toronto, May 2016.
Russell Goldsmith was joined in the studio by Ezri Carlebach, Consultant, Lecturer and Senior Associate at the PR Network and Arun Sudhaman, President and Editor-in-Chief of The Holmes Report. Paulo Henrique Soares, Director of Corporate Communications and specialist in Internal Communications at mining giant Vale was on the line from Brazil.
Topics covered included:
- Challenges in Internal Communications across countries and cultures
- The work of Geert Hofstede
- The Holmes Report’s Influence 100 list
- Benefits of attending global conferences and winning awards
- Podcasting
- Global Communications Report
- Design Thinking
Paulo discussed how he deals with the challenges faced in Internal Communications to the 110,000+ employees and third party contractors that work for Vale across 27 countries. He said that a large number of them aren’t desk based but will be working in a mine, on the railroad or in the ports.
The first thing they have to overcome is the different languages that are spoken across the company. They do that by creating everything in Brazil using Brazilian Portuguese and English, and then allow the local teams to translate and adapt the content for their local languages.
Paulo said that those working in Internal Communications have to understand how people from different cultures want to react with their organisation and like to receive information in different ways. He quoted the work for Dutch social psychologist, Geert Hofstede, who said that there are four dimensions to national cultures:
- individualism-collectivism
- uncertainty avoidance
- power distance (strength of social hierarchy)
- masculinity-femininity (task orientation versus person-orientation)
[Further reading: The Hofstede Centre]
Paulo said that Brazilians or Latin people prefer more interaction and face to face communication and respect hierarchy much more than other countries. He has therefore taken things like this into account when delivering information.
Ezri added about the need to use visual communications in Internal Communications to get consistent messages across different languages and cultures, which Paulo said they use a lot of. However, they have a very strong mix of tools and delivery methods, including intranet, printed and email newsletters, digital, mobile apps, one minute podcasts, TV screens on boats that some employees use to get to work and even paid for billboards where they know around 8000 of their employees could be travelling past each day to get to the mines, for example. He explained that when it comes to images in particular, they also encourage their local teams to replace the imagery to suit their market, changing photos of employees on documentation, for example, to suit the right countries.
Paulo also explained how they train their managers around the world in a similar manner to media training, but instead for talking to the employees, as through research they have found that most employees prefer to receive information face to face. Vale have built, what they call, ‘The Leadership Hub’, which is online and is there to support this area, providing managers with the tools to communicate to their teams, including using videos and presentations.
The mention of podcasts led on to a quick discussion about how we are listening to more of them, and in fact Arun produces his own one called The Echo Chamber.
[The topic of podcasting was actually covered in detail in Show 13]
Arun explained that The Holmes Report will be launching their Global Communications Report in Toronto. The research is being carried out in partnership with a number of organisations, including The Global Alliance and AMEC, but is being led by USC Centre for Public Relations, within the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Arun believes it will be one of, if not the biggest survey of the global public relations industry.
The final part of the show focussed on topic of Ezri’s Forum workshop, Design Thinking, which he explained is a socially embedded practice and something that is high on the agenda of business executives.
Ezri referred to the Harvard Business Review from September 2015 (right)> This explained that executives are using Design Thinking to devise strategy and manage change, being driven by a number of reasons, including the fact that businesses know they need to attract talent from a new generation that possibly thinks in different ways and that are also used to different types of attributes, particularly at work. For example, younger people are looking for ‘purpose’ from the companies they choose to work for, i.e. why is the business doing something, as opposed to wanting the huge salary package or the job security.
For anyone looking to read up on this topic, it was covered in an article in The Holmes Report about The Creativity in PR Study, but as well as the Harvard Business review above, Ezri pointed listeners to few sites:
- The work of Idris Mootee
- A recording of a presentation by Andrea Siodmok, Head of Policy Lab UK and Deputy Director at Cabinet Office, called ‘How design is shaping thinking at the heart of Government’
- Sciences of the Artificial by Herbert Simon
- The Design Way by Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman
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