Many companies seem to frequently be in a state of flux these days, whether it's a CEO or other leadership transition. Mergers and acquisitions or divestitures. Organizational change is the new normal. Reductions in force reorganizations, facility moves or closures, and uncertainty in the business. Climate and financial markets are triggering anxious moments on a regular basis. In this episode of Can You Hear Me? Co-hosts Eileen Rochford and Rob Johnson welcome special guest Howard Karesh, a veteran corporate communications expert, to discuss how to keep employees engaged through these tumultuous times.
Special Guest: Howard Karesh
Howard N. Karesh joined medical technology leader Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc. (Hillrom), in July 2015, and leads the company’s Corporate and Graphic Communications function on a global basis. He is a member of the company’s Senior Leadership Team and Pandemic Steering Committee. Howard’s internal and external communication responsibilities include CEO, M&A and pandemic communications; serving as Hillrom’s spokesperson; and launching/overseeing the company’s Hillrom for Humanity corporate social responsibility initiative.
Previously, Howard was director of Corporate Internal Communications and Creative Media at Exelon Corporation, a Chicago-based energy holding company. Prior roles include head of North America Internal Communications at ABN AMRO/LaSalle Bank Corporation, and senior positions at public relations agencies Ketchum (vice president, Midwest Corporate Practice), and Edelman (vice president, Technology and Business Marketing).
Howard is the recipient of multiple communications industry and company awards, including Hillrom’s 2021 Senior Leadership Team Commitment Award of Excellence.
He is a magna cum laude graduate of Loyola University of Chicago, and earned his Accreditation in Public Relations (APR) from the Public Relations Society of America in 2010.
Howard is a seasoned community leader and serves on a number of non-profit boards, including roles such as the president of a 430-student private school in Skokie, Illinois; president of a Chicago community educational organization; and board membership at numerous other social service organizations in the United States and abroad.
Rob Johnson [00:00:03] Many companies seem to frequently be in a state of flux these days, whether it's a CEO or other leadership transition. Mergers and acquisitions or divestitures. Organizational change is the new normal. Reductions in force reorganizations, facility moves or closures, and uncertainty in the business. Climate and financial markets are triggering anxious moments on a regular basis. And this episode of Can You Hear Me? Co-hosts Eileen Rochford and Rob Johnson. Welcome. Special guest Howard Karesh, a veteran corporate communications expert, to discuss how to keep employees engaged through these tumultuous times.
Eileen Rochford [00:00:49] Hello again, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Can You Hear Me podcast. I'm Eileen Rochford, CEO of the marketing and strategy firm The Harbinger Group.
Rob Johnson [00:01:00] And I'm Rob Johnson, President of Rob Johnson Communications. As you know, on this podcast and in our day jobs, Eileen and I are hyper-focused on how to help our clients when it comes to overcoming communications barriers and articulating their message and value proposition clearly and uniformly. But what happens when there's something very sensitive happening, like a CEO or other leadership change? Mergers and acquisitions. Organizational change like workforce reductions and reorganizations. And just the general anxiety that has become a part of life during the global pandemic. It's a lot to chew on, right?
Eileen Rochford [00:01:36] A lot to consider indeed, Rob. And that's why today we've enlisted the expertise of Howard Karesh to help us unpack all of this. So, Howard is this season's communications senior leader with more than 25 years of experience, including a dozen years at major PR firms and stints at LaSalle Bank, Exelon Corp., and Hillrom, which was a Chicago-based medical technology company acquired in December 2021 by Baxter International. Howard held the post of vice president of corporate communications at Hillrom during a time of tremendous changes.
On a personal note. I've known Howard, I would say nearly all those 25 years, Howard, because we started out together as interns at Golin where we had a ton of fun causing all kinds of trouble and just high jinks and hilarity throughout the halls as the silly interns. Those were good days. And thank you for being with us, my good friend. We're thrilled to have you as our guest today Can you hear me?
Howard Karesh [00:02:43] Thank you for having me. It is a long time. It's 27 years. But who's counting?
Eileen Rochford [00:02:49] Why are you telling people how old I am? Howard, that's so rude.
Howard Karesh [00:02:52] I'm telling them how old I am. And if people can do the math on their own, that has stopped already.
Rob Johnson [00:02:57] Eileen was a child prodigy.
Eileen Rochford [00:02:59] Kindergartner. Yes, yes. That's right. Absolutely. So, yes. Thanks for being here. You and I go way, way, way back. I know tons about you, but mostly the good things and how super smart you are and all the things that you've experienced in the corporate communications world. So, thanks for joining us to share your insights, knowledge, and experiences with our listeners today.
Howard Karesh [00:03:25] Thanks for having me. I'm excited to participate.
Eileen Rochford [00:03:29] So. Okay, are you ready? Because here's your first question.
Howard Karesh [00:03:31] Yes, let's roll.
Eileen Rochford [00:03:33] So you talk about employee engagement. Frequently in your LinkedIn posts. And I have to say, I really enjoy reading so much of what you post on LinkedIn. It's so thoughtful and I appreciate people who really put time and effort into what they put up on LinkedIn. What I'm wondering, though, is why the topic of employee engagement in particular? Why does that have such great interest to say more so than other things that kind of go on in our complex communications world?
Howard Karesh [00:04:04] In my earlier years in the agency world, I fell in love with the employee communications component of corporate communications. The single reason was that I got to be my own audience because I'm an employee. So, I was able, even at a relatively early age, to put myself in the shoes of somebody impacted by the words, the videos, whatever the communication vehicles that I was putting together, if I was an employee, what would I want to hear at this particular time of change? What would I want to hear at this time of crisis? Or what would I want to hear when everything is going great and there's really nothing major to worry about. So that element, a player-manager, if you will, of having the opportunity to provide not just strategy but to be the audience has made for a wonderful career and a fun way to make a living. So, it really all starts there and all of the stuff that Rob mentioned in the intro. CEO transitions and layoffs and facility closures and all the organizational change and pandemics that we've all gone through. The common denominator in all of those is the single most important audience, which is the employees impacted by whatever it is that's going on.
Rob Johnson [00:05:19] I think it's a really important point you're bringing up, Howard, because I think a lot of companies, especially when the pandemic began and we don't need to go revisit that in too detail, but everybody uniformly, it seemed had an issue with how do we reach out to these people that are now working remotely? We could run into them in the hallways. We could have these meetings in person, we could seem at the coffee machine, and now we don't have it. So, it needed to be intentional. And how do we do this and how do we keep them engaged? And there is so much uncertainty around that particular issue. But the other issues that we're bringing up here today, cause a little anxiety on the employee front and you need to be front and center. I love the fact that you loved it. You love talking about this because you’re part of the audience, that's a really interesting piece of this equation.
Howard Karesh [00:06:12] You know, ten years from now, five years from now, the story will be written about how all of us communicators pivot to handle the difference before March 11th or whatever the date was and after? For the most recent company I was at Hillrom, we completely changed the way we handle employee town halls but realized that a lot of companies don't just have knowledge workers sitting in laptops like this one at home. We've got people in power plants, factories, delivery companies, restaurants, and frontline workers. How do you reach those people? They were already the hardest ones to reach. What do you do now when there is a have and have nots? Some people get to stay home, and work and others must go in.
So, in an environment like the pandemic, which has been all-encompassing, but even thinks beyond that, how do you reach those that are already difficult to reach when things get more challenging? And there's not really an amazing answer to that beyond face to face. And we have come up the royal we have come up with better ways to reach those in manufacturing facilities and call centers and places where they're not sitting on email and slack all day long. But there's a history there waiting to be told that will judge whether we were or were not successful in reaching everybody equally as well, no matter what type of job they had.
Eileen Rochford [00:07:35] I’m really curious to hear just a little bit about something you touched on a second ago, Howard, how you had to at Hillrom pivot to reach all of those people who were already hard to reach. Could you talk about that for a little while? I'm sure our listeners would like to hear concretely the changes that you made and the effects that you saw, where they saw those changes, successful things like that. I'd love to hear more about it.
Howard Karesh [00:08:05] Sure. So let me try and briefly capture what we were dealing with. You've got a company with 10,000 people, some 6000 of whom had to continue going to work. They had to make the medical devices deliver, fix, install, and then another 3500, 4000 were sent home. So, on the one hand, you've got this dichotomy that I already mentioned. On the other, you've got people in all these different locations where we had an early lead on the start of the pandemic because we had people in China. So, it was very much an east to west, follow the sun, kind of a communication strategy. How do you start reaching people where they are and what we ended up doing, and this is not just a communications decision but an organizational, environmental, health and safety decision? We appointed leads at each individual facility that would serve an operational role in a role. In many cases, those were our human resources people, but also would be the on-site go tos for reliable information so center led, so globally relevant but applied locally.
A lot of the key messages may have come from corporate here in Chicago, and it happened to be in Chicago, but we really empowered people on the ground to make decisions that were best for the people that they were physically closest to, geographically closest to, for me, to, for example, for me to make a decision in Chicago on what should happen in the office in Amsterdam makes no sense without a leader in Amsterdam there to to advocate for whatever his or her position might be. So, you had this collection of people who were highly engaged, very well trained, very well educated about what the company was going for and then able to apply that locally. So that's dealing with the situation locally on the ground from an enterprise level. How do you strengthen a culture when everybody is dispersed? There's no more in office. Anything. Even those who were going to work were prohibited from gathering social distancing mask. It's we're I think we might be forgetting just how challenging it was exactly 24 months ago. China was dying. Italy was dying. New York was dying. We did not know what was going on.
So, we were trying to make decisions that not just kept the lights on but kept our culture strong. Because if your culture starts to break apart, you lose some of the engagement and heal. Ram, now acquired by Baxter as a medical device company that had some couple dozen products that the world badly needed ICU and regular hospital beds, ventilators, blood pressure thermometer, a patient. Vital signs mean those words and phrases came up constantly in the early media coverage. So how do you maintain a culture? How do you maintain engagement? It was our job as communicators, not just to help people get the information they needed so that they would stay safe, but to get the information, perhaps inspiration, influence they needed to stay engaged not only in what they were doing, but with the environment at our company more broadly in which they were doing it.
I would like to think that that we on the communications team played a reasonably impactful role in helping not just keep the lights on and keep the culture together. That's, that's, that's the lowest common denominator. But strengthening that culture and really keeping people not just on the ball but proud and happy that they were able to contribute in a meaningful way to a global disaster.
Rob Johnson [00:11:54] I'm glad you brought that up, Howard, because I know that was a challenge for so many companies about how we engage them, how do we reconnect with them when we're disconnected. So, I'm glad that you brought that up, and I'm glad you explained it in some detail about, you know, what, what you all did that was successful.
I want to talk about industry consolidation. It seems to be a constant. Sometimes it comes in waves. It depends on market conditions and a myriad of other factors. But companies buy and sell themselves every day. And you want to talk about employee uncertainty and it's my job going to be around. What's the future look like? Kind of talk us through the employee experience on either side of the transaction. When this becomes a reality for your company, and you have everybody understandably skeptical and nervous.
Howard Karesh [00:12:48] You know, over the years, I've developed a point of view that I don't think is unique to me or even especially insightful, but it is that employees can handle news that they don't want to hear. What they have a more difficult time with is the uncertainty around what's going on. So, you know, I've been part of. I don't even know how many transactions I've been bought. A couple of times have been on the buying side, a bunch of times divested a company or so, as with all the companies that I've had the pleasure of working for. Those are inherently uncertain situations for employees that very often include news that employees don't want to hear. There are executives who leave. There are departments that are closed. There are facilities that are consolidated.
Of course, inevitably, as companies come together, very often there are redundant positions, and you only need one person to do X. So, the goal in communication throughout any sort of M&A situation is certainty, and that comes with some responsibility on the communicators part. Responsibilities that include basic concepts like candor and transparency and honesty and clarity without resorting to acronym LADEN jargon, jargon that nobody really understands. So, I can handle being told that there's going to be a change to my group. I can handle being told that I might have to look for something new. What I can't handle is not getting that information in a timely manner. What I can't handle is people not being straight forward in communicating what is about to happen. I would much rather upset somebody with a politely and kindly delivered truth than dance around something and create uncertainty in the environment.
So, if you look at what must happen on the positive side for a transaction to go well. You need people engaged. You need people to understand the vision and the strategic value of a particular transaction and get them excited about it. Not every ounce of a transaction is going to be fun for everybody. But if you communicate what's going on in a way that is enticing and engaging and can with candid candor, excuse me and with truth, you know, somewhat counterintuitively, you can boost engagement during these times of uncertainty. I've seen it happen way more than once, and it's doable. But it takes a little bit of that philosophy to find its way into the communication strategy and the execution to make that possible. To make it possible and to make it true.
Eileen Rochford [00:15:39] So I'd love to hear about one of those experiences where you use that situation to kind of create a positive outcome. Can you recall one. Doesn't have to be your most recent but any. Just kind of describe what went down in how you guys delivered communications to make sure it was a culture strengthening opportunity.
Howard Karesh [00:16:04] Sure. I'll go back to something that's sort of a little bit distant. This is probably, I'll say, about ten years old. And I was working in the in the utility business and the company I was with did a very sizable acquisition, six, seven, $8 billion and bought another very large company. And when two very large companies come together. One of the things that I like to tell those who ask me about this is that whether you buy a company of five people, which in my whole run days we did, or 2500 people. There's not that much different that you're doing. It's a simply a matter of scale. You still need solid key messages. You still need solid executive communications. You still need to prepare for the external communications piece of that. You still need to prepare for social and investment in web and all the other audiences that you need to take care of.
It's just a matter of how many people are on the receiving end of your communication. So, think of it as a matter of scale. But when you acquire a very large company, that scale can get in the way because you have so many more people whose uncertainty you're trying to satisfy or correct and so many more people to deal with from an org chart. And what a former colleague called the box ology, you know, which positions do I really need in this company? And their boxes? Not yet. Names and people, but boxes and that. Can be very challenging, especially if you're the company that's being bought. It's a little bit easier to be on the buying side. You know the incumbent, at least many would think has the upper hand. But we bought a very large company. I was extraordinarily proud of the very proactive communication plan that we put in place, which included regular touchpoints across a variety of different communication vehicles, just not to keep people on their toes, but to keep them interested.
Certain things were consistent. We did a newsletter every 14 days, for example, and then we would do one of communications, maybe a video, maybe a live stand-up meeting at a certain location. We kept the information flowing, and I and I used all that background to tell you the follow that from an outcome’s perspective. One of the things that I'm very, very proud of is that the employee engagement score in the wake of that transaction was higher than it was for the parent company before, which is something of a minor miracle, because you expect with all that disruption on both sides of the company, that at that time, at probably 28 or 30,000 people in it. The numbers are not in your favor. So, if you're able to boost engagement after an extraordinary corporate change like that, you've done something right. The something right is treating your colleagues like the adult professionals that they are leveling with them.
It doesn't mean you have to be mean. It doesn't mean you have to hit him over the head with a hammer. But it does mean that you need to be really, clear and speak. In that situation, it was everybody in the U.S. Plain English in Hillrom’s case with people all over the world. So then, not only were we dealing with multiple languages but different cultures and different ways of communicating within those cultures which only amps up the complexity. But the principle is still the same: candid, well-informed, clear communication, the goal of which is to give people more certainty. So that's one I won't even call it a war story because it went so well. Those are the types of things that those of us who are looking at communications from a higher strategic level really need to keep top of mind. How do I keep people engaged when you would think you don't even have a chance of doing so? And that's where to borrow one of your phrases from earlier in this broadcast. That's a little bit of where the magic is.
Rob Johnson [00:20:02] I'm so glad you just said that, because I remember when all this was going on and I'm advising clients and now I have Howard Karesh, who's been doing this for decades, saying this is the way to do it, with candor and transparency because that was what I was urging them. I remember somebody in my old business telling everybody when things were not going well, it's all great. We're just fine. No problem. And then two weeks later, you have a bloodbath.
You lose 100% credibility when you do that. And it speaks to your point about people can handle bad news if they get treated like adults, and as long as you're leveling with them, you're not going to give them the keys to the kingdom and tell them everything that's going on internally, but give them a little something, show them a little respect and will go a long way even when the news isn't good.
Howard Karesh [00:20:47] One of my favorite professors at Loyola University of Chicago which goes back 500 years, was a fellow named Dr. Mike Cornett. It was a great class. And one of the things I most remember from his class is he said, never to underestimate the crap detector that other people have embedded in their brains. They will see right through you. So don't waste your time on a horrible loosey-goosey, bury it under the rug communication. That is never a good idea.
Now, at the same time, transparency doesn't mean telling everybody everything right at the start. It means you tell them the information that you can when you can, and you can be over transparent and bury people in information. And that's a good way to hide stuff, too. So, there's a balance there and it takes some seasoning to get it right. Right. If I send you a nine-page white paper, your eyes are going to glaze over. But if I send you 150 words of clarity, I've got you. You may not love it, but at least you're going to be respected by somebody else who's telling you what you need to know.
Eileen Rochford [00:21:56] Yeah. One thing that I want to pull out from all that gold that you just gave us is your point that employee engagement actually rose after anything. Was the utility example that you gave during that time period? I also say, you know, we've all witnessed in the last couple of years that throughout the pandemic, despite the barrage of communications and the need to communicate so much more with employees and partners and constituents than we ever had before or really thought we needed to. We also saw a spike in engagement during that time period.
Those things tell us something powerful. I think that the more that you communicate, if it is on target, relevant information that's delivered, you know, both concisely and powerfully and in the right way in terms of the mechanisms, you can increase employee engagement. Most people think if you communicate too much, people are just going to shut it out. Like, for example, I'll tell you, I can't tell you how many companies we ask, could we do an employee survey on this topic, or would you participate in this particular activity that requires an employee survey?
The answer we get more frequently than ever before is no because they're so protective of that type of communication with employees because they're afraid they're going to tune it out, disengage. Right. So, it's interesting for me to hear you say in several instances over the last, you know, 2 to 10 years that the more frequent and the while better communications are happening, you're increasing engagement with your employees. So that's a solid lesson for our listeners in Miami.
Howard Karesh [00:23:54] It is. I do want to pick up on something, though, and feel that back one more layer if I can do it with frequency. And you mentioned all events and those can occasionally be at odds. For example, I mentioned every 14-day newsletter. What I told my colleagues then and say to colleagues now is we're going to publish a newsletter every two weeks except for when we don't. Yeah, because if you don't have relevant, insightful content to offer publishing something just to say you did. Kind of a terrible reason.
That's like doing something because that's the way you always did it. Now, part of our job as communicators is to mine the organizations for appropriate content. So, we have to do the work and there is work there. But to publish something for the sake of publishing, when there's nothing really in there of value or there's no what's in it for me, there's no call to action. That's where the frequency and the relevance are. Miss one another. So yes, frequency is important, but so is the quality of that content, and the relevance of that content. If you give somebody something that's relevant to them. You've done your job.
Rob Johnson [00:25:09] And if you keep. Creating something that's irrelevant. They're going to tune you out quicker than you want.
Howard Karesh [00:25:15] They're going to tune you out and you are just spilling ink for the purpose of staying busy during the day.
Eileen Rochford [00:25:20] Yeah. Really good points. Shall we transition, Rob, to talk about the topic of change?
Eileen Rochford [00:25:31] I'll take that as a yes. So. Right. Thank you. You know, we all hear phrases like change management and other things. The phrase of the day, if you will. But what I would love to hear you talk about is what that looks like from a communicator's vantage point. Change and all that goes along with it.
Howard Karesh [00:25:55] So part of it is and where it starts is really understanding what is the change that the organization is about to go through. And it could be something as significant as a CEO. Departing and another arriving, regardless of the circumstances and all the CEO transitions that I have been through, trying to think quickly now have all been there's no malfeasance, nobody did anything weird or wrong. It was they retired, or it was time for them to move on to do something else. So, there was a friendly transfer of power, but that can be very destabilizing. What's destabilizing for the CEO, is direct reports could be trickle-down destabilizing for everybody else, but it could also be something as, hey, we're putting in a new timesheet system. Or we're giving everybody, and you know we're going to switch from remembering emails.
Eileen Rochford [00:26:50] Got yeah.
Howard Karesh [00:26:52] We had that one job I had, and the happiest day of my life was the transition to outlook. So, there's change and then there's change. Right. Change at the top is only so relevant to people, but you change their everyday times. Your program, change their email program, go for the benefits package. Right. Change benefits. Go from, for example, an HMO to a high deductible plan. Challenging. Very challenging.
So, there's change and then there's change common to all those elements from a communicator’s perspective is, number one, really understanding what? Really understanding why, the company is doing that change, truly understanding what the impact on employees and you are can group them broadly and then see around the corner because you really you must have this.
This is a drop of a crystal ball, a little bit of prophetic capability to understand if I make this change on January one, what am I going to be hearing on February 15th, and how likely might have stopped hearing it by April 1st? So, the idea from a communicator’s perspective, and this is separate from whatever training might need to be done right, which is usually going to be somebody else's role to fill. But the communicator's job is to paint that picture. Here's where we are. Here's where we are going. Excuse me. Here's where we need you to join us along the way. So, if it's a new CEO or if it's a new timesheet program, I would argue that the new CEO is a lot easier to handle.
Because I don't think to do anything. If there's a new CEO, I might show up when she does for a town hall meeting in my location. I might send him or her a welcome note. I might want to get to know that person depending on my role or where I am in the organization. But that's much more on the interpersonal skills. But if I went from, you know, timesheet program A two-time C, program B and I'm a factory worker and I've never used anything online before, but now I must use a kiosk, but I don't have my own login. I mean, you can just imagine the complexity that you introduce into an organization.
The idea from a communications perspective is to understand all those impacts. Educate in language. And I don't mean just French, English, Spanish, whatever, but in, in, in in a clear language that people can understand so they know what is their role, what do they need to do or not do by when and who is there to help them? If we don't have all of that really, really clear in our heads, we're going to blow it. And we can't afford to blow it. Because I would argue that communicators are not the only people involved in change management. Certainly not. But change management can't happen without us.
Eileen Rochford [00:29:47] Yeah, you mentioned one thing that I want to ask you to talk a little bit more about, which is you just touched on needing to understand the why behind the change that's taking place. Do you think it's always important to share that way with employees?
Howard Karesh [00:30:09] I think without it. Oh, go ahead, Rob.
Rob Johnson [00:30:12] No, I was going to say. Or is that providing too much information, as we talked about a little bit earlier?
Howard Karesh [00:30:16] That's a good two-part question. Let's pick at that for a second. In. I would in most situations think the why matters to people. Simple example. Your colleagues, we're sorry to announce that. You know, Eileen Rochford is departing the company effective yesterday. And here to come in as the new intergalactic director of Doorknob Washing is Mr. Rob Johnson. All right.
Eileen Rochford [00:30:53] So they were just thrown on that.
Howard Karesh [00:30:55] So now we.
Eileen Rochford [00:30:55] Place, you know.
Howard Karesh [00:30:57] So what do we know?
Rob Johnson [00:30:58] She's irreplaceable.
Howard Karesh [00:30:59] Jason. What do we know? All we know is that I left under weird, spooky, mysterious circumstances yesterday, and nobody told us in advance. And that now Rob is in charge. What's missing? You're missing a narrative. You're missing a story. You're missing we have an opportunity to do a far better job of doorknob washing. We made the difficult decision that a leadership change is a part of what we need to do to make that happen. And I think companies hide behind that because they don't want to hurt anybody's feelings and they want people to go out with grace as they should. And maybe that's not the best example, but I think the Y matters because, without the Y, you've told half a story.
Rob Johnson [00:31:43] But what if the why is kind of B.S.? I mean, what if it's like Eileen left yesterday and we don't know why and then they try to paint? Well, she's going to pursue other opportunities, some mealy-mouthed answer, because you see that a lot to Howard. Is it better to say something than to say nothing? Or if you say something that seems a little disingenuous, do you just dig yourself a deeper hole?
Howard Karesh [00:32:07] I can't speak for every company in the world. I can only speak for myself. Very often, or at least often, that language is up to the departing employee, which I think is a very graceful way to handle things like that. My personal preference, if that's not a factor, is to not offer a reason for a particular individual's departure, but to absolutely acknowledge that they will be leaving or have left the company. The story doesn't need to involve why they're leaving. The story needs to involve why is the future that we are pursuing relevant.
That's the story is not Eileen was a bad doorknob washer. The story is here's why Rob's leadership is right for this company currently in this particular role. People can. Derive and deduce whatever they want about Eileen. And there's only so much you can prevent people's brains from thinking whatever they want. But to tell the forward-looking future growth story, that's critical. Otherwise, you've done a personnel announcement and gay for you, but you haven't achieved very much other than a personnel announcement. You've told not one person. What they can look forward to.
Eileen Rochford [00:33:28] You've taken good advice, Howard.
Howard Karesh [00:33:30] That's not one person. What's their role? All they know is that Johnson's in charge. Who gives a crap?
Eileen Rochford [00:33:36] And what I love about it is everyone's mind. And as in the example that you gave, would instantly go to what happened to her. Why is she leaving? But.
Rob Johnson [00:33:47] And let me check Google and see if Johnson's a good doorknob washer and you just can't even know if he's any good at this. You don't trust that guy? Come on. Well, you know, Howard, communications progress can sometimes be a hard thing to quantify. And I run into this sometimes with people that want an ROI. They want a hard number, whatever the case may be. So how can companies know whether they are successful in abstract areas like culture and engagement, where you can't put a dollar sign on it necessarily?
Howard Karesh [00:34:17] Another conversation is whether you can or cannot put a dollar sign on it. But the easiest way. Ready? Ready. And all leaders asked what? So, most of the companies that I've been at for the last 15 years, let's leave the agency world out of it because it's a bit of a different animal. Excuse me. Companies do annual and many do biannual, massive employee engagement surveys with dozens of questions with an outside vendor regression analysis, and huge PowerPoints to take training to understand. And I like that. I think it's a very, very helpful tool, especially if you get good analytics and you can really dig in to help companies understand where they are. The problem with it, and I'm not the first to recognize this, is that it’s a moment in time. I posted about this on LinkedIn within the last couple of weeks.
Let's say I do a survey in January of 2022, and I spent three weeks of that survey open. And we beg, borrow, plead whatever we can do to get people to fill this thing out. Then, you know, it's 60 days. Maybe we get some analytics back from the outside company, we absorb it, we socialize it, we meet the CEO, CFO, C Hro. How are we going to position this? What do we share? What do we hold back? What are our action plans? Roll it out to leaders, liberal it out to all employees. Next thing you know, it's May. All right, so now you've got data that's four months old. That doesn't mean it's useless. In fact, it's very useful. But it's still four months old. So, what a lot of companies are doing now, which I think is a very, very good idea, is they might do some version of a very big, very detailed employee engagement survey every couple of years. But they're punctuating with very, very short. And I mean short.
One question, two questions, three questions, pulse surveys all along the way so that, you know, let's say your big three themes are employee advancement, communications, and leadership connectivity. Let's say those are the Big Three findings from your all-employee engagement survey. Do you want to wait two years to figure out whether you know what the hell you're doing on any of those topics? No. So you've got to ask people. Ask them frequently. Ask them simply. And you're going to start to see a trend. Very, very quickly, I'll give you a somewhat related example. When I was at Hillrom, we bought a small company, smallish, 180 people based in Sarasota, Florida, brilliant group, very successful acquisition there. Their specialty was mobile technology and hospitals. So, for example, if, you know, if Eileen is the patient and Eileen needs help, the right caregiver will get a notice on their mobile device to go to room 242 because Eileen needs assistance getting out of a hospital bed. So, we buy this company, and we always do a benchmarking survey just to get a little about what are we dealing with culturally?
The second survey showed a bit of a challenge in the communications area, and I'm not afraid to share this because we learned a lot from it. People wanted more, better, different, faster, cheaper, whatever it was that they wanted. We needed to do a better job. And we were able to take that feedback, which came at, let's say, the 60-day mark after the acquisition closed, and immediately make changes. I mean, like that on-the-fly quick meeting, new plan goes and we knew 30 days after that that we were on the right track. If we had waited a year. What do you put at risk after spending hundreds of millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, whatever it is, by flying blind? Too much? I would argue so, yes. Do the big survey. Do it every year, every couple of years. That's fine. But if you don't ask him between. You're missing an opportunity to really get the data that will help you move the needle along that two-year path.
Eileen Rochford [00:38:20] Oh, that's so smart. Quick follow-up.
Howard Karesh [00:38:24] It sounds so obvious, but to many of us so much. Yeah, don't do it. I don't know. It sounds obvious to me, but I didn't do it either.
Eileen Rochford [00:38:32] So pulse surveys are just rich with opportunity. What advice would you give for increasing engagement with your pollsters? I've just been hearing a little bit from a couple of our clients about declining participation in those. Do you have any thoughts?
Howard Karesh [00:38:49] Well, the issue is survey fatigue.
Eileen Rochford [00:38:51] Right?
Howard Karesh [00:38:52] Right. If you give me 50 surveys a year and you're kidding me, I'm going to go out of my mind, even if it's one or two questions. Yeah. So, the only insight I can offer, regardless of whether you do it once a month or every two months or whatever it is, is to help people understand that you're listening. Title of your podcast. Can you hear me? Yeah, I hear you. And I'm listening and I'm acting. If you can go to somebody, say, hey on May 2nd. On May 1st, we asked you this. By May 3rd, we had our answer. And on May 4th, you said, you know what? Thank you for that feedback. Here's what we're going to do differently. Aren't they going to be much more likely to answer your question the next time when they know that you're paying attention? If you're asking all these questions and then they go into a black hole somewhere.
Eileen Rochford [00:39:37] Of course, they'll tune you out. Yeah.
Howard Karesh [00:39:39] Yeah. Why? Listen, you're ignoring me. You want my time, my brain work. I'm busy with all this other stuff you gave me to do. Now you want me to answer questions, and then you're ignoring my answers? Yeah. Don't ask.
Eileen Rochford [00:39:50] Great point.
Howard Karesh [00:39:51] Thank you.
Eileen Rochford [00:39:52] So I have I believe this may be our last question. No, I think so. So you shared with us before we invited you to be a guest, you know when you were kind of proving to us that you should be okay.
Rob Johnson [00:40:08] It's a very difficult vetting process.
Eileen Rochford [00:40:10] Oh, let me tell you. Can you make I mean, laugh?
Howard Karesh [00:40:13] Checkers in the.
Eileen Rochford [00:40:14] Moment? So, you shared that you believe an inside-out communication strategy is essential. Just curious what you mean by that. And I think explaining that would also be of interest and value to our listeners.
Howard Karesh [00:40:30] So I am because Hillary was acquired. I'm in the search process now for my next great gig and a job description that I came across recently had a whatever the title was, and the job description was written entirely focused on external communications, media relations, influencer relations, web, social brand. You get it entirely external. And I said to the individual I was on the phone with after reading this, I said, you realize that this is a wonderful opportunity, but it's half of a position. You've left out the single most important audience.
Let's say I land a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal for you. But you haven't bothered to tell your employees your approach, your strategy, your dream, your ideas, how they can get about how they can help. That story is about as good as the paper it's printed on. Maybe because you forgot to include the people who must bring whatever it is you're talking about to life. So, when I talk about the inside-out strategy, it's wonderful to get articles out there and it's wonderful to have a social strategy to engage your customers. If your employees are not aligned with your vision and mission, if your employees are not acting in complete accordance with your values, if your employees are not focused on a diverse, inclusive, equitable workforce where people feel that they belong. Anything you say outside your company is. Keep it an appropriate family program. Oh, yes, it's bogus. Yeah, right.
So, if you don't have employees as your frontline ambassadors and it doesn't mean rah-rah parties every week with balloons and popcorn in the office, it does not mean that. But it does mean sincere internal communications, sincere communications that help build a culture, a culture that allows innovation to thrive, a culture that allows engaged engagement to be strong and consistent. If you don't have all those things in play, at some point people start to see through your media coverage. You've got the corporate equivalent of an empty suit. When I talk about an inside-out strategy, I mean take care of the inside so that the inside can take care of the outside. I take care of them because without them. On the outside, you don't have a chance of succeeding with your customers.
Rob Johnson [00:42:49] And it goes beyond that to Howard. We're talking about, you know, media coverage is few and far between, let's be honest. But even from just getting your internal message right and getting buy-in and getting uniformity and being able to talk about who you are and what you stand for before you go to your external stakeholders, which may include the media, it also includes a lot of other different people. I couldn't agree more with the inside-out strategy. And if you're not taking care of those people internally, you have no chance externally to be able to talk with any sort of clarity about who you are and what you stand for.
Howard Karesh [00:43:24] In my most recent role, I wore a variety of hats, one of which was Hal Rahm's spokesperson. So did a bunch of TVs, a bunch of radio, newsprint, whatever, blah, blah, blah. My parents are very excited. I could care less. It's part of the job. However, I told you, I want to tell you this. 90 to 95% of my job over the last six and a half or seven years has been employee-focused and my responsibilities to the external world. We're still there now. That was part of a conscious decision to not be so incredibly proactive on the media relations front.
Eileen knows this well, but it doesn't mean that that part wasn't there, that our company's success was not related to my TV skills, I promise you. It was related to the fact that we had an unbelievable culture, a culture that was supported by, by and large, effective communication. And we got it right. Most of the time we bungled it, of course, but self-aware enough to know we bungled it. And we were able to make two. Correct, but. The media relations part of external communication is critically important. When you've got something solid behind it.
Eileen Rochford [00:44:39] Man of the year, man. Awesome. Yeah, it's tending your own garden first. That is some fantastic closing advice from our amazing guest and my super dear friend, Howard Karesh. And I just want to thank you. And I know Rob shares the sentiment. We're so grateful for you being our guest today and for sharing some fantastic advice, and very sound, actionable, and insightful concepts that you walked us through today. And we really appreciate you taking the time to do that. Thank you.
Howard Karesh [00:45:14] Oh, you're welcome. This is a lot of fun. It's great to see you both. And thank you for having me.
Rob Johnson [00:45:19] You were terrific. Absolutely terrific. And spot on so many fronts.
Howard Karesh [00:45:23] Thank you.
Eileen Rochford [00:45:25] And that's going to do it for today's edition of Can You Hear Me? I'm Eileen Rochford.
Rob Johnson [00:45:29] And I'm Rob Johnson. We thank you for listening. And remember, you can listen to this podcast wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Google, Spotify, and much more. And we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening.