Consumers no longer tolerate this type of forward-leaning, aggressive, predatory-style communication. The world has advanced to where we no longer need to rely solely on what the ad or salesperson tell us. We can access consumer reports, blogs, and other sources online to quickly develop our own opinions and facts surrounding a product or service.

So what’s to be done? First, let’s clarify the idea of “grounded” or state of “being grounded”: unpretentious, stable, exuding balance, soft strength, total awareness of body and mind within space – without a need to invade the space of others.

Example #1: The state of being “grounded” is a principle that comes up a lot in yoga. One of my yoga instructors was recently working with professional actors to teach them this principle. Actors who are not grounded lean forward a lot. They tend to talk in the form of grand statements – even when it is not required. The audience is not convinced because it feels forced and unnatural.

Example #2: When I am sitting balanced and deep in my saddle, “grounded in my seat” as it were, my horse responds to my communication in a relaxed way. If I was to suddenly lean forward, tense up and shout, the result is fear and flight. I have become a predator (on her back, no less), and she is going to run from the threat.

Consumers are increasingly interested in and attracted to companies whom are grounded. Highly self- aware, comfortable in its own skin, and giving you an honest message about who they are. These businesses don’t need to shout. They are confident in letting the individual decide – “Is this a fit?”

Here’s the clincher: If you are not willing to invest the time to find out what your company’s culture is, that underlying current that drives your people to do what they do, you will never be fully self-aware. Once you know who you are as a company, you will be able to deliver an honest message to consumers about what you will deliver ( and even how).

In fact, once you are grounded, you will be far more approachable. You won’t be trying to attract attention at all. The goal is no longer to find anyone, but only the RIGHT one.

Author information

Kim Ross

Kim brings over 12 years of Marketing and Communications experience to the TransparentC team. Over the years, she has been involved in everything from sales and product marketing to management. Kim has the unique perspective of having worked as a communications provider, as well as a communications customer. It is this perspective that drove Kim to look for a different "model". TransparentC is a culmination of what she has been searching for. This company is an opportunity to bring about great things in an area that Kim is particularly passionate about — internal communication and engagement. In her spare time, Kim is the CEO and official driver of the Ross Family Offspring and an accomplished competitive equestrian.

Because it’s not customer-facing, many intranets get little attention. In fact, some internal sites set a whole new standard in terrible design when compared to even the worst public sites.

Staff need to know that their intranet will provide them with accurate and up-to-date information. An old, ugly or outdated site sends the opposite message: that the company places less value on internal communication.

So, how can this problem be addressed? Intranets should have a clear identity of their own, distinct from the company’s public-facing site and consistent with other internal branding. Although intranets may vary in their purpose or appearance, the best intranets have three things in common:

1. They’re easy to use
Most people only wait a few seconds to either find what they’re looking for, or leave the site. This means that information needs to be highly organized and logical. Thankfully, technology makes it possible to implement designs that are simple and provide a quality user experience.

2. They’re social
Access to information about other colleagues, dialogue with management and personal content is key. Many good intranets offer profiles or interviews on individuals at the company and include social features that encourage sharing. Employees can more readily connect via blogs, videos, pictures or polls. This also means executives have the opportunity be more accessible than ever before.

3. They have high quality content
The intranets of the past contained anything and everything. Over time, they simply become repositories of information that are difficult to sort through and contain tons of duplicated or outdated documents. Commit to posting only engaging, high-quality content to ensure your intranet stays relevant and valuable.

Ultimately, companies should ask themselves whether their intranet is functional, whether it is making a difference for their staff, and what value is being provided. One thing our clients often request is help collecting relevant, interesting content from both inside and outside their organization. Getting everyone engaged in dialogue and “leading by example” can help encourage a habit of collaboration.

As technology evolves, having an awesome intranet is well within the grasp of even the smallest company. Open source content management systems make it easy to create a professional look, and plugins such as Buddypress can help you build a highly social site. Using the tools available, staff now have the opportunity to find information they need, stay engaged with their colleagues and ultimately build a strong internal culture.

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Karina Crooks

Karina is passionate about developing creative strategies to help companies engage with their employees and develop their internal communication structures. From strategic planning to project management, what she loves most is making a positive difference in our clients' companies and ultimately making them an awesome place to work. In her spare time Karina enjoys travel, the gym and anything internet-related. She is currently learning Spanish and is always up for a great, strong cup of coffee.

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A common purpose is like a mission statement, or an internal creed. It is a common objective that ties everyone in an organization together. It should be inspirational and provide people with a sense of purpose higher than the delivery of the product or service.

My parents’ generation did not need a purpose at the organizations they worked for. Most people went to work to pay the bills, pay for orthodontics, and afford their children (me) a chance to go to school.

One has to be careful with broad strokes; an entire generation cannot be defined by a few general observations. My step-dad, who is a university professor, needed purpose. What mattered most to him was that he was making an impact on the generation after him.

Should companies have a common purpose for their employees? Is it enough to check in, make your salary, and then check out?

It depends.

The requirement of purpose has a lot to do with what most human beings need in life to “keep going”. It also has a lot to do with an exchange of values.

The proportion of required purpose depends on the size of the “ask” you make of your employees. Another way to put it is; if an organization asking for a lot from its employees, it needs to provide a higher sense of purpose.

In my parents’ generation, there was less work than there were hours. Purpose was not as critical as it might be today. Back then, if you needed purpose, you would likely lose your job to someone else that did not.

At a time when there is more work than there are people, companies with purpose will beat out the ones that do not. People who work toward to a common goal that is worthwhile and admirable are much more likely to commit to the organization they work for as long as they are being compensated fairly.

Author information

Jason Bekdashe

Principal at TransparentC

Jason knows nothing about building synergies, picking low-hanging-fruit or paradigm shifts. What he does know is how to successfully market and promote new initiatives internally to employees. From Jason’s point of view, winning employees’ attention and sponsorship is the only way to keep organizations progressing.

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One in particular got our attention because the numbers are quite staggering (and it’s a pretty good looking infographic!)

70% of employers have used social media to successfully hire a candidate. That’s a high number. 93% of hiring mangers and recruiters use LinkedIn as part of their strategy.

At first, I thought “these are US stats, Canada is different”. Canada is different! Keep in mind Canadians have been early adopters when it comes to social media platforms. The numbers jive too; As of 2009 (three years ago!) 69% of Canadian companies use LinkedIn as part of their strategy. You can bet that number is much higher today. (If you have access to a more updated number, please share!).

Let me know how LinkedIn and social is becoming part of your recruitment strategy. In the space that we’re working in, it’s a bit of a challenge because social media has been owned and run by IT or marketing. These numbers show that HR needs to be at the table.

The infographic is courtesy of Visual.ly – See here.

Author information

Jason Bekdashe

Principal at TransparentC

Jason knows nothing about building synergies, picking low-hanging-fruit or paradigm shifts. What he does know is how to successfully market and promote new initiatives internally to employees. From Jason’s point of view, winning employees’ attention and sponsorship is the only way to keep organizations progressing.

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If you’ve been on our site prior to August 2012, you might remember a stark, more clinical version of the TransparentC website and brand. I have to admit, I started getting a bit lost with the visuals. It ended up being a veggie salad mixed with icons and illustration – all I found fun and inspiring, but it was schizophrenic.

Enter the lastest interpretation of organic. We were inspired by local food and organic coffee. Materials and texture brought our brand more of an earthy feel; a major contrast from the previous look and feel that felt like TransparentC was made in a sterile medical lab. This is the way it was meant to be.

Inspiration

Our team did for ourselves what we do for our clients. We stripped down the business to it’s spirit and purpose. Our brand was about being authentic and real – nothing fabricated or engineered. We’re healthy, wholesome, real, and imperfect.

Gillian Harvey, a fellow UnitB resident worked with us on a collage of material, images, and elements that drew from these ideas and concepts. This was our brand at the core.

Process

Anytime we do a website for a client, we’ll look at the site’s organization and concept the site with wireframes. The website is built on a WordPress theme, so we were not starting from scratch and had some rough guidelines to follow in terms of sizing. That said, Karina and I are pretty comfortable customizing the CSS of a WP theme to make it look and work the way we want it to. We’re not pros, but we know just enough to be dangerous.

Customization

Karina and I took turns taking Gillian’s design work and infusing it into the website. We coded away some of the default look and brought in some of the elements based on Gill’s designs.

Eff it and Ship

It’s quickly becoming one of our core values at TransparentC. If we wait for perfection, we’ll never ship. We got the site to a point where we were 80% happy, and relaunched the site last week. We’ve got a ton of fixes to still make and we have even more ideas to implement.

Let us know what you think. We’re asking for specific feedback on the site with a few key people in our network, and we want to know what you think.

Author information

Jason Bekdashe

Principal at TransparentC

Jason knows nothing about building synergies, picking low-hanging-fruit or paradigm shifts. What he does know is how to successfully market and promote new initiatives internally to employees. From Jason’s point of view, winning employees’ attention and sponsorship is the only way to keep organizations progressing.

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It took a recent conversation with a health care professional to reveal a new layer of this thinking. Essentially it boiled down to this question: What effect does engagement (or lack of) have on the end-experience when the client is highly vulnerable and not voluntary?

School-age students and patients fall into this category. They are most often “Clients” of schools and hospitals out of proximity, and nothing more. Unlike the average consumer, the majority of these people did not get to shop around – and they cannot easily take their business elsewhere. In fact, they are at an even greater disadvantage than a typical consumer because they are highly vulnerable. Young children and patients do not have the ability or the expertise to evaluate the actual service. (Did that surgery go well? Does this teacher really know what they are talking about?) – What they do know, is how the provider makes them feel. Empathy in health-care providers has been linked to greater diagnostic accuracy and lower recovery times, and we can all relate stories of our favorite teacher(s) – the ones that inspired us to do better work, that were committed to our success, and that encouraged us to results we had never thought possible. I would venture to guess that the leadership teams in each of these institutions would list these outcomes as their ultimate goals – the very reason that they are in existence.

So what happens when their employees feel frustrated by a lack of communication and leadership? (I purposefully did not say management…)?  What happens when they are not engaged? Amongst other things, client experience suffers.

Now, what happens when these clients are highly vulnerable? When lives and futures are at stake?  Engagement, culture building, and internal communication initiatives –these are no longer buzz words or goals that look pretty in a 3-year plan.  When your clients are vulnerable; when their mental, physical, and emotional well-being rest in the hands of your employees – the alternative to empathy, inspiration and commitment is not just a poor client experience – it is an atrocity.

Author information

Kim Ross

Kim brings over 12 years of Marketing and Communications experience to the TransparentC team. Over the years, she has been involved in everything from sales and product marketing to management. Kim has the unique perspective of having worked as a communications provider, as well as a communications customer. It is this perspective that drove Kim to look for a different "model". TransparentC is a culmination of what she has been searching for. This company is an opportunity to bring about great things in an area that Kim is particularly passionate about — internal communication and engagement. In her spare time, Kim is the CEO and official driver of the Ross Family Offspring and an accomplished competitive equestrian.