The head office communication forum

Out of sheer need, the BP Oil communication manager invited a small group of key middle managers to meet on an informal basis, to help her by discussing communication issues. This evolved into a formal monthly meeting because the managers themselves wanted it. They were the first to appreciate the chance to be together and catch up on what was going on outside their immediate areas. Useful spin-offs included head office tech-ins, head office get-togethers and – stealing from the US – head office brown bag lunches. And, most satisfyingly, management in head office owned its own communication.

Then BP Oil brought its main communication professionals together to develop the next stage in helping line management communicate. One of the outputs of that meeting was a redefinition of the role of the professional communicator:

To facilitate an open, timely and balanced two-way communication process in which messages about BP, and its objectives, enhance BP Oil’s ability to perform.

Points worth noting in this statement are the words ‘facilitate’, and ‘perform’. The former is a clear indication that communication professionals are there to help management; they cannot do the communication task for them. The latter is the recognition by the communication professionals that, for many managers, ‘communication’ is still a soft issue. If you talk to managers about communication the chances are they will switch off. If you talk to them about performance you have a better chance of getting their attention.

The virtuous circle

Figure 2.3 The communication process

Agree/own the message

Feedback 50% of communication Target

is listening Tailor

Test

Deliver

Primary tools (Face-to-face)

Secondary tools (Paper, videos etc)

1 BP Oil developed, in consultation between management and the communication professionals, a virtuous communication circle. This is shown in Figure 2.3.

2 At the top is the word ‘own’. That is a strong message to management to be consistent so that they speak as one voice. Next is the imperative to target the message, tailor it to the appropriate audience and (this is after all an oil company) ‘road test’ it with a sample audience to see if it works or needs tweaking.

3 Then comes the delivery. BP Oil emphasized the importance of face-to-face delivery of a crucial message, citing this as the primary communication tool as the attitude survey revealed. All other tools are secondary, to be used to back up the primary communication by management.

4 Like many companies BP Oil uses a variety of communication tools. These include meetings where management tells a large audience of employees what is going on to the smaller, more intimate, ‘brown bag’ lunches. Local ‘teach-ins’ on various aspects of the business help employees learn about aspects of their business outside their immediate areas. Regular meetings of senior managers from around the world provide them with the main management messages they need to cascade, in their own style and to their own timing.

5 The secondary tools used to complement and reinforce them include local house journals, video and audio programmes. House journal editors have the option to carry a centrally produced feature on, say, the results. They tend to use these features because first they are relevant, second they are simply written and therefore easy to translate and tailor to local audiences, and third because they do not have to: it is their choice. Video and audio-tapes are made on specific business issues and, increasingly, are used by team leaders to set the scene for a discussion on an issue of the day. Then there are award schemes, to focus people on ways of improving performance. These include the chairman’s awards for excellence in health, safety and environment activities.

6 One successful example of a consistent and coherent piece of communication was the delivery of the ‘performance’ message. It was the subject of local team briefings, a scene-setting video, an audio-tape, house journal articles on the results and feedback survey.

7 Feedback is the final link in the communication loop and arguably the most powerful. The need for feedback was perhaps the hardest concept for line management to take on board. For some it sounded too much like policing, back to the bad old days of second guessing, with head office checking up on local management to trip them up and see if they really were doing what they had said they would do. These were the managers empowered to operate with a high degree of autonomy.

8 Yet while senior management was reasonably relaxed about providing the umbrella, the framework for communication and then casting its bread on the waters, it did need to know three things.

a. Is the message getting across?

b. What do staff think of it?

c. What is concerning staff right now?

9 The feedback process was put in place. What helped was the assurance that no results would go to the top management team until they had been seen and discussed locally, by local management with their staff. A further help was the agreement to limit the feedback surveys so that actions arising from one were identified and carried out before the next survey. Staff, just as much as management, dislike being over-surveyed. And management, just as much as staff, can find it frightening to open up and listen to what their staff are saying, and saying about them.

Link with human resources

Listening forms 50 per cent of a good communicator’s tool kit and listening to what staff are saying is at the heart of upward feedback and appraisal. This is the province of human resources (HR). Strong links between human resources and communication professionals are being forged because both are essentially support staff for management. Management cannot deliver performance without the help of staff; staff cannot perform well unless they know what they are doing and why.

BP is now working towards making communication one of the criteria for selecting a manager and measuring his or her performance on it. In other words managers will have to communicate with their staff if they want to get on in BP Oil. So the HR and communication professionals are joining forces to help coach, train and counsel managers in these vital skills.

It was perhaps easier to forge the links between HR and communication in the BP Oil head office than elsewhere: the consequence of the dramatically downsized and open plan location was that they now sat next to each other.

While this was happening in BP Oil, the BP corporation was putting out an extremely powerful, simple and memorable message, former Group chief executive David Simon’s 1:2:5. This meant he committed BP to cut debt by $1 billion a year, make $2 billion a year profit and hold capital spending to $5 billion a year. And all this to be done by 1995. It was a message cascaded over the course of the next couple of years to analysts, to the press, to staff.

Back in 1992 no one outside BP believed it possible. It was accomplished a year early.

A couple of good communication practices are implicit in this 1:2:5 message. First it meets the communication best practice of being short, simple and memorable. Second it was used consistently. He told staff, he told the City, he told journalists. And he told them all again. And again. And again. Which is the third piece of communication best practice: repetition.

Management now understands the need to make messages as simple and memorable as possible, not to use head office jargon and they are turning to professionals for help.

Where is BP Oil now?

The honest answer is: about a third of a way along the road. The complete communication process, from identifying management messages, to delivering them, to getting feedback on them is now well understood if not well practiced right round the world. As one BP Oil manager commented:

‘There is no place left to hide.’

And he was not referring to the open-plan office. However, among the blocks to communication are:

· the ‘not invented here’ attitude;

· time pressure on managers who do not make the connection between making time to communicate with their staff and the bottom line;

· absence of any penalty for not communicating;

· lack of guidance, coaching and training for poor communicators;

· too many messages/lack of focus on the message.

Work is now in progress on the need to focus on the few messages that really matter. The BP Group, BP Oil, each BP Oil geographical division, country, function, department and team has messages all vying for attention. What are the messages people really need to do their jobs?

There is no easy answer, and it is not an answer that a head office can or should provide. So the BP Group as a whole right now is engaged in the next step. It has formed a team of communication professionals and line management, drawn from all three businesses. They work closely with each other and with their colleagues in all parts of the world to enhance BP’s reputation. Their brief is a wide one. It takes in employees and financial analysts, the press and the environmentalists.

They do however have the advantage of support from top management. Even the most empowered organization needs reassurance that it is doing what senior management wants it to do. Former BP Group chief executive David Simon stated publicly that communication is one of the three skills management must practise (the other two are coaching and visibility). New chief executive John Browne has let it be known that employee communication is the ‘hot button’ the Group needs to press to continue delivering performance.

BP Oil completed a review of the lessons learned from downsizing head office. The review included a survey of communication best practice. They found the following.

· Use face-to-face communication by line management as the primary method of communication (seek training if necessary).

· Involve ‘professional communicators’ at the outset and throughout to help identify the messages, to help deliver them in the appropriate way to the various targeted audiences, to provide feedback on how well the messages have been understood and to provide feedback on grassroots concerns about them.

· Explain and establish the business case for the event to staff.

· Identify and communicate the positive changes that will result from the event.

· Co-ordinate the timing of communications to staff in different teams to avoid potentially demoralizing rumours spreading in advance of formal announcements.

· Do not speculate: this leads to increased uncertainty among staff.

· Allow as much time as it takes for people to talk through whatever they want to talk about.

· Communicate with staff in a clear, honest, consistent and timely manner.

This checklist holds good for any communication process, not just the painful one of communicating the need to make people redundant. There is nothing revolutionary or new about any of it. But then, as one BP Oil director put it:

‘It’s not rocket science. It’s more difficult than that.’

(Anne Gregory. Public Relations in Practice. – Kogan Page, 2001. – P. 35-50)

Exercises

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 937