Communicate, Communicate, Communicate with Employees


When the decision is to outsource, there’s no such thing as too much communication. The first thing employees want to know is, ‘‘What about me?’’ And they want to know in very specific, concrete terms. Will they have a job? How will their pay and benefits change? What will happen to their retirement plans? The chief financial officer of a large central European energy company outsourced all of information technology, finance, and accounting to a provider that created and operated a shared-services center. This experienced executive was well aware of the need to communicate with the affected employees, and he took the steps he thought were necessary. Despite careful attention to this issue, it was not enough. Individuals were able to get back to work and focus on the project only when they had been given comparative pay slips for their current job and their new role at the provider’s company. This was the level of detailed communication that individuals needed to feel comfortable with how the terms of their employment would be changing.

Of course, handing out pro forma pay stubs may answer the most critical questions, but it doesn’t answer all the questions. Workers want to understand enough about their new employer to be able to make an in-formed and proactive choice to move. NS&I’s outsourcing provider went to great pains before it had even won the contract to present itself to the affected employees. In this case, the company’s strong brand and worldwide reputation made it very appealing as an employer. Long-term employees had to leave the government service, but the fact that they were joining a respected company and would still be contributing to the success of their former employer helped ease the pain of the transition.

Road shows are an important part of a concerted campaign to communicate with employees; they should be followed up by one-onone conversations between the individual and the new supervisor. Some outsourcing providers also make ‘‘buddies’’ available to prospective transfers. These are individuals who originally worked for another company but were transferred to the provider as part of an outsourcing initiative. These people can reassure transferring workers about both the process and the opportunities it can provide. Again, the entire purpose of this process is to give individuals the means to make choices. The sense of personal control they get from this process helps them adjust more quickly to their new work situation.

Once employees get clear, if not pleasing, answers to their questions about personal status, they will raise their sights a bit. They will want to know why this is happening. In some ways, this question is easier to answer for transformational outsourcing than for more conventional outsourcing initiatives. The organization’s financial and competitive situation should provide a compelling motivation for dramatic change. And the more external the driving factors are, the more it helps. An external driver gives the initiative legitimacy, while avoiding the implication that the current leaders’ missteps created the organization’s poor performance in the first place. This helps workers rationalize their situations and add their support to the cause.

Thomas Cook’s initiative gained some legitimacy from the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Every employee immediately grasped that this unconscionable act would undermine travel sales for some time to come, and that the company would have to adjust. When executives lack such an obvious driver for change, they must make their own reasoning tangible to employees. This requires walking an emotional tightrope. On one hand, executives must convince employees that an outside provider can make the extensive changes the company needs. On the other hand, executives are not likely to win the staff’s support by insulting their abilities in comparison. An NS&I executive recalled that what convinced the senior team that outsourcing was the only answer was ‘‘the specter of how it would’ve been if we had to do it all ourselves.’’ But the public-sector process for gaining approval for outsourcing requires a detailed comparison of the expected costs and risks for both options: outside provider and in-house initiative. He continued, ‘‘This cost comparison is a very sensitive thing. If you give people the perception that you’re enhancing any of the costs to favor outsourcing, or impugning their ability to do the work in-house, they will revolt. In the end, we very significantly underestimated the cost and risk of doing it in-house. But you have to strike the right balance to keep people on board, without being overgenerous to the idea of in-house being effective.’’

One more word of caution is appropriate here. The executives in some companies are not skilled at delivering unpleasant messages. Many don’t have the courage to be open and honest when the news is bad. To soften the impact, they give in to the temptation to make promises to the employ- ees that they are later unable to keep. Nothing can sabotage a change initiative faster than having the leadership demonstrate that they cannot be trusted. And employees would rather know the truth about what is likely to happen to them, even when that truth is painful.

What you have to say is important, but how you say it is even more important. When most executives communicate, they focus on sending out the right messages. What they really need to attend to is not what they are sending out, but what employees are receiving. This means structuring communications that are more likely to be understood and internalized. For example, when executives want employees to learn more about the outsourcing providers competing for a contract, they ask the providers to make presentations. Instead they should opt for more memorable and engaging experiences. They should structure workshops where employee teams have the opportunity to play the role of the outsourcing provider companies and try to convince each other that employees would be better off if their particular company won the bid. This would motivate employ- ees to find out more about the bidders, and the information they sought would be what was most important to them. This kind of simulation would not only help get the messages across, it would provide invaluable feedback to executives about the bidders.

This is only one example of a whole category of communications approaches that are designed to ensure that messages are received and remembered.[1] These include everything from case study discussions and story-telling to field trips and war games. Effective communicators make learning active. You will want to ask employees to give the presentation, not listen to it; write the book, not read it; act out the new process, not hear about it.

[1]Jane Linder, ‘‘Spark Learning with Engaging Experiences,’’ Accenture Institute for Strategic Change research report, March 1999.




Outsourcing for Radical Change(c) A Bold Approach to Enterprise Transformation
Outsourcing for Radical Change: A Bold Approach to Enterprise Transformation
ISBN: 0814472184
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 135

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