Through the Grapevine: Internal Communications For Long-Term Growth, with John Korinek

In Good Companies - Season 6 Episode 2 - John Korinek: “Internal Communications for Long-Term Growth” Intro [00:00:00] John Korinek: If you can increase retention through communication by getting people to understand the values of the organization, adopt the culture of the organization, embrace safe behaviors, healthy behaviors, and all sorts of things – you can have an immense impact on the ROI of your company. [00:00:00] Ari Marin: I’m Ari Marin, and you’re listening to Season 6 of In Good Companies, from Cadence Bank: The podcast where we talk about the future of business — to help you get where you want to go. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur, or a seasoned leader… We’re with you. Our priority is your success. [00:00:00] Ari Marin VO: Hey folks! How do you keep track of what’s happening in your company, day after day? Do you have a newsletter? Are you on all the right messaging channels? Or… Is it more of a “heard it down the grapevine” situation? How does information reach you? I’m asking because – research by Gallup found that nearly three quarters of employees feel they’re missing out on work news. That’s… A lot of people. So, in this episode, we’re diving into the world of internal communications. We’re going to hatch some plans… Discuss how to share our values and our goals at the company level… And improve the quality of our output too. You’ll find out, effective communication can prepare us for the unexpected. Because, as today’s guest would tell you – that’s the future of work. [00:00:00] John Korinek: Communication is becoming more important than it ever has. You can probably hear it in my voice; I'm passionate about what we do. And the impact that it has on people's lives. Uncertainty was introduced in organizations so I think that we have to diffuse the negative consequences that come with that. There are different levers that are causing the uncertainty. We've got to identify what those are, what a company's response wants to be, and then we have to find ways to do what we always do… Engage employees, get them to internalize the messaging, and then adopt the behaviors that we want them to adopt. [00:00:00] Ari Marin VO: That voice you just heard? It belongs to John Korinek. And if you need somebody for everything communication? He’s your guy. John is the president and CEO of Partner Com – an internal comms consulting firm he’s been running with his wife for nearly 30 years. Before he got into business, he used to teach Organizational Communication. He got a PhD for it. And it shows… Because John? He loves a good story. Ask him how it all started at Parner Com, you’ll see. [00:00:32] John Korinek: Yeah, that's kind of an interesting out-there story. So I was at this large firm and my wife worked at the same firm, which was ideally, and we were in a little bit different areas. There's a lot of stories between my wife and I, but that's for a different podcast. We were invited to dinner by a person that I worked with at this company and he said, "I want to start our own company, and you guys would be great because you have slightly different expertise, areas than what we have." There was a couple other people. He was a really good salesman and he sold us, and we thought we could do the same things we were doing at this other firm better, more efficiently, cheaper to clients. And so we left, started our own company and he turned out to be our initial marketing guy at PartnerComm. I think there were five of us when we started, and here we are 30 years later with little over a hundred people and 10% of the Fortune 500 companies as clients. So it's worked out pretty well. [00:01:35] Ari Marin VO: That’s right, the Korineks got poached. That’s how they started their firm. Now it’s been three decades, they bought out their old partner, and their children are on board…. The company has turned into a family business. So – the potential they saw in Partner Com… That leap of faith? It really paid off. And by the look of things, it’s going to continue that way. Because communication – it’s gaining momentum inside our companies. Why We Talk about Communication for the Future [00:01:49] John Korinek: When we started the company, I actually had a person tell me our turnover is 400%. I don't care about communication to employees. That's the exact company that should have been concerned about it because if you could have lowered it from 400 to 300%, they would've saved enormous amounts of money. Today, what we have is companies almost universally understanding at some level that communication is important to employees. [00:02:14] Ari Marin VO: So what's changed? And why is communication such a good lever for business? Well we’re going to get to that. But first, we need to understand what internal communications is all about. [00:02:28] John Korinek: We are focused primarily on telling a company's stories to its employees from a practical, strategic standpoint, we are trying to get employees to understand the values of a company, what behaviors a company wants them to do to appreciate the benefits that they get and a variety of things like that. Usually, we get called in when there's somewhat of a problem. It doesn't have to be a problem, but there's an objective. We want employees to accept this change. We want people to adopt healthier behaviors. We want people to actually embrace the training programs that we have. We want them to work safely. There's issues like that. We see healthiness and medical costs related programs being a huge part of what we're asked to get involved in. This has been a problem since I've been in the business. Healthcare costs for companies are an enormous part of their expenses. And so a 3% increase versus a 4% increase is a big deal to them. So they're always looking to you, to adjust their health plans, try to create new incentives for getting people to be healthier, and to keep those costs from going up so much. Most large companies that we deal with, if one of their employees has a heart transplant, they're paying for the heart transplant. And so, if they can get people to have fewer heart transplants, then that's a big deal. A few years ago, we had a company who was having an extremely high cost of premature births. And we did focus groups. We talked to the people who had had babies, and those kinds of things, and we found out: one, that women didn't know all the things that they needed to do and be aware of when they were pregnant. And number two, they were afraid of their managers, maybe firing them. If they went to a natal care appointment with their OBGYN while they're at work. So we had the company put in some incentives for the general manager communication as well as employee communication. And they lowered their costs by something like 20 percent the first year after these programs were put into place. And so, those are the kinds of things that we see. We work with change communication. We work with benefits communication. We work with human resources. We work with culture. We help with recruiting communication. We do business communication, the presentations to board members for their board meetings, trying to translate the really heavy financial information into stories that are important for board members to understand about the company. So those are the topical areas. There's plenty more by the way that we focus on while we tell the company stories to employees and the other relevant audiences that are part of a company. [00:03:48] SFX: Fade out John's enumeration from around 3:38 [00:03:48] Ari Marin VO: The list goes on for a while… But you see what John is saying, right? Internal communications means… Getting everyone aligned around the same values. Retaining talent. Making better financial decisions. It means overcoming obstacles together, and looking after everyone… From the boardroom, to reception. And yes, that can be done through storytelling. Which -- you know -- John is very good at. [00:04:07] John Korinek: I'm just going to give you one kind of brief example, retention. There's some research out there that shows that for every person that you have to replace. So a person leaves the company, you have to replace that person. Between direct and indirect costs could end up being as much as two to four times that person's salary. So if you have a person that you're paying a hundred thousand dollars to, the cost of replacing that person could be two to 400,000, maybe even more if it's a senior level person. So you have an HR person that has to look for a new person. You have to post a job. You have that cost. You have to interview them, multiple people. You have to onboard them. Those are direct costs. But then you have other things like loss of expertise. That person that comes in has to get up to speed, and that takes time, which means you might lose efficiency, quality, sales ,depending on what that person's in during that time period. It might have an impact on team morale. So there's a lot of indirect costs too. Then that's just one person. So if you can increase retention through communication by getting people to understand the values of the organization, adopt the culture of the organization, embrace safe behaviors, healthy behaviors, all sorts of things, you can have an immense impact on the ROI of your company. [00:07:47] Ari Marin VO: You see - communication holds potential for business. I mean when we know what our teams need; when we hear what leaders can or can’t do; we’re in a better spot to work together. The goal becomes quality, inside and out. So the question is not: should we do it? Rather -- how do we get started? Internal Communications Strategies [00:08:13] Ari Marin: I can imagine that communication strategies vary from business to business, but are there some foundational principles we should all know about? [00:08:21] John Korinek: Yeah. So we have this little model that we use as a starting point. You have to first find out what the objectives are, what's going on in a company? We clarify what the objectives are that we're being asked to address. And then when you have this little model that we call, no, think, feel, do. It's pretty simple, but it's pretty powerful at the same time. So number one is, "No, you've got to get people to be aware of whatever it is that's out there." So if it's safety, let's just take safety for example. If you want people to adopt safe behaviors, you've got to make them aware that safety is a problem. It can impact them, what to do about... Where to go to find information, etc. Think is understand it, so they're aware of it now, but so what? Is there an understanding? Is there an acceptance of the information and the issues that you're talking about? So that's number two. Then feel. There's an attitude, there's a value depending on what the objective is that you've got to get people to internalize. So one of the big issues in companies is pay, for example. Companies will tell us, person A makes more here than they could in a general in the marketplace. We go talk to employees or they do survey research and they find out that employees don't value or believe that that's the case with their pay. They think they're below market. So we've got to do something to educate people about that. But it's not just educate. It's actually get them to value and accept the fact that they're paid above market. That's not an easy one in the context of what we're talking about, but it is important. And then finally, there's in some cases, you want people to do something.You want them to adopt healthier behaviors. You want them to take a training class so they can enhance their career. You want them to sell more. You want them to follow the rules that you put in for quality, whatever those happen to be. [00:10:15] Ari Marin VO: So strategy Number 1: Know / Think / Feel / Do. Get the information. Digest it. Really see how that applies to you. And then: act on it. To me, that’s another way of saying – when you really engage with a topic, you come at it from all angles. Because everyone has different ways of learning. [00:10:36] John Korinek: Employees like everybody in real life, not everybody learns or understands in the same way. So some people like to read, some people like to watch videos, some people watch TikTok. It's just different things. And that's somewhat generational. Most companies have a pretty good dispersion these days of older employees, middle group employees, younger employees. We've got to communicate to all of them, and we don't want to make the mistake that there are no 20-somethings who might be more traditional in their approach to learning than another 20-something. So we really have to say we want to use a variety of messaging and a variety of channels of communication in order to reach people most effectively is what we like to call surround sound. That means that you don't just use one channel and that cuts across whether we're talking formal channels like video, microsites, home mailers to non-traditional things like experiential communication, use of social media and very specific instances. That's really how to engage people in a different way. And so that surround sound becomes the second kind of principle that I think all companies need to think about and use as a involve communication in reaching their goals. [00:12:00] Ari Marin VO: The hard part is cutting through the noise. I mean, I don’t know where you’re listening from right now… If you're at work, or in the car… But - just look around you. Whether it’s people, sounds, ads, screens… There’s so much information in our environment… It’s hard to know what really needs our attention. [00:12:21] John Korinek: I was doing focus groups for a client one time. This is about five or six years ago. I had a copy of a mailer that had gone and on the envelope it said, important benefit information inside. And it had gone to all employees. And I asked the group. These were all 20-somethings. We had split the groups by demographics. And I held up, I said, "How many of you received this piece?" And there were 10 people in the group and only two of them said they received it. So eight of them, we didn't get the awareness, even the awareness because they all got it. One of the people who did not get it said, "I might have gotten it, but I throw all that stuff away." And I said, "It says important benefit information." "If it's really important, they'll get it to me some other way." So I mean, she says, "I never open any." I said, "What if it was a check?" I actually asked that question. And she goes, "Well, I'll get it eventually." So that's kind of what we're dealing with. That's the extreme, I'll have to admit. But that's the general attitude we're dealing with. Whatever it is that people are trying to compete for their time with. Employees have lots of competing messages. We've got to break through that clutter and say, "Hey, this is coming from your company, but this is important." And we've got to find a way to engage those employees, cut through the clutter and creativity is what's going to do it. The Creativity piece [00:13:38] Ari Marin: So one question, selfish question of mine is, what inspires you to be creative? How do people get there? Is it personal experiences? How does somebody become creative? [00:13:49] John Korinek: I believe, and I'm not one of the creative geniuses. I'd say I'm in the medium level in our company. I'm not at the top and I'm not at the bottom. And I will just tell you that there are some people who are more creative than others. We have some really creative people and we try to hire for that. That's something that you look for when you hire people and then you can develop those people. That's why not everybody is right for an advertising agency. I mean, I look at billboards and I see some that I'm just like, "Wow, that is really, really creative. That was great. That message really hit me." It's just maybe a couple of words, but you go, "Wow, that was really good." So I do think creativity is somewhat personality-based. But once you have that, you can't sit on it. You've got to work at developing it. You've got to pay attention. My wife is one of our creative geniuses. We were in a museum in Europe and she stopped at something and said, "Take a picture of that." And I said, "Okay." I said, "You really like that?" She goes, "Oh, yeah, it's okay." She goes, "But I've got this idea for this client and I think this would really work this." And she described how it was going to work, and it had nothing to do with the picture. It was the inspiration she got about how she was going to apply it. So I think those kind of people are kind of turned on all the time. They look at Instagram, they look at Pinterest, they look at billboards, they look at television ads, they look at social media, they look at art, they look at nature, and they're always trying to say, "What can I learn from what I'm seeing other people do that I can adapt and use myself?" So it's a constant learning experience. And I actually think that's one of the things that all companies can profit from. [00:15:28] Ari Marin VO: I agree. In fact – creativity is something we all have in us. Some people are creative with numbers, with systems, objects; others with visuals, words… We’ve got different talents – we just have to explore them. And to bring it back to what John was saying before – when we use everyone’s imagination: we can communicate effectively. [00:16:01] John Korinek: I get a chance to visit a lot of different companies, and sometimes you'll walk into a conference room and there on the wall is kind of a framed plaque of the seven values that the company has. I've held focus groups and asked the people what the company's values were and nobody knows. And then I said, "Well, they're right there on the wall." And they go, "Oh yeah, I've seen that. I really didn't know what it was." Because it's small and it's just not brought to anybody's attention. So we did something non-traditional. So we created a program called Six Word Stories, and we asked people in the organization employees to create stories about the company's culture that were limited to exactly six words, no more, no less. And we collected those on a microsite that we created for that. So people would submit their stories. We then put them up and people could go there and read the stories and vote on what they thought best represented the company's values. Then we took what people said, and we created artwork, and we put the artwork up on wall. So it was experiential. They saw it as one Six Word Story or on elevators. You can do that. You could create posters. But we do the wall art is what we created. I don't remember many of them, but this is my favorite, was bagels for breakfast, competitors for lunch. It's a great thing about being competitive and that's what one of the values was to be competitive. When you see it, a six-foot by six-foot drawing with bagels on it and some big mouth eating a competitor, you see that on a regular basis. You may not remember the exact term of the value, but you get the impression of it. And so that kind of outside the box breaking kind of the norms, looking at something in a different way, engages all employees who want to be engaged, who want to be interactive, who want to have outside the normative thinking, non-traditional thinking to communication. Measures of Success [00:18:06] Ari Marin VO: I loved this example. Because the best way to engage with your team…. It’s probably to speak their language, right? Communication is something we can personalize. Make it our own. Which is why… I’m curious to hear how John practices what he preaches. [00:18:29] Ari Marin: So you work with clients every day, but you also have a business you're growing . How do you use internal communications? [00:18:40] John Korinek: Whoa, boy, I didn't see that one coming. We're smaller than our... Most of our clients have 20-, 30-, 100 000 employees. So the organizational barriers are very different in those companies than they are in ours. So we have a monthly company call, for example, that all employees attend. I mean, so you can't do that when you have a hundred thousand employees. We can do that. And then one of the things I learned a long time ago that I tried to do, I heard a story one time, and I'll tell it shortly because I think it's so impactful, is that the head of research for a very large world renowned tech company turned in his resignation to the CEO and the CEO reportedly said, "You've got to stay. You can't leave. You've been here forever and you're so important to us." And he goes, "No, I've already given my word to this other company. I'm leaving." "But why? Why are you leaving? I thought you loved it here." "Well, I like the work a lot." He goes, "But I don't have a window on my office. And he goes, "You're in the lab and it's in this area and da, da, da, da da." And he goes, "Yeah, but I really wanted a window in my office." He goes, "I'll blast a window in your office. We can put a window in your office." He goes, "No, I gave my word." And so the story goes, the guy left because he didn't have a window in his office. That was the fundamental reason. And so this person put in a program at his company that required all managers twice a year to sit down with their employees, not give performance feedback to ask them a simple question, what is on their job that's making you unhappy? What would you, specifically, would you change that would make it better for you here? [00:20:24] Ari Marin VO: That CEO by the way? It was Bill Gates. The year was 2000, Microsoft lost one of its prized chief executives -- Kai Fu Lee – the Founding Director of Research for Microsoft China. And wait, it gets worse. When Lee shuts the door… He goes to Google. The number one competitor. Becomes President of Google China for a number of years. So you see, a window? It's no small thing. Even for the big guys. [00:20:49] John Korinek: Fighting for talent is really important. So whether it's everything from recruiting to employee value proposition work, we're trying to figure out what can we offer employees for their 40 hours here? Obviously, pay is a part of that, benefits are a part of that, but there's a culture. There are specific programs. There's a community involvement. There's opportunities to grow your career that are offered to employees and we've got to figure out a way for them to understand those and engage in those programs and be more committed to the company as a result of that? We need people to stay and we need more new people to come. We've got to get these things under control. [00:21:24] Ari Marin VO: And to do that, one word of advice: bottoms up! [00:21:29] John Korinek: I meet with all my employees at least once a year, sometimes twice, and at least one of those times I give them the opportunity to tell me, "What is it about your job that you don't like that you would specifically change if you had the choice?" Now, I can't do all of the things they say. I mean, I'll be quite honest, but I want to hear those things. So if I hear it something that I can change, I can do that and keep that person here. So I think is that we try to create an environment that allows bottom up communication. There's a pretty active grapevine here. I call it a channeled grapevine, but it is just people's thoughts and desires, and those things don't have to wait for a once a year thing that they go to the right people who can get them to me and we can decide what to do about those things. I think that's a really important option for companies to make our culture better and our jobs better. Cultural Implications [00:22:19] Ari Marin: I feel like this relates to big changes in our cultural environment. We expect different things from our workplaces these days. In your view, what new cultural communications come with these changes? [00:22:32] John Korinek: The first thing that comes to mind is the impact of the pandemic. That had immediate cultural and communication implications. So one of the things that happened to us is we had to communicate what the policies were, what the responsibilities were for employees who are now working from home because that was safe. But the other thing that happened immediately was they created a two-tier system for employees of certain companies… …So, for example, an airline had people – flight attendants, pilots – who still had to go to work every day. To the job, to their office, if you want to call it that. The people who work at ticket counters and check your baggage, they all had to go every day. The corporate people didn't have to go; they could work from home. [00:23:09] SFX: Fade from “So, for example” section into the background behind VO. [00:22:56] Ari Marin VO: That's right. Those of us working corporate and – quote on quote – non essential jobs could stay home. But if you worked in the service industry, healthcare, transportation... Suddenly, you had a very different reality. [00:23:30] John Korinek: ...This two-tiered system caused a little bit of cultural tension. And companies have struggled with that. And my guess is it had to do with productivity. [00:23:39] Ari Marin VO: Productivity is a big concern in business at the moment. And it’s legitimate; we’re still experimenting with remote work… We don’t have years of insights And… What’s hard is: Employees and leaders are not always on the same page. And communication becomes… Tricky. It’s all fun and games – until you can’t see eye to eye. [00:23:50] John Korinek: Employees, one of the things they'll say is, "I'm more efficient at home. I don't have to commute. I don't have to distractions. I can just sit and do my work." But there are a number of other factors involved in that. There's a lot less accountability. You don't have a manager who can actually see what you're doing, talk to you, all those kinds of things when you work from home. And so you might be doing the wrong thing. You might be very efficient, but not doing the work that way it's being done. Number two is you lose some of that interaction, that team environment, learning from each other and playing off each other, that's actually really important. And so you lose some of that and maybe lose some innovation as a result. So individuals think they're more efficient. Companies are saying We're not as productive as we used to be, so we need to do something different. And so what we have in today's environment is I was talking to a person who works for a bank. It's not one of our clients, but works for a bank and they got an email at 5:00 on Friday saying, "Starting Tuesday after Labor Day, everyone is expected to be back in the office full time." So for four and a half years they've been working from home. They had somewhat flexible schedule. Some days in some days out. Now, they're going to have to be back in. Why did they do that? Well, I don't know specifically in this case, but I certainly would not have advised them to send an email at 5:00 on Friday and just an email. There needed to be some prep for it. There needed to be a variety of... I would've had manager communication involved. There was none of that. You're creating a culture now of people who are resentful of having to be back at work. And I think that's the biggest cultural implication is trying to deal with that work at home, work at work, flexible. Is there a happy medium? And to be quite honest, I don't know where we're going to end up. And I know that no matter where you end up, there's a need for communication and we've got to find out what is it that the company wants to do, what are the messages and objectives that it needs to have communicated, and then find the best ways to do that. So that's a big deal. [00:25:48] SFX: Music Transition [00:25:48] Ari Marin VO: So when we look at the future… And all the cultural shifts coming up in our companies… Communication becomes the name of the game. It will give everyone a platform to contribute… And nurture trust between leaders and their team… You will need that sense of reliability to manage change. [00:25:55] Ari Marin: For entrepreneurs and businesses who might be looking for good communication practice that can weather future challenges, what can they learn from change management? [00:26:04] John Korinek: I think change management, number one, starts with transparency. We deal with a lot of companies who ultimately want to spin something that they perceive as negative to their employees, a positive spin. I'll give you an example. We had a company who had to offshore a large percentage of jobs over an 18 to 24-month period. And one of the things was, it's important for the financial health of the company to do this, and that's true. But employees don't really care about that, right? If I don't have a job, I could care less about the financial health of your company if my job is going away. Being transparent with people, not necessarily about the reason for it, but how it's going to impact you. And what we're going to do for you as a company to help you in this process. So that may be constructing resumes, job searching, maybe interviewing skills, et cetera. So when you do lay someone off, they've got the tools they need to find another job. You're not going to find a job for them, but you can equip them to be able to better find a job. And then you let everybody know that. Not just the employees who are getting laid off, but the ones staying behind. The ones who stay behind are as important to the culture as the ones leaving. And so you want them to know you're treating those people correctly. The communication traditionally has not been for people who are leaving a company, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time and effort communicating to people leaving the company, but those kinds of... That's all in the realm of transparency as being as honest as you can with people about the things that impact them. I think any entrepreneur needs to remember that as well. Conclusion [00:27:43] Ari Marin VO: Transparency & reliability. That’s John’s recipe for success. When we trust that our company will tell us exactly what's going on… When we know our teams are engaged… When we can discuss things together… Openly… We’re prepared for whatever comes our way. So in the spirit of good communication, let’s recap the details, one more time: Internal Communications cover many areas of business – from performance goals, to benefits entitlement. When done right, they affirm your company values, help you retain talent and save you money down the line. Point is: When everyone knows what’s going on – you gain long term security. And that’s great, because the future is unpredictable. So don’t forget: Know / Think / Feel / Do. Get the information - digest it - understand it - act on it. It will take time to communicate with your team effectively. So make sure you provide several access points to information. A mailer, a poster, a workshop… When it comes to communication – be creative. And rely on teamwork to get different perspectives. Want to launch a new performance campaign? get people involved. Organize brainstorms. And to improve your employee retention – collect feedback. At the end of the day, this is cultural work. Your communication, will help you manage big change, so be strategic. Prioritize well-being, stay transparent… And your people will trust that you’re taking them places. I want to thank John Korinek for sharing his insights, and his many business tales! It was a delight and a privilege to speak with him today. [00:31:23] SFX: Outro Music Out [00:31:23] Ari Marin: This was In Good Companies, from Cadence Bank, the podcast where we do business on your terms. If you liked this episode, and want to hear more, why don’t you follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And when business is hot – you’ll be the first to know. You can always leave a review or a five star rating… Or share this podcast around! The more, the merrier. In Good Companies is a podcast from Cadence Bank, member FDIC, Equal Opportunity Lender. Our production team is Natalie Barron and Eydie Pengelly. Our executive producer is Danielle Kernell. This podcast is made in collaboration with the team at Lower Street. Writing and production from Lise Lovati. Sound design and mixing by Ben Crannell.