Kanika Datta: Management cant vs information

SWOT

Seen from one perspective, corporate HR departments have never had it so good. Gone are the days when HR was the parking place for non-performers, cranks and trouble-makers.

Gone, too, are the times when HR consisted of those hapless guys whose sole job involved maintaining the attendance roster, keeping track of new recruits and departures and organising the annual departmental bash to the dissatisfaction of all concerned.

As the quality of talent increasingly becomes the sole source of a company's cutting edge, the HR business has seen a boom like never before.

Among the myriad ways in which the function of corporate HR has evolved in India""from the introduction of tools like 360-degree assessments, various profiling techniques, incentive tours, team-building trips and so on and so forth""the most prolific has been the rise and rise of the corporate newsletter.

This is an understandable trend. As corporations grow bigger, more successful or more ambitious, senior managements need to communicate their vision and strategies to their employees and sometimes to their vendors and other stake-holders.

The newsletter, whether in electronic or physical format, is easily the most cost-effective way of doing so.

But there is a world of difference between being cost-effective and being effective. So how valuable are corporate newsletters?

Having leafed through innumerable back issues of newsletters during a lifetime of waiting for interviews in company receptions, I can confidently say that the corporate newsletter is rarely a breathlessly awaited must-read for employees.

The problem is not the medium in itself, but the approach to it. Either the content is dry and turgid ""there is the mandatory "Message from the CEO" full of clumsy, worthy rhetoric.

Or it is confused: it contains a smorgasbord of company news/events/awards, some developments and some vaguely encouraging messages from senior execs. Most often, it is teeth-grindingly cheesy: like propaganda television in the Soviet days, no negative news is permitted.

I have often been amused to note how few corporations actually take the trouble to convey real, meaningful information to their employees through the corporate newsletter.

It is almost as though they are blithely unaware of the unofficial""often startlingly accurate""bush telegraph that every organisation sprouts to spread bad news, gossip and rumours.

Today, this is an issue that corporations increasingly need to tackle head-on and in realistic ways, not least because of the samizdat information that spreads like a contagion through the Internet over a far wider constituency than just employees.

Few companies""and there are some interesting exceptions""have shown the pragmatism to do this. Of course, not every silly rumour needs to be refuted; but the newsletter is a priceless opportunity to explain hard, unpopular decisions to employees.

Instead, you will get corporations that may have down-sized savagely, or are facing heavy attrition rates. But what will their newsletter contain?

One cert is a breathless account of some annual corporate picnic/outing ("A good time was had by all" is one stock phrase, "Employees appreciated the chance to bond with each other" is another).

Or there will be a didactic piece on corporate values or corporate social responsibility""all of which is guaranteed to make the eyes of the reader glaze over. Stretching their credulity with opaque cant amounts to a disservice to employees.

Face-to-face meetings to tackle sticky situations are fine (in her early days, Carly Fiorina honed this to a fine art with her "Coffee with Carly" sessions).

But given the demands on senior executives' time, they are necessarily few and far between. A sensitive, well-written piece setting out the compulsions of a hard decision as a key supplementary exercise conveys senior management thinking transparently""and it can go a long way in damping down the inevitable consequences of such moves.

The truth is, the Corporate Newsletter in India has become a bit like the "divine stamp" devised by the small-time businessman in Rajshekhar Basu's immortal satire Sri Sri Sidheshwari Ltd.

To fulfil the requirement of writing out god's name a propitious 108 times before the start of business each day, he devised an ingenious time-saving method.

He had a stamp made with god's name written nine times; all he had to do was press it to a red ink pad and stamp it 12 times, and he would fulfil his daily religious duty in no time.

It is the same proforma approach to this vital communication tool that generates sub-optimal results. A corporation is more than just an agglomeration of people making and selling goods and services.

It has a personality that flows from its CEO and senior management and that defines the company and its practices. Good companies should not be afraid to let that personality show with a few warts here and there.

It makes its message all the more credible. To do that, however, it is important for senior executives to take themselves less seriously.

Indian corporations have still not acquired the confidence to do that yet""indeed, few global corporations have. The corporate newsletter, as a result, remains the most un-evolved of communication tools at a company's disposal.

The views expressed here are personal