Body language was popularized by Albert Mehrabian in the 1970’s. His investigation left him with the understanding that communication consists of 7% words, 38% tone of voice, and 55% body language. So if we break this conclusion down, his discover is that 55% of all communication happens through the position of the body.

It’s just not true.

If it were true, we would have less of a need for verbal language; as a matter of fact, we wouldn’t really need language at all because we would understand each other entirely through the position of our bodies. Essentially, all business meetings would truly apply interpretive dance to present an idea rather than use a PowerPoint presentation.

So why then do we continue to train the workforce to focus so heavily on body language? Well, when something becomes so popular or even provides a path to understanding that was not there before, we seem to grab onto it and hold it up as truth.

The compelling aspect of this study is that it helped people to focus in on the person or people with whom they were communicating—which is good! They may have falsely interpreted their signals, but at least they were paying attention.

Your opportunity is to change the game when it comes to training employees, managers and leaders to be effective communicators. To have a highly effective communications training program, consider applying these principles for success:

1.    Identify the communication style—There are a lot of tests out there that will help you identify the communication style of each training attendee. The test doesn’t need to be complicated; it just needs to get the person to a point of understanding various communication styles better than before the class started.

2.    Teach learning styles—Communication is sent to the receiver, right? Everyone learns that concept in Speech 101. More importantly than what is being sent is what is being received. So then, it is critically important for those studying communications to actually get very clear about learning theories. Again, there are hundreds of theories out there and you can pick the one that feels right for you (based on your learning style). All theories boil down to these three primary learning styles: kinesthetic, learn through touch; visual, learn through sight; auditory, learn by listening.

3.    Plan to communicate—The final component of your communications course is to teach attendees who to plan to communicate and how to use the communications that your company sends to them. Seems straight forward, but most training courses miss the critical element.

Communication is the lifeblood of any organization, so when it is flowing through your organization on mass or person-to-person, your company will succeed. When it is slow, faulty, or stops all together, you can be sure that your company is headed toward massive issues and will likely experience rather tough times ahead. Don’t let that happen! Get in there and help design your communications training programs in a way that leads your employees, managers and leaders to happy, healthy, productive communication outcomes.

 Jeremy Henderson is founder and chief client partner at Jungle Red Communication, a corporate human relations consulting firm. He focuses on helping clients build happy, healthy, productive workplaces that deliver tangible business results through internal communication, leadership, decision making and corporate social structures. You can reach Jeremy at www.JungleRedCommunication.com.

Many years ago, one of the CEO’s that I personally respect the most said to me, “Jeremy, business is only about relationships.” Why had no one said that to me in the past? I had spent all of those years focused only on producing exceptional work,  and always felt that something was missing. So, you can imagine that when he offered me this advice, it was like a massive light bulb went off and I started to get it.

From that point on, I focused as much on “how” I was working with my fellow humans, as much as “what” we were doing. Now, that was many years ago and in a time when people actually went into the office. Sure, we spent a lot of time on email; but, we also spent a great deal of time in meetings talking about projects, sharing our life experiences, and generally getting to know each other.

But even with all of the technology that allows us to share our experiences with others, one thing was missing. For me, I am dying to have face-to-face conversations.

Jungle Red Communication is working with one such video conferencing company. They insisted that we get on video and have a conversation with them so that we can better do our work. Were they right? YES!

Video conferencing is not experience at the enterprise level and can even be free for consumers, but what it gives you is an opportunity to get to know the person you are working with on any given project. You get to see them; their facial expressions; their body language; their smile when you nailed it; and their look of disappointment when you missed the mark.

Video conferencing is bringing the human back into human relations.

So while you are probably like me, a human relations pro who spends a great deal of time on communications projects and social networks, step back for just a minute and invite your meeting attendees into a video conference call and discover the power of face-to-face communication. It will change your professional life forever!

In business, that beautifully clear moment is typically when a successful company of the future starts up, hence the reason that these trailblazers have affectionately become known as “start-ups.”

Once the decision has been made to go for it—and most times, in doing so, change the world—everything starts to get nutty. All of the sudden a start-up needs cash to hire employees, which the founders then realize is the biggest line item on their budget. And then on top of all of that cash they need just for salaries, they also need a benefits package that will attract the right people to the business…and keep them there!

However, setting all finances aside, the ultimate challenge that any founder is going to face is that they likely have exceptionally good product skills, but probably have no idea what it takes to run a successful business; and to be successful, it takes exceptional human relations skills. After all, it is humans that build, market and sell the product, not to mention hire, manage payroll, and keep the lights on.

To get your start-up growing in the right direction (which clearly is up and to the right), spend time at the beginning your business planning your human relations strategy, which includes:

1.    Leadership—Every single person in your company needs to understand the strategy and clearly see how their individual work contributes to the company’s overall success. The strategy is the “what.” So that means you are also going to need a stellar set of innovative values to guide “how” the work gets done, too.

2.    Decision Making—Anyone who has ever worked in a start-up will fall down laughing should someone say that they are “fast paced.” The truth of the matter is that one year in a start-up typically equates to at least 3 years in an established business. So with everything moving at the speed of light, lots of decisions are being made. Start-ups will fail faster than an established business if too many wrong decisions are made, for obvious reasons. So then, to protect the business, get your product to market, and keep everyone working as a team, you have to teach employees to make the right decisions for the business every time a decision is made.

3.    Communication—Go ahead and get your PR strategy out of the way, but a start-up that misses the opportunity to communicate to employees early and often will soon have a revolt on their hands. People will literally vote with their feet and walk right out the door in the absence of good information. After all, communication is the lifeblood of any organization. So, unless you want to have cardiac arrest, you need a solid internal communications plan that keeps everyone humming along.

4.    Organization Social Structures—Unlike established businesses, start-ups tend to require more collaboration, especially across business lines if they are even established. (P.S. Try to avoid creating great big silos…they never work.) However, collaboration doesn’t just happen. You need a system of collaboration that will help your employees bring their best ideas to the table and work with each other in a way that helps you achieve what you started out to do in the first place.

Now, if you are a mid-to-late state start up, never fear; there is always time to get your company back on the right course of action. But, if you see that you are starting to lose people, especially around the 50-employee and 500-employee mark, waste no time in fixing what’s broken. No matter how well you are funded, you can’t just let your most valuable intellectual property walk out the door. It is people who make your company successful, so along with being focused on all of those wonderful MBA strategies they teach in business school, double down on creating a workplace that is happy, healthy, and productive.

 Jeremy Henderson is founder and chief client partner at Jungle Red Communication, a corporate human relations consulting firm. He focuses on helping clients build happy, healthy, productive workplaces that deliver tangible business results through internal communication, leadership, decision making and corporate social structures. You can reach Jeremy at www.JungleRedCommunication.com.

Dale Carnegie once said, “ People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing” I don’t think that quote could be more appropriate to what working as a consultant with great people for great companies is all about.

We have the opportunity every day to help ourselves and our clients succeed both personally and professionally. How we do this depends greatly on our work/life balance.

For example, our team recently worked to put together a presentation for one of our clients.  We held meetings, we wrote, we discussed and we revised until we had come the realization that it was Saturday afternoon already and we were a little more than brain dead, out of juice and creativity.

At that particular moment, we stopped and said to each other – we need to take time to break for the weekend, go have some fun to rejuvenate our creative senses and come back renewed on Monday so that we will have more energy and creativity to complete the presentation.

You may be asking, wouldn’t it have been better just to plow through the presentation and get it done instead of breaking for the weekend? It may have and in some cases it may be necessary to plow through. But by taking that break and doing the other things we enjoy, we were able to come back to the table renewed and refreshed with even better ideas.

Our belief and the things that we as a team constantly strive to maintain is that when our team is happy and having fun at what we are doing, we are succeeding and in turn better able to help our clients build happy, healthy and productive workplaces.

Tina Tuma is a senior client partner at Jungle Red Communication, a corporate human relations consulting firm. She focuses on helping clients build happy, healthy, productive workplaces that deliver tangible business results through internal communication, leadership, decision making and corporate social structures. You can reach our team at www.JungleRedCommunication.com.

1.    Define yourself: Whether you absolutely love the role that you are in today or desperately seek to find yourself in a new experience extremely soon, you are the only person who can actually define yourself. All too often in today’s business climate, your manager is responsible for writing what often are pointless performance reviews that attempt to tell the story of you. On top of that, if you are in a larger organization, the employee development team will identify “competencies,” a list of personal characteristics and attributes, that they believe the company should use to operate as one team. Then, on top of all of that, companies will employ a set of values or operating principles which rarely, if ever, support the above elements. Now, are all of these defining characteristics important in business? The argument can be made that indeed they are. However, you get to define yourself! As a matter of fact, you are the only one who can actually do it.

2.    Have courage: When you define yourself, it is highly likely that you will be making a significant change in who you are or a complete departure from what others expect from you. To change, you must have courage, and a great deal of bravery to capture the hearts and minds of those people who expect you to remain the same forever.

3.    Target correctly: With the change you seek to implement, you may need to go look for a new company at which to work or you may start your own business. In times of change, however, be certain that people will tell you a story that you want to hear. And, if it sounds exactly like what you are looking for, be sure to ask every question that you can think of and make no assumptions. Too many times, we are enticed by the dream rather than the reality and in such make poor decisions.

4.    Stay committed: Once you know what you want to do, do it and don’t stop doing it. Often times people say feedback is a gift; but what feedback offers you is an individual’s desire for you to do what they want you to do rather than what you are committed to doing. So, stay focused and remain committed to what you love to do in the way you love to do it.

We know that there are at least 100 different ways to get to an answer; but, there are no right or wrong answers in this world, when it comes to what you seek to do with your life. So, we’ll leave you with one last word, and that is this: once you find your love, never let it go. You too can live a happy, healthy, and productive life.

 Jeremy Henderson is founder and chief client partner at Jungle Red Communication, a corporate human relations consulting firm. He focuses on helping clients build happy, healthy, productive workplaces that deliver tangible business results through internal communication, leadership, decision making and corporate social structures. You can reach Jeremy at www.JungleRedCommunication.com.

1.    Engage Your Team of Internal Experts: Gather a cross-functional team whose departments and functions both directly and indirectly impact employees and begin checking under the hood to see if the shiny car your Company is driving has working airbags, clean mats, or if the “check engine” light is on. And what exactly is that fragrance? In other words, implement an “employee experience audit” to see if the “inside” experience matches the “outside” brand the Company is conveying. Your team should include a member of HR of course, but that’s just the beginning. Employee touch-points go way beyond benefits packages and welcome emails. Invite staff to this “Employee Experience” team and include facilities, finance, IT, global mobility, internal communications, philanthropy and social responsibility, marketing and senior management. You know your teams best, so include additional voices for a truly truthful process. If you the members of the team just don’t know each other all that well, be sure to break the ice by using a few team-building exercises so that the conversation is honest and transparent.

2.    Conduct an Employee Experience Audit: Once your team is working well together, establish guidelines to guide you in gathering materials, information, and feedback from employees so that you can audit their day-to-day experience. Consider all levels of workers, regions, and touch-points—even independent contractors and temps! This may seem overwhelming, but it can be managed by reviewing key core areas. Divide your team’s tasks to include four types of experiences (communication, leadership, decision making, organization social structures) and tally how well these match-up to a positive experience that helps your employees live your brand. Think in terms of how the employee experiences the day, such as finding convenient parking, walking into the building, reading company-generated emails, registering for career development opportunities, relating to a manager, and searching for benefits information or internal job postings on your Intranet. In our previous blog about culture, Design Business Success with a Cultural Manifesto, we explain that language, actions and icons are the direct reflection of the culture at any Company anywhere in the world. By taking a close look at these three items, as employees experience them, and as such experience the brand, you can determine what’s working and what’s not. Create a measurement tool to determine a positive, neutral or negative experience based upon the brand promise as set forth through the language, actions and icons you come across in your review of the list below. This is another reason to have a member of IT on your team. They can help develop or recommend a measurement tool to track your audit automatically.

3.    Align Internal Communication with the Experience: Take a sampling of employee communications over the last several months. Include all functional areas and departments that generate employee messages to all employees, people managers, and other specialty audiences that exist in your organization, everything from facilities and finance to marketing and HR. Remember to consider how employees take in these communications. Is the language from the employee’s or the employer’s point of view. Guess which one makes a better employee experience? Yup. Communications that put the employee first, just like you would do with your customers, is the right answer. Now, take a good look at your Intranet. If your company has not updated its Intranet since 2005 and doesn’t have a means to incorporate enterprise social media as a form of communication, you may be missing your brand promise altogether. Examine other forms of employee communications including posters, flyers, company meetings, and even the structure of manager-employee one-on-ones. Since flyers are the easiest to pick on, let’s do it! (We never really pick on anyone and in fact despise bullying) Ask yourself these questions: Are your company flyers posted neatly and replaced regularly with messaging that is consistent with the brand? Are they written from an employee point-of-view or is management making a stand with their language? Is there a nasty sign on the refrigerator warning certain death if employees leave un-eaten food too long in the refrigerator? It’s these little, yet big, touch-points that are part of an employee’s every day experience.

As long as we are here talking about communications, on a quick side note, don’t let your graphic designers dictate your use of your company’s color palette internally. Every brand has primary and secondary colors, and sometimes even a set of tertiary colors, too. Since almost every single bit of your official corporate communications will be colored with your primary colors, use secondary colors to carve out communications that are focused on HR, people managers, crisis communications and the like. You’ve got the colors, so go ahead and use them. You’ll win with this approach because employees will be visually prompted to read communications  that look different, rather than thinking it is all just the same stuff flowing their way each and every day.

4.    Design Internal Events that Mirror Your Brand: Examine your employee events from company-wide conference calls and town hall meetings to holiday parties and team-building events. Are you focused on the employee or the Company? What’s the general “feel” of these events? Are they competitive or cooperative? Hierarchical or social? Events are one of the biggest ways to build relationships and cement the brand. If your employment experience is all about people knowing each other and building great relationships, then prominently display relationships between employees at every event that you ever host. If you are at a tech company that fuels the world’s ability to communicate—video, social media, email, etc.—then be sure to use these tools as a means to managing your live event, too.

5.    Review Each Employee Program Against the Brand Promise: This is the part of the process that will get really passionate employees totally jazzed! The types of employee programs your company offers should be entirely aligned with the values you have set forth in your brand. Basically stated, each and every program should be designed and administered as your brand dictates. For example, if your brand is all about social, teams, and collective contributions, rewarding a single employee for his or her contributions individually may not be a true reflection of the brand. Taking it a step forward, in this scenario, you probably wouldn’t even perform performance reviews at the individual level, but rather you would review functional and project teams instead. The point is that for the experience to be true, it must be based on the rules of the road that are established by the brand.

6.    Build a Branded Environment: Focus this part of your audit on the physical surroundings and every day environment. The employee experience goes beyond seeing logos and company colors on the walls. Yes, this is a great way to continue spreading your internal brand from a visual identity and iconography perspective, but other factors are just as important. Does your environment include privacy rooms in case an employee has a personal need such as taking care of a new baby, a religious observation, or chill-out time? Are there plenty of green (and by green we mean living) plants, sunlight and natural elements in your employee’s workspace? Do conference rooms offer hand sanitizer, extra pens and or maybe a few pair of reading glasses for an aging, on-the-go employee base? Do employees have a voice in how their cubes are displayed or does management have strict policies on what is acceptable? Environmental experiences include the safety and comfort of an employee and this includes proper ergonomic evaluations and supplies like a comfy, supportive chair. Once you have completed your audit, decide what can be improved and who on your team of internal team of experts can make it happen.

You don’t have to make all of the changes you identify at once, it is just important to commit to the change, build a timeline, and roll it out in a very public way, so that your employees understand what’s coming. Some improvements will be easy fixes, and others will require that you get some outside help. When you commit to creating a better employee experience that not only matches up with the brand you convey, you will be well on your way to a building happy, healthy, productive workplace, one that will attract awesome candidates and ensure that your employees are, and continue to be, satisfied with their employment experience.

Jeremy Henderson is founder and chief client partner at Jungle Red Communication, a corporate human relations consulting firm. He focuses on helping clients build happy, healthy, productive workplaces that deliver tangible business results through internal communication, leadership, decision making and corporate social structures. You can reach Jeremy at www.JungleRedCommunication.com.

1.    Hiring: Recruiting will be on fire looking for new candidates because mid-level employees will be leaving for bigger opportunities.

2.    M&A: Exceptional employee integration will become a massive focus because more companies will be merging to gain market share.

3.    Leadership: Unlike the recent past, employees will be even more critical of their leaders and leadership credibility will become more important to corporate success.

4.    Decision Making: Decision making will be pushed down lower into most companies because the issues at the top will be much bigger and harder to solve.

5.    Collaboration: Enterprise social networking applications will be used for collaboration across company silos rather than for simple corporate announcements.

6.    Organization Structures: Companies will flatten their organizations and increase management span of control.

7.    Management Training: The importance of people managers will sky rocket and companies will double down on management training, development and communications programs.

8.    Employment Branding: Marketing, IT, Finance, Facilities and HR will all come together to develop one employment brand that attracts and retains the type of employees the company needs to grow its business.

9.    Benefits: Benefits programs will pop up to not just solve the needs of employees, but also to differentiate the experience from one employer to the next.

10.  Corporate Social Responsibility: More companies will up-level their sustainability efforts and implement or increase volunteer time off programs.

      Jeremy Henderson is founder and chief client partner at Jungle Red Communication, a corporate human relations consulting firm. He focuses on helping clients build happy, healthy, productive workplaces that deliver tangible business results through internal communication, leadership, decision making and corporate social structures. You can reach Jeremy at www.JungleRedCommunication.com. 

As a new business, we have learned a great deal over this last year—so much in such a short amount of time. The very good news is that these lessons can be applied to everyone and everything any of us will ever do:

1.    Clients make us super happy—We have been blessed to work with some of the biggest and most respected technology companies in the world. What we found is that they make us proud to support them on their journey to have amazingly strong human relations programs. The worst day helping a customer is better than the best day helping ourselves.

2.    Listening changes everything—People just want to be heard and when we all listen to each other amazing things can happen.

3.    Live with gratitude—With so much wrong in the world today, continually giving thanks for all that has graced our lives has become even more important in today’s world, especially in the world of business.

4.    Say thank you—It is the best thing you can ever do for anyone and for yourself.

Okay, okay, okay…enough about what lessons were ever present this year for us at Jungle Red Communication. Thank you to all of our clients and supporters, to everyone who reads our blog, and to all of those who are doing the good work of helping corporations to develop a happy, healthy, and productive workplace.

Happy New Year!

Why wait until the next time you have a benefits change or want to remind employees that when you have a “life event” you can change your benefits. Now is the time to build upon your open enrollment communications so that you can improve your programs impact on the success of your organization. The entire organization? Yup! We said it first, right here on our blog.

You can change the overall health of your organization just by communicating about benefits throughout the entire year. How? Well, when employees are mentally, emotionally and physically happy, they produce more and at a higher level of quality.

Here’s how:

1.    Research: Based on the benefits your employees signed up for, changed or left in the dust, figure out what is most important to them.

2.    Build a Plan: Use your research to build an annual plan that reflects back to employees those benefits that matter most to them.

3.    Communicate Often: Rather than a random email full of various “bits” of information, communicate frequently and through a number of channels and vehicles.

4.    Make Benefits Personal: Find employees whose benefits have been instrumental in their lives, and then write it up using best practices from community journalism.

5.    Put a Bow on Top: When you are ready to make a splash, pull in writers, graphic designers and, if needed, developers to help you package up your benefits in way that gets everyone excited about what you have to offer your employees.

When you do it well, you’ll see more people living a happy, healthy, productive life as you stroll through the halls and fewer people pointing to other companies as the gold standard of a great place to work.

Jeremy Henderson is founder and chief client partner at Jungle Red Communication, a corporate human relations consulting firm. He focuses on helping clients build happy, healthy, productive workplaces that deliver tangible business results through internal communication, leadership, decision making and corporate social structures. You can reach Jeremy at www.JungleRedCommunication.com.

A culture will attract the “right” type of employees and retain those who are personally in alignment with what the company is trying to achieve. Conversely, a strong culture can quickly weed out those employees who made it through the hiring process but really don’t fit the bill. But for a culture to truly play a significant role in the success of any given company, it has to be the lens through which all decisions are made.

The biggest issue with corporate cultures today is that leaders don’t really know what culture is and rarely dive deep into the understanding of what makes their culture great. Most often, especially in start ups and fast-growing companies, culture is a trickle down implementation of the CEO’s personality.

There are only ever three elements to any corporate culture anywhere in the world: language, actions and icons. Regardless of the cultural differences from one country to another, the corporate culture has to overcome these differences to ensure that all employees are working in the same company with the same set of stands, expectations and procedures.

Identify Your Culture

To fully understand your culture, you have first got to study it. Go deep. Get serious about knowing the “how” and the “why” behind the culture that exists in your company. Even if you are a start up with only a week under your proverbial  belt, you’ve already got a culture that is developing whether you realize it or not.

Step One: Language

To get a good picture of you company’s culture, start by identifying the language that you use each and every day. Look at your marketing materials, call center scripts, recruiting campaigns, internal communications, contracts, etc. What pops up for you? Are you using language that is very visionary and innovative, but you are an accounting firm? Or, maybe you are a company that believes it to be the most innovative in the world, yet your written language looks like a text book from the 1980’s. Or, perhaps you are a graphic design firm that continually uses words rooted in sound. In any case, a review of all language that is used in your organization will give you a good starting point on your journey to finding your culture.

Step Two: Actions

Similar to the linguistic review that is described in Step One, honestly looking at how your company operates is significantly important. This is where massive gaps start to pop up for most companies, mostly because they are already attuned to the fact that their words don’t map to what they are trying to achieve. So, when the actions don’t match it words, and its words don’t support the vision it is trying to achieve, major opportunity for change tends to follow. Following on with the innovation example above, if yours is a company that claims to be massively innovative, yet is mired in burdensome red tape and overly engineered processes and procedures, then it is likely your culture is misaligned.

Step Three: Icons

Simply put, icons are images that represent something special about your company. Icons can be a specific sign, recognizable symbol, or even a person who serves as the face of the company—usually the CEO. Whatever the case, icons play an equally important role in your company. For example: Let’s say you own an advertising firm and your company is known for superior creativity; however, you insist that all of your employees show up in three piece suits. The disconnect between creativity and business suits is something that will baffle your employees and the suits will eventually become iconic, which will likely kill your brand image.

Publish a Cultural Manifesto

Once you have thoroughly analyzed your culture, it is likely that you will find specific parts that are perfectly aligned and other areas that need to be tweaked. You can then being the process of working on your culture so that you achieve the best business results possible. But, you can’t do it alone; and, you can’t be in every meeting making every decision to get your culture back on track. So, the best way to get everyone in your organization aligned behind your culture is to write a cultural manifesto.

The cultural manifesto is made up of four sections:

1.    Our Culture Today: Clearly document where your culture is at today. Be clear about the language that is being used; be honest about the actions that are and are not working; and highlight those icons that do and don’t serve the needs of business. Also, be completely transparent about the fact that the culture is something that must be managed by everyone to ensure business success.

2.    Our Culture Tomorrow: This is the highly creative part of the process. In this section of your cultural manifesto, describe the language, actions and icons that collectively will drive greater business success now and into the future. Your culture can be aspirational, but it must above all be achievable. If you design a culture to work toward that is impossible to actually implement, your employees will reject it and you will be in the same position that you are in today.

3.    Our Cultural Transformation: In this section of your manifesto, articulate the differences between where your culture is today and where it will be tomorrow. Specify the actual language changes that need to occur; pinpoint the actions that are getting in the way of business success and how they will need to change; and finally, identify those icons that miss the mark and make a plan to change them.

4.    Success Signs: The signs that your cultural is winning are clear. First, you’ll find people having fewer and fewer conflicts because they will be using an agreed upon business language. Second, your employees will be happier with the way the business is being run. Finally, you’ll see more and more people upholding the icons used by the business, and will eventually see more people in company-branded clothing.

While Jungle Red Communication offers you a high-level overview of how to create a cultural manifesto, the devil is in the details—naturally. However, regardless of how you get to the final answer for your business, be sure to not miss the always important step of getting employee input before you simply launch into a cultural change. Employees make or break your company, and if they reject the new culture, you could be in a world of hurt in just a short period of time. Employees want to help the culture succeed, so be sure that you let them do just that by offering up their ideas throughout the process and asking them to take the lead to implement the manifesto across the business.

Jeremy Henderson is founder and chief client partner at Jungle Red Communication, a corporate human relations consulting firm. He focuses on helping clients build happy, healthy, productive workplaces that deliver tangible business results through internal communication, leadership, decision making and corporate social structures. You can reach Jeremy at www.JungleRedCommunication.com.