The Definitive Guide to HR Communication : Engaging Employees in Benefits, Pay, and Performance

Two experienced HR communications consultants show how to dramatically improve the effectiveness of every HR message. HR professionals know their programs are pivotal to organizational success, but they also know how difficult it is to communicate those programs effectively. Hampered by legal restrictions, highly complex policies and programs, corporate politics, and old-fashioned notions about business communication, they create communications their audiences simply ignore. It needn’t be that way! Alison Davis and Jane Shannon present simple, powerful principles and techniques every HR professional can use, even those who’ve never been comfortable as writers. Davis and Shannon demonstrate how to treat employees as customers, and use the same strategies, tools, and care your company uses to sell its products or services. The authors help HR professionals understand their customers’ (and executives’) needs and motivations more clearly; package information to promote faster, better decision-making; and measure their effectiveness. They present specific solutions for safely eliminating unnecessary detail and jargon; explaining benefits, pay, and policies; improving recruiting, orientation, and outplacement communications; supporting retirement planning; and improving performance management.

Alison Davis has served for 25 years as CEO of Davis & Company (www.davisandco.com), helping companies such as BNY Mellon, Georgia-Pacific, IKEA, Johnson & Johnson, MasterCard, and Merck reach, engage, and motivate employees. Davis is coauthor of Your Attention, Please and a weekly blog, “Insights,” at www.davisandco.com/blog. She frequently writes for leading business, communication, and HR publications, and was an online columnist for The New York Times. A sought-after speaker on communication issues, she is former President of the Council of Communication Management (CCM).

Jane Shannon, now an independent consultant (www.janeshannon.com), spent much of her career as Vice President of HR Communication at Citibank. She then worked as a Senior Communication Consultant at Davis & Company and as a principal in the communication practice of William M. Mercer, Inc. Her clients have included Texaco, Barnes & Noble, Bank of America, and United Distillers & Vintners. She authored 73 Ways to Improve Your Employee Communication Program and has spoken at communication conferences hosted by the Council of Communication Management (CCM) and the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). A few years ago, she returned to her alma mater, University of Missouri-Columbia, to teach in its Journalism School’s Visiting Professor Program.