Changing Roles: Can Employee Comms and O.D. Play Nice? Artwork

The Swear Jar

No nonsense. Just the straight sh*t about the harsh realities and the wonderful opportunities that inspired employee communications can bring you and your organization.Whether your job title includes the words 'Communications', 'Human Resources', 'Project Management' or 'Executive', The Swear Jar is for you. The Swear Jar is irreverent, entertaining but, most of all, it's practical. This is where you will get advice that will transform your organization by truly tapping into the power of effective employee communications. Just don't expect us to 'pull any punches'. Is it 'safe for work'? Well, as the title suggests, we do indeed swear a little. But, chances are, when you're dealing with employee communications, you feel like swearing too. So, I think we're pretty much on the same page. Come and swear along with us.

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Changing Roles: Can Employee Comms and O.D. Play Nice?

July 31, 2021 • Andrew Brown and Elizabeth Williams

In your role as an employee communications professional, chances are you’re expected to ensure proposed changes --- like adoption of new policies, procedures, or technologies --- get effectively introduced and actually “stick”. And that’s regardless of whether you have any kind of change management skills, training, or support.

Life gets even messier for you when folks from HR, training and project management share your mandate to bring about desired behavioural change. And, then there’s O.D. (Organizational Development) which is certainly one of the more misunderstood organization functions.

With all these fingers in the pie, life for an employee communications professional isn’t just messy – it can be confusing, frustrating, dysfunctional, and sadly sometimes even hostile.

That’s why we sat down with Nicole Shokoples who provides O.D. consulting at ATB Financial by serving as their Director, Strategy/Chief of Staff - Organizational Development & Consulting. Nicole shares her insights and enthusiasm about how and when employee communicators can work best (or, at least better) with O.D. work colleagues.

Topics we cover with Nicole include:

What O.D. professionals are measured on
What O.D. professionals never tell their communications colleagues (but probably should)
What Comms professionals should share with O.D. (but probably don’t)
The importance for forging a strong relationship between Comms and O.D.
How communicators can make nice with O.D.

If your next employee communications project aims at changing behaviour, be sure to check out this episode of The Swear Jar podcast.