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.
Episodes
35 episodes
Making It On the Big Screen
It seems like it was just yesterday when the prospect of leveraging build screens as an internal communications tool was out of reach. And the reasons were plentiful:The technology was too expensive;Since big screens ...
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34:31
Stop Surveying Employees and Start Listening to Them
Every Fearless Communicator has a love-hate relationship with surveys. But, let's take a step back and remind ourselves why we survey employees in the first place. Ostensibly, we're trying to "listen to employees" because doing so help...
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37:49
Changing Roles: Can Employee Comms and O.D. Play Nice?
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 regar...
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32:44
Communications Ain't No F**N Soft Skill
The verdict is in: Every survey asking leaders which skills they consider essential to success and/or growth sees “communications skills” called out in the top five responses --- and often, within the top three. And yet, or...
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25:22
All Aboard: A Technology Adoption Success Story
Let’s face it, it’s tough introducing a new technology or a new process, into your organization. And like it or not, as the professional communicator, you’re often “on the hook” for making sure these kinds of changes are embraced. That’s why Ne...
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45:08
Rolling Out a New SharePoint Intranet: A Success Story
"Intranets aren't sexy". That's the word according to Amanda Stephenson, RSA's Manager of Communications. (And, it couldn't be more true). Yet, Amanda recently won a Gold Quill Award for rolling out an upgrade of an on-premises ...
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38:40
The Hearts & Minds of Middle Managers
Employee engagement is creeping up, but guess who's not engaged? Middle managers. Those much-maligned and ignored folks are under more pressure than ever to get stuff done and keep their organizations moving.
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59:26
What's in Your Communications Stack? (Part 1)
We all know it: Marketing always gets all the fanfare when it comes to innovation. After all, stuff that contributes to bringing revenue to our corporate overlords is generally valued more than activities that keep the lights on --- like man...
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39:12
Is the Light at the End of the Tunnel an Oncoming Train?
Robert Gold is well-known throughout the Canadian business community as a thought-leader, an early adopter of technology and a trusted advisor to growing companies of all shapes and sizes.
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36:18
I Think We Have a Loose Connection
Here’s an annoyingly simple truth: If your employees don’t feel emotionally connected to your organization’s purpose, its cultural values, its tasks or its people, your organization will underperform. In fact, your organization won’t survive ev...
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32:12
The D Word: How to Stop Worrying and Start Communicating About Inclusion, Diversity & Equity
Is 2021 the year we finally start getting inclusion, diversity and equity (ID&E) right? In a time of overt racism in the U.S. Capitol building and the firing of KPMG's U.K. leader for calling unconscious bias "complete crap" are we fi...
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41:19
Communications Your Audience Can’t Resist (Part 1)
There isn’t a communication professional alive who hasn’t been confronted with resistance in some form or another. In fact, comms pros are often called in to prevent or minimize resistance to upcoming transformations. However,...
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23:04
Leadership skills for the sh*t show ahead. Also goats.
If you haven't had the pleasure of listening to the Goat Rodeo Sessions by Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile, you've been missing out one what on commenter called "Bluegrass that dropped out of high school, sneaked away to NY...
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38:04
(Unlearning) About the Great Undesked
The "Great Undesked" is a segment of the workforce that often gets forgotten, neglected, underserviced and sometimes even scapegoated by employers. Just think about nurses, insurance agents, healthcare givers, drivers, miners, grocery s...
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41:28
Reviews Are a Fu*king Gift
Whether you like it or not, your current, past and potential employees are talking sh*t about you online. It might be nice sh*t or it might be nasty sh*t, but the truth is, if you're not paying attention, someone else is owning the narrative ab...
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27:34
Hitting the Right Nerve
We’re going to be hearing a lot about trust in organizations this year. As we begin to figure out the new terms of engagement for the workplace in 2021, we’ll need to make sure that building and maintaining trust is a deliberate outcome of ever...
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28:50
Getting Remote Team Communications Right
We've been at this remote work thing for long enough that you'd think managers and executives would be pretty good at communicating with their teams. Wouldn't you? But that's not what's happening.Despite the fancy technology and the cre...
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45:50
Carrots and Communications: A recipe for all employees
Reward and recognition programs are adopted by all types of organizations – across industries – to move or more needles on employee behaviours. But, despite the best of intentions, these programs, which are often launched with much fanfare (and...
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31:32
Stuck in the Communications Drive-Thru Window
Episode SummaryThis week Andrew and Elizabeth talk about a fate that befalls even the best organizational communicators: the dreaded Drive-Thru Window. We don’t mean a literal drive-thru (but if working in one is your part-time ja...
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17:02
The Swear Jar - Greatest Hits (Volume 1)
Well, it's been a wild ride so far!In producing The Swear Jar podcast we've tackled the good, the bad and the truly ugly in employee communications/internal communications. But why would we do that? Because we ar...
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18:02
Communicators are COVID-19 Superheroes
Episode SummaryFollowing on our earlier podcast, COVID-19: What the Hell? Andrew and Elizabeth take a few minutes to celebrate the extraordinary work of organizational communicators during the first six months of the pand...
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21:24
Corporate Podcasts: Are they just the new corporate newsletter?
Employee Communications professionals beware....the next new(ish) thing is here! That's right, corporate podcasts have descended upon us. That means we've got to figure out:If we should use themWhen we should use them<...
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36:38
COVID-19: What the Hell?
Elizabeth and Andrew reflect on the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and the vital and shifting role organizational communicators played.Starting in early March, many of us discovered we not only didn’t have a playbook for something...
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25:18