A weekend in the Bush?
The banner photo above shows view of Australian landscape from our holiday lodge. The Retreat Bushland Lodge

Presentations

Effective internal communication starts at the top
Research shows that CEO communication is likely to be the most cost effective way to improve internal communication. In this presentation to the Strategic Communication Management Asia-Pacific Summit in Sydney in November 2004 Rodney Gray and Larry Robertson outline how communicators can support CEO communication.

Internal Networking
We all know how powerful networking is. But if you're in a large organisation (be it a corporation, government department or agency, or professional firm) you can network internally to achieve your job goals and advance your career.

Change Communication
Internal communication has a critical role during major change: e.g. mergers, acquisitions, divestments, restructuring, downsizing, new systems or processes, new technology.

Change communication research
A landmark study commissioned by The Allen Consulting Group for a group of a dozen clients set out to find the key drivers of successful change management, especially the key communication acitivies that would lead to successful change. The research was conducted by Rodney Gray. This short presentation to The Australian Centre for Public Communication outlines the key findings.

Communication metrics - measuring internal communication effectiveness
I was invited to present a paper on ?communication metrics? for the Strategic Communication Management Third Australian Summit. I presented this paper which ranges across a number of measurement issues for communicators: why measure; what to measure; when to use qualitative and quantitative research approaches; who can measure; effectiveness v satisfaction; how to measure preferred communication sources and channels; and some technical issues explaining how to conduct a survey professionally.

Employee Engagement: Where does it fit? What value does it add?
I was involved in helping to organise the Australian Human Resources Institute's HR Practices Day in 2007. I'd arranged to chair a "debate" or discussion between David Brown, MD Hewitt Associates in Australian and NZ and Geoff Alford of Geoff Alford Research Services, Melbourne. Geoff has been an outspoken opponent of clients using engagement measures as a fad without truly understanding what it is about. Unfortunately, Geoff took ill a few days before the session. So I gave his presentation, taking the opportunity to inject many of my ideas about engagement into the presentation. This is how it came out.

Getting a seat at the table
Few communicators want to be simply "senders out of stuff" - they want to get included in the top executive team. Recent IABC / PR News research conducted by Rodney Gray sheds some light on this issue. As well research of top CEOs in the UK reveals what chief executives think of the role of PR executives, particularly in regard to reputation management. These slides were pre-reading for participants in an IABC International Conference think tank in Vancouver in June 2006.

Internal Branding
The useful concept of internal branding has been around in the UK and US for about 12 or 13 years, but in Australia there is still a lot of confusion

Open Book Management
OBM is a management philosophy that gets employees to think and act like business owners by using "game play concepts" to run their business units using actual numbers (e.g. production, financial). OBM has helped thousands of organisations dramatically improve not only their financial performance, but their corporate cultures as well.

Why people leave and what we can do about it
There is still huge interest in how organisations can best retain their best people. Research of your employees can help. By finding out what factors are the key drivers of retention will enable you to concentrate your efforts on those factors that will truly make a difference.