An organization built upon responsibility is one informed of its social and environmental impacts and as such, one well postioned to tap into growth and investment opportunities. Indeed, integrating an appetite for economic progress with sustainability objectives provides not only a roadmap for competitive growth but can strengthen market position and transform and differentiate an organization.

Embed and CommunicateFor a company’s sustainability ambitions to reach their full potential, it is vital that they truly become part of the company’s DNA and are instilled in each process at every level of the organization.

Communicating internally about milestones achieved – even modest ones at first – will keep people aligned and motivated by making genuine progress visible, while highlighting the benefits of the transition will allow staff to take ownership of them.

Communicating externally will improve stakeholder understanding of the organization, its objectives and activities. This will translate into improved stakeholder relations and a more active and respected position within the community.

BENEFIT 1: Attract and retain talents

CSR engagement provides an enhanced ability to recruit, develop and retain staff. This can be the direct result of pride in the organization’s practices, or of introducing improved human resources practices. Employees are not only a front-line source of improved performance but are champions of an organization for which they are proud to work.

BENEFIT 2: Boosting innovation and anticipating trends

Importantly, CSR implementation also contributes to improved innovation for CSR is about seizing opportunities, as well as avoiding risk. A CSR strategy can drive a company to capitalize on economic potential inside or outside the firm, and enable corporations to detect opportunities for innovation that they otherwise could have missed.

CSR also offers an enhanced ability to address change; any organization that engages in regular stakeholder dialogue is in an excellent position to anticipate and respond to regulatory, economic, social, and environmental changes that may occur. Increasingly, it is known that CSR-related considerations can operate as a “radar” to detect evolving trends in the market.

BENEFIT 3: Enduring alliances and improved clients and stakeholder relations

CSR and sustainability are powerful tools in gaining and retaining market share with consumers loyal to organizations they feel are operating responsibly.

In addition, CSR will nurture a company’s reputation which may also evolve into more robust and enduring alliances with business partners sharing the same values.

BENEFIT 4: Money, money, money

The financial benefits of CSR are also important as enhanced operational efficiencies and cost savings will arise from activities and policies identified through a systemic CSR approach.

While investing in CSR will have limited financial impact on the short term, research indicates that it does offer a remarkable long-term economic advantage.

The reason #1 for leaving a company is poor management. Unfortunately, not all managers are good managers. One of the main trait of a good manager is that he is good at communicating, but this skill is not innate.

Improving the communication skills of managers to increase staff engagement

Not everybody is in his comfort zone when it comes to communication. But communication is a skill that can be developed through training and coaching. Indeed, research indicates that companies that invest in developing the communication skills of their managers perform better than those who don’t.

Managers need to engage both the Heart & the Mind

To turn strategy into action, the manager will have to connect with his team on both a rational and an emotional level.

At the rational level, the staff needs not only to be aware of the the company’s mission but also to understand it. And it’s the manager’s role to ensure both this awareness and understanding. But then the manager will also need to connect emotionally with his team - listening to them, encouraging them, inspiring them - to promote commitment and enagement because people want to be part of something that they believe in, of something that touches their heart.

Réussir son déménagement d'un point de vue humain

" Déménager est l'évènement le plus traumatisant après la perte d'un être cher ou de son emploi."

Un déménagement est une ponctuation dans la vie d’une entreprise dont il convient de profiter pour renforcer la cohésion des équipes, l’engagement des collaborateurs et l’image de marque de l'entreprise. Pour réussir ce virage, la communication doit être pensée rigoureusement. Sans quoi, le risque est grand de perdre en cohésion interne et en image externe lors de cet évènement où chacun a des questions et des appréhensions.

Une communication pensée rigoureusement avant, pendant et après le déménagement

Un déménagement est un évènement hautement émotionnel qui peut s'accompagner de changements de mode de travail et requiert :

sens, lien avec les valeurs, dialogue, implication ludique, accueil, célébration interne, accompagnement,célébration externe

Read the full story on Delano.lu

Delano #61, September - October 2018, pp 12-13

Too often leaders pour their energy into formulating strategy and spend too little time figuring out how to implement it. To successfully execute your organization’s strategy, you should pay attention to the 3Cs: Clarify, Cascade, Communicate.

1. Clarify your strategy

Move away from high-level statement and ensure that everyone does understand the strategy by clarifying it in a way it resonates with everyone so that people can rally to support its implementation

2. Cascade your strategy

Cascade your strategy at each level, translating it to understandable and contextualized sound bites, which connect to the work of individuals. The managers will own this cascading process. Should this be out of their comfort zone, the managers will be coached to endorse this role.

3. Communicate your strategyCommunicate powerfully the essence of your strategy at every level of the organization to inspire and engage… and don’t forget that communication is a two-way street.

A strategy doesn't just implement itself by magic and the human factor is the key to success… so don't miss the chance to make it easy for your employees to connect to the strategy and be aligned and engaged!

".” Bill Gates

GDPR: It's all about Reputation Management!

GDPR is first and foremost about Reputation Management. GDPR has indeed 4 main implications in terms of communication that should not be underestimated:

1. First you will need to report within 72 hours every "data breach" to the regulators and, in some cases, to the affected people. This is a huge change as, in the past, many organizations chose not to report hacks in the hope that the problem would blow over.

Reporting is not an option anymore and having a crisis communication plan in place in case of a data breach is a must. Careful scenario planning (including a risk assessment of the types of data processed and the types of stakeholders impacted), drafting materials to meet these scenarii (press releases, media Q&As, holding lines) and a clear line of responsibility defined in advance are key to tackling data breach crises within this tight window.

2. All GDPR information and policies can no longer be written in legal jargon but must be in “clear and plain language” to ensure transparency to the EU customers. Do rely on the writing skills of your communication specialists to ensure efficiency in this process.

3. Sensitive data - like gender, religion, ethnicity, health, etc. - is becoming very sensitive. It is essential for your internal communication team to create a GDPR-proof data culture in which people understand that privacy is a thing, and that any information they keep about stakeholders can be accessed and scrutinized.

4. Your corporate communication department itself needs to be GDPR compliant

Your annual report, CSR report, website, brochures and articles offer unique opportunities to nurture your reputation, build trust and demonstrate your leadership. Make these important communication tools work for you.

Annual Reports that build trust and confidence

Annual report writing can be a daunting task, but annual reporting is also an incredible opportunity. An opportunity to tell your company’s story in a credible and compelling way, and a chance to build understanding, trust and confidence among investors and other key stakeholders.

The particularity of the annual report is that it is the result of a coordinated teamwork involving many departments. However, the key to an effective annual report is to present one consistent voice, one writing style and a strong central theme in the document. Distinct Communication can edit the different contributions to your report and ensure a common thread and a consistency of style.

Sustainability Reports that nurture your reputation

Sustainability is no longer a corporate afterthought and ‘doing well by doing good’ is now an established operational ethos for all companies, big or small. Increasingly mainstream, the disclosure of non-financial information is critical to building reputations.

As a communication and CSR expert (certified ESR consultant for INDR Luxembourg), Laurence Ponchaut helps companies communicate their social and environmental performance to their stakeholders, meeting reporting requirements (including GRI) and best practice standards.

Websites read by humans and by search engines

In a website, information is prioritized and structured for quick scanning and action-oriented navigation. On the web, one should tell a story in a concise way making it skimmable (with powerful headlines, bullet points, infographics, etc.), easy for everyone to read and ensuring SEO.

Brochures that sell

Though people take more time to read a brochure, it is important to be punchy, keep them concise and not to provide too many details or technical information.

Distinct Communication can manage your whole communication project – be it a report, a brochure, or a website – working with your design agency or with one of the great agencies we have partnered with in the past.

"Laurence is a fantastic transformer of insights into clear concepts driving engagement and understanding. She has a real knack for presenting the information clearly, and make it understandable for our different audiences. Laurence has developed for us a Corporate Profile, an Employee Handbook, infographics, presentations, a motion design movie,... all with a strong, engaging content."

Marcello Coluccia, Director Strategic Marketing, Imerys Graphite & Carbon

"Whether you need someone to write the content from scratch – including interviewing subject matter experts and crafting forewords – or simply edit your content for consistency, Distinct Communication will ensure your message is strong, engaging and consistent… delivered on time and on message."

Laurence Ponchaut, Distinct Communication

Businesses will use bots. It is not a matter of "if" but "when".

The benefits of bots are just far too great to be ignored. To mention just the three largest:

reduced costsand, last, but not least, data collection.

Improved Customer Experience

With bots in place, businesses will provide 24/7 support through personalized, instantaneous, two-way conversations.

Customers want an answer now, they want their problem solved quickly, and if a bot is helping that to happen faster and smarter, they will actually enjoy that experience.

Reduced Costs

Bots help reduce customer service costs by at least 30% by automating all recurring requests tasks and freeing your service teams up to focus on more value-adding activities.

A bot will rapidly boost your profitability and prove a high ROI solution.

Data Collection

The more you understand your customers, the better experience you can provide them.

Your bot will collect data on your customers and all their requests. It could be a request you have not thought about yet, a customer need you could anticipate or a cross selling opportunity you could exploit.

This knowledge is priceless!

Do not miss what could just be your next key business driver Not only can bots improve customer service and help reduce customer service costs, but bots can also become your newest revenue stream and your biggest competitive advantage, making customer service your next key business driver.

And the good news is you can still be among the first adopters, reaping all the benefits of offering the NEXT generation of customer service!

Customers want to message your business... because it is easy, fast & convenient.

The most natural way to communicate

Your chatbot

speaks the real language (no « sign-up », « login », « click », etc.)enters in a personalized dialogueunderstands the client’s intentionprovides complete and precise answersis fully dedicated to your audiencereflects your brand’s identity and personality

We help you build the NEXT generation of customer service

We advise on, design, build and operate in situ chatbot projects from concept to closure. We help you provide a magnificient customer service at scale while reducing your operating costs and freeing your service teams up to focus on more value-adding activities !

A bot reflecting your needs and identity

Do you have a comprehensive crisis management plan, a partial procedure or you do not need to prepare your organization for a crisis because you have good managers who will handle it as soon as it occurs?

According to the Savvy Incorporated group, 20% of companies are well prepared and have a complete crisis plan in place (the boy scouts), 45% admit to be vulnerable as they have only a partial coverage (the wire walkers) and 35% (the ostriches) are exposed as they only see a crisis plan as a source of difficulties.

A crisis plan is an extension of the communication strategy to develop a favourable bias towards the organization. No company is immune from a crisis. Also, to prepare for this eventuality and determine, cool head, what communication actions should be taken when it occurs will allow for a diligent, appropriate and efficient answer.

Also, it is not in a crisis that one should seek to establish a positive reputation. If anything, a good crisis communication plan can relieve the worry over whether a sudden crisis can wipe out your reputation that you've spent years building. With a little effort, any business can be prepared to handle almost any crisis, and in the process maintain its reputation, and perhaps emerge from the crisis as an even stronger company with an enhanced reputation.

While businesses spend lots of money for flood or fire insurance in preparation for a disaster that may never occur, few prepare adequately for a media crisis that is actually far more likely to occur and with equally devastating results.

Every $1 spent in crisis planning saves $7 during a crisis.

Source : Washingtom Military Division

70% of SMEs that experience a crisis go out of business within a year.

Source : Data Centre Solutions

So, as any scout, be prepared!

Your employees complained about communication during their evaluation review? Your staff is missing the big picture? Engagement is not at its best? It might be the right time for a communication check!

Having a healthy internal communication is critical to business success. It will drive innovation, improve employee engagement and increase productivity. Here are a few tips!

Keep your message successfully simple

Use a "Inspire-Educate-Reinforce" framework for your messages and keep them sharp and simple. Be concrete, unexpected, emotional and tell a story! People normally remember only 3 to 5 points from any communication, and a story will help your points be easily remembered!

Be clear about your business objectives and priorities

Inform clearly about the industry trends, the company's objectives and priorities, and the progress made towards these goals. Give the big picture and get your staff aligned with your strategic objectives!

Schedule communication

The simplest way to put yourself in the mindset to communicate is to put it on your calendar. Regular communication points are much more effective than a single large yearly town-hall meeting. And, in addition to the scheduled communication, spend some 15 minutes each day - more if you can spare it - on informal conversation.

Written communication, oral communication, one-to-one, in groups… you have to do it all!

Your messages need to be reinforced, so do not hesitate to follow up oral communication with a memo or note that recapitulates the conversation.

Listen to your employees

Successful communication is a two-way street. If management is doing all the talking, employees tend to tune out. What's more, your staff often has great suggestions. Formal feedback mechanisms will capture brilliant ideas and helpful criticism.

"You can tie back almost every employee issue - attendance, morale, performance, and productivity - to communication." Fred Holloway

Improving internal communications is a smart move. It will empower a more committed

and better-performing workforce, make sure everyone is working toward the right goals, and make leadership more effective.

At Distinct Communication, we work alongside you to effectively channel your communication by:

Designing internal communication strategy aligned with your business strategy;Creating effective communication programmes and tools to support employee engagement and business change projects;Equipping managers with the right skills and tools;Writing, editing and producing regular employee communications;Providing an outsourced solution for all your business communication needs.

We help to demystify communication, breaking it down into manageable tasks for future success.

In B2B, content marketing is natural as decisions are made on the expertise criteria. Expertise is therefore a necessary condition in B2B marketing, but however not a sufficient one. Relationships and confidence must also be built.

B2B audience

Typically, the B2B audience is online, in social networks, goes to events. It is on multiple devices and is evaluating alternatives. 88% of B2B buyers use Google to investigate alternatives and 48% discover new brands by doing so.

Also, the B2B audience has a longer attention span than B2C customers, they are thirsty for knowledge and absorb more information. From this point of view, you’re lucky: you can engage with your audience via longer content.

Developing Thought Leadership

Not surprisingly, your website content is your best B2B marketing tool, closely followed by webinars, case studies, white papers and blog articles.

These kinds of content are designed to position yourself as experts in your field by providing relevant information to your audience. A content marketing begins therefore with a convincing and professional website that displays in a sound and clear way the products and services you offer as well as the benefits of working with you.

Your goal: positioning your company as a subject matter expert by producing regular interesting, reputable and up-to-date quality content on your website, easily identifiable by search engines and which will be relayed through social networks.

Relationship marketing

Participating in events will allow to profit from those interventions on the web. Events offer an opportunity for true human relationships that will leverage the process initiated by content marketing as confidence – essential to business relationships – is based primarily on personal contact.

A real communication plan

Relationships with your customers are built over time. Also, it is essential to develop a content and relationship strategy and plan in advance… a real communication plan is needed, away from a drop-by-drop dissemination.

Client

Nowina Solutions – IT actor with a unique expertise in process dematerialisation (consultancy, product and SaaS)

Client Challenge

Recruit talents

Brief

Develop a different recruitment campaign in a context where all recruitment ads are similar

Approach

Stories add value. Visual storytelling is even stronger. When an image is worth more than a thousand words

Deliverable

A surprising recruitment ad with a clear positioning and a strong visual attracting attention and stimulating interest.

Process

Write Nowina Story and give it an imageA story positioning Nowina clearly as explorers (brand archetype). This strong brand identity allows for an efficient communication and for an immediate connection between Nowina and its audience.

The 12 brand archetypes all successful businesses are built on

Nowina is a Polish term that means breaking new grounds, exploring virgin territory and unknown lands. Nowina talents feel like explorers ready to raise anchor and cast off for new adventures. They are pioneers at the forefront of the digital revolution, bringing dematerialisation in new territories. They invite their customers to embark on a journey with them in search of the indication ‘Hic Sunt Dracones’ for new digital territories to conquer.

The Relevance of ‘Hic Sunt Dracones’ in IT

‘Hic Sunt Dracones’ has a double meaning. Firstly, it indicates unexplored territories in uncharted areas of maps. It also refers, in computer science, to sections of particularly complex parts of the source code of a program so the user or other programmers who would access them are warned. The metaphor of an explorer who passed this limit, must act wisely with care and skilfully before continuing, reflects reality as some programmers prefer to avoid this code, while the more adventurous, or those looking for challenges, prefer to explore and perhaps clarify (document or “map”) these code areas for others. (source: Wikipédia)

The visual

Happy employees are more productive

This is the result of many studies as it appears that employees who feel happy are more efficient and are also better managers. They feel more committed to the company and show lower turnover rates. They are less often absent for illness and their risk of burnout is less important.

Furthermore, this phenomenon is contagious: the mood of leaders and managers has a direct impact on their teams. Thus, employees whose manager feels happy are more likely to feel themselves happy, be healthy and consider they work in a climate conducive to performance. A performance gap measured at about 30%!

It is happiness that fuels success, not the other way round. It is not success that makes happy: it is happiness that leads to more efficiency. And when we become more positive, our brain becomes more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, healthier, resilient and productive.

Reprogramming our brains to become more positive. Contrary to popular belief, we do not have a determined propensity to happiness. But we can deliberately act on our happiness level and reap the benefits of a happier and more positive mind-set to achieve the extraordinary in our work and in our lives.

Do you know the "leap frog"?

It is this phenomenon which sees emerging countries catch up in terms of infrastructure and technologies by skipping a generation of products to provide directly the most modern. For example, China suddenly switched its antique locomotives for the TGV, without purchasing or producing more conventional trains. Or Africa which is massively equipped with cell phones without having known the stage of fixed phones due to the absence of copper wire networks. Or those large cities in full development, concerned about the consequences of the rise of the automobile on their territory in terms of serious congestion and large CO2 emissions, and which are questioning how to avoid or limit this "car" stage by not building, for example, parking around airports to encourage their access by ultrafast public transport into the heart of the nearby city.

Away from small steps, frogs allow for large jumps to leap over the delay and obstacles in order to be at the leading edge and stay a step ahead. This is why Distinct Communication symbol is a frog.