Are your job descriptions up-to-date?

The way work gets done is changing fast. Work is ever more interdependent and knowledge-intensive, and employees face continuous change and an ever wider choice of technologies. As my colleague Raf wrote recently, these shifts are creating IT talent gaps and role changes. To stay ahead of the curve, CIOs should move beyond the use of job descriptions as one-time hiring tools. As IT roles change, expand, and grow more complex, it is vital to have a workforce plan and to keep job descriptions up-to-date.

What Is Changing?
Most of the CIOs we speak with believe that IT in the next four to five years will look radically different from today, and so will the average IT employee. Trends such as globalization, externalization, and consumerization have created four new realities in the workplace. Greater interdependence, greater knowledge intensity, frequent organizational changes, and more technology choice compel IT employees to expand their skill set and look beyond their traditional roles. These changes impact 97% of IT roles, and 78% of IT employees will witness multiple changes in their skills needs, responsibilities, and objectives. Despite the severity of these changes, most IT organizations are unprepared.

Well-Written Job Descriptions Prepare Organizations to Address Talent Needs
Most organizations see job descriptions as essential during the recruitment process, but fail to see how effectively designed employee job descriptions are great communication tools that can be used to manage talent after the hiring process. Given that IT roles are changing fast, job descriptions help in communicating role expectations and identifying training and development needs of the current employees. Among other things, effectively written job descriptions help to assess role maturity as it is much harder to write a job description for an immature role.

Our sister program, CEB Recruiting Leadership Council, has extensive research on how to create effective job descriptions:

1. Determine Job Classifications: The classification should be based on the work requirements of a position, and not on the qualities or skills of the current occupants or potential applicants. Seniority, role trajectory, and sourcing difficulty can also be used as classifying parameters.

2. Identify the Right Content for Job Descriptions: Most descriptions have separate sections on responsibilities, skills, and competencies associated with the job. However, the most effective job descriptions include essential information on the work environment, performance expectations, and role trajectory.

3. Continue to Update and Manage Job Descriptions: As roles evolve and decline in importance over a period of time, organizations should have a formal schedule for reviewing and updating all IT job descriptions.

4. Assign Ownership for Job Description Creation: The three steps above should be owned by IT, not HR. While HR may steward the process, only the hiring manager fully understands the key requirements for any given profile, and should be actively involved in designing job descriptions and keeping them up-to-date.

Taken together, these approaches help organizations use job descriptions to communicate role requirements and identify development opportunities for existing IT staff.

Our IT Job Descriptions Library provides job descriptions complied from the world’s most progressive organizations. If you are working to improve your job descriptions, visit the job descriptions library to download samples. If you have examples that you’d like to share, let us know, and we’d be happy to include them.

While his talk focused primarily on videos that HR would prefer we watch outside of work, the trends he explores are very much relevant to the videos that communicators are being asked to create and/or publish more and more frequently.  In particular, he notes that the majority of videos that spread like wildfire among a given audience possess at least one of three traits:

1) Unexpectedness

Here’s a question for you: Why have over six million people viewed a video on YouTube of a man proving how unsafe the bike lanes can be in New York City by riding his bike in the aforementioned bike lanes?

And a follow-up, “pouring salt-in-the-wounds” type question: Why are you having trouble getting more than just six of your manufacturing managers to watch that informative video you posted on your intranet about very serious safety protocols?

After watching the bike lane video, you actually might be surprised that only six million people have viewed it.  The unexpected twist in the video is not only funny, but it gets an important message across (riding in bike lanes in New York City can be very dangerous) and compels the viewer to share it with others.

Compare that with your safety protocols video, and you might actually be surprised that six of your managers have watched it.  While the average safety protocols video effectively informs the audience (e.g., “don’t reach into the hydraulic shearing machine, even if it is turned off”), most lack a sense of unexpectedness that causes the message to truly stick and ultimately cause stakeholders to act differently.

• Advice from CEB Communications:  Captivate your audience and drive behavior change by adding a dash of originality, humor, and unexpectedness to your videos.

2) Tastemakers

Another question to ponder: Why have over 37 million people viewed a video on YouTube of a man witnessing a rare double rainbow?

And another follow-up question: Why can’t you get over 37 of your college recruits to view the video you posted on your website about “why our company is a great place to work“?

Perhaps surprisingly, the double rainbow video did not immediately go viral because it is completely outrageous and funny.  I’m sure that helped (and might make your recruiting video more intriguing), but it wasn’t until Jimmy Kimmel posted a link to the video on Twitter six months after it was first published before anyone really noticed it.  In this situation, Jimmy Kimmel was, as described by Kevin, the Tastemaker – the person who introduced a whole new audience to something new and interesting.

In the corporate world, there are a lot of potential Tastemakers.  We typically call them Ambassadors or Advocates, and they are critical to the success of any message.  Communicators who activate and maintain the support of these Tastemakers with their videos are much more likely to see their messages being spread throughout their target audience.

• Advice from CEB Communications:  Generate support for your videos by tapping into stakeholders’ emotional drivers to feel smart, look cool, belong, and help others.

3) Communities of Participation

One last question for you: Why have nearly 100 million people viewed a video on Youtube of an animated Pop-Tart-shaped cartoon cat flying through space with a Japanese pop song playing in the background?

And a final follow-up question: Why haven’t more than 100 of your stakeholders viewed the video you posted on your online newsroom of your CEO speaking at a recent thought leadership conference?

As ridiculous, and incredibly annoying, as this flying cat video is, it was the 5th most watched YouTube video in 2011.  Unlike the bike lane and double rainbow videos above, there is nothing overly humorous or unexpected about this video.  However, it is so creative and simple that it begs for audience participation – as Kevin noted, “an entire remix community sprouted up that brought it from being just a stupid joke to something that we can all be a part of.  Because we don’t just enjoy now; we participate.”

Now think about your CEO video – does it truly encourage your stakeholders to participate in the message being communicated or even enable them to share that message with others?  If not, maybe the answer isn’t asking your CEO to do something crazy at his/her next public speaking engagement.  Rather, it might be something much simpler (and less desperate) like making the video available on a number of social channels that your stakeholders frequent or breaking the video down into bite-sized bits for easier consumption.

• Advice from CEB Communications:  Enable communities of participation to form around your video by communicating in a more engaging manner and making the content easier to share.

What has been your experience with corporate videos? What works? How are you using YouTube as a communication channel? Would love to hear your ideas!

 Related Resources:

• How to Build a Leading Online Newsroom
• Resetting Employee-Strategy Alignment
• Channel Selection Tool

Related Blogs:

• 3 Innovative Examples of Multimedia Use in PR and External Communications
• And The Oscar for “Best Internal Comms Video” Goes To…
• Writing News Releases that Stakeholders Will Actually Read

It’ summertime again and I’m sure you’re looking forward to some relaxing reading by the beach (or on the couch for those of you taking a

So, in the spirit of furthering yourself on a professional level this summer, we have culled together a few suggestions—resources that you shouldn’t miss:

1. Manage multi-channel contacts

What it is: This resource center offers guidance on how you can develop a multichannel strategy that aligns with customer expectations and preferences, helping you realize the benefits of multiple contact channels: lowered costs and an improved customer experience. Our research suggests that too much channel choice can actually overwhelm customers; instead, you should nudge customers to the best-fit channel for their needs.

Why your peers use it:

• To guide customers to the right contact channel
• To design non-phone contact channels (such as web chat, e-mail, customer communities, social media, and IVR)

2. Build sustainable knowledge management

What it is: This portal will help you take stock of your current knowledge capabilities and offer strategies for improving knowledge management in your organization. Our research suggests that you should focus efforts on processes and people—not technology—to ensure scalable, effective knowledge management.

Why your peers use it:

• To improve knowledge management processes to make knowledge more easily accessible to end-users
• To  encourage active employee contribution to the “knowledge community” and facilitate cross-functional collaboration

3. Service organization structure and design

What it is:  This research provides guidance on creating a collaborative organization structure in an increasingly complex service environment—think global operations, increasing customer preferences for self-service, and the proliferation of multiple contact channels.

Why your peers use it:

• To evaluate organizational design options
• To improve effectiveness of their organization structure
• To benchmark their organizational structure

CEB Customer Contact readers, what other resources would you suggest?

And I think it really has all to do with the old real estate adage: location, location, location.  And for these companies, that means going where their customers do (so to speak).  The same holds true (much less literally, thank goodness) for insights communication: leading insights functions are learning how to take advantage of executive preferences and use their company’s existing information flow to spread insights.

And we have seen Market Insights functions tap into existing information flow in a few different ways:

• Collaborating with Communications departments to increase the reach and resonance of messaging
• Co-opting business partners to help distribute insight messaging
• Increasing the “virality” of messages by making them more emotionally provocative

CEB Market Insights members, learn more about embedding existing information flow in your organization.  And let us know in the comments below how you are thinking about the location of communication to help get your points across.

When working with our members, we seek to broaden how our members can utilize and benefit from BPM by considering how BPM can help them to understand, predict and inflect end-to-end process performance toward predetermined business outcomes. We encourage firms to assess their maturity in managing overall processes and target areas of low maturity for improvement.

To that end, the Council has developed a diagnostic and benchmarking tool to help members evaluate their BPM maturity and compare to their industry peers. Here are three principal components to a successful BPM strategy:

Part 1: Understand Process Inputs

• Understand standard process steps
• Understand the steps, actors, technology, inputs and outputs
• Predict the impact of changes on steps, actors, technology and outputs

Part 2: Measure Process Outcomes

• Measure process workflow performance
• Measure process financial performance
• Predict the impact of changes on process workflow and financial performance

Part 3: Own Process Performance

• Define protocols for process documentation and compliance
• Define protocols for process monitoring and analysis
• Define protocols, accountability and resources for process changes

How do you compare to peers? Reach out to us at OCResearch@executiveboard.com to participate in our Business Process Maturity Diagnostic.

To help you and me both stay hip and consider the ways in which we can connect with our younger audiences, I’m sharing a short primer on these three social media tools. In short, it’s all about the visuals. Please share how your company is thinking about taking advantage of these tools or if you’ve noticed other apps gaining popularity with your audiences!

1. Vine

Vine, developed by Twitter, and launched just this year, is an app that enables its users to create 6-second video clips. Its users right now are primarily teenagers and Vine video clips are primarily of the skateboarding, cheering, and goofballing type. Eager to connect with teens who are fleeing the social media sites that you and I use, companies, and consumer brands in particular, are starting to experiment with teen engagement through Vine. For example, General Electric, Tropicana, Nintendo, and Gap have taken advantage of Vine to engage followers with creative content, celebrate key milestones, and build excitement for product launches.

2. Snapchat

You may have heard of this one, possibly on a list of “apps to be careful of” distributed by your child’s PTA! This app allows users to send photos and videos to their friends. Doesn’t sound all that special, right? What makes Snapchat unique is that users set a time limit for how long—up to 10 seconds— they want the image to be on their friend’s device before it disappears from the device and Snapchat’s servers. Fewer corporate use cases of Snapchat exist today. One of the first ones, however, came from a yogurt store in New York City as a way to drive potential customers to their stores.

3. Keek

Keek is similar to Vine, but allows users to share 36 seconds of video content. Popularized by the Kardashian family, Keek is all about building an individual’s reputation. For example, Keek encourages you to build Kred by rating fellow Keekers (?!) for being funny, talented, and entertaining. A Top 100 List, currently saturated by the Kardashian clan, inspires its users to aim for social media glory in their video commentaries.

What Does All of This Mean for Corporate Communications?

Vine, Snapchat, and Keek are just the latest social media apps to gain seemingly overnight popularity. So what does this mean for corporate communicators of the world? Three immediate implications come to mind.

First, the rise of these new tools is a good reminder of just how fluid the social and digital communications space is. Instead of over-prioritizing the development of specific channel experts on lean corporate communications teams, be sure the team has the base skills to take advantage of any of these emerging platforms. These skills include the ability to create short, engaging content in multiple formats (video and photo) and the ability to understand key audience motivators and preferences.

Second, corporate uses of these tools are emerging, so we are essentially in an experimentation phase. As with all experimentation, be sure you start your efforts with some hypotheses you’d like to test and align your measurement efforts accordingly. This is all about learning!

Finally, each of these new tools creates an exciting opportunity for communicators to deepen stakeholder engagement and drive active support for their organizations. Remember, today it’s all about getting your content to flow through existing stakeholder networks. If the under-21 set is one of your key audiences for, say, attracting talent, garnering support for construction in new locations, or garnering support for sustainability efforts, then these tools could provide a new way to get your company’s voice heard. If this all seems far-fetched to you, the best—and safest—place to start is with listening!

We want to hear from you!

Share with the 10,000+ communicators in the CEB Communications network who read this blog weekly! Please share how your company is thinking about taking advantage of these tools or if you’ve noticed others gaining popularity with your audiences!

CEB Communications Related Resources

• Learn more about Millennials, Gen Xers, and Boomers Communication Preferences with Iconoculture Stakeholder Insights
• Check out the latest trends in Europe, China, Latin America, and the Middle East, too!
• Social Media Topic Center

CEB Communications Related Blog Posts

• Social Media: Where’s the Plan?
• 3 Surprising Trends about Social Media in Brazil
• A Marketer’s Guide to Vine

Compare your BPM technology spend and adoption curve to our recent Adoption and Investment FSI Technology report. Our proprietary findings indicate that: 

• 42% of wealth firms expect spending on BPM technology to increase in the next 2 years.
• 65% of respondents indicate attribute BPM as a high value technology.
• Less than 20% of executives rate BPM as a risk of catastrophic failure or as forcing a high dependence on specialized resources to support the technology.

Later in 2013, CEB TowerGroup Wealth Management will conduct an in-depth analysis of BPM technology providers and how the technology supports the unique requirements of the wealth management industry.  If your bank, brokerage, or trust company has questions or feedback on specific BPM providers or on our assessment methodology, please contact us.

But getting customers to accept and use videoconferencing remains a challenge—some simply aren’t comfortable with the technology, while others find it hard to trust unfamiliar, remote advisors.

CEB recently profiled a North American firm with the pseudonym Winphrey Wealth Management, which piloted branch videoconferencing after finding that advisers struggled to engage with all clients in-person on a regular basis. After testing the concept in key branches, the firm found that nearly 40% of test participants said the experience was better than an in-person meeting.

Here are three lessons from Winphrey’s experiment with using videoconferencing in the branch:

• Understand how videoconferencing impacts customer experience. See how the factors that go into a remote advisory conversation—from the user interface to the room’s layout—can potentially affect the client experience.
• Ensure a seamless handoff. Learn about the standard process Winphrey’s branch staff follows to streamline the initial client-advisor introduction and put customers at ease with speaking via videoconferencing.
• Coordinate Specialists for Scalable Guidance Delivery. Discover how Winphrey uses desktop video-chat functionality to overcome geographic obstacles and bring together multiple specialists for client conversations.

Click here to read the full case study.

• Forty percent of business owners exhibit positive overall feelings about personal finances.
• Canadian business owners are slightly more positive than their American peers.
• Older business owners have moved from a net positive sentiment in 2012 to net negative sentiment in 2013.

Benchmark your client research to our survey findings to develop greater insight into this important client base for improved wealth management relationships in North America. The technology implications for firms range from how financial planning and onboarding turn business owner prospects into clients, and how online portals, mobile tools, and reporting automation drive loyalty to wealth firms and their advisors.

Specifically, CEB Customer Contact research has found that coaching is a better driver of staff performance than training—and that when it comes to developing staff skills, it’s better to focus on coaching and to deemphasize training. There are a few key reasons to keep training short and limit the volume of information that staff learn:

1.       It’s hard to retain information taught in training

If employees don’t use information soon after they learn it in training, they are likely to forget it. In fact, our research has found that 87% of training is forgotten in a matter of weeks.

 2.       Training doesn’t lead to skill mastery

The ideas and concepts introduced in training need to be continually reinforced before staff are able to comfortably exercise these new skills.

 3.       Training can create a false sense of understanding

When staff don’t remember exactly what they learned in training, they may retain a sense of knowledge and still think they know what to do for customers.

Despite all of those downfalls, training does have an important role in developing staff and is valuable when it’s used in the right time and place. In particular, training is most effective during new hire onboarding and to help staff learn new product knowledge.

Once training is finished, coaching is vital to help reps use new skills and develop good habits. Effective coaching is heavily integrated into reps’ workflows and takes advantage of everyday occurrences to find opportunities for skill development.

CEB Customer Contact has developed coaching resources to help you teach your supervisors the skills they need to provide targeted, effective coaching. Our supervisor coaching modules include training materials, exercises, and tools designed to help teach supervisors how to use an integrated coaching approach.

We’re always interested in the innovative things are members are doing; how have you been thinking about training at your organization? Let us know in the comment section below!

Related Resources:  

• Training
• How to Develop Staff Skills
• Identify the Right Opportunities for Training
• Accelerate Training by Focusing on the Most Common Customer Inquiries
• Teaching Supervisors Best-in-Class Coaching