Job Sharing: Will it Ever Arrive?

Two people working as one

Amid layoffs, so-called quiet quitting, and talk of renewed personal priorities, why isn’t the concept of job sharing getting more buzz? Job sharing is an arrangement where two or more people collaborate on what would normally be one role, where each one works less than full time. Sounds great to me! A job share, of […]

“Thanks for having me!”

I am a regular guest on podcasts, webinars and blogs. Below is a selection. If you’d like me to contribute to any of your channels, please get in touch (contact below).

Communicating COVID-19 do’s and don’ts: what we can learn (and unlearn) from H&S

As more people return to the workplace, internal communicators will no doubt be working to inform and remind people of safe and hygienic work practices. I hope we do this without repeating many of the mistakes from most communications around health and safety (H&S). If you work in employee communications, you’ve probably had to work […]

“Build it and they will come”

A hopeful metaphor for traditional corporate content I still occasionally hear someone say, “Build it and they will come.” Wikipedia says it’s a misquote from the 1989 movie Field of Dreams. It says the actual words are from a voice in the head of hero Ray Kinsella, which told him several times, “If you build […]

Webinar: The Need for Employee-Focused Communication

Join me and the panel in this free webinar organized by Content Wrangler (recorded October 4, 2018). We discussed the challenges of reaching employees in global settings and some of the steps you can take to reach them more effectively. Scott Abel of The Content Wrangler moderated the discussion, including data management expert Aaron Baldwin, […]

LocWorld Warsaw 2018

I had a great experience at my second LocWorld. I had the privilege of presenting on the pitfalls of communicating with global employees and why Marketing should care about it. (photo: Lazienki Park, Warsaw, by R. Walsh)

Can intranets speak what users want?

It’s still relatively rare to find websites where users can choose the language, and those that offer it tend to be from large, global, commercial organizations. Yet even for the few that offer this option still artificially reduce the world. In the US, you might see English and Spanish as options, despite a consumer base […]

Lose the lorem ipsum ASAP

Pay attention to the what of brand identity, not just the how. When companies create a brand identity, they typically go through months of iterations, working with a creative agency to fuss with all the details of logos, colors, fonts, and layouts. The supporting written content is normally produced last, and that’s when they bring […]

Breathing and communicating: Pros do it better

If I told a group of corporate attorneys that the wording in their NDA needed more storytelling, or a team in finance that their announcement of the quarter’s financial results had third-act problems, I’d be laughed out of the room. That’s because they have advanced degrees and we have faith in their expertise. Their work […]

Don’t leave your writers hanging

One type of difficult client is the one who can never be pinned down on what they want to say. In the same category is the subject matter expert who claims to be so busy that there’s no time to brief the writer. Instead, they send you two endless PowerPoint presentations that are so text […]