Fifth Edition, January 2023:
The fifty-four essays comprising this volume originally appeared in the author's blog between 2008 and 2011. Compiled, organized, and published as a book in 2011, it has continued to sell well and be accepted widely as an invaluable source of insights into employee engagement, communication, and change management.
To sustain its core messages through changing times, the author has updated it frequently, approximately every three years since. This edition is the fifth such update. However, this new version represents the most ambitious revision and update, reflecting especially the profound impact that the pandemic and subsequent shutdowns have had on the business world and people's lives.
At its heart, this collection of essays-while nominally about internal communications and employee engagement-only marginally concerns itself with communications in the sense of a profession. There are no tips on writing effective newsletters, presentations, or blogs. Instead, the book targets a wider audience of leaders, managers, and communicators, getting to the core of what communications and employee engagement are all about: the human side; the struggles and camaraderie of the workplace; the value of relationships; the importance of empathy and listening; the challenge of adapting to constant change.
When the previous edition was released in the early March 2020, the United States was riding high on a strong economy with low unemployment, low mortgage rates, low energy costs, and near-zero inflation. But the world was also in the early days of what became a multi-year economic upheaval, triggered by the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic that caused the deaths of about 6.55 million people worldwide, including more than a million in the U.S. The widespread lockdown in many countries, intended to control the spread of the virus, forced the extended closure of schools, universities, government agencies, and most businesses. Many small businesses were unable to weather the crisis and closed permanently.
At the same time, through the convenience of computers, the Internet, and services like Zoom, many people were able work remotely, usually from home offices. They could sustain their livelihoods while their companies survived. Not so fortunate, however, were those in businesses like restaurants, airlines, hotels, logistics, and manufacturing where physical presence is a job requirement. Many such people lost their livelihoods altogether as their employers closed permanently.
Everyone's personal and professional lives were affected, in some cases shaken. The way we operated in our respective jobs and in our interactions with co-workers, clients, customers, and families changed radically.
As we emerged from the lockdown, we discovered that some old ways of doing business were now outmoded while some of our new practices could be maintained because they represented vast improvements. For instance, the notion that whole departments of people now work from their homes anywhere in the world and do so productively had suddenly become acceptable and highly practicable. For many, gone were the daily hassles of back-and-forth commutes.
New, uniquely twenty-first century challenges confront organizations today, which are addressed in the Fifth Edition in two new essays about remote work, and mixing politics and business, respectively. Other essays have been completely rewritten, though their key points remain the same. (Additionally, two outdated essays originally written in 2009 and appearing in previous editions have been excised.)