Intrigued by the announcement of the Labour Party’s recent poster competition I went to their website to find the brief. There were two options: one was to explain how Labour would protect front line services through the recovery; the second was to explain why Mr Cameron wasn’t up to the job of PM. I’m not a big fan of negative campaigning, so I gave some thought to the first brief and popped in an entry. Returning to the site a couple of days later to look at the front runners I was struck by two things: firstly how witty they were (much wittier than my contribution) and secondly that they were all at Cameron’s expense. There was not a single poster that set out what Labour was going to do for the people of Britain if they were to get re-elected. The subsequent hoo-ha about the winning Gene Hunt poster has been well covered in the press. But what, I wonder does the episode teach us about our political parties? That their campaign teams are staffed by fourth formers; too in love with their own jokes? Or maybe that in the rush to be clever and witty even the best communicators can lose sight of their audience and the question we all ask when faced with a big decision: what’s in it for me?

There’s lots of chatter on the wires about companies needing to ‘re-build employee trust’ and ‘plan for recovery’. Is this the next ‘big thing’?
I’ve always thought that the relationship a company has with its employees is a long term affair. If it’s a healthy relationship it will survive the bad times; if it’s unhealthy then it won’t be fixed by the corporate equivalent of an ill-chosen present and a trip to the Harvester.
We know that some people have been accepting pay cuts, pay freezes, shorter hours or career breaks to help their organisation survive the credit crunch. Obviously there’s a selfish motivation here, but it still sounds as if these employees are genuinely engaged in the success of their business. Maybe these dark times have led to a spot of straight talking.
I’ve always been a great believer in honesty. Any company can hail the success of their new product on the front of their magazine or intranet; but if the call centre is swamped with complaints then the people will know the truth long before anyone plucks up the courage to tell the CEO. Meanwhile the reputation of the company rag is in tatters.
I’m a big fan of ‘employee engagement’, but not the thin gruel that is often doled out in its name. It has to be a genuine attempt to improve the whole working experience and ensure that people really can make a difference in their roles. In my book, companies that really want to engage their people should be asking themselves tough questions about their values, culture, processes and job-roles, not just setting up a wiki and rolling out some communications. Workers are savvy, so don’t treat them like fools.

Welcome to the Wagnall Associates blog, where we’ll be posting our thoughts and ideas on the world of communications. What can you expect? We’ll be talking about the things we like (and the things that drive us crazy); articles we’ve read that have made us think; places we’ve been and the interesting people we’ve met. We’ll aim to be honest, incisive, maybe controversial, hopefully worth the read. That’s quite a tall order, but that’s what we’re like at Wagnall Associates: hard working, straight-talking and lots of fun.