The Tribe Report 10. The Non-Desk Best Practices Issue | Page 13

BEST PRACTICES

Cascading works great. Except
when it doesn’t.

that a smartphone photo works fine for this recognition
program. “A professional photo is no longer a strong
expectation. They really want something authentic.”

In Tribe’s national employee research, managers tasked
with cascading information to their teams indicated
that they would like more tools and materials to make
communicating easier. Meanwhile, communications
teams often cite the uncertainty of whether managers
are actually delivering the communications or not.

Beyond recognizing employees, which is important in its
own right, this approach also models that desired behavior
for other employees. It makes the values actionable by
demonstrating how those values can be used in their dayto-day jobs. And it helps managers start conversations
with their teams about the values, which is an important
step to making them relevant to employees.

Non-desk employees in the study shared general
acceptance of the cascading method, but had concerns
about consistency of message. Many of them mentioned
the telephone game, where a message is whispered
from one player to another until it becomes hopelessly
garbled. They also told us they’d prefer to hear directly
from corporate on two topics: change management and
the vision and values of the company.
HILTON GARDEN INN
At Hilton Garden Inn, corporate provides hotel managers
with customizable tools to help communicate the brand
values and fill other communications needs for over 600
locations in more than 22 countries.
One way hotel leaders cascade communications to
their non-desk employees is during department huddles,
the Hilton version of pre-shift meetings. “Each month a
huddle touches on one of the brand values, and the hotels
receive an electronic poster featuring a team member
who illustrated that value,” said Lynn Smith, Director of
Culture and Communications.
“We also include an electronic customizable template so
they can recognize a team member who has demonstrated
that value at their own hotel. They upload a photo of the
employee to be recognized, customize the copy and then
print locally,” she said.

CARLE HEALTH SYSTEM
At Carle Health System, the communications team came
up with a clever way to demonstrate that managers
did indeed deliver the message. Like other healthcare
systems, Carle has a highly educated non-desk employee
population that is constantly on the move.
Although they’ve recently launched a new intranet, and
clinicians have computers they take with them to patient
rooms, “They don’t have time to use CLICK (our intranet)
when they’re working,” said Kelly Skinner, Internal
Communications Coordinator.
That meant the communications team had to get creative
when tasked with getting employees up to speed to
prepare for a second ANCC Magnet Recognition Program®
for nursing excellence. “There are five areas in Magnet
accreditation. We needed to make sure our people were
fully educated on how our organization exhibits those five
so we could put our best foot forward,” Skinner said.
The solution was as simple as Duplo® blocks, the oversized
Lego® blocks for toddlers. Five different colors of blocks
represented the five Magnet areas.

“We created a champion for each unit,” Skinner said. “The
champions were expected to do rounds, connecting with
all the people in their department to talk about one of the
Although they previously shipped posters to each property, five educational units each month. After they rounded on
“going electronic is more efficient,” Smith said. She’s found a person, they gave them a block.”
SPRING 2015 | 13