员工不坐班，如何保障知情权

    如果您的公司业务依赖众多的外送司机、厨师、服务员、零售促销员、现场技术人员或其他整天四处走动的员工，下面这个发现或许会让您大吃一惊：大多数此类员工都希望您能告诉他们更多信息。

    这项发现来自于一项针对“不坐办公室”员工的最新调查,调查选取的是一些员工规模超过1,000人的美国公司。高达84%的受访者表示，他们没有从公司高层那里获得充足的信息。75%表示，公司在向他们传达一些政策和目标的变动方面做得还不够。差不多相同比例的受访者（74%）表示，公司高层“持续的”信息传递对他们很重要，就算这样的信息传递不是经常进行。

    有两件事可能导致这些员工感觉自己被遗忘在了黑暗里：83%的人不在本公司的电子邮件系统中，虽然超过1/3的人（38%）表示，他们希望能被加入。因此，他们无法通过这种方式获得公司高层发出的备忘录；73%的人表示，他们依靠直接主管来获取相关信息。

    “指望直接主管及时传递最新消息，理论上似乎可行，但实际上行不通，”伊丽莎白•考格斯韦尔•巴斯金称。“首先，主管的沟通能力有好有坏，因此一些重要的信息可能在转述过程中丢失。

    另一个常见的问题是员工听到消息的时间会有早晚。有些员工会比其他人早一些听到消息，只是因为其他人的领导尚未将消息告知下属。”

    巴斯金是亚特兰大传播咨询公司Tribe Inc.的CEO，为家得宝（Home Depot）、可口可乐（Coca-Cola）、塔吉特（Target）、保时捷（Porsche）北美和其他大公司服务。一家传播公司建议改善企业沟通，似乎颇有为己谋利之嫌。或许如此吧。但是，调查结果仍值得我们思考。Tribe启动这个项目的起因是，巴斯金在与企业高管的会面中注意到，“他们经常告诉我，”——只与总部的人进行沟通。巴斯金说，很难接触到那些不在办公室工作的人们。

    “这就造成了一道鸿沟，”她发现。“对于客户而言，服务在前沿的员工是公司的脸面。”你可以通过广告和营销投入数百万打造一个品牌，但几例糟糕的客户体验就足以毁掉它，特别是，如果这些糟糕的客户体验广为传播的话。”

    那么，对于这部分希望能直接从高层听到更多消息的员工来说，应该如何到达呢？鉴于大多数受访者（86%）每天都会在家上网，“你可以利用员工早已使用的一些传播渠道，比如Twitter，”巴斯金指出。“企业内部网站也是非常有效的工具。”这项调查发现，在能够进入企业内部网站的员工中，43%的人表示，这对于他们做好自己的工作有帮助。

    If your business depends on an army of delivery drivers, cooks, and waitpersons, retail sales staffers, field technicians, or other employees who move around all day, here's something that may surprise you: Most of them wish you would talk to them more.

    So says a new survey of "non-desk" workers at U.S. companies with more than 1,000 employees. An 84% majority said they don't get enough information from top management, while 75% said their employers aren't telling them enough about changes in policies and goals. Almost the same number (74%) said "consistent" messages from senior management, although few and far between, are important to them.

    Two clues as to why these workers feel left in the dark: 83% are not on their companies' email systems -- although more than one-third (38%) say they would like to be -- so they're not getting the memo that way; and 73% say they rely instead on their immediate supervisors to keep them informed.

    "Counting on people's immediate bosses to keep them up-to-date sounds fine in theory, but it doesn't work," says Elizabeth Cogswell Baskin. "For one thing, some supervisors are better communicators than others, so important messages can get lost in translation.

    There's also a frequent problem with inconsistency in timing. Some employees get the word about big changes before others do, simply because some bosses haven't told their people yet."

    Baskin is CEO of Atlanta-based communication consulting firm Tribe Inc., which has worked with Home Depot (HD), Coca-Cola (KO), Target (TGT), Porsche of North America, and other big outfits. If it seems self-serving for a communications company to recommend (surprise!) better communication, well, maybe so. Still, the poll results are worth pondering. Tribe embarked on the project because Baskin noticed in meetings with corporate executives that "over and over again, they'd say to me, ''Just work with the people at headquarters. It's too hard to reach the people who are out in the field,'" Baskin says.

    "That creates a huge gap," she observes. "To customers, front-line employees are the face of the company. You can spend millions building a brand through advertising and marketing, but a few bad customer experiences are enough to blow it -- especially if they go viral."

    So how do you reach those legions of workers who want to hear more directly from the top? Since most (86%) of those surveyed spend time online at home, "you can leverage communication channels your employees already use, like Twitter," Baskin notes. "Company intranet sites are also a really effective tool." Among employees with access to an intranet site, the survey found, 43% say it helps them do their jobs better.