GPI 292 – Include your president’s letter in the payroll envelopes to let everyone know what is going on.

Many employees go weeks and months without ever seeing the guy in charge of your firm. These hardworking employees come to work every day, do a good job, but go home with no idea how the company is doing.

They wonder what the overall mission of the company is, how the bottom line is faring or if the new products they are helping to make are successful or not. Your upper management can help solve that problem. They can hold meetings on a regular basis or they can write a brief summary of how the firm is doing each week or month.

Have someone accumulate these memos or articles into one document. Put these one or two page memos in the payroll envelopes every week. Make this a habit for your firm because the PR you will receive will prove invaluable.

Here are ideas for your weekly newsletter or president’s memo:

• Company events/donations/charities. Company sponsored hunting trips, skeet shooting competitions, walkathons for charity, scholarships, donations.
• Sales/office/employee locations. Provide a map of the U.S., highlighted where all of the company sales are concentrated.
• Happy customers. Talk about great customer compliments or stories provided by happy customers about the company’s great products,
• New locations. Discuss the creation of a new office built and recently opened.
• New product benefits. Talk about and describe the benefits of the company’s new products.
• Answer FAQs. List FAQs about the list of services the company provides to its customers.
• Brag about the promotion of great employees or their particular accomplishments.
• Operating procedures. Discuss a company operating procedure not well known to employees (i.e. return of goods, procedure to follow for product failure in the field, who does what, where and when following an employee accident).
• Plant courtesy. Talk about the proper way we greet and treat visitors, customers, employees’ families or any other group that shows up at the plant.
• New records. Discuss new production or sales records recently recorded and who was responsible for this admired feat.
• New equipment. Discuss the purchase of new machinery, robots, upgrades or plant layout changes.
• Discuss company milestones passed (i.e. first sale outside the country, 1,000,000^th product sold, first product sold in a new color).
• Relate individuals so families are involved. Discuss any of a number of items that employees and their families will find interesting.  Talk about important employees that will interest their family members and friends.
• Alternate views. Alternate the memo writing among managers or departments so a different group or function is featured every week (i.e. views from QC, how things go wrong in receiving, how we greet any new visitor in the lobby within five seconds, new parking guidelines for street parking).
• Address family members. Write the memo so it will be interesting and understood by the employee’s family members.
• Show pictures. Include pictures of new products if possible, best production teams, new record shipping day, a retiree’s last day at work after 25 years, the new QC lab or include a one page advertising sheet that is about to be released for new products.
• Ask for ideas. Do more than just talk to the employees.  Ask questions and for input for cost reductions, methods to cut costs, ways to boost sales or improve products or anything that will get your employees thinking and most importantly, contributing.