For a busy IRO with an executive team constantly on the road or trapped in meetings, the invention of PDAs like the BlackBerry opened up the frontiers of email access. The CEO is in a taxi in Shanghai but needs to see a report straight away? No problem. Of course, having 24/7 global access to emails doesn’t necessarily mean messages will be read.
In fact, as BlackBerry use has spread, it seems more emails are being sent – and if dealing with hundreds of emails a day at your desk is confusing, it’s even more so using a little PDA screen. But rather than letting their internal messages get lost in a jam-packed inbox, many IROs have found ways to tailor communications to suit a BlackBerry reader.
Rodrigo Brumana, senior manager of investor relations and business development at Fairchild Semiconductor, is part of a threestrong IR team split between San Jose, California and the company’s Maine headquarters. He sums up the major problem with accessing email on the move: ‘People often check their BlackBerry but don’t have a chance to read a long email. If they don’t see the important information right away, it can easily get overlooked.’
Last September Brumana and his team decided to make things easier for their executive team by including a summary of three or four bullet points at the beginning of every email, something many IR professionals agree should be standard practice in all internal corporate communication.
Key points from any attachment are also included in the summary. ‘We never assume an attachment will be looked at, either because it’s not possible to download it to a BlackBerry or because it takes too long to do so,’ Brumana explains.
‘We include the attachment for later reference when people are back at their desks, but we always highlight the important content in the bullet points.’
Quick & easy
Jennifer Garrison, director of IR at San Francisco-headquartered Del Monte, agrees that attachments can pose a problem for BlackBerry recipients. Until six months ago, if a peer company reported earnings or held an investor day, she would send a summary to the executive team using an Excel spreadsheet.
She would also email links to folders and presentations on a shared server and compile a monthly PowerPoint report with analysis of competitors. Now, however, she’s overhauled internal communication to make it more BlackBerry-friendly.
‘We discovered that people weren’t opening up the spreadsheets or the links, so we no longer send anything you have to open a link to,’ Garrison explains. ‘People read these types of nonemergency, nice-to-know emails on their commute or when they have a moment between meetings. The format needs to be quick and easy to digest.’
Garrison uses bullet points, concise text and color-coding to ensure her messages pack a punch but take up as little room as possible. ‘If people want extra information, they can call us to request it,’ she points out. ‘This also saves time because we don’t have to put together and distribute huge presentations.’
According to Garrison, the new internal communication style has been very popular: ‘We now get lots of Thanks, this is helpful messages and have had requests from people saying they’d like to be added to our distribution list.’
She and her team recently completed a year-end review of their communication practices and recommends every IR team should interview those on its internal distribution list regularly to find out where improvements can be made.
Security considerations
Alex Hughes, director of IR at Dolby Laboratories, describes the culture at the San Francisco-headquartered company as ‘collaborative’, with emails flying back and forth among senior management no matter where they are. But he points out a major problem posed by the ‘on the go’ nature of PDAs: how easy they are to lose.
‘If a BlackBerry is left somewhere, important information could get into the wrong hands,’ Hughes comments. ‘In general, you shouldn’t rely on email to distribute sensitive information. You need a secure link network where executives can access files. It’s best that people pull sensitive information to themselves rather than you pushing it at them.’
Another area that must not be overlooked is basic email etiquette, according to Julie Tracy, vice president and chief communications officer at California-based Kyphon.
‘Sometimes people send emails with no subject line, which can really waste time,’ she notes. ‘As well as including the important points at the start of the message, you must summarize the message in the subject line.’ Letting your executive team know whether an email is urgent or can wait to be read later can also help people with time-management.
Overall, taking BlackBerry readers into account might take a bit more thought and effort, but it can also enhance the quality of messages sent. ‘Thinking about how people will read our emails has forced us to get our ideas into bite-sized pieces,’ says Brumana. ‘Our level of communication has improved because we’re always thinking about how to be concise.’ In today’s fast-moving world, any extra minutes saved could add up to a big difference.
