Join Us in Co-Sponsoring Research on Social Media, Safety, and Lean

We are preparing to launch three research projects that may interest you, and we're enrolling sponsors for them. All three projects will produce real-world solutions for real-world problems. However, only those companies that co-sponsor the projects will benefit from them. We invite you to join a consortium of co-sponsors for one or more of these endeavors.

Each project will dig into an issue that companies like yours already face. Because each co-sponsor will help design and customize the research, each project will reflect every co-sponsor’s own concerns and interests. Each will result in relevant findings and actionable recommendations. Each will provide external benchmarks for comparison, evaluation, and benefit.

Every co-sponsor will be interviewed for specific concerns and interests relevant to the research, so that each project addresses every co-sponsor’s particular needs. In addition, co-sponsors will have exclusive access to the reports for one full year. Each report will have a written executive summary and PowerPoint slides for presentation of findings. At the conclusion of each project, we will host a webinar for co-sponsors that presents the findings and responds to questions.

The three research projects are:

1. Blogging and social-media policies and practices. Companies are walking a tightrope on social media. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, and LinkedIn pose issues of control and empowerment, generational divide, and responsibility and accountability. This research project will collate and compare policies and standards adopted by corporations, government agencies, and non-profit organizations on the use of social media by their employees. It will sort through competing approaches and determine what priorities are most important and necessary. We’ll also look at what companies are doing proactively with social media in terms of marketing, employee engagement, and reputation management. Our initial research shows a wide variety of approaches and practices, in terms of both substance and tone. Our intent is to establish a benchmark of policies that each sponsor can use for evaluation and improvement.

2. Communication for engagement on workplace safety. Workplace safety is a never-ending challenge for many companies, especially in the process manufacturing, transportation, and resource-recovery sectors (e.g., energy, fishing, timber). This research will look at policies and standards for the communication of safety goals and practices. It will compare and contrast differing approaches. To the extent possible, it will also cautiously connect communication of safety goals and practices with relative performance. Our experience in this arena has taught us the real difficulty of ensuring alignment, even among front-line supervisors, when it comes to workplace safety. This report will identify successful practices and enable sponsoring companies to compare their own policies and procedures and to manage the communication of workplace safety more effectively.

3. Communication for engagement on lean management. Lean management, the gold standard of production, is a well-organized drive to identify and eliminate any source of waste. Pioneered by Toyota, it has made a significant difference in many operating environments. How well is it supported by resources and processes of professional communication, and how lean are those resources and processes? What opportunities are there for lean approaches to non-manufacturing and staff functions? Here, too, we will look for trailblazing companies and identify what and how they are communicating the principles of lean to and with employees.

We will enroll co-sponsors on a first-come, first-serve basis. The first five co-sponsors to enroll in each consortium will receive favorable pricing. We hope to finalize these consortia by October 16, 2009 to ensure the timely completion of these projects.

If one or more of these projects is of interest to you, please call us directly at +1-847-247-2241 for further information, including fees and scheduling, and for registration. Or write to us at info@arceil.com, and we can arrange a convenient time to talk by telephone. We look forward to working with you.