Hello all,

Does your company distribute a newsletter and/or magazine to all associates? Is HR involved? Is there a Training & OD component?

We're currently investigating our options with regard to producing a regular newsletter. We're thinking about something either specifically from T & OD that would include positive messages, perhaps a focus on a different piece of our vision each month, tools and resources available for development, etc. We're thinking it would be a short, graphic-heavy eMail or Web piece.

I'd appreciate any advice you might have on this.

THANKS!

Kerry

Kerry Fina
HR Consultant, Training & Organizational Development
Ameritas Life Insurance Corp., A UNIFI Company
Phone: (402) 325-4159
kfina@ameritas.com

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kerry Fina,

It is a tremendous practice on many levels, enhance training efforts, focus on industry/ company topics, interactive so on. Seek to have a significant amount of contributions from your organization as a whole. You can use e-mail and web. Sometimes you have different viewers
Nero

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but this is a pet peeve of mine - when I think "employee newsletter" I literally cringe because in the places I've worked as a trainer, it's been done poorly and ended up reflecting badly on the dept.

By badly I mean that it either ends up looking really amateurish or it gets started and, because it's not a priority, the Web site doesn't get updated for months, it becomes out of date, etc. (In fact, in my current company our Training Web site is still listing the March training schedule).

The last place I worked had a monthly training newsletter full of word puzzles, poor-quality photographs of employees who generally didn't want to be photographed, training tips that were out of date by the time the thing was circulated, and cheesy bios of employees listing favorite movie, food, pet, etc. It made me feel like I was back in high school working on the school paper.

Unless you have the resources to put out a really professional-looking piece of work and know that you'll still have the resources going forward, I'd think twice about how much value it'll add to your organization and how it will promote your training dept.

Liz, Thank you for your feedback. I really appreciate it. It is good to be aware of some pitfalls such as you've described.