Employee Communication with the Human Flipbook

First off, this human flipbook idea by Erbert & Gerbert is just plain cool. They made a bunch of t-shirts and then used stop-motion photography to make a little movie. How inventive.

That made me think about company t-shirt giveaways.

Wouldn’t it be cool to use this human flipbook idea for employee communication? You could use it in a large group training session where people could get together and create their movie based on what’s on their shirt. Or, it could be used for a big benefits rollout. How about if you wanted to get everyone to consider enrolling in long-term disability? You could create a movie, and your employees could be one frame in the communication. How about that? I’m going to get a flipbook at the Denver airport and see if I can sketch something out before I land in Philly this afternoon.

Any other ideas?

Sometimes in HR We Need to Learn to Let Go

School Bus Drawing

I don’t know the provenance of this one, but it’s been making the rounds.

Here’s a Pre-School Test for You
Which way is the bus below traveling? To the left or to the right?

Can’t make up your mind?

Look carefully at the picture again.

The answer is after the jump. (Sorry RSS readers…it’s a little game.) Read more

Management Slanguage

Triplesplaying Comcast

Here’s some real creativity from Comcast in what they call Comcast Triple Slanguage. Check out their set of funny cards with very clever definitions. For example:

Quizjacking: Using faster Internet to look up answers to TV quiz shows so you can look smarter than you really are.

You can even submit words yourself.

And the HR link? Wouldn’t it be cool to create deck of cards for your HR initiative? How fun would it be to poke a little fun at pay-for-performance, employee engagement, or self-directed teams? I’m not talking about being mean, I’m talking about making up fun words for certain behaviors. Here’s one: Cramformance Reviews: The last-minute reviews that a manager does the night before the annual review period ends.

Goggle’s Used-Generated Gmail Video

Goggle did a fun promotion asking Gmail users to submit a little snippet of video that passed the Gmail logo from left to right on the camera. They got thousands of submissions and compiled many of them into this clip. (If you can’t see the embedded video, click here.)

It would be so cool to do something like this with employees and HR could take the lead. This video has a real teamwork element to it — the envelope “passes” from one hand to the next. If you’re really into teamwork, maybe you could use it as a communication device, and have people pass something. (Or, to be funny, you could “pass the buck.”) Make it highly visual and get your employees to play along. They’re already posting user-generated video. How about letting them play along at work?

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In Praise of the Black T-Shirt at Work

I read this quote at Innovation Zen in an article called “Wear a suit to work? Not as smart as you think.” and it really resonated with me:

Think about Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg…

Managers and MBAs wear suits. People that want to make money wear suits. Professional athletes that want to look important wear suits.

People that want to change the world do not.

I know a really smart guy who wears a suit to work everyday. And I think he’s got a pretty good shot at changing the world. But I think a lot of people who rock the world are in black t-shirts and flip-flops.

What am I wearing today? Black t-shirt. Black velvet vans. Jeans. Maybe I should go change the world.

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