Warning: This C.R.A.P. could be infectious

Cutting through the employee profile to find more C.R.A.P.

Here at C.R.A.P. (Corporate Rhetoric Awards Program) Central, we often have spirited, drunken debates about employee communications. That’s quite a feat, since I am the only person at C.R.A.P. Central. And if you think having a drunken debate with yourself is easy, try it sometime.

Last Sunday, for example, I was drinking mimosas and arguing about whether or not employee editors should ever profile employees.

I know what you’re thinking. Of course we should profile employees, right? Next to communicating the business strategies of the organization, profiling employees may be the most important job of the employee editor, right?

And I conceded that point to myself. But the reason I kept arguing is that, although the idea of profiling employees is good, the end result usually is bad. In fact, 95 percent of the employee profiles I see are pure C.R.A.P.

So why not kill them all? And if we have to throw out a couple of healthy babies with the fetid, C.R.A.P.ped-in bathwater, so be it. And on and on, the debate raged, until I passed out.

Of course, the real question is, why do so many employee profiles suck? Well, from my experience, there are two ways of doing these profiles: