The reason why corporate communications no longer works is not all that different from why traditional marketing communications no longer works.

Whether your internal culture encourages it or not, there is an emerging infrastructure of participation that enables democratization of participation for all employees - with or without your consent or employee snooping techniques.

They enable conversations that are much more powerful than yesteryears water cooler conversations or the inevitable rumor mills. If your corporate communications slogans don’t live up to reality, as is often the case with employee empowerment stories that are not backed by policies or budgets that truly empower people, they will be outed in an instant.

Thankfully for employees, and especially younger ones, there are some large company visionaries, like BT’s CIO JP Rangaswami, who get that and who encourage the proliferation of the platform of participation, which enables employee empowerment, within their corporate walls.