This morning I received a heap of brochures inviting me to attend professional development courses, training seminars and conferences. One in particular stood out for reasons I’d like to share with you.

By way of context; it’s a 2 day programme (workshops on the first, plenary sessions on the second) of social media for internal communicators. As I have a keen interest in internal communications, I studied their offering.

One presentation, from an “international guest speaker,” is so striking I’ll reprint it in its entirety, removing the name of the company to prevent them any (further) embarassment, (all emphasis mine):

[Multi-national company] is rolling out Sharepoint this year. It will provide the organization with an enhanced way of communicating, collaborating and managing content - a dynamic platform on which to evolve and further improve [company’s] way or working. From an internal communications perspective, the Microsoft Office product provides an updated way to engage colleagues, in order to drive winning culture and business performance. This session captures the opportunities, benefits, and realities of implementing and living with Sharepoint.

[Employee name], Internal Communications Director, [company].

Did I read that correctly? The company haven’t actually implemented the technology yet, but they are still fronting someone to sell it’s future virtues.

Whether or not the technology is able to deliver these benefits (and I doubt it very much), shouldn’t the corporate communicator at least be talking about, oh let’s say for a whim, something grounded in evidence?