thinkBox summer 2009

PROVOKING THOUGHT GENERATING DISCUSSION ENGAGING EMPLOYEES DELIVERING RESULTS

KARIAN ANDBOX

Also in this edition of thinkBox…\ Keeping a finger on the pulse p20 Measuring the impact of engagement

\ The power of employee involvement p26 How involvement can improve performance

\ Employer brand in action p32 Tangible action to help employees live the brand

In the eye of the stormFind out on page 6 different ways to engage employees when organisations are going through change.

Leading fromthe frontAt times of crisis, employees want to be led. Turn to page 14, to read why the role of visible, open leadership is more important than ever before.

summer 2009

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2620In the eye of the stormThe times they are a-changing. Not engaging employees in organisational changes is a risky business. Is it possible to implement tough changes without employees onside?

In the newsNews and updates on the world of employee engagement.

Leading from the frontAt times of crisis, employees want to be led. The role of visible, open leadership is more important than ever before.

The power of involvementInvolving employees at times of change is critical to gaining their active support. How is this done in practice?

Keeping a finger on the pulseTracking what employees are saying and doing on your business priorities is a must do. See how best-practice pulsecheck® research can make a difference.

thinkBoxwhat’s inside

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Winning the Blu-tack testWhen employees are bombarded with messages every day, employers need their people to see the wood for the trees. Creative communications make a difference.

What’s inside

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Book reviewsWhy Tony Soprano can be your mentor.

Employer brand in actionThe power of brands can help people believe in what they do, day in, day out. But how can the intangible be made tangible for employees?

In the current economic turbulence, organisations are facing the tough challenge of keeping their people motivated. It is not easy when costs are being cut, jobs taken out and the fear of losing one’s job is as great as the reality.With interest rates at record lows, major fiscal stimulus and oil prices lower than they have been for a number of years, the recession is likely to bottom out over the coming 12 months. However, as with past economic slumps, there is a time lag before consumers have the confidence to re-open their wallets and start spending again. There is an even longer time lag before organisations have the confidence to start growing again and unemployment begins to drop.

Riding out the storm over the coming year or two will require organisations to run a tight ship and keep their people focused on delivering solid performance. Mobilising those employees into action will be based on individuals having a clear understanding of their role and being motivated enough to perform. Furthermore, for high-performing people to stay on board, they need to believe that their employer has a future; and one they believe in.

An organisation’s leaders, supported by communications and HR professionals, are in the eye of that storm. They need to reassure and inspire. That means telling a good story, involving their people, and keeping their finger on their employees’ pulse.

This edition of thinkBox magazine is focused on precisely these issues – with articles from experts in the field and case studies from blue-chips and from across government.

I hope you find this edition both interesting and useful.

Ghassan KarianFounder, Karian and Box

[email protected]

A word from the editorGhassan Karian

thinkBox is a publication from Karian and Box Ltd, 158 West Offices, Station Rise, York YO1 6GA. Tel: +44 (0)1904 654 454 www.karianandbox.com

© All thinkBox content is the exclusive copyright of Karian and Box Ltd

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Analysis of research across 200 organisations shows that moving a workforce of 10,000 employees from low to high engagement can have a

£21 million impact on the bottom line.

Only

10%-20% of the workforce in any country, company or sector is highly engaged. 12% of UK public sector workers are highly engaged; 22% are disengaged.

Engaged employees in the UK take an average of 2.69 sick days per year; the disengaged take 6.19. Also, engaged employees can generate 43% more revenue than disengaged ones.

70% of engaged employees indicate they have a good understanding of how to meet customer needs, while only 17% of non-engaged employees say the same.

The average consumer receives approximately 3,000 ‘messages’ a day, in the form of TV, online and newspaper adverts, posters, and lots more. Assuming we give each message an average attention of 3 secs, that means we consume 2.5 hours of messages out of the 16-17 we’re awake.

As would be expected, the effects of the current economic situation are evident in the results. 11% more communicators say that change communications are a key feature of their role than in 2006 and 61% say that their organisation is focusing on reducing costs. And such cost cutting is clearly having an impact on the communications departments themselves, with budget sizes falling across the board coupled with an overall reduction in internal communications team size.

Ironically, it is times of change like the current situation when good communicators are needed most, to help organisations smoothly introduce new measures, gather feedback from employees and keep those employees informed, engaged and involved.

It is also clear that there is still some way to go to get this message through to all organisations. Only 40% regularly measure the impact of communications on awareness and understanding

Internal Communications:

The state of the industry today

iC Survey 2006, a groundbreaking survey of communications professionals run by Karian and Box, gave insight into the state of the industry. As time has moved on, so has the profession. iC Survey 2008, conducted in partnership with HR magazine and published late last year, is here to tell us how.

Facts

in the newsthinkBox

of business priorities and just half review business decisions in light of employee feedback.

It is also important for leaders to engage with their employees to avoid them becoming disillusioned with an organisation in tough times. It is worrying, then, that the majority (58%) of respondents say that their leadership do not participate in involving face-to-face communications. In order to improve this, greater cooperation between leaders and communicators is necessary.

Report author Ghassan Karian says, “The overall picture is that the level of interaction and understanding between communicators and leadership may not be enough to ensure that they are both on the same page when it comes to aligning business priorities with the right messages at times of such fundamental change and organisational trauma.”

5In the news

New guidance for employers, recently published by Acas, the arbitration and conciliation service, and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development urge organisations to be more inventive to preserve jobs and morale in the economic downturn.

Avoiding redundancies and finding ways to “maintain employee engagement, well-being and productivity as rising work intensity threatens to increase stress and conflict” ought to be top priorities, according to the report.

The guidelines warn against making people redundant to cut costs now, only to re-hire when demand grows again. Redundancies “can have a serious negative impact on the morale and performance” of remaining staff and the inevitable re-hiring process can be slow and costly in the face of a strengthening market.

John Taylor, Chief Executive of Acas, said, “Many organisations that were quick to lay off people in the last recession struggled to meet renewed business demand when the economy picked up. The light at the end of the

tunnel may seem a long way off but those employers that treat people well now will benefit from a more committed workforce.”

Maintaining an engaged workforce is crucial and organisations should “manage expectations and set a clear sense of direction” by keeping employees informed, even if there is little concrete news, according to the guidelines. They should also consider “creative, non-financial ways of motivating employees, such as recognition schemes, team-building days and employee awards”.

In a recent article, British Airways director Baroness Kingsmill (right) called on business leaders to emulate the honesty of President Obama’s approach to leadership.

From his speech setting out his goals and the difficulty of America’s task at home and abroad, to his admission that two of his proposed cabinet appointments were errors of judgement, honesty has always been Obama’s top priority.

It is this attitude that Kingsmill thinks is crucial for success and should be adopted by those in analogous positions in businesses.

‘‘ ‘‘When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue

another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first.Ralph Waldo Emerson

Top director calls for leaders to set the tone

Organisations encouraged to be inventive to preserve morale

She is adamant that creating this healthy culture cannot be achieved with carefully positioned company reports and staged communications, if these do not reflect the reality felt by employees. And even when they do, it is still up to leaders to make visible personal gestures to convey the right messages about the sort of company they want to lead.

She gives the example of one CEO who, after becoming a father, sent round an email saying he was leaving at 5pm to be home for the baby’s bath time so would be unavailable for evening meetings, and writes, “Nothing could have signalled more clearly the company’s approach to work/life balance than this demonstration of his personal values.”

She writes, “If CEOs, with their management teams, could be persuaded to set out publicly and honestly their objectives, values and goals, and how they propose to achieve these, we would have a yardstick against which to measure their success. It might also be used to help establish the style and culture of the company, which together are often as important an indicator of the health of an organisation as its financial performance.”

A guide to crisis communications thinkBox6

Look at Monster.com or a job page in any newspaper and count how many times you read the word CHANGE. Now take a look at Internal Communications vacancies; it’s a safe bet the word count has gone up twofold.Change is a fact of life in organisations these days, even more so recently with the current, and heavily publicised, economic downturn. As such, organisations need to be on the front foot when it comes to communicating change to those who have the power to make or break an organisation: the employees.

We take a look at what organisations need to do to weather the storm by keeping employees with them.

In the eye of the storm

7In the eye of the storm

The last 12 months have seen the scale and pace of change escalate to an unprecedented degree for many British and multinational organisations. The current global financial crisis and its impact on the real economy is escalating, exacerbating a trend that had already gathered pace in the preceding few years. The difference is many organisations are now on the defensive, having to take action and batten down the hatches.

So when change is afoot what should we be communicating and to whom? How can we plan for the long-term during what seems to be an eternal state of flux? How can we ensure leaders know what they need to do? And crucially, how do communicators make the transformation from carrier pigeons to influential advisors?

Over the next few pages, we outline the steps organisations caught in the eye of the storm need to take.\

Change comes in different sizes. It can be planned or swift and unplanned (sometimes known as crisis change).

If not managed properly it has the ability to totally de-stabilise an organisation – be it through negative media coverage or negative impact on staff morale, or both. Good communication is the cornerstone of any effective change.

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‘‘People often talk about being scared of change... I’m more afraid of things staying the same. The game is never won by standing in any one place for too long. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Jane is an associate director at Karian and Box. She has worked on major employee strategy, ethics and research programmes for organisations including Rolls-Royce, lastminute.com, BAE Systems and Ladbrokes.

Jane Mitchell [email protected]

thinkBox8 In the eye of the storm

What are we talking about here? The word change often makes people think of upheaval on an epic scale. In this economic climate, that is always going to be a possibility but size is no indicator of damage when it comes to your reputation, internally or on the outside. So you need to watch out for the small things too.

Many organisations are cost cutting and restructuring themselves. With every merger, there are always redundancies and with discretionary budgets starting to get the chop, employees will be wondering if they are next. This fear and low morale can be difficult for managers to deal with. The pressure is on for communications and HR professionals to manage these communications on top of business-as-usual activities.

The ability of those responsible for engaging an organisation’s backbone – its people – will play a vital part in getting an organisation through the next year or two. However, communications resources are shrinking. The iC Survey 2008 results revealed that communications budgets and team sizes are being cut across all sectors. In the midst of cut-backs, the internal communicator can be seen as a ‘nice-to-have’, and more or less expendable if belts need to be tightened. Ironically, it is times like these that good communicators are more needed than ever in order to:

Minimise disruption across the organisation and maintain levels of productivity.

Keep high-performing employees from leaving during change.

Ensure the organisation’s goals are achieved and changes are introduced smoothly.

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All change please

The Karian and Box iC Survey 2008 results show the impact on the internal communicator’s role, with 11% more respondents saying change activity forms a key part of their job than in 2006. When asked about the biggest issues their organisations face, 61% said reducing costs and 53% said restructuring. These numbers will grow more acute in 2009.

Only 43% of iC Survey 2008 respondents said that change is well managed in their organisation. This may be because they have not previously had the right resources, platform or empowerment from leaders to influence how change is communicated.

Help! What do I do?The steps to success:1 Plan, plan and plan again!2 Get your story straight3 Lead through the change4 Take people with you5 We made it

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In the eye of the storm

As with most things in life, planning is the key to success. If you don’t plan what to pack for your holiday, once there you may find yourself by the pool in your underpants. There are four things you can do, to avoid embarrassment, when planning your change communications.

Become a subject matter expertSome organisational changes will be straightforward. It will be obvious what employees will need to know; it could be something you have communicated before. Other changes, such as financial matters or redundancies, require a thorough knowledge of the subject matter.

Only by having this knowledge will you be able to translate these into appropriate employee messages. It might be that not all the facts are known yet, but because it is crucial to communicate change as soon as possible, tell people what you do know.

Catch change and communicate earlyIt is a common misconception that people are afraid of change per se. In fact, change is just about the only constant thing in our lives. People just do not like bad things to happen to them. That said, if they are well informed about what is going to happen, they tend to deal with it better.

During tough economic times even employees from the most stable companies will be feeling vulnerable. They want to know what is happening to their organisation, and how this will affect them. Monitor what is being said. Regardless of what your organisation is in fact experiencing, if employees think that something is in the air it is important to address these concerns and move quickly. For some, silence will always equal bad news, and they become demotivated.

Keep the organisation togetherThink about your external and internal stakeholders and work out who is going to be on your side; people you could trust to speak out in your defence either publicly or privately. Nurture your relations with these people as there is nothing worse than being in the middle of a crisis with no-one else on your side.

At the same time, work out who your fiercest critics are likely to be and what they are likely to say. Where possible, it is worth meeting with them to try and neutralise any bad feeling. If you don’t think they will change their minds, then meet with them anyway – at least you have made the effort and it might stop some of them from being overly critical. It also shows those who are not hostile but are just worried about the implications of change that you are willing to listen and engage.

Plan for every eventualityThere are of course things you cannot predict in life. The fact is that some changes will be big and some will be everyday dramas that organisations simply have to deal with. If you treat each one as important you could avoid a minor issue spinning out of control.

This requires detailed scenario planning – working out what might happen and what you would say and do in each of the possible circumstances.\

Plan, plan and plan again!

Four ways to effectively plan

1 Become a subject matter expert. Work out your areas of risk. Where are you most vulnerable, and what is most likely to go wrong?

2 Catch change and communicate early. The worst thing that can happen is that someone hears about changes through media speculation or on the employee grapevine.

3 Identify who is with you. Figure out who needs to be in your stakeholder group. Who is onside and who are the wreckers?

4 Plan for every eventuality. Unexpected things happen. It’s a fact of life. Be prepared for different scenarios.


When you have started the planning process you need to work out what the key messages are. It is vital that those who have a stake in the changes being planned are involved in shaping those messages: the decision makers and subject matter experts (board members/steering group), HR, internal communications and PR all have a role to play.

It depends to an extent on the size and type of your organisation, but a one-size-fits-all approach to messaging usually proves ineffective. It is important to segment your employee audiences and define the following for each audience segment:

What the audience segment is currently saying.

Relevant feedback from the last employee engagement survey.

Their reasons for low or high motivation.

What you want them to be saying in the future (6/12/24 months time).

What they need to know now and in the near future.

This will help you to identify which employee groups are at the highest risk of low motivation and disengagement.

Change narrative Having a list of key messages is not enough. A narrative that weaves these messages together will ensure the story is more compelling.

Such a narrative is a one or two page ‘story’ of the change, containing all the agreed key messages: the context for change, challenges for the organisation and its employees, what the outcomes will be, and what action employees need to take. Once ready, this narrative will serve as a touchstone for all communications, ensuring that messages are aligned and pointing in the same direction.

When a change narrative is drafted, those responsible need to conduct a simple sense check:

1 Are all the key messages present and correct?

2 Is it factual?

3 Is it believable?

4 Is it relevant for all employee audiences, and if not, do we expand/streamline it for certain groups?

5 How long will it be relevant for? Will we need to revisit parts of it at a later date?

Testing, testingIt is a good idea to ‘stress test’ your narrative by giving it to a sample of the target audiences to review. You will get valuable feedback on the language used, whether it is positioned properly and whether it answers all questions they are likely to have.

Once you have a watertight narrative, you can create the communications to support what you are saying in more detail, whether they are manager briefing packs, Q&As, or other engagement materials.\

Get your story straight

Before you start your planning or messaging you will need to have your finger on the pulse of the organisation. It is the cornerstone of any change programme. You will need to keep your finger there throughout. You can read more about how to benchmark and track what employees are thinking, saying and doing at times of change on pages 20-25.


Ever heard of the cultural trickle? We often look up to our leaders like children look up to their parents. If they do not believe in something, it is a safe bet we will not either.

There are two levels of leadership engagement that matter in periods of change. The first involves an organisation’s senior leaders – what they say, the direction they set, their visibility, the way they engage people and critically, what they are seen to do. On pages 15-19, ‘Leading from the front’ outlines how senior leaders can better engage their people, with real examples of best practice.

The biggest (and arguably most effective) resource for, initiating change and sustaining performance amongst employees is their team leader. Team leaders are pivotal for the success – or failure – of motivating employees. Such managers know their teams well, know what makes them tick, their interests and subject-matter knowledge. They can often be seen as more trustworthy than lofty business leaders whom people do not know personally. As such, line managers become key ‘opinion leaders’ and should know better than anyone how to motivate their people on a group and individual level.

In many cases, managers feel unable to motivate their people around complex and sensitive change. This can be for four reasons:

1 Lack of knowledge – not having sufficient information or expertise on the issues they are engaging their teams on.

2 Lack of skills – not having the experience or the inherent capabilities for managing teams and individuals to maximise engagement.

3 Lack of confidence (due to a lack of knowledge and/or skills).

4 Lack of support – inadequate team briefing processes to aid managers, or resources to obtain advice and information on how to improve their skills or knowledge.

Each of these four can mean, for example, that team leaders do not spend sufficient time engaging their teams and cannot make the link for their teams between wider strategic issues and day-to-day operational ones. Of course, there are practical ways that they can be helped to do this. Here are just two:

British Gas used an ‘engagement toolkit’ to provide team leaders with hands-on, practical guidance on how to engage their teams and deal with difficult issues. Lots of hints and tips, with pro-forma templates, provided team leaders with a resource to more confidently plan and implement engagement activity.

Rolls-Royce put in place a team leader hotline, staffed by HR and communication experts who had been briefed and coached to handle engagement queries. Team leaders were able to use the telephone and email hotline to ask questions and get advice/support on any issues they could not resolve themselves.

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Lead through change

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‘‘A fish can stink from the head – or it can inspire the sweet aroma of the sea. An organisation is no different. Leaders can make a difference.


Leave employees out at your peril. They want to feel they have a say. Particularly during the early stages of change, if they are not involved this opens the door for misunderstanding, demotivation and resistance.

You cannot expect high levels of engagement from people who have not felt able to contribute to decisions that affect them. Here are three ways in which organisations can involve their people. They are outlined in order of how much ownership employees are given over the nature of the changes – from little to near total:

1 Focus groups and discussion forums can generate meaningful feedback from people at all levels, and provide insight into what employee groups are thinking, saying and doing.

2 Meetings to solicit feedback work best if they are geared towards a specific operational goal, rather than just a free-for-all that could lead to frustration and confusion. This gives employees greater ownership over the outcomes as they have had a say in defining them.

3 If we are being pragmatic, a lot of the time you cannot involve employees in the initial decision making – particularly if it is commercially sensitive. But you can get people involved in finding solutions, once the initial decision has been made. For example, one manufacturing company used self-administered work teams as a way of working. Rather than have managers who set priorities and worked out solutions, the business provided teams with strategic goals and teams were able to define how they were going to meet them. Work shifts were altered to better meet the organisation’s goals and suit individuals in the teams.

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Take people with you

When deciding which channels to incorporate as part of a change plan, consider:

The need to communicate regularly and quickly, particularly during the early, uncertain stages of change. Which channels do employees use most? Which are the quickest to plan and deliver?

Making channels involving, where possible. Is there a way of adapting the channels you already have to make them more interactive? And crucially, what will you do with the feedback you get from these channels?

Use cost-effective channels when planning communications. Would regular breakfast meetings or an interactive workshop produce the same results as expensive, large-scale channels? If you are making redundancies and cost cutting, the perceived cost of something may alienate employees.

Channelling the right messages The channels used for communicating during a period of change have the capability to involve and win over, or alienate employees.

Mass media channels such as email bursts or webcasts used at the wrong times can promote a stifled one-way ‘tell’ approach to communicating change. Involving employees through two-way, interactive communications can make them feel part of the change.

Three things to do to take employees with you:

1 Be seen to listen – visibly demonstrate that you are listening, talk about it in your communications.

2 Truly hear what they’re saying. If they say X and you hear, or interpret it as Y, you may as well not have bothered listening. You may do more harm than good.

3 Do something about it. Act on the feedback and keep listening.


Like the gold medal for winning a race, communicating success as a result of changes made, or even despite them, goes a long way to keeping people motivated.

People want to know when important milestones are being reached, and success stories will help to keep employees focused on the objectives.

The process of putting together your roadmap should have already helped determine what success looks like. It could be financial targets or positive feedback received from your organisation’s stakeholders. The important thing to remember is to communicate success in a way that makes it relevant and tangible for your people. Communicating success on a local and personal level, fitting in around team and departmental objectives often proves effective. Building an element of employee involvement – such as employee-led recognition and reward schemes – helps people to define what success looks like for them.

Finally, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for ensuring the success of change communications. We have highlighted some of the key steps any organisation should take. How this is done and on what scale depends on the circumstances organisations are in and the willingness of leaders to listen before acting.

We made it


What do Dr Martin Luther King and Alexander the Great have in common? Look back through your school text books and you will see that all of history’s revered leaders, from Alex to Dr King to Obama, have one trait in common – excellent communications skills.

Good communication begets great leadership. We set out to look at the impact good leadership communication has on organisations and what leaders can do, in practice, to improve it.

Leading from the front

15Leading from the front

Bill Marriott, Chairman and CEO of Marriotts, is a good example of what that looks like in practice.

Bill makes it his priority to visit at least 250 hotels every year. Whilst he is on a visit he strikes up as many conversations with his employees as he can. He wants to know what it is like to work at Marriott; how they feel, what is working and what is not. He actively seeks ideas on what would make things better, acts on what they say and then goes back to talk to them some more.

Bill is resolute that this people-first philosophy has been the cornerstone of Marriott’s financial success.

What Bill’s example shows is that good leadership communication creates an open, honest and collaborative culture.

It is probably also a fair bet that other leaders at Marriott emulate this style too (this is sometimes known as behavioural trickle), so leaders are consistent in promoting the right culture.

Ultimately, this increases their employee engagement. Leaders are responsible for ensuring company goals are achieved, which can only happen if employees are productive. To be productive, they need to be engaged and motivated. Employees who are engaged with a company’s goals are more likely to want to achieve them. It is a no-brainer really.

It sounds easy; what Bill does looks simple on the surface, but it requires huge dedication and commitment. The really clever bit of Bill’s strategy is that he sets the precedent; creating a culture of open and honest communication.\

What is Leadership Communication?“What do you think?”That is probably the first question a leader who is a good communicator would ask.

In response, you would probably tell him that the first rule of good communication is talking to people, listening to what they have to say and acting on it where appropriate. This is a sound foundation but there is a little bit more to it than that. It is also about being visible, self aware, leading from the front and walking the talk.

Faz Hakim is an associate director of Karian and Box. Previously, she was a political advisor at No.10 Downing Street to Tony Blair and director of communications at the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. Faz specialises in leadership coaching and development.

Faz Hakim [email protected]

thinkBox16 Leading from the front

1 2 3Great leaders are good communicators And so, excellent communication skills are the hallmark of a good leader. There are seven requirements which can help transform a good manager into a good leader:

Self-awarenessIt is no surprise that, when recruiting, more and more organisations are focusing on people who have high levels of emotional intelligence. That is to say, people who have an innate ability to be self-aware, manage their emotions and the emotions of those around them. Emotional authenticity is vital in good leadership. Self-reflection and honesty about how the leader really feels and thinks should govern how he or she speaks and acts. This makes a person more genuine, believable and eventually builds trust.

A good leader needs to be engaged in what they are going to communicate. There is more to it than just knowing the facts. A good leader will have thought about the impact on them personally. Thinking about new ideas from a personal, as well as a rational, perspective deepens understanding of the issues and gives a leader insight into how things might be received.

Leaders also need a level of intellectual honesty about the options available to them and their organisation. That can help them both identify what is truly possible and ensure that the route forward for their organisation is one that people can recognise as being credible.

Finger on the pulseIt is equally important to take the pulse of the business. Formal structures for listening to employees, such as employee surveys or discussion groups provide leaders with a good measure of the effectiveness of communication strategies and employee engagement in general. Not only that, but the opportunity to give feedback, both formal and informal, makes people feel acknowledged and valued as individuals, rather than treated as replaceable parts in a machine.

However, it is vital to show that feedback is acted on and that leaders are willing to alter their approach in response to employee input. If this does not visibly happen then it will look as if leaders are cynical; paying lip-service to collaboration while pressing ahead with their own plans regardless.

StorytellingEveryone likes a good story. Children learn and understand through stories and Hollywood has made a fortune out of taking people on exciting journeys through storytelling. Stories help to make messages more easily digestible. Even on a basic level, weaving a narrative from seemingly disparate strands of information helps initiatives appear cohesive and connected. It conveys that they have been thoughtfully planned and helps to show the reasons for decisions and the links between them.

An important piece of knowledge for any leader is that people can only remember one or two messages. Leaders who insist on thinking they need to tell their people the 10 or 15 things on their mind will fail to have any of their messages heard. “Keep it simple, stupid”, should be the refrain of any professional advising a leader. Simple and clear messages, repeated often, in a strong, logical narrative is what will be heard.

And when weaving that narrative, two important factors help leaders reach out to their audiences.

Stories become more meaningful when we can relate to a character. Putting employees at the heart of the story can make a huge difference to how those people relate to the message. This method also conveys the idea that employees are at the centre of the organisation and that their welfare is a crucial factor in any decision made by a leader.

It is also crucial that stories are both enlightening and entertaining. It is hard to think of a good book that does not use well-constructed analogies and metaphors to bring its story to life. Good metaphors make their meaning accessible because they convey it succinctly and create memorable images in people’s minds.

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‘‘Character is a journey, not a destination.President Bill Clinton


3 4 5EmpathyStudies show that people understand things better when they have an emotional investment in the outcome. Rattling out bare facts can make messages seem stale and unimportant. Good leadership communication should make the audience want to sit up and listen. To make this happen, a leader should talk about how he or she feels about the message along with its factual content. This will leave the impression of trust and sincerity, and that the leader actually thinks about what he says and does.

This should go hand-in-hand with finding out the possible emotional impact of a message on its audience, even if that is negative, and acknowledge that it is real and has been considered. This shows that he is not just thoughtful with regard to himself but he recognises that his audience will react emotionally to the message as well. Recognising this brings a leader closer to his audience because it emphasises common ground between them.

Walking the talk – action not just wordsLeaders must be consistent in what they say and do. If leaders advocate certain behaviours and do the opposite they look hypocritical. This will not encourage others to comply and trust will fly out of the window. This fits in well with the idea that what the leader says should be a genuine reflection of what he or she thinks.

A leader who displays these qualities is more likely to be respected than a leader who does not. If a leader does not have the respect of his or her people, then performance will suffer.

Importantly, leaders can build confidence amongst their employees by visibly demonstrating confidence themselves. In the current economic situation, this is easier said than done. Displaying confidence may be misinterpreted as a leader living on a different planet or being in denial.

Again, actions speak louder than words. One multinational British CEO and CFO team in the late 1990s, when their business hit the buffers and lost market confidence, decided to pump half their life savings into buying the company’s then heavily devalued shares. The message was loud and clear: the share price is low now because of performance issues; but we are confident we can get back on track and see the value of the business rise again. \

thinkBox18 Leading from the front

76Getting out and aboutGood communication is not just about giving information; it is about talking and listening to people to make them feel part of a community. For this to happen, leaders have to be visible; out and about talking with employees. This is never truer than at times of crisis, when visibility becomes a critical factor in an organisation’s ability to turn itself around.

It is often said that leaders are the visible embodiment of everything their organisation stands for; in effect, the living, breathing, walking, talking brand. What they say and what they do can make a difference to people’s perceptions – both inside and outside an organisation.

Face-to-face communication, like an informal walk-about or one-to-one meetings, is much more likely to grab someone’s attention than the overly used mass-email. It can be personal and sincere, and creates a chance for the leader to listen to the views of employees first hand. Employees can see into the whites of their leader’s eyes and scrutinise every aspect of their behaviour. To some extent, that is why leaders avoid getting out and about.

However, if a leader is to lead, they do have to be seen. Leading by example, a leader is encouraging informal discussion to take place between people in an organisation, and creating an open environment for people to express themselves in. This is vital if employees are to feel like they have a voice in the organisation. It also allows advocates to champion key messages at peer level, rather than announcements coming through a ‘top down’ process.

Brett Warburton, Executive Director at family-baker Warburtons, has made a point of regularly visiting every bakery across the UK. Talking to staff and being seen to do so, has a powerful impact on perceptions of leaders. However, any leader can only ever talk to a handful of staff at a site and it is up to effective communications to plug the gap. Brett Warburton’s solution has been to write to every one of his 5,000 employees whenever he visits a site – telling them in personal terms what he heard and his views on issues of the moment. Personally signed, they reach deeper parts of the employee psyche than any intranet article or impersonal email can.

Invitations to be involvedWhile, when times get tough, a leader needs to be seen to act decisively, it is just as important for leaders to bring people on board.

It is impossible for one person to have all the answers or always to be right. Consultation before a decision is made generates more ideas and lowers the chance of something being missed or the wrong decision being made. This can mean a greater level of inclusion at board–level decision making, or casting the net much wider in terms of involving those with expertise or experience to help the organisation succeed.

How far you cast that net is also important. It may be that leaders need to reach out to an even wider pool of employees to unearth the real issues an organisation faces and the solutions it needs. Getting people involved in decision making shows that the leader is more concerned with making the right decision than flattering his or her ego.

For more on how leaders and their organisations can actively involve employees, see pages 26-30.

I am just writing a quick note to thank you for Brett’s letter thanking us for his recent visit to Bellshill. I felt the letter was very personal, especially with Brett taking the time out of his very busy schedule to personalise the letter himself.Every little helps to make employees feel appreciated and improve morale, which I feel this wee letter did.

We look forward to welcoming Brett again in May.Brett Warburton (above), personally taking the message to employees, and the kind of feedback (right) that it receives


Leadership checklistSeven questions a leader must ask themself when communicating:

Am I thinking about how my actions and emotions impact on others? Be honest.

Have I been seen to listen, have I really heard what people are saying and have I been seen to take action as a result?

Am I taking time to breathe life into the information or the stories I am telling employees to make them more relevant and meaningful? What am I doing to keep the momentum going?

Am I using my own emotional reaction to information to help me pre-empt the potential reaction from my audience?

Am I really practising what I preach?

Do people know who I am? Am I approachable? Do people believe they can be honest with me?

Have I involved people throughout developing the message? Am I taking people with me?

7


Keeping your finger on the pulse

The challenge for most organisations is to show that the communications they employ to engage and mobilise their people make a difference. That is the perennial headache for communications professionals – providing tangible, hard evidence to demonstrate that their efforts are helping to shift audience thinking and behaviour.

21Keeping your finger on the pulse

Many organisational leaders are genuine in their desire to know how well the organisation’s mission and related priorities are ‘hard-wired’ into their employees’ minds. Sadly, that desire often translates into formulaic, cumbersome staff surveys that provide vague insights into the real employee issues. By adding limited value, such employee research becomes a box-ticking process for leaders. They know they have to do it but, at best, do not know what to do with the results.

Imagine if the same approach was used for any organisation’s external perception research. Imagine if the same attitude or investment in understanding customer reaction and behaviour was used. It is unthinkable for businesses or government institutions to not have a clear picture of what their customers are saying and doing on a regular basis. If they did not, such organisations would quickly become out of touch with and drift away from the customers and their needs – ultimately, losing many.

Inside an organisation, it is not dissimilar. The only difference is that, at the very least, employees simply walk away with their hearts and minds – and, at worst, the good ones walk out of the door.

Organisations need clarity on what employees are thinking, saying and doing on business priorities sufficiently regularly to enable leaders to take quick action when they find employee groups are not on-side. That is a simple enough premise.

Getting this clear information requires a real commitment by an organisation’s leaders to:

Test employee opinion and behaviour regularly even, and particularly, when the organisation is going through a tough patch

Ask the hard questions in order to receive an honest response from their people

Not shy away from taking the action necessary to address difficult findings – and show employees that they have listened and acted.

Putting in place an effective, simple and cost-effective measurement approach is not rocket science – although it does require answering some fundamental questions. What do you measure? How do you measure it? Of course, there are ancillary, tactical choices to be made too: who to survey, when and where.

This article addresses the first two – as critical starting points for shaping a measurement approach. \

James is pulsecheck® manager at Karian and Box. Before joining Karian and Box he was a research manager at worldwide consumer research agency, MMR, managing research programmes for clients including Unilever, Diageo and Premier Foods.

James Shand [email protected]

thinkBox22 Keeping your finger on the pulse

Organisations need to be really clear about what their employee research seeks to find. This not only helps define the questions asked of employees but allows organisations to determine whether their research answers the most fundamental question of all: “so what?”

What do you measure?

Communications and engagement activity

I know and can make meaning of our business strategy and priorities

I believe in the organisation, its mission and am proud to say I

work here

I am taking action to help achieve those

objectives

Think Feel Do

Inputs and outputsPut really simply, employee research can test both communication inputs and outputs.

Inputs are the communications and engagement activities and channels which are used to help to change or reinforce employee thinking and behaviour.

The outputs are what people think, what they feel and what they do, as a result.

Organisations can ask questions which test the effectiveness of their communications inputs – although this is of limited use. It is the same as asking if someone has read a novel and whether they liked its format and style – and then leaving it there. \

So what?Each question employees are asked has to answer this ‘so what?’ test. What action can an organisation take by knowing the answer to a particular question? Will an organisation be able to do anything with the results, or will these be nice-to-know research findings?

By applying this test to all potential questions, organisations can make surveys work harder. This is especially important when any survey can only include a defined number of questions. Ruthlessly applying this test means weaker, nice-to-have questions can be weeded out.

With that test in mind, what is it that an organisation focuses its employee research on?

The organisation and its managers communicate well with me and my colleagues


Think Feel Do

Discovery

Emotions

Interpretations

Conclusions

Employee journeysIn addition, employees go through a journey when they experience life in an organisation or a particular change in that organisation. A range of workplace studies have shown how people make sense of, respond to and accommodate their experiences at work – especially when those experiences are outside their comfort zone.

In simple terms, an individual goes through four broad stages in their state of mind.

Again, organisations can ask specific questions that test the state of mind people are in at particular junctures of their experience at work.

This is a particularly important tool when organisations are going through difficult change.

It means that, rather than shy away from it, organisations can use measurement of this kind to see where employees are on their journey of making sense of change. It helps organisations take the action needed to make sure employees (individually and collectively) are moving along their journey in a way that minimises disruption and maximises performance.

Discovers or realises that something at work is happening, say, a change to the way people will work

Has an emotional reaction to the news

Seeks information on how it applies to them, and interprets what it really means for them

Has feelings of affirmation, relief or conclusion that help them move on (logically and emotionally)

MatrixKarian and Box employ a useful combination of the inputs/outputs approach and the testing of employee journeys. By using a simple matrix, organisations can define questions in a sophisticated way that helps test the use of communications inputs to deliver desired outputs at different stages of the employee journey. Examples of questions that test what people think, feel and do during each particular stage, are outlined in the matrix opposite. \

I understand why we need to change the way we work in my part of the organisation

The direction the business is taking is the right one

I understand what the changes mean in practice to me and my role

I know what I need to do to improve my performance and that of my team in my part of the business

I believe that the outlined changes have been communicated in an open and honest way to me and my colleagues

I support the rationale behind the need for change in my area of the business

My line manager has listened to concerns I have about the changes to my role

I feel personally committed to supporting changes in my area of the business

I have had a meeting with my line manager to discuss the reasons why we need to change

I raised my concerns about the changes taking place with my line manager

I have had a discussion with my manager about the areas I need to focus on for the coming 6 months

I am taking action to help us deliver on the business priorities

thinkBox24 Keeping your finger on the pulse

Most organisations test employee engagement once every year or two. However, many also conflate and confuse short-term understanding and support for business priorities with longer-term engagement. They try to use the same research approach to get feedback on both.But this minimises the ability for organisations to get a genuine handle on what employees are saying and doing in relation to current business issues. This is for two reasons:

Time – once every year or two is not enough.

Focus of research – large-scale engagement surveys can often ask only 40-50 questions (best practice) in a wide ranging look at issues, from levels of cultural openness to the effectiveness of reward and recognition systems.

By their very nature, such broad surveys cannot dig deeper into genuine levels of employee understanding and support for business priorities and change activity. This means they skate over the surface, asking, if and when they do, generic questions on understanding such as “I know what the business priorities for this year are” – leaving it up to employees to make a judgement on whether they really do understand that year’s priorities. They cannot measure retention of and belief in those messages.

That is why some organisations, alongside longer-term engagement measures, are opting for quick, low-cost, employee pulse or temperature checks.

Short-term needs: The level of employee understanding and support for an organisation’s business strategy and priorities. This is about testing the ‘here and now’ issues; it is about the performance goals the organisation has to achieve that year. These are the issues that keep leaders up at night; it is what they are rewarded on or, where they fail, castigated.

Long-term engagement: The level of engagement employees have with the organisation they work for and what it stands for. This is a long-term measure, with sentiment or levels of engagement taking time to change. Whether you call it culture, mood, sentiment, or brand affinity, it is about how the employee relates to their employer.

How to measure it?

The philosophy and methodology behind pulsecheck® research is simple. It uses the basic ‘act’ and ‘react’ model where organisations take management and communications action and then test the response of their people to that action.

Conducted regularly enough, it allows organisations to refine its messages, its media and its management action, so that employees are nudged towards thinking and doing the right things to achieve performance objectives. \

Benchmark

Refine and reinforce

Refine and reinforce

Man

agem

ent A

ct

ion

Com

mun

icat

ions

Management Action

Communications

Management A

ction

Communication

s

TrackPulse

TrackPulse

TrackPulse

pulsecheck® Philosophy


Pulse ‘etiquette’This approach, if not managed properly, can create survey fatigue – for both leaders and employees alike.

Traditional employee engagement research produces heaps of data and information which is hard to digest and act on quickly. Busy leaders and managers would not, if receiving regular insights into employee thinking and behaviour, cope with that same level of data. Despite or because of receiving regular, complex information on performance metrics such as revenue, profitability, customer satisfaction ratings, their appetite for adding more to this load will be limited. As such, regular pulse research needs to produce simple, easy-to-digest data and recommended action to leaders.

By conducting surveys of samples of employees organisations can regularly measure without causing fatigue. Choosing representative samples of employee groups in rotation means you can take a snapshot of the organisation without placing undue strain or cost on the operation.

To call or not to callWhen conducting large-scale employee research, the obvious route for most organisations is the online one. Web-based surveys are relatively cheap and simple to administer. Where this route is not available, for example, to organisations where some or all of their people do not have online access, the paper survey has been the method of choice.

However, when conducting regular testing that is sample-based, a third credible option is available. Telephone research has the additional advantage of capturing the voice of many employees who do not complete online or paper surveys. More traditional routes tend to be skewed in favour of the self-selecting vocal minority – those who are well tuned in, who have something to say (always) and who are overly positive or negative. Telephone surveys capture these people’s views and are also much more likely to reach out to those who would not otherwise make their voice heard.

Telephone surveys, by their very nature, enable more discursive answers from employees – lending them to more open discussion on how employees are feeling as much as on what they think.

UK wholesale gas and electricity commodity costs rose substantially and as a result, all energy suppliers/retailers had to pass on increased costs to customers. A larger than expected consumer price rise left British Gas exposed to aggressive competitor marketing and PR. The business had to counter competitor activity in the market – defending its customer base.

Employees were seen as playing a critical role: they needed to understand the reasons for the price rises, be on-message when talking to customers and be at the forefront of the battle to retain existing customers and sign up new ones.

The crisis facing the business required regular insight into what employees were saying and doing.

Telephone-based, fortnightly pulsecheck® research was conducted into the views of representative samples of 300 employees – with research focus on:

Awareness and understanding of key messages

Awareness and opinion of products being offered to customers

Feedback on what more information employees wanted to do their job of retaining customers

Feedback on what customers were saying to employees about products and the wider issue of price rises.

Fortnightly research reports on the findings were provided to the leadership team, together with insight into the issues, trends and recommendations

for follow-up action. The research became a valuable part of the leadership team’s management information systems.

The impact of specific and quick action on issues/poor performance in the results could be tracked given the regularity of the surveys.

Case study


If you watch a TV drama from episode one you’re more likely to empathise with the protagonist’s plight and pick up nuances in the plot than someone who joined the show at episode three.The point is, if you’re involved in any story from the start, you are more likely to be engaged in it.

We look at the power that involvement has on engagement and when is a good time to ask people to switch on and get involved.

The power of involvement

27The power of involvement

Janet is a Karian and Box director specialising in building and managing employee involvement campaigns. Prior to her time at Karian and Box, Janet worked at the BBC and BAA in internal communication roles. Most recently, she was head of internal communication at Sainsbury’s.

Janet Robinson [email protected]

At what stage do organisations involve their people in defining and developing their goals and related business strategy? And, more importantly, at what stage should they involve them?

The involvement curve

True engagement cannot be achieved without involvement. The mobilisation of a workforce cannot happen if the people tasked with delivering goals do not understand them. And true understanding comes from being actively involved.

The involvement curve (see below) shows the process most organisations go through when developing their business strategy. At which stage of the curve do most organisations involve their people? The iC Survey 2008, conducted by Karian and Box, showed that just under three in five communicators said that employees in their organisation were not involved in shaping strategy.

Where do employees jump onto the involvement curve?It would not be trite to argue that the earlier you involve employees in the decision-making process, the better. Nonetheless, there is no single answer to this question and each organisation will know where best to start involvement. This is based on three factors: \

1. Leadership faces strategic issue

2. Data gathered

3. Number crunching

4. Proposals/ options developed

5. Discussion and debate

6. Decisions made

7. Executive desire for communications and advice

8. Communications & engagement activity

9. Deployment

thinkBox28

‘‘‘‘To communicate some issues

unfiltered and without context, expecting employees to

a) understand them and b) get involved with shaping the organisation’s strategic response

can be counterproductive.

Honesty is important but it is also the duty of leaders to not cause panic or undue worry about the shape of things to come.

The alternative can be a demoralised and unproductive workforce. As such, unravelling strategy with employees can be like peeling an onion.

You have to take it layer by layer – exposing the issue in a way that enables understanding of the context and allows employees to come to their own conclusions.

The power of involvement

1. The existing culture of involvementMoving from a culture of limited involvement to full, proactive involvement too quickly is unlikely to get the necessary engagement or honest input from employees. A graduated approach may be necessary; taking employees incrementally up the curve whereby, over time, they are involved at earlier stages.

2. The nature of the strategic issueSome issues may be too sensitive to merit wider, earlier involvement. Whilst this is the ‘cop-out’ answer given by some organisations against earlier involvement, it still has merit. An issue may be too commercially sensitive or have industrial relations, regulatory, market or other implications if communicated too early. However, in some cases, employees can be provided with the strategic context or background to issues. This enables them to come to their own understanding.

3. The complicated nature of the strategic issueInvolving employees in complex organisational or market-related issues may be counter-productive. Some argue that employees would not understand the issues sufficiently to make the right judgements, but this can be addressed by carefully framing the question asked and avoiding complicated language that excludes people. In other words, issues can be distilled and translated to enable most, if not all, employees to understand the strategic context. Also, it is arguable that the people with the most understanding of the issues are those who encounter them daily.

A similar objection to involving employees is that many will be disinterested in strategic issues and simply want to ‘get on with the job’. However, employees will be more than interested when strategic issues are explained and translated into their language (and not the jargon of economists, strategists and policy-makers). After all, it is their future and livelihood that strategy affects.\

HR Director, chemicals company, The Netherlands.

Interviewed as part of a business-wide audit of the organisation’s communications and engagement activity.

29The power of involvement

‘‘

Where involvement adds value It is unlikely that wider involvement in the first three stages on the curve adds much value. Strategic issues can and do arise when highlighted and defined from within the organisation. The process of identifying such issues, gathering the necessary data and turning it into meaningful information is not easily achieved without the lead from the experts (often, the finance, strategy and policy teams). This information can then be translated into a series of options for discussion across the organisation. It is at this point that input from employees can add real value.

This input can take the following forms:

Defining proposals and options (Stage 4 on the curve) – The workforce is tasked with assessing the specific business context and outlining further options for action.

Discussing, debating options (Stage 5) – Employees look at the range of strategic options and discuss the merits and demerits of each.

Decisions on action (Stage 6) – Employees decide on the necessary action either in local teams or via democratic, collective decision-making processes.

Many organisations only involve their workforce at or near the deployment stage. This is the most common form of employee involvement, albeit within defined and specific parameters, but there are weaknesses in leaving employee involvement to Stage 9 alone.

If the development of the strategy has not had input from employees, they may not be committed to it. Of course, communicators can do their best to inform or persuade their workforce of the merits of a strategic route. However, no degree of communication activity can obtain maximum support for a strategy without early involvement in its development. This is particularly the case when issues or decisions are controversial, difficult and/or do not reflect the existing employee attitudes, prejudices and behaviour. It is also true that ‘operational’ involvement in the delivery of an organisation’s strategy does not equate to strategic involvement.\

‘‘I work from 4am until 10am shift, 6 days a week and get up just before 3am to get to work. I work damn hard when I get there and my job is important to me. I care as much about the future of this business as any guy at the top.

I want to know where it’s headed and what I need to do to ensure we succeed. So many of us feel that the company doesn’t get this point. They go on about strategy this and vision that, without so much as asking our view on the matter.Sales assistant, LAX airport (Los Angeles) for an airport retailer, commenting as part of a focus group on engagement and involvement.

thinkBox30 The power of involvement

Two very different organisations had the challenge of implementing fundamental change. They chose to involve their people in defining the issues and building the solutions to create genuine understanding, encouraging people to act confidently in support of the change.

Case studyRoyal Mailstrategic review

The challenge was an audacious one – to build and deliver an engine in an average of 40 days. This was at a time when aero engines were made by the company in approximately 18 months. Some thought it impossible. Others believed it necessary in order to improve future profitability, cash flow, and secure long-term success.

With a goal as clear as that, the business had to decide on how to make it happen. Throughout the four years it took to do it, the philosophy which underpinned its delivery was of near-total employee ownership and involvement.

Case studyBringing the Rolls-Royce 40 Day Engine to life

Every team and employee was tasked with integrating the goal into their work plans. Everyone had to work out how to interpret the broad strategic priorities into day-to-day, relevant activity for which they were responsible.

Groups of employees were subsequently responsible for defining the future operating model of the business. With this operating model defined and communicated, from the board onward, employees were tasked with defining their business, regional and local actions for changing the existing operating model into the future one.

The goal was achieved one year ahead of schedule; the business benefited from improved profitability and the service delivered to customers was improved. And, every employee played a role in defining the problems and deciding on the way forward.

Undertaking a major strategic review of its future direction, the Royal Mail, a 350-year-old institution employing over 180,000 people across the UK,

had a challenge on its hands. On the horizon was the liberalisation of the mail industry and the increased threat from competitors.

The Royal Mail faced two choices – develop the options for change and implement them, involving employees

at or near the deployment stage. Or get employees involved much earlier – in order for them to understand the rationale and context of the change.

The organisation did its homework – gathering data on the likely shape of its markets, the competition, the threats facing the business and the opportunities available to it. All this was translated into user-friendly communications packs for discussion by employees. Every team worked through this process and was able to take time thinking about the impact on them and their colleagues.

Making changes will always be difficult but people had the opportunity to consider the same facts as the board and understand the challenges facing the business.

That’s why, in the last 12 months alone, we’ve helped the following companies engage their people…

It’s why we’ve also been recognised as one of the best communications agencies specialising in employee engagement.

IABC Gold Quill Award Strategic Communications

Process

CIPR Finalist Outstanding Small Agency

CIPR Finalist Employee Engagement

Campaign

HR Excellence Award Outstanding Employee Engagement Strategy

lastminute.com

We combine logic and magic to deliver communications which help change employee thinking and behaviour.

KARIAN ANDBOX


As organisations have discovered, sometimes too late, the employer brand is an important factor to their health and future success. So what is this magical Holy Grail that attracts talented, innovative people, makes them work harder and never want to leave? We provide a pragmatic walk through how organisations turn the intangible into something real.

The employer brand in action

33The employer brand in action

In theory, an employer brand has the ability to attract and retain the right people, influence productivity, engage, motivate, innovate, and therefore fend off competitors. An organisation’s wellbeing and reputation relies on more than the sum-total of its operations. Everything an organisation says and does plays a part in shaping its employer brand.

What is an employer brand?

How inextricable is the employer brand from an employer’s overall identity and reputation? Some companies possess an innately strong and distinguishable brand presence – The BBC, Marks & Spencer and Proctor & Gamble, for example. All have made appeals to job-seekers, who formed queues at the door as a result.

Specific communication efforts were part of the plan. But an employer brand is built on far more than any slick roadshow or induction brochure. This is because potential employees have worn other stakeholder hats before, whether as investors, customers or members of the community.

Any marketeer knows that brand reputations are built on perceptions matched by experience. And that is no different with employer brands. Employees know what it is really like working for the organisation; they are there every day, through good and bad. This is a key differentiator between overly-clever employer marketing or positive spin and effective employer branding. Good employer branding might accentuate the positive but, ultimately, it paints a picture that people can and will relate to. \

Ghassan Karian is founding director of Karian and Box. He started as a campaigns manager for The Labour Party before building a career in corporate communications. Ghassan has worked as director of internal communications for companies such as British Gas, Rolls-Royce and ICI plc, as well as advising the Cabinet Office on audience engagement and internal communications.Ghassan Karian

[email protected]

thinkBox34 The employer brand in action

Who owns the employer brand?Everyone. HR is often tasked with being the midwife and nurse to the concept of the employer brand within an organisation. However, it is too often seen as being the sole responsibility of HR.

Employer brands and associated values that are the preserve of HR or internal communication teams will, more likely than not, end up as meaningless words translated into glossy posters, mouse mats and expensive videos. This is where organisations get it wrong.

An important dimension to successful employer branding is the role played by an organisation’s leadership. Visible direction setting by leaders is a vital component in showcasing to employees the desired behaviours and culture. Organisations that try to encourage employees to understand and engage with their employer brand will invariably fail if their leaders are not actively living the brand themselves.

Another argument is that any successful employer brand comes from within the guts of an organisation – based on the innate culture, values and traditions of the workforce. It is not artificial, based on an expensive branding consultancy’s musings or simplistic focus group’s findings.

But what if an organisation wants to move its culture on – changing behaviour and the way people understand, experience and relate to what their employer stands for?

Chicken or egg?Do you start from where your employees currently are, basing brand-building activity around existing cultural traits? Or do you set a marker for where you want employees to be and change culture and behaviours accordingly? The answer is that you need a bit of both.

To shape a successful employer brand that supports your organisation’s strategic goals you have to set a marker in the sand. You need to define what kind of culture, values and behaviour will help deliver the organisation’s goals. And you have to encourage leaders to be very clear about what kind of organisation they want to lead.

But – and it is a big but – this vision of the desired employer brand has to be realistic and achievable. It has to be rooted in the organisation’s current cultural traits so employees can recognise aspects which are important to their self-esteem and why they joined the organisation in the first place. As such, knowing where you start from and where you want to get to will help define the journey of step-by-step culture change. \


Understanding and experience

I know where this organisation is headed.

I know what our priorities are and what my role is in delivering them.

I am receiving a good pension scheme and training and development opportunities.

My company actively involves us in a variety of community-based projects.

My organisation’s leaders do what they say they will.

Emotive engagement

I like working for this company. I am proud of what the company stands for.

I feel valued through the work that I do.

My organisation’s leaders care about me and my future.

I’m not afraid to voice my opinions about issues that matter to me.

How emotionally engaged are employees in your organisation? And how positive is their understanding and experience of what your organisation stands for? By knowing the answers to both these questions, organisations can see how many of their employees are ambassadors for the brand. These ambassadors are people who both understand and are emotionally engaged. \

How many ambassadors does it take to make a light bulb?The notion of an ‘employer brand’ can be defined by using two simple parameters: what an employee knows about an organisation and how they feel about it.

Positive examples of what these parameters mean in practice are:

Loose Cannons Ambassadors

BystandersWreckers

70%5%

16% 9%Understanding

Eng

agem

ent

Ambassadors MatrixThe Karian and Box ambassadors matrix is used by a number of organisations to understand how many of their employees are brand ambassadors, and how many are bystanders, loose cannons or wreckers. The challenge for every employer is to move employees into the top right quartile (see below) and minimise the number of employees in the other quadrants.

Loose cannons Employees who are highly engaged but have a relatively weak understanding or experience of the organisation and what it stands for.

Wreckers Employees who are both emotionally disengaged and have a weak understanding of the organisation and what it stands for.

Ambassadors Employees who are both emotionally engaged and have a strong understanding or experience of the organisation and what it stands for.

Bystanders Employees who have a strong understanding or experience of the organisation and what it stands for but are emotionally disengaged.

thinkBox36

Deep and long-term employer brand building encompasses the lifespan of an employee’s time with an organisation. From before joining to after leaving, and including every experience in between, an employer has to positively shape and reinforce an employee’s relationship with the brand.

This approach is known as employer brand journeys. Employers define the significant experiences employees have when working for an organisation and seek to influence each experience in ways which improve brand understanding and engagement.

The experiences along the employer brand journey can be as significant as being inducted into the organisation, receiving recognition for a job well done or being made redundant, through to receiving their pay slip, or talking to senior managers. They also include experiencing the way their organisation is positioned or represented in the media and

advertising compared with the reality of working there.

The journey a typical employee experiences in the lifespan of one job is outlined over the next few pages, with examples of how some organisations have made each stage a reality for employees. \

The employer brand in action

Taking employees on a journey of understanding and engagement

Building, shaping, or reinforcing an employer brand does not happen overnight. Many organisations put their employees through ‘sheep-dip’ brand engagement experiences that are often no more than a marketeer’s or event manager’s dream. Lots of money is spent in a short period of time to achieve limited employee understanding, motivation and engagement.

Getting the right�people on board

Welcome to the company

Getting to work

Entrenchingthe brand

The powerof goodbye


1Step OneGetting the right people on boardAt this stage, the prospective employee is an external stakeholder. This is where the employer brand journey begins. What might external branding suggest about what it is like to work for BP, Rolls-Royce, The NHS or Royal Mail?

Even for the outsider looking in, organisations have an identity and a story that differentiates them from their competitors.

Rankings such as The Guardian’s ‘Ideal Employer List’, FORTUNE’S ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’ or even Working Mother Magazine’s ‘100 Best Companies for Working Mothers’ help to shape perceptions in a more definitive way. Organisations on these lists often offer challenging assignments, exciting training and development prospects, or market-leading products and services. Quite simply, they have developed clear messages about who they are and what they stand for and communicated them consistently.

Case study:

Case study:

Britain’s favourite baker takes pride in the quality of its products. That is why its bakeries invest time and effort making sure new employees understand the history and culture of the business. Job rotation, where an employee spends time in most functions at a bakery, is complemented by one-to-one meetings with senior managers. In their first week, employees experience every aspect of being part of the Warburtons family before they start baking bread.

Land Rover and Hackney Council may not, at first glance, share much in common. However, their induction processes both use symbolism to communicate what it means to work there. For Land Rover’s ‘dipped in green’ induction, each employee is given experience of driving or being driven in one of the car maker’s vehicles around a test track. This immediately brings to life what Land Rover is about – the thrill of the driving experience.

Hackney do something just as powerful. Every employee who starts at the Council gets on a red double-decker bus and, touring the borough, are shown the area’s highlights and places the Council are responsible for with one of the Council’s executive team as a tour guide – giving employees early and informal access to the organisation’s leaders.

This gives employees a sense of perspective and pride in the services the Council offers local people. A sense of place and role is established in a short space of time.

2Step Two‘Welcome to the company’First impressions matter, and the induction process is the first opportunity to offer new recruits a taste of an organisation. New recruits should leave informed and inspired, having spent no longer in induction meetings than necessary.

Nobody enjoys spending the day watching health and safety videos and listening to lots of ‘motivational’ management speak, so interactivity and creativity are critical. Another dimension is how to distil what working for an organisation means into a symbolic induction experience. This matters more than all the presentations and information. It packs it all into a one-hour experience that powerfully brings the employer brand to life. \

The Royal Navy launched an original recruitment campaign for the Royal Marines entitled ‘Are you man enough?’ through Zoo magazine

Case study: and online. It invited the target audience to take part in Royal Marine training competitions at ten regional sites. Viral videos on YouTube were used to entice possible recruits and encourage them to pass the videos on. The advertising campaign was less about skills and more about required values and mindset.


3Step ThreeGetting to workThis is where getting the knowledge and goodwill established at induction becomes harder to stick. Has the organisation lived up to expectations?

It can be hard for new employees to reconcile a miserable workforce, lack of training and poor management interaction with the organisation’s slick, sparkly external branding, for example. That is why it is important that external and employer brands align closely – otherwise, disappointment and cynicism set in.

‘Cultural trickle-down’ theoryPsychologists will tell you that children copy the behaviour (intentionally or subconsciously) of their parents. It is no different in organisations, where employees see leader(s) as substitute parents – to follow, adore, please, be frustrated and embarrassed by, and, ultimately, imitate.

Leaders set the behaviours and cultural ways of working, and then live them, demonstrating to those working closely around them that they are serious about this. Direct reports start to behave in the same way (voluntarily or out of a keen interest in their own career prospects).

A comprehensive and integrated approach to every aspect of the employee’s working experience is required to ensure employees remain engaged and motivated by the organisation’s mission. Do employees know what the current business priorities are, and how their role supports these? Does the workforce feel that it has a voice, and can offer feedback on issues that affect it and its work? A culture of open and honest communication takes time and planning, and should not be considered a ‘given’ within any organisation.

Inside the organisation, employees see everything, warts and all. And that includes what the organisation’s

leaders are saying and doing. Do leaders walk the talk or, as so many employee surveys show, do they say one thing and do the other? This is one of the most powerful elements in the employer brand mix. Leaders set the tone and pace of an organisation’s culture. It requires visible demonstration of what the leadership team believe is important for success and leaders need to take related action to show they are serious.

Of course, it would be unrealistic to imagine a CEO stopping at every desk for a chat with each employee. That is where ‘cultural trickle-down’ theory is important. \

Practical demonstration of the behaviours and culture by this next layer of managers encourages others to live the employer brand. This process is replicated until most of the organisation understand and live the desired behaviours. Without the visible direction-setting and ongoing demonstration by leaders, employees might assume that a new set of values is not really important and just ignore it.


British Gas was experiencing a revolution in its consumer markets. Up against ever tougher competition, the one-time monopoly had to fight tooth and nail with other energy suppliers. That meant brushing up on the way it served customers. With a culture where customer numbers mattered more than customer service, this was going to be tough. It had to get employees to understand the importance of customer service, and create a culture where this was a reality not just a slogan.

Hence the employer brand wheel came into existence. Every part of the business that had an impact on the employee’s brand experience acted as a spoke on that wheel. Each spoke was involved in re-assessing and re-shaping to align itself with the required culture and behaviour set. Activities such as leadership development, front-line training, operational KPIs, external

marketing, HR processes and internal communication were all redesigned to reinforce the new behaviours.

Functional leads were responsible for specific actions that contributed to the wheel moving in the right direction.

A number of ‘spokes’ often had to work together. As such, leadership development and internal communications were tasked with challenging and changing a hierarchical, top-down, fearful culture. The organisation wanted its employees to think more creatively and independently to serve customers quickly. But failure was inevitable if its people were reluctant to take any initiative for fear of being punished for making mistakes. The importance of a more open culture was accepted by the British Gas management team. And they knew they had to lead the way. Former Marketing Director Nick Smith acknowledges that he and his colleagues had to change the way they behaved to give permission and encouragement to others to

Case study: do likewise. “Open dialogue and the invitation of constructive criticism; more informal, discursive focus groups led by a different leader every Friday; a change in dress-code; being comfortable with employee debate on issues in fora such as the employee tabloid newspaper and in face-to-face meetings – all these played their part in loosening up the culture.”

The employer brand wheelEvery part of the organisation that has an impact on and responsibility for employee behaviour acts as a spoke on the wheel.

Each spoke is accountable for defining what action it will take to reinforce the employer brand behaviours. If one or more spoke is broken, the effectiveness of the wheel is reduced.

Who else is relevant to change?

Reward and recognition

Employeecommunications

Learning &Development

Front lineTraining

PR / PAprogramme

External marketing/positioning

Leadershipdevelopment

Leaderbehaviours

KPIs

Operatingsystems

HR process

Recruitment


4Step FourEntrenching the brand: Reward and recognitionFor the organisation to entrench the employer brand, it needs to retain the people most likely to actively ‘live’ that brand. That requires the right employees being recognised and rewarded for demonstrating the right behaviours – as well as going the extra mile in achieving the organisation’s goals. But this is not just about employers ‘dangling carrots on sticks’.

Money talks, but a reward and recognition package that is solely focused on financial gain will not get the most out of your workforce or help to retain them either. It also sends the wrong messages about what your organisation thinks is important.

Psychologically, financial rewards have a diminishing return. They have a time-limited impact on motivation.

Many workforce surveys show that personal fulfilment and being recognised for jobs well done, is a surer and longer-term way of motivating and mobilising employees.

To pay or not to pay?According to a Gallup survey of more than 80,000 employees, recognition is a key factor in employee engagement and retention. Recognition and praise ranked fourth among the twelve dimensions that consistently correlated with those workgroups that have higher employee retention, higher customer satisfaction, higher productivity, and higher profits. The dimensions do not include pay and benefits. That does not mean that pay and benefits are not important. But it does mean that compensation levels do not differentiate great workgroups from the rest. \

Vodafone is encouraging its employees to live the company’s brand values

through a powerful recognition scheme. The Legends scheme finds and recognises individuals who demonstrate Vodafone’s brand values in their everyday work. Unlike previous recognition programmes, Legends specifically ties recognition to the company’s employer brand and the achievement of its strategic goals.

Employees, excluding senior management, are invited to nominate colleagues, and assessors (non-management employees who are given training to judge nominees) choose the winners. After the assessors’ work is done, 100 Legends are selected for that year. The Legends, drawn from across the organisation, receive senior management recognition and both financial and non-financial rewards.

The programme’s impact has helped recognition become part of the everyday culture within Vodafone. Encouraging employees to give positive praise to each other not only builds a sense of satisfaction and mutual respect, it also helps drive overall engagement.

Case study:


5Step FiveThe power of goodbyePeople choose to leave their jobs for a variety of reasons, some of which are outside of an organisation’s control. For an organisation, saying goodbye to a key player is inconvenient at the best of times, but for the well-engaged employee, a professionally handled departure is the icing on the farewell cake.

This is important as employees who have departed can be stakeholders in other ways – often customers and influencers – who play a part in the organisation’s ongoing success. This includes activities such as continuing to buy products from the company or positively shaping the perceptions of people in their circle of influence.

What can organisations do to positively influence the way an employee continues to engage with their former employer’s brand?

One example is exit interviews, which are extremely commonplace these days. They offer both departing employee and employer (usually line management) the opportunity to talk about the individual’s work and to gather feedback. For example, how might the organisation improve or better engage their workforce with the working environment, systems or procedures? It is a golden opportunity to find out exactly what is going on. Far more than a formality, these meetings can help instigate positive change for the future, and encourage employees to think back favourably to their time at that organisation.

Case study: What happens when employee de-briefing and exit interviews become a last-minute effort or a

chore? Often within organisations, processes and best-practice examples are not documented and are simply lost when people decide to move on. NASA realised in 2006 that 50% of its workforce were eligible for retirement if they wanted it, and realised that unless they came up with a viable solution, years of experience and knowledge would walk out of the door.

Efforts to retain at least some knowledge or expertise were integrated into a new knowledge debrief. This debrief is conducted through asking employees to

complete job manuals, write case studies, tell stories, give best-practice examples, and provide their top 5 knowledge resources. Depending on the type of role and associated skills and expertise, the information is stored in a way that is the most meaningful for remaining employees. The process adds to the learning curve of newer staff and ensures that valuable expertise and perspectives are hard-wired into the corporate memory.

Importantly, the process of asking employees for such information and feedback can both engender fond memories and pride or, where some experiences have been negative, be cathartic. This all contributes to the lasting impression the employer has on their former employee.


Getting the message across loud and clear.We live in an information age. You cannot move these days without a billboard, newspaper or text message vying for your attention. Recent court cases involving tabloid newspapers and celebrities testify to the fact that people are willing to go to extremes to get the attention of the paying public.

It is no different inside organisations either. Information points and walls are full of posters and notices, inboxes are snarled up with emails and you have got sixteen unread texts all of which contain information ranging from need-to-know to business critical.

So, when it comes to devising an internal campaign to get your message across, you may just as well give up and go home right? No.

There are some very simple principles that you can apply to get your message across so that your target audiences hear and understand them.

Passing the Blu-tack test

43Passing the Blu-tack test

Our brains are designed to do that; they sift through the millions of visual, audible and verbal messages we receive each day and screen out the ordinary, the familiar and the pale.

Instead, it is the new and the vivid that shouts out for our attention. But something new today is old tomorrow and the brain learns to adapt. So the Blu-tack, by now virtually invisible to our minds, has to be replaced by something else to grab our attention.

Our role as communicators is to help make sure we design and deliver messages that get seen and heard. \

The communications Blu-tack test

Have you ever put Blu-tack on the end of your nose? Try it. You’ll notice a blurred blue blob right in front of you. Give it a couple of minutes and the distraction will disappear. Not because it has fallen off your nose but because your mind has quickly learnt to blank it out.

Minda is a senior account manager at Karian and Box. Prior to working at Karian and Box, she was communications manager at British Gas, responsible for employer brands and major change programmes.

Minda Galvin [email protected]

thinkBox44 Passing the Blu-tack test

1 2Talk your audience’s languageIf your audience reads The Sun – it is pointless speaking to them in the language of the Financial Times.

You have got to get to the bottom of what issues interest, excite or frustrate your target audience. It is not enough to just have the demographics – age, sex, type of job, etc. You have to understand their cultural background and what they like. What newspapers do they read, how do they socialise and what do they watch on TV? You also need to dig deeper and find out all about their working day – how do they get their information, what are their concerns, gripes and bug bears?

It pays to know exactly how your audience is thinking and feeling (both generally and in relation to the focus of your campaign). This will help define your messages and how you communicate them.

Of course, it is also important to remember not everyone in a large group is going to be the same. That is human nature. Having a good insight into the breadth of your audience helps you use your channels and language effectively.

Catch their eyeMost of us can remember an advertising campaign that seemed like it was made just to appeal to us. That’s because, in a world full of information and multi-channel marketing, people are using clever tactics to make sure their messages cut through.

Here are three questions you should ask yourself:

1 Do the right people get what you’re putting out there? Does it arrive or does it sit in a box, unopened? Is your poster languishing on a notice board under a Weight Watchers ad? Is your mail shot going into a spam folder? If they’re not getting it, you need to understand where the breakdown is. What is stopping your audience seeing your communications?

2 Does it pass the 3-second test? Good communications are visually captivating and appealing. The use of powerful, colour images and large, bold typography can be vital to catching someone’s eye.

3 And the 8-second test? The most difficult one. Real ‘cut-through’ with your audience means that someone picks up what you’re trying to say and understands your core message within 8 seconds. You have to explain, in no more than one or two sentences, what it is you’re trying to communicate. Can you distil your many messages into a simple, brief sentence or headline that ‘says it all’ – what your campaign is about and for and what it means for the person reading it?

It goes without saying that you should always test your campaign, before it goes to market, with a sample of people from your audience. This gives you crucial feedback before the campaign is launched.

Give it a try:

Grab some communication materials, scatter them on a table and see which item or items most quickly leap out at you. Those ones that do pass the 3 second test. Study the ones that don’t and figure out the common themes on both sides.

Do the same with the 5-8 second test. If you are using materials that you know by heart, why not try testing them with friends and family.

\

Here are the five principles for getting your messages in front of your audience’s nose

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What can youdo in

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3 4Keep them with youNow you have got their attention you have to keep it.

The ‘stickiness’ of your campaign depends on how well you are able to keep your audience interested – particularly if you’re running a long campaign.

Here are some factors to help improve your campaign’s stickiness:

Involve themInvolving people keeps and maintains their attention. Asking for their opinion, vote or input engages them more than having them passively receive information. It is this interaction or ‘call to action’ that, above all, can keep them engaged with what you’ve got to say.

Use emotionLook for ways to entertain your audience. It doesn’t always mean making them smile or laugh – it means making an emotional connection that your audience can relate to. EastEnders entertains because it makes people both laugh and cry. Touching on people’s emotions is a powerful way of holding their attention.

VariationSaying your messages again and again is vital to get much deeper understanding from your audience. But the real trick is to keep saying them in different ways. People will get bored and switch off if they think you have told them something before – so find new and innovative ways to get your core messages across.

It’s all about the peopleYour campaign should be one that people can personally connect with. The ‘humanisation’ of your organisation’s messages means using real case studies and real people whose experiences your audience relate to. You can get your messages across by using other people to demonstrate them through their own words and actions – often this is much more powerful than you saying it. Warburtons used this approach when communicating their new 5-year strategy.

Keeping it goingOne-off, stand-alone communications rarely work

Communications to a target audience generally need to be carefully and tactically planned, and often work better as one long campaign, rather than a series of set-piece, one-off events.

You have to keep reiterating messages:

Not once, but several times

Not through one medium, but through a variety.

Peter Mandelson, New Labour’s campaigns guru, once said, “you have to repeat something 10 times before it actually gets through to your audience.”This not because the audience is stupid, but because we live in an age of 24/7 media. Getting messages heard and understood requires repeating them until the audience knows them.

Organisations often fail to get their messages across because they see communicating them as a ‘tick box exercise’. One newsletter, a mailing, an article in a publication or two and a large event (often at great expense) do not make an effective campaign.

Unless those messages are repeated and replicated in a range of other media, the organisation has wasted a lot of money – it is unlikely the messages will have hit home to most people in the audience.

This is particularly the case when organisations hold large all-employee motivational events or briefings. The effects can be powerful in the short-term – people can go away with a sense of purpose, some understanding of the key messages and a bit of a motivational boost. Then what? Often, organisations leave it at that and don’t keep the momentum going to reinforce the key messages. \

The Warburtons strategy – communicated through the eyes and words of their employees.

thinkBox46 Passing the Blu-tack test

5Tell a storyWhen running a campaign, you need a clear, simple story or narrative that captures all your messages and places them in a compelling form.

This narrative is a distillation of all the messages you want to communicate – based on all the strategy presentations, reports, facts and statistics relating to the substance of your campaign – and translated into one or (if really necessary) two pages that flow in the same way any story would.

A narrative for your messages:

Helps you clarify what it is you’re trying to say in your campaign.

Gets your messages across in a logical order – all stories have plots that flow and can be clearly followed.

Should be in clear, simple language that anyone outside your organisation can understand.

Answers the key questions of why, what, who, when, where and how – or as many as are relevant to the substance of your campaign.

\

Quick tips Talk your audience’s language

Get under the skin of your audience – that means you need to know the work environment and social and cultural characteristics. Use this knowledge to inform the way you communicate.

Find out what your audience thinks about the issues or messages at the heart of your campaign.

Catch their eye Test your systems. Check that people are actually receiving what they should receive and, where there is a breakdown in the system, fix it.

Are communications visually appealing and do they catch the eye within 3 seconds?

Do people understand what your communications are trying to say within the first 8 seconds?

Keep them with you Use different and innovative approaches to ensure your audience does not get bored with the repetition of the same messages.

Make sure your campaign has call to action – enabling a two-way relationship that can be maintained over time.

Keep it going Do not think because you’ve communicated a message once, that the message has got through.

Take the same messages and publicise them through all your media in different ways.

Tell a story Turn messages into a narrative. Use simple, everyday language that flows like a story.

Test it on someone who is unfamiliar with the campaign – do they understand and follow the story?


The British Gas Everyday Heroes campaign was designed to reinforce brand values and support a formal recognition programme. It used clear and measurable objectives, effective planning, strong execution, integration and creativity to achieve a quantifiable impact on its target audience. Above all, it used highly creative and interactive means to involve them.

Here is an example that illustrates how these five principles were brought to life in practice

Where people wereThe brand values had been introduced fairly recently and unsurprisingly there was some scepticism. It seemed that people needed the meat on the bones to understand what living the values meant. Recognition had also been seen as something that was ad-hoc, subjective and top-down.

Research showed a relatively young employee audience, on the whole, were enjoying the recent influx of interactive TV shows, such as Big Brother and The X Factor.

Capturing attentionFrom the start, the campaign used language and creatives that mirrored the values, creating a subtle cognitive link to the values in people’s minds.

But the real fire power in the creative arsenal would be people – their pictures and stories. This was all about the people who really put the values into practice – the everyday heroes. But who were they? The business needed employees to tell them. The mountain would go to Mohammed.

To create a buzz, interactive booths were set up across all locations; flyers turned up on people’s windscreens; teasers popped up on the intranet. Even trays in the canteen sported McDonalds-style liners. They all asked the same simple questions – “Do you know an everyday hero? Who’s living the values? Tell us your story!” – Nothing more, nothing less.

Maintaining momentumPeople rushed to fill in the forms on intranet, posted cards and recorded video messages telling the organisation exactly who lived up to the moniker of an Everyday Hero.

Their responses were turned into human interest stories, told through

all channels, which focused on the person and what they had done.

The business needed the next chapter in the story to keep the momentum going. This part of the campaign launched a formal recognition programme. Who would be the Colleague of the Year? The look and feel of the campaign was pared back to its origins. Where images of people should stand on the Everyday Heroes stories, they appeared as black outlines. People noticed the change. For this stage the business capitalised on the interactive voting craze. People would vote for their colleagues – ‘X Factor’ style. Even the short-listing into categories – themed by the values – was done at peer level.

Because of this process, awareness of the awards leapt from 4% to 88% – driving a 500% increase in nominations and garnering over 15,000 individual employee votes.

The upshot was that people were actively involved in telling the business what the values meant; not the other way round.

thinkBox48 Book reviews

Tony Soprano on Management: Leadership Lessons Inspired by America’s Favorite Mobster by Anthony Schneider Anthony Schneider’s book makes an apparently controversial claim in asserting that Tony Soprano should be seen as a model for leadership.

This book claims that Tony Soprano should be the role model of a very new and different kind of manager; a manager better suited for today’s economy and type of organisation.

And the point bears out. While Schneider doesn’t recommend that anyone starts intimidating people, punching them, or getting drunk and angry, he shows that Tony Soprano’s example can help leaders to be faster, more decisive, and make smarter decisions.

A good leader in this style knows how to build a more cohesive and less competitive team, how to manage up, how to praise and how to reprimand, and when and how to meet people. Combined with all these things is the ability to encourage employees and colleagues to be more productive. Quite a list of skills.

The book is intelligent and incisive, whilst being fun to read, whether you are a devotee of the hit television series or not. It is very up to date in terms of case studies, methods and examples from the private and not-for-profit sectors in countries from around the globe.

The book also contains great worksheets and practical tips so you can start making it happen for yourself.

book reviewsthinkBox First, Break All

The Rulesby Marcus Buckingham, Curt CoffmanThis book, based entirely around research (unlike many management books), overturns accepted business myths. Going against conventional wisdom, the book encourages people to take advantage of their natural strengths, rather than focusing heavily on their weaknesses.

It discourages attempts by leaders to become completely perfect. If you have not got a particular talent, such as a natural eye for detail, then no amount of effort to acquire it will be wholly successful.

It might therefore be tempting to conclude that people cannot be changed or improved. That is not true and not what this book says. The message to the leader is different; they must learn to combine many types of best practice to find a style that works for them.

An inspirational read, not just for leaders, but for those at all levels of a company, due to its lesson that focusing too heavily on perfection is destructive.

Engagement Is Not Enough: You Need Passionate Employees to Achieve Your Dreamby Keith E. AyersIn this book, Ayers conveys what he knows about getting employees to be actively engaged and involved with a company. The point is to make engagement and involvement a continuous process that follows an employee.

Starting with the hiring process, a company wants people who will immediately become, and continue to be, actively involved in helping achieve organisational priorities.

Ayers suggests this can be done through four steps, which consist of knowing what must be done, an awareness of how best to do it, accepting of the policies, procedures and channels of authority and communication and maintaining a positive attitude with appropriate behaviour.

49Book reviews

Effective communication is essential to inspirational leadership. If a leader is a good communicator, there is more chance of an audience rallying themselves behind what is said and wanting to achieve the goals the leader sets. In order to communicate well, a leader must both inform and entertain the audience. Part of entertaining the audience comes in telling great stories.

These two books examine stories as communications tools. One book looks at what makes a great story and how to construct your own. The other looks at stories as part of the wider scheme of leadership communication; as one of the many communications tools open for use by an excellent communicator.

Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins by Annette Simmons, focuses on what each reader can offer others through stories. She has managed to write an entertaining book and illustrates her points with stories from her career.

The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative

by Stephen Denning

Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins: How to Use Your Own Stories to Communicate with Power and Impact

by Annette Simmons

Language is the clincher

‘‘

‘‘Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Her examples illustrate how a personal story well-told can establish and then sustain a rapport with an audience. Especially important is the point that such stories may get through to those who may otherwise consider your point of view as threatening or simply not worth listening to.

The second part of the book is a practical guide on how to choose and write stories, with various exercises for

completion by the reader within the spaces of the book itself. This draws on material in the first section whilst managing to retain its engaging and informal character.

Simmons is optimistic about the potential of stories, saying that there is not a problem that cannot be addressed through the use of great stories.

In The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action through Narrative, Stephen Denning explains how stories can fit with other methods of communication to create convincing communication from leaders.

Denning examines four styles and structures of storytelling: exposition, description, narrative and argument, showing how each one has its place in the language of leaders, doing different work in response to different needs. Stories help to hold elements of messages together, but can be complemented with the use of other devices of communication such as questions, offers, challenges, metaphors and reasons.

He provides six ‘key enablers’, which together facilitate the most effective use of language by a leader: articulating a clear and inspiring change idea, committing themselves to change, empathising with the audience’s own story, cultivating human stories that bring your messages to life, a commitment to telling authentically true stories and deploying body language.

All of these ideas demonstrate that there is no catch-all answer to the question of how to go about it.

Both books approach the subject from different angles, providing valuable insight into the role and context of storytelling as a tool for both organisational leaders and communicators.

50

Large organisations are just as prone to fads as individuals, which goes some way to explaining the proliferation of new media technologies. This is understandable, given that the attraction of new ideas and creative opportunities is very strong. Some organisations will have great success; a weekly blog from the CEO that attracts a large and enthusiastic audience, or a promotional campaign on Facebook which gets people talking and raises brand awareness. Others will run similar projects that fail to capture anybody’s attention.

The ones who succeed will be asking the same questions of new channels that they ask of old ones: Does it work? Is it value for money? Is the medium appropriate for the material? How do we use it most effectively to maximise value?

Our view is that there are clear benefits to new media technologies. Their novelty means they pass the Blu-tack test; they have the freshness to cut through the heft of stale communications that people receive every day. They have an immediacy and a level of informality which appeals to

people on a more personal level and can make communications look more relevant. Used well, to communicate the right material, there is no doubt that new media can be effective, but their natural advantages of novelty and immediacy alone cannot guarantee success.

For any communication to be successful, it has to be good, and this means sticking to the principles of good communication. This is just as true for communication through new channels as it is for more traditional channels.

Firstly, communication must be in clear language. If the audience does not understand what you are trying to say, then there is no point to saying it. So it is important to use language that is simple, relevant to the audience and free of jargon.

Secondly, the messages must resonate. They must be credible and reflective of the daily lives of employees. If communications present an idealised image of life in an organisation, employees will become disillusioned. So communicators must have a deep understanding of their audience to create the right messages.

Thirdly, it is important to repeat the message to get it through to the audience. Saying things only once is a good way of ensuring people forget what you have said. It is important to repeat messages through several channels to reach a wider audience and hold their interest.

Finally, communication through various channels must be integrated, so that messages are consistent and coordinated.

If communicators follow these simple rules and treat new channels with the same rigour as more traditional ones, rather than seeing novelty alone as the key to good communication, they are more likely to create good communications that engage the audience, hold their attention and get the message across well.

thinkBoxLastword

Kathryn is a senior account manager at Karian and Box and has substantial experience in managing both employee and community engagement. She has worked on change management programmes for Smith & Nephew plc and British Gas. Most recently she was communications manager at Hull City Council.

Kathryn Fenwick [email protected]

Lastword: new is not always bestMany communicators in all kinds of organisations are making extensive use of new media technologies, such as blogs and viral videos, in their work. While these technologies offer benefits to communicators, it is important to remember that using them does not mean it is fine to forget the rules of good communication. The message still has to resonate, regardless of the channel it is communicated through.

‘‘

‘‘Waiting a year or two, for the next engagement survey to form an opinion on employee attitudes is not enough. At a time of change, you need to know what people are saying: do they understand your priorities and do they support them? What are they doing to deliver them? That’s what’s critical.

This is why pulsecheck® is an important tool for any organisation going through change right now.

Andrew Moys, Global Internal Communications Director, Cadbury plc

pulsecheck®

www.employeepulsecheck.com

pulsecheck®

To engage this man you have to get beyond the face and inside his head.To communicate with Tim Brady the individual, you need to know what he is thinking. That will keep changing, so you need to keep asking him.

Organisations usually only measure employee engagement annually. To gain real insight into what individuals are saying, you need to keep the conversation going. Only then can your communications really get through to all the Tim Bradys in your organisation.

The pulsecheck® approach enables organisations to regularly measure what individuals are thinking, saying and doing on the priorities that matter.

Will the real Tim Brady please stand up

www.employeepulsecheck.com

Documents

thinkBox summer 2009