The all-consuming employee: Employee engagement in the age of experience

The all-consuming employee–Employee engagement in the age of experience

Introduction–A quick refresher on why CEOs care about employee engagement

Imagine you’re a CEO and you see data proving that investing time, money and expertise in an area of your organization could improve your customer experience and your financial results. Wouldn’t you make that investment without hesitation?

That’s employee engagement: the more involved and enthusiastic staff feel about their work and their employer brand, the more successful that employer will be.

But here’s the thing: companies are spending on employee engagement initiatives, but far too often that investment isn’t having the impact it could—because employee engagement programs are lackluster, behind-the-times and just plain lame.

This white paper addresses how to create better employee engagement programs.

It’s simple: just treat employees like the consumers they are.

Jon Paul Potts Communications Strategist

Katie Chatfield Creative Strategist

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Employee engagement rankings–For 40 years, Gallup has studied employee engagement and its effect on individual and organizational workplace performance outcomes.¹

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More engaged employees make customers happier, too.

According to the same study, companies with higher employee engagement show 86% higher success rates on customer metrics.

Forrester has shown just how valuable a better customer experience can be:

For instance, in the hotel industry, moving from a below-average customer experience to an above-average customer experience could mean an annual upside of more than $1.1 billion USD for a hotel.²

than competitors ranked below average for employee engagement

2.6x greater earnings per share growth

Top quartileorganizations

44%

70%higher profitability

higher success in lowering turnover

Top half organizations

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Imagine you’re a consumer-facing brand, trying to get the attention of people in their daily lives. Of course you work hard to get their attention across every conceivable touchpoint: through phones and laptops and tablets and rich media experiences. Of course you think through your messaging and understand that not all consumers are alike; they’re people, with human-scale differences of culture and perspective. And of course you never take consumers’ attention for granted; you know you’re competing for people’s attention so you push your brand to be creative and cut-through.

So why do brands so often fail to bring the same game to their employees that they do to their customers?

The problem–Employee programs aren’t what they need to be

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Employee communications are often flat, uninspiring, filled with legalese and bad clip art. Cheesy stock photo, anyone?

As an employer, you can’t take your workforce’s attention for granted. You need to market to them, just as you do to your potential customers. You need to bring creativity to your communications and think multichannel—reinforcing the purpose of their work as part of the brand and business vision in the context that’s right for them. Don’t just send out 10,000 emails and call it a day.

Equally, don’t assume that employee engagement drivers are universal. Operating in the multicultural, multigenerational and multichannel world represents new challenges for leaders trying to drive high levels of employee engagement. Organizations that invest in understanding and managing the key drivers of engagement across multiple constituencies will drive better performance.

Employee programs aren’t what they need to be–

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Top engagement drivers by geography

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United Kingdom

Australia

Brazil

United States

1 Being treated with respect

Working environment where I can provide good service

Work-life balance

Quality of organizational leadership

Type of work I do

1

2

3

4

5

Being treated with respect

Work-life balance

Type of work I do

Quality of people I work with


India

1

23

4

5

Type of work I do

Base pay



Promotion opportunities

1

2

3

4

5



Work-life balance

Quality of people I work with


1

2

3

4

5


Type of work I do

Work-life balance

Base pay


China

1

23

4

5


Base pay

Benefits


Learning & development opportunities

Top fiveengagement drivers by geographySource: Mercer ³

2

3

4

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People are all different—jobs, life stages, circumstances—and brands need to take this into account in employee communications in the same way they segment their consumers. This is why internal segmentation is as important in employee communications as consumer modeling can be when you take your brand out into the world.

Yet amidst the diversity of engagement drivers, there is a common thread for workers: they want to be treated with respect by their employers and feel inspired at their place of employment—and that means they want to be engaged as the consumers they are. They expect you to be just as truthful, transparent, inspiring, agile and relevant as the other brands in their lives.

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But how?

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Brand to everyone–Four key requirements

We know that there’s a correlation between employee engagement, customer experience and financial performance. What’s the impact on brand?

Brands that deliver relevant, compelling and consistent brand experiences for every stakeholder, where the consumer value proposition and the employee value proposition reinforce and reflect each other, experience the amplification effect of a “brand to everyone” or “B2E” approach. B2E thinking ensures that your own people and channel partners deliver a great experience to your end-user customers. Driving the brand from the inside out creates a stronger foundation for effective, meaningful brand experiences with customers and consumers.

But what are the building blocks to B2E thinking? What’s the starting point for effective employee engagement?

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Be purpose led–Create impactful experiences anchored in the business and brand’s purpose, ambition, and intent

A night at the movies

How do you convince thousands of employees that a significant change in how they do their job was a good thing? How about a night out at the movies? A large telecommunications company in Asia Pacific was launching a new internal digital platform that all employees would need to embrace. Since people have a hard time adapting to change, the launch experience integrated both live and digital touchpoints to drive excitement and generate buzz across the company, including online banners and snail mail that invited employees to register for a free movie night. These live movie nights at local movie houses became engaging “surprise and delight moments” for the employees. They were invited to view a film of their choice, and in return before the screening began, a member of the company’s leadership team gave a short introduction on the new digital platform and showed a 10-minute animated video explaining the new tool. The results? 94% of employees reported they understood the digital strategy.

Be true to your brand. If you’re telling your consumers one thing, don’t tell your employees something different. Your employees should understand how their work connects to the brand, and be able to deliver the brand to your customers.

Develop a roadmap enabling your people to understand the brand’s purpose, future relevance, beliefs and promise.

Agree what success looks like, get buy-in at the top and engage key stakeholders.

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Build intuitively designed experiences–Anticipate how employees will want to participate, and design to enable those interactions

Taking it to the next level

Employees at one of the world’s largest professional firms saw themselves as high-performers—so driving acceptance of a new global strategy aimed at unlocking more discretionary effort meant overcoming skepticism and inspiring change. Treating the firm’s partners and staff as savvy consumers, what could have been a ho-hum internal communications effort was transformed into a full-blown political-style campaign, with local Town Halls, an employee manifesto, microsite and leadership “stump speeches”. Nearly 100% of the 22,000-person workforce participated, in a campaign that 95% of employees rated as excellent.

Segment your workforce. Understand the split across your demographics, how many people are mobile versus desk bound, and who has access to what channels of communication.

Anticipate how employees will participate in communication and enable positive interaction, immerse, engage and invite participation and dialogue (don’t just train and communicate).

Remember that—like a good ad campaign, which can take 12 to 18 months to take hold—engagement takes time and change can be difficult. Create your internal brand through a series of experiences that build on each other and are connected by a strong messaging thread.

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Create useful employee experiences–Add value for your employees and help them be advocates for your brand

Make it relevant, and make it about them.

Build a culture that celebrates the people who live the brand, deliver it to customers, and can articulate it clearly—no matter their position in the organizational hierarchy.

Be creative and accessible. The quality and sophistication of the content should be of the same standard as you would use to talk to your consumers.

Remember that engagement depends as much on context and as it does on content. Understand the world your employees live in, and treat them as if they have other options to get information.

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Measure twice, communicate once–Understand what’s working, and count what matters (not just what can be counted)

Employees as celebritites

Scott & White Healthcare was growing fast, hiring new talent and opening new healthcare facilities in Texas. However, there was a downside to tremendous growth: a collection of hospitals and clinics each with their own culture, all of them talking about the brand differently. The most relevant way to inspire disparate staff to embrace a common cause? Tap into social media culture and make employees the celebrities in support of a larger culture campaign. A cultural manifesto was hung in halls and break rooms, and placed on mousepads, videos and screen savers, on buttons and ID clips. Unlike other corporate campaigns the staff had seen before, these communications featured “in the moment” photography of people they knew and worked with every day, people who served as models of the overarching cultural values. The employees were the celebrities and heroes. Gallup scores improved, resulting in PR Week’s award for “Employee Communications Campaign of the Year.”

Don’t restrict yourself to an annual survey (often managed centrally and comprising a huge number of questions). Yes, you’ll get detailed reports across a large number of metrics—but you need more than a once a year snapshot.

Take a page from the Net Promoter playbook: survey employees more often, ask a few simple questions, and simplify the reporting. How likely would you be to recommend this company to a friend as a place to work? How likely would you be to recommend the company’s products or services to a potential customer? What’s the primary reason for your response?

Let employees to use their own words to identify opportunities and issues. However difficult to hear—employees tend to be tough graders—you’ll be better equipped to meet employee needs.

Convene a panel of employees from across the organization and ask them about the health of your brand. An employee who feels heard can be the most passionate brand ambassadors, motivating peers and partnering with leadership.

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Everyone’s a consumer–

Training a lifestyle

A leading consumer electronics company was launching a new device and needed to train sales reps on the device. Since the new device was built to meet the lifestyle needs of consumers, the training was built the same way. Rather than dry presentations and training off-sites, the sales enablement program tapped the energy of consumer marketing to inspire sales reps to sell the device with passion and clarity. A nine-city training tour in the US invited reps to local clubs to see local bands and try out the device. The events showcased the features of the device, but also kicked off a “Battle of the Bands” to find an ultimate winning band. The B2B training events merged with the sales reps’ consumer worlds, building a passionate and engaged advance audience that led to an amazing viral campaign at launch.

Loyal, passionate employees can offer your brand as much benefit as loyal, passionate consumers. They stay longer, work harder, work more creatively, and find ways to go the extra mile. And along the way, they bring you more great employees.

Just as your customers consume your brand, so are your employees constantly evaluating how you talk to them, how they feel about the place they work, and whether you are engaging them as an employer. Treat them with the same care and attention as consumers, and engage them across multiple touch points, with the same heart, sophistication and intelligence as you would consumers.

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Talk to us–Contact Melinda LindlandSVP, New Business and Group Account [email protected]

Read our blog at blog.jackmorton.com

Follow us on twitter @jackmorton

Visit us online at jackmorton.com

¹ Follow This Path: How the World’s Greatest Organizations Drive Growth by Unleashing Human Potential, Curt Coffman and Gabriel Gonzalez-Molina.

² The Business Impact of Customer Experience (http://www.flowresulting.nl/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/The-Business-Impact-Of-Customer-total.pdf)

³ What’s Working (2011) a survey of 30,000 workers in 17 global markets.

About Jack Morton

We’re a global brand experience agency. We generate breakthrough ideas, connecting brands and people through experiences that transform business. Our portfolio of award-winning work spans 75 years across event marketing, sponsorship marketing, promotion and activation, experience strategy, employee engagement, digital, social, and mobile. Ranked at the top of our field, Jack Morton is part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. (NYSE: IPG).

More information is available at: www.jackmorton.com or @jackmorton

© Jack Morton Worldwide 2014

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The all-consuming employee: Employee engagement in the age of experience

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