Here are some articles that we've written in the last few months.
You'll only find our recently written articles here. We do have an archive of the articles we wrote in 2003, but like 80's hairstyles they just don't seem cool...
How to use digital mediums to engage, not exhaust, your employees…
With the abundance of digital mediums now available, many companies are putting less effort into the way in which they communicate with their employees. Traditional internal marketing strategies are increasingly being overlooked in favour of the faster and often cheaper means of reaching employees via digital media such as emails and online campaigns. There are certainly many advantages to using digital mediums, but in most cases, web-based communication is not having the desired effect on employees. This is largely because companies still do not understand how to incorporate digital mediums into internal marketing campaigns. Based on my observations and experiences as an employee engagement specialist, there are a few aspects to using digital media that every company should make note of.
The Inbox Wars
Within most corporate environments today there is a real sense of e-mail fatigue. Companies are bombarding their employees with poorly packaged emails on a daily basis. This is often the direct result of a lack of strategic internal communications and internal marketing protocols/processes.
At Actuate (internal marketing, communication and capability building specialists) we ensure that any communication that is e-mail based is designed with an ‘advertising’ perspective. In other words, it must cut through the rest of the information clutter, be visually appealing, and have a very clear call to action. In addition, we recommend placing hyperlinks in these e-mails to drive a response to a micro-site, which is usually hosted on the company’s intranet or a secure external platform. Although there is an inevitably big drop-off in responses or views relative to an embedded e-mail newsletter, those respondents who do click through usually spend more time viewing the content. They are also more likely to heed further calls to action (be it viewing another page, registering for an event, or responding to a question or survey). The fact that employees are driven to a webpage ensures that messages and aesthetics can be tiered – i.e. the initial e-mail is short and sharp, the landing page has more information, and the rest of the pages then unpack the information in more detail. Essentially, this allows the consumer of the message to be in control of how much - or how little information - is consumed.
AVs: A True All-Rounder
Video is a medium that if used correctly, can be a valuable component of an internal communications campaign. While the initial investment is usually significant in terms of cost, a well-produced Audio Visual (AV) presentation can make a long-lasting impact. In addition, AVs often allow for integration with many other employee touchpoints. For example, an AV used to support a change effort around a company’s brand can find new life in employee induction, learning and development interventions or corporate roadshows. They can then be hosted on the company intranet for further consumption. Again, short and punchy e-mailers can be used to drive traffic to a micro-site where the AVs are hosted for future viewing. In my experience, larger companies are usually more willing to invest in new platforms where hosted video content is enabled.
Strategic Social Media
Social media is currently the brightest star in the digital universe, but companies are jumping onto the bandwagon without truly understanding the medium. Firstly, social media must be approached as one component of an internal marketing strategy – it cannot stand-alone. Furthermore, the use of social media is only successful when it stems from a specific strategic imperative, and is then custom-installed to address a particular purpose that the brand/company has already indentified. If companies keep the above two ‘rules’ in mind, social media can indeed prove to be a transformative internal communications tool.
Digital Toolkits: A Happy Medium
Finally, I have found that digital manager’s communication toolkits are a very successful and worthwhile channel. These toolkits combine digital and analog solutions, thereby enabling managers to communicate more consistently and more effectively. Each edition follows a similar structure, and they are published on a regular basis. Ready-made presentations, AVs, as well as comprehensive “how to use” guides are embedded in each toolkit. Managers can then use the digital toolkit to enable a team conversation – combining the best of digital with a human element.
Creative internal marketing and dynamic skills development can prove to be a profitable combination.
How much are you spending on your internal marketing, communications and learning and development? Is the way you allocate budget scattered, ineffective, expensive and confusing? For many business leaders, this is sadly the case. But if resources can be pulled together and spent as an internal, strategic war chest, it is possible to significantly increase ROI in terms of employee engagement spend, while helping to create greater clarity in the minds of your employees.
Information overload and irrelevant messages?
While customer interface is a high priority for every brand or company, many are wasting money on ineffectual methods of engaging their employees and aligning them with the brand promise. Instead of implementing two or three broad, organisation wide strategic initiatives to reach employees, most companies devote resources toward too many unrelated and irrelevant internal communications strategies. As a result, employees tend to suffer from information overload, with few messages actually hitting home. Moreover, this common scenario results in wasted time (employees could be working instead of receiving banal internal messages) and wasted money.
The good news is that it can be avoided, and a focused internal engagement strategy, will probably cost the company less and dramatically increase the benefit – both to the organisation and the employee. One of the ways to achieve maximum bang for your buck is to pair a great internal marketing and communication campaign with innovative and engaging skills development schemes.
Keep in mind that the ultimate goal of internal marketing is to achieve higher levels of employee engagement. And for those for whom this concept is a bit hazy, employee engagement is the emotional connection that an employee feels for his/her company, coupled with a broader cognitive understanding of the business. This deeper understanding motivates the employee to work harder and invest in the brand promise.
Get creative
You should approach internal marketing in the same way that an advertising agency would approach an external campaign. View your employees as consumers, and strive to reduce complexity and create clarity in your messaging. Use creativity and original ideas to build an emotional connection in the same way that a powerful advertisement does. Remember that you are competing for valuable mind share with your messages, and you therefore need to break out of normal communication channels. Just like you pay attention to your external marketing, make sure you have the same benchmarks and standards in place for your internal marketing.
The next step is to reinforce your internal ‘advertising’ campaign with an engaging training initiative. Develop internal campaigns which are able to exist as stand alone units, but which are then fully integrated into the learning and development space. The online training modules created for the staff can then reflect the central messages and theme of the employee engagement campaign.
Essentially, you need to create and send a consistent message through all the employee touchpoints that are available to you through the entire HR value chain.
Clarity is key
when designing any internal communications campaign, make sure that you have the fundamentals in place. Firstly, establish what the expectation is. Then provide a detailed map of how you plan to achieve that goal in partnership with the employees, and what the journey to the end goal will look like. Provide the tools and the information, and then focus on developing skills. Finally, create a system in which employees are recognised and awarded such as this ‘Behavioural Change Model” detailed below.
Effective employee engagement is a vital business tool which can provide a significant competitive advantage. Unfortunately, most brands and companies are failing to leverage it.
Leave the dark side, and discover the benefits of creative internal communication capability building.
There is a common misperception amongst business leaders that there are staff, and there are consumers. Not true. Employees are consumers – just like everybody else. They are constantly barraged by the onslaught of TV adverts, radio adverts, print, direct mail, billboards, in-store displays, social media and other online messaging. Let’s face it…it’s inescapable.
To put all this exposure into perspective, Media Matters – a Media Dynamics publication - reported that a typical adult has potential daily exposure to about 600-625 ads in any form. A total of 272 of these come from the traditional media (TV, radio, magazines and newspapers).
Yet employers don’t seem to get this. When they create and distribute internal messaging, they approach staff as if they were a rapt audience hanging onto every word. The prevailing attitude is “it’s just for staff.” There is a distinct air of complacency about the messaging, and as a result, it almost always fails to have the desired impact and promote any sustainable behavioural change amongst staff.
Internal Advertising
When it comes to truly engaging one’s staff, business leaders need to approach their communication to employees in the same way that an advertising agency would approach consumers. Just as an ad agency has a team of specialists who investigate the emotional needs, lifestyles, desires and habits of their target market, so to should an organisation approach its employees. It is important to place the same emphasis on creating an emotional connection to the ‘brand’ (ie. organisation), as well as to ensure the same high quality of design, production and packaging.
The trick is to keep in mind that, as a business leader, you are competing for the attention and head space of employees. They won’t read internal newsletters and emails if the content is long, boring, complex, and/or poorly put together. Most importantly, they won’t read it if it doesn’t appeal to them on an emotional level. Essentially, staff won’t pay any attention to communication if it’s not important enough for business leaders to plan, refine and produce with care.
High Impact
The task of ‘internal advertising/marketing’ is perhaps even more complex and challenging than traditional advertising. Marketing to staff requires the same level of expertise, effort, and rigour as an ad campaign. However, in addition to these elements, one needs to integrate the campaign with various other aspect of staff outreach – such as HR practices, skills development, change management, recruitment and training. Furthermore, employees are often harder to convince or connect with when compared to the average consumer. They are to a certain degree already ‘inoculated’ against internal company messaging, which makes the task of trying to reach them even more of a challenge.
So what is the winning formula when it comes to employee engagement?
I would argue that one should approach the task with a combination of the advertising guru’s flair and imagination, and the HR specialist’s insight into both employees and the organisations they work for. The former goes for high impact, and the latter goes for efficiency.
And in an environment in which results are the only thing that matters at the end of the day, impact and efficiency are two assets that an organisation can’t afford to go without.
Apart from being a rather ‘old’ and overdone topic, I believe that the whole concept of work life balance requires some careful reconsidering. Let me start by saying that the challenge that it implies I am deeply empathetic to and I am painfully aware, as many of you will be, that work can consume an immense amount of psychological and emotional energy as well as time. However, I cannot help getting exasperated every time this archaic concept of work life balance gets rolled out – in discussions, in employee surveys and most often at corporate gatherings (and especially HR conferences.)
Think about it for a moment. The very term ‘work life balance’ has certain rather dramatic implications. Firstly, there is the implication that there is work and then there is life - as if work is not part of what might be considered ‘life’? Yet surely ‘work’ and ‘life’ are not necessarily mutually exclusive?
Which brings me to the critical question of what it is that work gives to us (aside from the painful reality of what it takes from us!).
Work, when aligned with our soul, gives us meaning, joy, challenge, stimulation, an opportunity to become a better person, and an opportunity to commune with others in the pursuit of a worthwhile goal. And even when work is rote, or somewhat unstimulating as many jobs can be, the very act of working becomes a source of dignity, a sense of contribution and at the very least an opportunity to co-exist with other people in something resembling a community.
This all becomes evident when you look back on work that you have enjoyed, that you are proud of, and through which you became smarter, more resilient or more confident. I would also wager a princely sum that there were people who worked with you who derived joy from their work. Indeed, my best work has been achieved when working with clients, colleagues and partners who have found joy (not unbridled delight and happiness at all times but an undercurrent of joy) from their profession. Ultimately, our best work as individuals is done with people who see work as a source of meaning and fulfilment, and not just a task to be done.
In my book, the concept of work life balance is for people who view work as a burden, a punishment, or as a means to an end. It’s a puritanical construct, which implies that our work is something to be tolerated, a means to end and not a means in itself.
When you truly love your work (while acknowledging you may not always like it), you don’t need to capitulate about work life balance – you can just see it as one vital component of your life… and find your life in your work. (And for the many out there who don’t love their work, there is surely some part of your work that you can grow to love, or at least find stimulation from.)
A Zero-Sum Game
When we think of the word ‘balance’, we often conjure up an image of two scales in balance. Yet this is the wrong visual metaphor to have. Firstly, it suggests that we need equal amounts of competing elements to create a constant equilibrium, and for many people, equality in the importance of and attention to the different parts of life makes no sense!
Secondly, it signifies trade-offs: gaining in one area at the expense of another. Even though it is sometimes unavoidable, thinking about work and the rest of life as a series of trade-offs is fundamentally counterproductive. When the goal is work life balance, you’re forced to play a zero-sum game.
Indeed, the quixotic quest for balance restricts many of us. A more accurate metaphor for our mission could be found in the image of a jazz quartet. Here, becoming a total leader is analogous to playing richly textured music with the sounds of life’s various instruments. It is not about muting the trumpet so the saxophone can be heard. Similarly, unless you seek ways to integrate the four domains of your life (work, self, community and home or any other combination of perspectives) and find the potential for each part to help produce success in the others, you cannot then capitalize on synergies in places which most of us don’t see or hear.
Finding the Flow
What is clearly emerging from all of this is the fundamental importance of deriving meaning and enjoyment from one’s work. When this is achieved, the striving for work life balance is either forgotten or abandoned.Yet finding joy in the workplace is not always easy. To this end, I will refer you to the fascinating wok of author Dr Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who has written extensively about the concept of flow.
He describes flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Yourwhole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."
People who are in the "flow" therefore achieve a state of consciousness that is in harmony with their surroundings and feelings. They do not make distinctions between work and play ... people in the "flow" create an inner state of being that brings them peace and fulfilment that is separate from their external environment.
So the next time the subject of work life balance comes up over your lunch break or at the year-end function, challenge yourself (and your colleagues) to take a closer look at what you’re really discussing. Don’t mistake the quest for meaning with the more ‘accepted’ quest for the outdated idea of work life balance.
In order to achieve its purpose, employee engagement needs to be fully integrated into the general strategic plan for your brand. This means incorporating an employee engagement strategy into your brand planning from the outset. Unfortunately, internal 'advertising' campaigns are usually an afterthought, and are therefore not given the advance planning, attention, and resources that they require. Indeed, employee engagement deserves the same level of 'respect' and importance as any traditional marketing campaign. It is as vital to your brand's success as the flashy billboards, catchy television commercials, and colourful in-store promotions.
Furthermore, by approaching employee engagement on the same level as marketing, you will automatically create more congruence between the two and allow them to complement each other in the short and long term. Before I proceed, let me give you a quick refresher on what employee engagement actually is, and why it is so critically important for your brand. Employee engagement is best understood as the emotional connection that an employee feels for his/her company, paired with a broader cognitive understanding of the organisation/brand. This understanding is essentially what motivates the employee to work harder, more thoughtfully, and with greater investment in the brand's success. And by getting one's employees behind the brand promise, the chances of creating a positive and powerful customer/client experience are greatly enhanced. Yet despite the obvious importance of implementing a thorough and well-planned employee engagement strategy, it is often regarded as one of the final steps in a brand campaign - instead of being thought of as one of the initial steps, as it should be. In addition, internal campaigns often do not draw upon the resources and intellectual capital of the entire company. This is wasteful, and detracts from the desired impact of any employee engagement strategy.
It requires buy-in from across the board. This means that you need to pull personnel out of their respective professional 'silos', and integrate various departments into the engagement process. Ultimately, you are creating a customer experience. And everyone within the organisation has a role to play, be it large or small, in shaping this experience. For example, human resources personnel enable a client experience through HR practices by inducting staff and implementing performance management, amongst other things. If your HR team is invested in the brand promise, this will greatly influence and guide their decision-making within the HR realm. Similarly, if your sales personnel understand the brand proposition to the market on a deeper level then they will be able to leverage that promise far more effectively in the sales environment. So if you approach employee engagement with this collaborative approach as a guiding principle, the effect will be far more powerful, sustainable, and ultimately more profitable.
To provide an example of this 'collaborative' approach in action, I will give you a brief snapshot of recent work we did with a FMCG company. We realised that in order to implement the change management and transformation that would ultimately propel the brand to the next level, we needed buy-in and participation from across the board. Fortunately, the company's brand teams contributed a budget that went into training sales representatives and launching an internal advertising campaign. This enabled us to build both capability and knowledge around the brand promise. So even though employee engagement is not where marketing budget is usually spent, the result was a dramatic increase in sales. This was due to the simple but effective integration of branding, trade marketing, and sales. If both you and your organisation truly understand and appreciate the power of employee engagement, it should not be too difficult to pool intellectual capital and resources for the campaign. At the end of the day, everybody will appreciate great results! Kevin Liebenberg managing director, Actuate
It is an accepted fact nowadays that companies spend vast amounts on creating dazzling marketing campaigns - each of which are designed to catch the attention and spend of increasingly demanding consumers. These campaigns strive to deliver a brand promise to their audience. Now, whether this brand promise is kept or broken depends on the consumer’s interaction with the brand, and the brand employees. If a considered effort isn’t made to align employees with the brand promise, then those marketing dollars (as well as time and effort) have more than likely gone to waste.
Moral of the story? It is critical to ensure that an organisation’s employees have gotten behind the brand promise. This is achieved through effective employee engagement.
While there are many ways to define employee engagement, I approach it as an enhanced cognitive understanding and emotional connection that an employee feels for his/her work - and this connection drives an increased, voluntary discretionary effort. In other words, an engaged employee will do over and above what is expected of her, working more broadly than her actual role requires her to.
Employee engagement is thus a win-win situation: the employee has an opportunity for both personal and professional growth, and the organisation gets a higher quality of output. If an organisation can achieve engagement ‘en masse,’ then that will certainly become its competitive advantage. In fact, studies have revealed that achieving even 10% engagement will lead to a significant improvement in results.
One of the most important drivers of employee engagement is their relationship with their manager/director. This relationship is shaped to a large degree by how a manager communicates with his/her employees. What makes the manager’s task such a challenging one, is the fact that engagement is a psychological state (ie it can be compared to happiness or sadness). It is therefore a state which is ever-changing and which is unique to each individual. In essence, a manager needs to function as an amateur psychologist - learning how to read and understand an employee’s emotional state. Indeed, there are actual communication strategies that a manager should put into practice...
Firstly, ‘know thy staff.’ This is achieved through spending quality time interacting with employees, both within and outside of the work space. When managers are able to find out the seemingly small and inconsequential details of an employee’s life, this adds to their arsenal of understanding. A manager should seek to understand who his/her employees are: what drives them (both personally and professionally), and what they consider rewarding. A common mistake is to assume that everyone is motivated by the same things.
Secondly, managers should always be present with their employees - in both the physical and mental sense. When an employee approaches his/manager for advice, feedback, or direction, the manager needs to devote his full attention to that employee. If he is unable to be fully present at that moment, he should ask the employee to come back at a more convenient time.
The way in which feedback is delivered is also critically important. Managers should strive to always give honest feedback on work performances, while at the same time helping employees to feel that they are improving. This is where knowing an employee becomes very helpful, as each employee will respond differently to the way in which feedback is given.
Relationships are built on effort, so managers should create regularity and consistency in the way that they communicate with employees. Time should be set aside for both individual and group meetings, and these appointments must be kept at all costs. This can be an invaluable way of staying current with the personal and professional contentment of employees.
Lastly, managers should act as translators for their employees - translating the organisation’s strategic intent into clear operational steps and activities. This is where the importance of cognitive understanding comes in. While the task of the CEO is to communicate the organisation’s vision, mission and values to the outside world, it is the manager’s job to show his/her employees how what they do on a daily basis is transforming that vision into a reality.
Effective management communication is therefore essential to employee engagement. In fact, there is a widely accepted notion that ‘employees join companies, but they leave their managers.’ This theory was backed up by Gallup Organization’s Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman in their groundbreaking book, First, Break All the Rules.
Naturally, there are many other key drivers of employee engagement, and unless they are present in a critical mass, then even having the world’s best manager will not lead to engagement. The challenge is to create an environment in which an employee is motivated to invest in the brand and excel at his/her work - and the atmosphere of this environment is determined to a large extent by the manager.
While we weren’t watching you, Trevor, while you were still a mere comedian as far as we were concerned, and long before you became the CEO (Customer Experience Officer) of Cell C, something else was going on deep in the bowels of the cellphone network.
And that something was what you were doing to help in the unglamorous field of staff training, Trevor. You were watching the company’s staff like a hawk Trevor, in the company of experts from Joburg-based marketing and communications agency Actuate.
The story goes back at least a year before Cell C, through its CEO Lars Reichelt and Trevor Noah relaunched itself with a marketing apology that some considered tantamount to brand suicide.
That, it has since become plain, was the start of an all-out assault by Cell C on the market share of the Big Two of the cellphone business , Vodacom and MTN.
And before he hit the beaches, CEO (the real one) Reichelt knew his troops had to be trained, because he realised that the most effective marketing money you can ever spend is on staff training and motivation.
The world’s cleverest ad agency and best commercial director mean little when you call centre staff are rude and your shop salespeople are chewing gum-masticating and ignorant.
Actuate is a company which blends the disciplines of marketing communications, human resources and training and focuses, says co-founder Terri Brown, on ensuring that a company’s internal resources are aligned to its external marketing strategy.
In the case of Cell C, Reichelt and his executive team realised that a true transformation of the company could only come from within – and by acknowledging some harsh home truths.
Working with Atucate, Cell C developed a dynamic internal brand positioning to align Cell C employees with the new brand promise.
The idea was to give employees a sense of pride, ownership and understanding of the new brand and the skills to make the brand promise a reality.
Melody Lekota, Cell C chief human resources officer, says: “Cell C embarked on a huge transformation, and it was critical to have a highly engage workforce in order for us to be able to deliver.”
In keeping with Actuate’s philosophy that a brand promise is only delivered by employees who are “engaged, informed, empowered and who love the brand”, Actuate and Cell C co-designed a sustainable employee engagement programme that created a “brandforce” of employees – a veritable army of professionals who are equipped to enhance the Cell C experience internally and externally.
The unique empowerment programme consisted of trainers’ toolkits, electronic toolkits, and intranet self-learning programmes. The easy-to-use and highly colourful toolkits were designed to give employees critical knowledge and skills which allowed them to ‘live’ the Cell C customer experience and deliver it effectively. The toolkits covered every aspect of the new Cell C positioning – from the enhanced network to the company’s vision, mission and values.
Noah was originally introduced into the mix as an internal spokesman and brand ambassador; and only after that became a key feature of the external relaunch campaign.
His part in the campaign internally meant that staff had developed a relationship with Noah when the above-the-line messaging began.
“His popularity in a large part of the internal target market was a key differentiator” explains Lekota, “and introduced some humour and freshness to the learning and communication material.”
The electronic toolkits were “manager-ready” and allowed managers to train employees and refresh their knowledge, while the intranet toolkits provided online training for employees.
They could use these toolkits to train themselves on critical information about the business within an hour. And, to make the experience a memorable one for employees, Actuate developed a competition – “The Mother of All Trolley Dashes” – to motivate employees to use the new material. Any employee who achieved an 80% correct answer result on the training assessment won the chance to go on a one day shopping spree worth R50 000.
Kevin Liebenberg, managing director of Actuate, says the company worked closely with Reichelt, Lekota and Cell C’s marketing director, Simon Camerer.
“This was no ‘lip service’ paid to training and engagement, this was full-on commitment from the top down to literally re-engineering the company.
“What you have seen in public is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to work done for the relaunch,” adds Liebenberg.
To ensure the sustainability of the campaign and build in an element of manager accountability, Actuate also proposed ‘mobi-based training reinforcement’ – micro bits of information fro employees with built-in real-time measurement and tracking.
Also, Actuate created manager ‘chat guides’, which provided skills and tools that empowered managers to converse more with their team and so support the change and enhance knowledge and business-aligned behaviours, ensuring accuracy and consistency of information across the business.
Finally, to incorporate executive leadership into the campaign, Actuate and Lekota introduced monthly ‘brown bag breaks’ to drive a culture of conversation and shine a spotlight on key issues.
The team also organised a “Leaders’ Launch Roadshow”, which provided a unique opportunity for Reichelt and the leadership team to chat to employees about the relaunch and reasons behind it.
The glamorous event also emphasised the critical role that each Cell C employee plays in making the new brand promise a reality.
Actuate, a full-service employee engagement consultancy, recently partnered with Cadbury South Africa to create top-of-mind awareness about gum within the company. The Chewing Gum category is a relatively new member of the Cadbury portfolio and is one of the fastest growing segments of confectionery in the country.
"We used a strategic two-phased approach," explains Kevin Liebenberg, MD of Actuate. "Phase one was designed to increase the level of awareness and understanding of the gum category, and Phase Two was implemented to up-skill the sales team - giving them the information and tools they needed to increase their capability at store level and win more sales.
To gain firsthand insight into the gum category and the challenges within the sales process, Actuate went on ride-alongs with sales reps. The experience revealed that the reps needed to be equipped with better sales techniques, as well as useful information about gum as an emerging category.
"We wanted to give gum a voice and make it stand out," adds Liebenberg, "so we formed the Gum United Movement (G.U.M.) to promote the interests of gum around the country."
The Cadbury National Sales Conference held in February 2010 provided the ideal platform to launch Actuate's awareness campaign, with a staged 'protest' by GUM supporters. Additionally each rep received a trendy gum boot-kit at the event. The kit contained a G.U.M. manifesto, a handout for merchandisers, and colourful booklets for store managers. In addition, each guest received a Valentines box (filled with gum, not chocolates!). All attendees then received a double-page "news handout" about the conference a few days later which wrapped around the Citizen newspaper.
Phase Two consisted of the Winning Activation workshop, which aimed to increase the capabilities of the sales force. The intensive two-day workshop consisted of a range of fun and interactive activities, including a debate session, quiz, "conversation cafe", and theoretical discussions. Each rep was given various tools including a redesigned gum pack to hand out to their store managers, which highlighted the compelling facts and figures about various placements of gum in store. The managers also received a guide, which consists of tips to communicate effectively with their sales teams and entrench the knowledge they had gained.
"Actuate assisted us superbly in developing the right tools to combine both benefits for the shopper and customer in a creative yet pragmatic way, that resonated strongly within our sales team," says Brendon Keightley, Head of Trade Marketing for Cadbury SA. "We started with the challenge of changing behaviour within our team, and with the assistance of Actuate's expertise, I believe we have achieved that objective."
In the emotional-driven field of employee engagement there are certain buzzwords that keep coming up.
Topping the list of common terms are purpose, passion, vision, excellence and meaning. So, why are these words so seldom applied to the manner in which companies engage employees?
I’m passionate about advertising. Had my life taken a different turn, I’d be busy making adverts. But it didn’t, and here I sit.
What people tend to forget about ads is that they have a serious job to do. They have to sell products, educate consumers, shift perceptions, change behaviours, and create an emotional connection with a brand.
This is, as far as I can tell, exactly what employee engagement strives to do. The major difference is that the ad guys do it by appealing to people on a very basic level – how they feel.
A powerful advert connects with consumers by making them laugh, feel angry, proud or dissatisfied with their lot in life. Ad gurus pluck an arrow from their quiver and aim shamelessly for the heart.
Employee engagement aims that same arrow directly at the head. Practitioners do this by providing cartloads of information to employees on what they should adopt, change, shift, understand, know or do. But the way the information is delivered fails to capture the emotions of employees.
Employee engagement professionals provide the directions without the vision of a compelling destination.
Here are two things I don’t understand:
Why do employers feel that employees deserve less than customers when it comes to communication?
What do employers think their staff are watching and reading when they leave the building at the end of the day?
There is a prevailing attitude that there are staff and there are consumers. The truth is that when not at work – and even when at work – depending on your internet policy, employees are consumers.
They are being exposed to whatever is out there – TV adverts, radio adverts, print, direct mail, billboards, in-store displays.
According to the Media Dynamics publication, Media Matters, a typical adult has potential daily exposure to about 600-625 ads in any form. A total of 272 of these come from the traditional media (TV, radio, magazines and newspapers).
Each of these campaigns is designed to cut through a swathe of clutter and catch the eye of customers.
Do employers share this critical knowledge? It appears not. I suspect there’s a sense of complacency instead, because business leaders feel that “if you’re on my payroll, you’ll read what I send”. No, I won’t.
I won’t read it if it’s boring, difficult to understand, long and complicated, or ugly. Most importantly, I won’t read it if it doesn’t appeal to me on an emotional level. I won’t read it because if it’s not important enough for you to plan, craft, refine and beautifully produce, then how important is it really? After all, look at how much effort you put into your brand ad.
I’d love to reveal to you how many communiqués employees receive daily, but the truth is I don’t know. And it’s not for lack of effort. I’ve done a few media audits for major companies and it’s hard to arrive at an accurate, or even a vague, figure.
So, what are the key lessons we can learn from the ad people?
They go for high impact. And in a land where the currency is emotions, they invest their money, time and skill in creating campaigns that aim first to own the heart – and then the head.
Terri Brown is a director at Actuate – employee engagement specialists.
Researchers love to put generations into neat boxes – the baby boomers, Generation X or Generation Y, for example.
There are no exact rules for when Generation Y, otherwise know as “Millenials”, begins and ends. Depending on the source, birth dates range from the mid 1970s to the early 2000s, but companies seem to agree they will need to change the way they recruit and retain young people. The Harvard Business Review says Millenials (in this instance those born between 1977 and 2000) will make up more than half the global workforce by 2014.
Phephile Simelane, client service director of Actuate, says: “Globally, the ‘war for talent’ is on, and it has become necessary for organisations to find creative ways to attract and retain skilled individuals.”
She says employers should look out for people who will question everything. “It doesn’t matter if you are the big boss, they will still question you. So give them rational reasons for the decisions made.”
Oliver Fortuin, general manager at IBM sub-Saharan Africa, believes older generations have much to learn from Generation Y. He says when Millennials first started using Facebook, Youtube and Twitter at work, it was seen as another way for “these digital natives to slack off”. However, attitudes have changed and now these platforms have become an integral part of the working world.
“It was about creating a new way of working. There’s already loads of research showing that their leadership styles will be markedly different. In bringing social networking inside the corporation, Gen Y has taught employees by introducing them to things like Facebook on which they can share information.
This familiarity with technology has, according to Paul Fick of Spescom DataFusion, made Millennials more demanding customers. He says organisations will need to find ways to understand and meet their expectations or risk losing them as customers and employees to more switched-on organisations. “They are happy to help themselves in their own time so ‘always-on’ self-service is becoming essential. And when they do need to interact with a contact centre, they want the convenience, ease and ‘richness’ of interaction, featured in their regular stomping grounds – social media platforms.
Generation Y has often been criticised for being too demanding. This has upset employers who want their staff to understand that usually hard work comes before big salary.
Yashivan Govender, director of operations at FirstStep.me, says: “There is no problem with wanting to have money. However, it’s the belief that money comes from fresh air that has led to the youth fixating on it.
They forget that, in order to get cash or some form of remuneration, there needs to be hard work, discipline and some form of monetary awareness. So it’s a degree of expectancy that has come from a mentality of just being given money rather than earning money.”
Dedicated workers are found to be more productive, profitable, safer, less likely to leave and customer focused.
According to Towers Watson, 88% of fully engaged employees believe they can positively impact the quality of their organisation's products and services.
Only 38% of disengaged employees feel the same way. (www.towerswatson.com)
But what is employee engagement?
There are numerous definitions of employee engagement. Some emphasise the underlying cognitive requirements, some on the underlying emotional issues and others still on the motivational aspects of an employee and the job they do in an organisation.
Practically though, employee engagement is the heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for her company, together with a broader cognitive understanding of the business, that influences her to exert greater discretionary effort to her work.
Simply put, an engaged employee is one who understands and supports the company goals and values ("think"), has a greater affinity for and pride in the organisation ("feel") and is more likely to willingly invest discretionary effort to fully contribute to the success of the company ("act".)
There is a significant focus currently in large organisations on employee engagement and the drivers of achieving enhanced levels of engagement among a critical mass of employees. Most of South Africa's largest and best companies have departments, or at least roles dedicated to understanding and improving employee engagement.
And there is compelling evidence to explain this trend. According to a recent Conference Board report on employee engagement there is significant evidence that higher levels of employee engagement correlates to better personal, group and company performance in areas such as retention, turnover, productivity, customer service and loyalty. ("Employee Engagement, A Review of Current Research and Its Implications", 2006)
The report also showed that highly engaged employees could outperform their disengaged counterparts by 20% - 28%.
A 2006 Meta-Analysis by Gallup of over 23 000 business units, compared units with engagement scores in the top quartile with those who had below average engagement scores. Those businesses in the top half of the engagement scores had 27% higher profitability than those in the bottom half. Gallup found that engagement levels can also be predictors of sickness absence, with more highly engaged employees taking an average of 2.7 days per year, compared with disengaged employees taking an average of 6.2 days per year.
In fact, Towers Watson, in recent research found that effective employee communication is a leading indicator of financial performance and a driver of employee engagement - and companies that are highly effective communicators had a whopping 47% higher total return to shareholders over the last five years, compared with firms that are the least effective communicators. ("2009/2010 Communication ROI Study")
What the executives of companies large and small need to take heed of when considering employee engagement and particularly the driver of internal marketing and communication in employee engagement, is that their employees are exposed to highly sophisticated marketing messages and processes by brands who are wanting to engage both cognitively and emotionally with them. The same consideration and strategic approach to their internal messaging and engagement can produce a significant return.
Engaging employees is a fast route to engaging customers. Not only are engaged employees more productive, but they're also more profitable, safer, less likely to leave their employer, and crucially more customer focused. In turn, all this translates to higher customer satisfaction and increased revenue for the business.
There are numerous definitions of employee engagement. Some emphasise the underlying cognitive requirements, some on the underlying emotional issues and others still on the motivational aspects of an employee.
Practically though, employee engagement is the heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for her company, together with a broader cognitive understanding of the business, that influences her to exert greater discretionary effort to her work.
Simply put, an engaged employee is one who understands the company better, has a greater affinity for it and is therefore more likely to contribute fully to the success of the company.
What are the benefits that companies can reap if their employees are engaged?
According to a recent Conference Board report on employee engagement there is significant evidence that higher levels of employee engagement correlates to better personal, group and company performance in areas such as retention, turnover, productivity, customer service and loyalty. ("Employee Engagement, A Review of Current Research and Its Implications", 2006)
The report also showed that highly engaged employees could outperform their disengaged counterparts by 20% - 28%.
Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson), in a 2008 global workforce study ("Closing the Engagement Gap. A Roadmap for Driving Superior Business Performance") report quoted a 1-year study on 50 global companies showing a keen correlation between levels of engagement and hard performance data. Companies with high levels of engagement showed increases of 19% in operating income and 28% jumps in earnings per share. Conversely those organisations with low levels of engagement saw drops in operating income of more than 32% and EPS declines of 11%.
Noteworthy differences in operating margins and net profit margin were also illustrated.
How would an engaged employee differ from one who is not?
Engaged employees have a sense of personal attachment to their work and their organisation. They are motivated and able to give of their best to help the company succeed. And from that flows a tangible series of benefits for the individual and the organisation.
At the other end of the spectrum employees who are said to be disenchanted, or disengaged, are either getting by doing the minimum, or could be displaying behaviour that is destructive and value destroying.
The impact is also felt in the attitudes and therefore the behaviour of the employees. According to Towers Watson:
88% of fully engaged employees believe they can positively impact the quality of their organisation's products and services.
Only 38% of disengaged employees feel the same way. (www.towerswatson.com)
What role should manager play to ensure their employees are engaged?
The direct relationship with one's manager is a very strong driver of employee engagement. Good managers work hard at understanding their employees needs, values, motivators and contexts and "market" their required outputs better. The same effort put into understanding the customer, must be practiced regarding employees.
Senior managers' ability to create authentic proof-points showing that they are genuinely interested in employee's well-being is a key positive influencer and can be as important as the impact of the direct manager.
It is easier to feel engaged if your job is stimulating, can employees who have fairly repetitive,
low skilled positions also feel engaged?
Absolutely - a work environment characterised by stimulating work that challenges and rewards the employee with professional and personal growth is the ideal.
Particularly in South Africa however, we do have many jobs that do not necessarily offer that possibility. Engagement can however undoubtedly be enhanced with the correct approach.Informal recognition, a safe and aesthetically pleasing workspace, integrated communication and internal marketing programmes, as well greater context and line of sight between the employee's tasks and the company's performance can increase employee engagement at all levels. It goes without saying that the manager's behaviour and skill levels are also extremely important.
If so, how would a company go about ensuring that all its workers were engaged?
The larger the company, the more difficult it is to drive consistently high levels of employee engagement. One of the inputs that can have a significantly positive influence on engagement is strategically formulated and well considered internal marketing and communications programme driven from the very top of the organisation.
Equipping managers at all levels to communicate and manage for engagement is also a vital input.
We have seen great success in creating manager's toolkits to enable consistent, well prepared and compelling communication of important issues such as business strategy, progress, innovation, values programmes and the like.
In many companies people work in teams, how important are the other team
members in this process?
Co-workers and team members significantly influence one's level of engagement. Working with others who you respect and like will obviously be conducive to greater engagement - the meaning that is created through good human relations in the pursuit of a common goal is a key ingredient to engaged employees.
