Optimizing the employee experience is a priority for organizations of all sizes everywhere these days for very good and sound reasons.
It can influence how someone feels about the company they work for right through their tenure, their productivity while they are employed there and how they speak about it – and recommend it, or not, to others after they leave.
It plays a critical role in attracting and retaining skilled employees when talent is scarce in a shrinking labor market, and it has a profound impact on the bottom line.
Studies by IBM’s Smarter Workforce Institute and WorkHuman Analytics & Research Institute show that organizations that score in the top 25% on employee experience report double the return on sales and nearly three times the return on assets.
Because employee communications plays such a key role in the numerous interactions and touchpoints that contribute to engagement and the employee experience, we decided to take a closer look at how they are conducted by IC teams and resonate with employees across diverse industries in the US and
Europe.
Between April and July of this year, in conjunction with the world’s leading ethnographic research company, Human Factors International, we set out to investigate what communications mean in reality from an employee perspective.
The research – a combination of in-depth interviews and work environment observation – was conducted in the pharmaceuticals, engineering, healthcare, manufacturing and mail and transport services sectors. To ensure we obtained a 360 degree picture of the communications flow in each organization, we included employees, line managers and IC professionals.
During the research, four distinct generalized personas emerged, with commonly shared characteristics irrespective of industry or sector. The most striking and profound finding has been the gulf that we have found exists between the priorities and activities of IC teams on the one hand, and the needs and wants of employees on the other.
We believe this finding should give cause for serious deliberation for business leaders, internal communicators, HR professionals and employees alike.
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