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Employee Benefits Communication Success Strategies

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In the aftermath of the pandemic, employers have received a massive wake-up call — in more ways than one. Who knew so many people would rush to quit their jobs when The Great Resignation rolled through the workforce? And who thought organizations would still be embroiled in return-to-office battles, after everything we learned about remote work during the lockdown?

We’ve all felt our share of disruption in recent years. And with so much uncertainty around health and wellbeing, many employees are realizing just how important health benefits are. No wonder Pew Research found that, among people who quit their jobs in 2021, nearly half (46%) left primarily because benefits like health insurance and paid time off were lacking.

As a result, many employers have been racing to rethink their benefits packages. It makes sense for any organization that wants to attract and retain strong talent. But providing a comprehensive benefits package is not enough. You also need to be sure people understand what you offer and know how to make the most of what’s available to them.

This is where employee benefits communication can make a huge difference. In what ways? Let’s take a closer look at why and how the right strategies and tactics help…

Why Employee Benefits Communication Matters

You can provide the world’s best benefits package, but if people don’t know about it, you’re bound to miss the mark. This is why clear, consistent communication should be an integral part of your benefits strategy. Employees deserve to make informed decisions about the benefits they use. And it’s in your best interest to demonstrate your commitment to their wellbeing.

Employee benefits communication is more than just broadcasting information about healthcare plans, retirement savings programs, and other perks. It serves as a bridge between employers and employees by fostering workforce trust, engagement, and satisfaction.

Too often, employees don’t fully grasp the breadth and depth of their benefits package, or they’re unaware of recent updates and additions. For example, it’s not hard to imagine scenarios like these:

  • A staff member doesn’t realize they’re eligible for paid time off, so they forego much-needed opportunities to relax, recharge, and focus on personal priorities. Their stress level rises. putting them at risk of burnout.
  • Another employee avoids preventative medical care because they don’t know it’s covered by their health insurance plan. This delay causes an undetected condition to take hold.

Missed opportunities like these add up. And the negative impact reaches beyond employee health and wellbeing. It can also lead to costly unintended consequences when people feel exposed and unsupported, and they decide to leave.

In the wake of Covid, it’s even more important for employees to feel like they’re in the loop. Not only are healthcare costs continuing to rise, but people are more concerned about their health and wellbeing. In fact, 77% of survey respondents told CVS Health that the pandemic prompted them to pay more attention to their health in general, and 50% said the 2020 quarantine helped them achieve their health goals.

But on the downside, nearly 1 in 4 CVS survey respondents said they don’t understand their out-of-pocket medical care costs, and they don’t know how to interpret information published by their health plan provider.

By clearly communicating benefits, you can ensure that employees are more aware and invested in managing their wellbeing. This, in turn, can improve workforce productivity and loyalty.

Employee Benefits Communication in Recruitment

The first step in showing potential employees you truly care starts with effective benefits communication during the recruitment process. Most job candidates seriously consider benefits when choosing an employer, so showcasing your benefits package can differentiate your company and help seal the deal.

Be sure to clearly articulate the breadth and depth of your benefits in recruitment materials and job postings. This includes detailed information about health insurance, retirement plans, vacation policies, and any additional perks or unique offerings.

To make this information more coherent and memorable, you may want to publish a guide or brochure. Also, to extend your reach, consider using multiple communication channels.

For example, in addition to job postings and company websites, try leveraging social media platforms, employer branding videos, and employee testimonials to make your benefits offering more visible and enhance its perceived value. Digital outreach can help you tap into a broader pool of candidates with visually compelling content that is easy to access and understand.

How to Plan Benefits Communication

The annual enrollment period is naturally when organizations focus on benefits communication. But ideally, this is a continuous process. That’s why you’ll want to develop a year-round plan:

1. Before Open Enrollment

Create a communication roadmap to ensure that employees will have access to the information they need at the right time, so they can make informed decisions. This plan should outline key messages, relevant channels, and timelines for key events, as well as content development, production, and delivery.

Keep in mind that you’ll want to build awareness and anticipation among employees prior to open enrollment season, so they’ll be more prepared to engage when the time comes. Also, consider providing early access to educational resources and tools so people have ample time to familiarize themselves with available options and make informed choices.

2. During Open Enrollment

Targeted, ongoing communication is crucial throughout the open enrollment cycle. Plan to utilize various channels, such as email, intranet portals, and in-person meetings. This should ensure that employees receive consistent, personalized information about benefits options, relevant plan changes, and important deadlines.

Employees also appreciate opportunities to ask questions and seek clarification, whether through HR representatives, benefits fairs, online forums, or dedicated helplines. By maintaining open lines of communication, you can address any concerns promptly and provide the support people need to make informed decisions.

In addition, a benefits guide can be a particularly powerful tool, not just during enrollment but throughout the year. Think of it as a comprehensive resource with detailed information that clarifies various available options, along with eligibility criteria, enrollment processes, and frequently asked questions. You may also want to include real-life examples and case studies to help employees envision various benefits in action. This guide can be produced in print as well as digital formats, to meet diverse content preferences.

3. After Open Enrollment

Even after enrollment closes, you’ll want to reinforce the value of your organization’s benefits throughout the year. For example, you can provide timely updates when plans or processes change. Also, you can communicate about wellness activities, events, and resources, as well as employee assistance programs, and other support services.

In addition, it helps to offer feedback channels, as well as dedicated resources to assist employees who need help to access benefits and use them effectively. Regularly promoting these services reminds everyone that you care about their health and wellbeing.

Top Trends in Employee Benefits Communication

When planning, developing, and delivering benefits communication, consider these hot trends:

1. Personalization

Because individuals have unique communication needs and preferences, personalized communication is an increasingly important trend. By leveraging innovative AI technology, you can tailor benefits communication to individual life stages, topic interests, content preferences, and more. This customized approach elevates engagement and helps people better understand and appreciate the benefits available to them.

2. Multichannel Approach

With the rise of digital communication, it’s essential to adopt a multichannel strategy. By integrating diverse communication channels such as email, intranets, mobile apps, and social media platforms, you can reach employees across different generations and work environments. As a result, benefits information becomes more readily available when and where employees want it.

3. Gamification

Gamification techniques make benefits communication much more engaging and interactive. This includes quizzes, challenges, and online simulations that help educate employees about their benefits. By infusing an element of competitive fun, gamification encourages active participation, boosts knowledge retention, and improves the overall effectiveness of your communication efforts.

4. Simplified Language

To enhance comprehension and eliminate confusion, employers are moving away from complex jargon and using simplified language in benefits communication. By focusing on clear, concise messaging you can ensure that employees understand the details behind each benefit. This empowers them to make better-informed decisions.

A Final Note on Benefits Communication

Above all, keep in mind that successful benefits communication is an ongoing process that requires regular evaluation, adaptation, and feedback from employees. Working hand-in-hand with other internal communication efforts, benefits communication plays a vital role in shaping employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention. Ultimately, by relying on modern practices, you can develop and implement a communication strategy that resonates with your workforce and enhances their health and wellbeing.

Diverse Communication Transforms Work Cultures. How About Yours?

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No question about it. Strong internal communication is critical to a strong business. But it’s not easy — especially when workplace dynamics are constantly fluctuating. For example, not long ago, Covid forced organizations to embrace remote work. Now, return-to-office policies and hybrid schedules are adding new layers of complexity. Change is a universal challenge. Yet, the most successful leaders keep everyone in the loop so their organizations can continue running smoothly. What’s the secret? Diverse communication.

Why Diverse Communication Matters

Every organization strives to build a work culture that attracts and retains top talent. Communication plays a key role in this process by helping employees feel recognized, valued, and supported.

When people feel more deeply connected with their employer, their work, and each other, morale and engagement naturally improve. But some ways of making this happen are more successful than others. This is where diverse communication shines.

At first glance, this strategy seems focused on tools. Certainly, access to useful tools is important. For instance, you’ll want to be sure employees can easily conduct video calls and informal digital conversations through collaboration platforms like Slack or Teams.

But the most powerful solutions reach far beyond tools like these. Diverse communication strategies look more expansively at how information flows within an organization — and what may be inhibiting that flow. For example, you’ll want to understand:

  • Job Roles: How do different functions and roles communicate? What’s the typical frequency and nature of these interactions? Where are the bottlenecks? What are the implications when communication isn’t effective?
  • Individual Styles: You’ll also want to consider various communication modes. Although people may behave similarly when performing similar tasks, each of us brings our own preferences to work.
  • Other Variables: Many other elements come into play. For instance, generational differences, cultural differences, and work environment differences. All these and more can influence the ways coworkers connect, interact, and share information.

Because so many variables are involved, trying to standardize communication is counterproductive. Instead, start by researching various communication needs, preferences, and styles. The more you understand your employees’ unique strengths, behaviors, and traits, the better you can serve them as individuals and teams.

Let’s look closer at several key factors…

What Shapes Diverse Communication?

1. Generational Differences

With four generations actively participating in today’s workforce, managing multigenerational teams is a growing challenge. Each generation comes to work with unique expectations and approaches to communication:

  • Baby Boomers grew up in an analog age, so they’re likely to appreciate direct, face-to-face communication more than virtual interaction.
  • Gen Xers weren’t exposed to digital devices until early adulthood, so their preferences tend toward a Boomer/Millennial blend of informal, flexible communication via phone, email, or text.
  • Millennials have relied on instant messaging and text communication since their teen years, so they tend to appreciate fast digital chat-style communication.
  • Gen Zers are comfortable with digital technology because they’ve been surrounded by it their whole lives. But interestingly, they also crave one-on-one feedback and authentic communication experiences, like those provided in team huddles and video calls.

Does this mean you should standardize communication based on what “most” Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, or Gen Zs prefer? No. Age is only one part of the equation.

2. Team Dynamics

Each department in your organization has no doubt established distinct communication patterns and preferences. So, to communicate effectively across the organization, leaders must understand multiple group norms and provide various experiences that accommodate everyone, regardless of their department or location.

But departments can’t work efficiently in isolation. That’s why it’s also important to foster a sense of community and connection that spans groups, functions, and geographic boundaries. You’ll want to understand how individuals from across your organization consume and share information. By leveraging this insight, you can offer customized communications that also reach across differences to build a sense of shared identity and purpose.

3. Individual Work Styles

Which comes first — technology or work preferences? In the digital age, it depends. Sometimes technology leads the way. For example, mobile apps entered the workplace, not because employers drove adoption but because employees everywhere started bringing their smartphones to work.

At the same time, employees introduced another groundbreaking technology shift — the widespread use of social media at work. Now, according to the Pew Research Center, 56% of employees use social media during business hours for work-related purposes, such as connecting with subject matter experts.

Knowing where employees currently spend time communicating is helpful, because you can leverage those channels to improve other types of organizational communication. The more you rely on tools and channels employees already use, the more engaged and satisfied they’re likely to be with your strategy.

4. Technology

Weak communication only increases misunderstandings and unnecessary conflict. This erodes team cohesion and productivity. Ultimately, it jeopardizes company culture and business performance as well. Technology can help avoid these issues by letting people share information faster and more easily. But tools, alone, don’t guarantee successful communication.

For example, it’s possible to misinterpret a face-to-face conversation. But the likelihood of miscommunication increases dramatically when you rely on digital tools to conduct that same conversation. And the problem only multiplies when your entire team works remotely or on a hybrid schedule.

Another potential pitfall involves messaging itself. Although employees need and want timely access to information, it won’t have much impact without meaningful context. Do you explain how a news update is tied to your company’s vision and values? Why is it relevant for employees? What should they expect as a result of this news? Think strategically about how to frame content so it receives the attention and support it deserves.

To ensure company-wide news and information are highly available to all, many organizations provide collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams. These solutions make communicating with in-office and remote employees quick, easy, and reliable. Without these channels, people are not just less productive. They’re also likely to feel disconnected from colleagues and leaders, as well as company culture and goals.

And for in-office employees, one way to amplify communication is with digital signage displays. Their visual appeal engages people and helps them quickly digest news as they move through company spaces. Plus, you can quickly and easily update screens anytime to personalize the messaging for individuals, groups, or special events. Some companies even use digital signage to streamline their meeting room booking process or provide visual wayfinding cues to enhance the in-office experience.

These are just a few examples of endless tools that can enhance workforce communication. The tools you choose should reflect your organization’s unique needs.

Why Diverse Communication Beats Generic Methods

When budgets are tight and businesses are juggling multiple priorities, applying a one-size-fits-all approach to internal communication may seem tempting. But that won’t work. Here are several reasons why:

  • Digital Expectations Have Changed: Outside of work, modern employees are accustomed to receiving personalized content that fits their preferences. This shouldn’t stop when they clock in. Interacting with individuals in ways they prefer will improve engagement. Ultimately, it will improve operational efficiency and effectiveness, as well.
  • Leaders Can’t Afford Blind Spots: Organizations thrive when they include people from various backgrounds, cultures, and points of view. Yet many leaders struggle to accommodate others’ experiences. When communication ignores these unique perspectives, trust, team-building, and collaboration suffer. But a more customized approach can bridge these gaps and bring people closer together (without requiring them to be located in the same place).
  • Too Much is at Stake: Studies show that when employers tailor internal communications, their workforce is more responsive, productive, loyal, and engaged. In a tight talent market, why risk your relationship with employees by choosing not to address their unique perspectives?

Getting Started

A successful communication strategy begins with insights about the people in your organization. Rather than relying on hunches or third-party data about just one dimension of each employee’s identity, take time to gather and analyze intelligence about everyone’s communication preferences. The answers are only a few questions away. All you have to do is ask.

An internal communications survey can help you:

  • Identify and prioritize issues that need improvement
  • Reveal the most effective communication methods for various perspectives
  • Establish benchmarks, so you can measure progress over time

With this first-hand data, you can apply sophisticated targeting techniques to communicate with whole departments, or with individuals who are likely to be more responsive when they receive information packaged in a particular way.

By adopting a strategic approach to diverse communication, you can keep your organization running smoothly while eliminating roadblocks that hinder information access and knowledge sharing. It may take time, but if you commit to continuous improvement, you can create a more successful, inclusive culture that employees will love and others will admire.

 

 

Want to Improve Engagement? Focus on Employee Expectations

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TalentCulture Content Impact Award Winner - 2023

When it comes to implementing a successful engagement strategy, HR teams can’t afford to ignore employee expectations. Yet, research suggests that too many organizations forget or overlook this pillar of engagement. For example:

If you’re an HR professional or business leader, statistics like these should alarm you. Clearly, something about the process of managing employee expectations is going awry. And if you care about engagement, the sooner you address this disconnect, the better.

A Related Issue: Labor Market Trends

To understand this challenge, it’s helpful to consider the bigger picture. For example, in the UK and elsewhere, the talent pool is shrinking, despite a sharp decline in permanent staff recruitment. This decrease is fueled primarily by demographic factors — experienced workers are retiring early, the birth rate continues to fall, and immigration rules are changing. Plus, the pandemic has caused many people to rethink their career goals.

As a result, when organizations need to recruit, finding the right people at the right time is becoming increasingly difficult. And in terms of retention, it means employers must work much harder to keep their best and brightest people engaged and on board.

In other words, recent labor market dynamics have shifted power from employers to the workforce. Individuals now have enough latitude to be more selective about their career moves. They’re also likely to expect more from their current role — for example, higher wages, better recognition, or stronger professional growth opportunities.

With all this in mind, organizations need to understand what people expect from their employment experience, and proactively address these expectations. This makes it easier to create a positive work environment and improve employee satisfaction. Both of these metrics are essential for effective talent attraction and retention. So, how can HR successfully manage employee expectations?

6 Ways to Manage Employee Expectations

To elevate employee engagement across your organization, first step back and evaluate existing HR strategies and programs. If you’re falling short in any of the following areas, this is the time to rethink the tools and techniques that support your engagement efforts, as well as broader leadership and management practices:

1. Communicate Clearly and Consistently

Access to relevant, useful, accurate information is essential, right from the start of the employment journey. When you approach candidates and new hires with clear, open communication, their job expectations are much more likely to align with yours. What’s more, it sends a powerful message about the importance of transparency and inclusion in your work culture.

Be sure you center communication activities around your organization’s vision, mission, and values. You’ll also want to be sure important company policies are readily available.

In addition, showcasing updates and insights from senior leaders is a highly effective way to reinforce priorities and build trust. In fact, as our 2023 staff satisfaction survey shows, many employees value communication from senior leaders as part of a positive workplace experience.

2. Revisit and Revise Job Descriptions

As mentioned earlier, inaccurate job listings are all too common. The problem may not be intentional on an employer’s part. Regardless, it can derail the employee experience from day one.

Candidates naturally form expectations based on the job posting that prompted them to apply. So, when actual responsibilities don’t match, new hires aren’t likely to stick around. And even for those who stay on board, this mismatch can permanently jeopardize trust and goodwill.

Now, imagine how badly your employer brand would be damaged if numerous employees experienced the same kind of disconnect. This is why HR teams must ensure that job descriptions correctly outline roles, responsibilities, and performance expectations. And ideally, these descriptions should help people envision what it’s really like to work at the company.

HR must also recognize that developing a job description isn’t a one-shot process. For best results, you’ll want to review descriptions regularly and update them as business needs change. All this will help new employees understand what’s expected and avoid misunderstandings over time.

3. Prioritize Performance Management and Feedback

When organizations are able to measure, evaluate, and improve workforce performance, they operate more efficiently and profitably. And the best way to ensure that employee expectations are on point is with support from a robust performance management program.

Underpinning this program with an integrated performance management system makes it possible for HR to establish company-wide workforce goals, track progress, and provide regular feedback. It also helps support line managers in conducting more meaningful employee evaluations.

By working in concert to set clear objectives and provide constructive feedback, HR and line managers can continuously guide and improve employee performance. Plus, they can effectively manage expectations about job roles and career progression.

4. Ensure Fair Business Practices

An HR professional’s core duty is to maintain fair, consistent decision-making across an organization. This includes adhering to fair and unbiased practices in areas such as annual performance and salary reviews, promotions, and disciplinary actions. Ensuring fairness and consistency helps manage those all-important employee expectations. It also helps build trust.

HR can’t afford to ignore the element of trust. When it comes to successful engagement strategies, the employer-employee relationship is critical. And as with any relationship, it depends on a solid foundation of trust. But trust isn’t just switched on like a lightbulb — it is earned in numerous ways, over time. Fairness directly contributes to this process.

5. Provide Ample Training and Career Development

As our research on successful company cultures reveals, staff members want more than just competitive salaries. They also expect to develop new skills, so they can grow professionally.

This is why the best employers invest in building workforce competencies and knowledge through various learning opportunities — training, mentorships, stretch assignments and more. By committing to a culture of learning, organizations demonstrate their faith and confidence in employees’ future success. As a result, these organizations enjoy higher retention rates.

6. Pay Attention to Exit Interviews

Lastly, exit interviews offer a perfect opportunity to discover if departing employees feel their expectations have been met. When people decide to move on, they’re typically more comfortable providing unfiltered feedback, for better or worse.

By conducting exit interviews, you can gather valuable insights that help the organization compare actual employee experiences with expectations. By analyzing and acting on this intelligence, your HR team will be better able to identify areas for improvement and manage future employees’ expectations.

A Final Word on Managing Employee Expectations

These suggestions offer a framework for HR planning. Still, this is only a starting point. Every company, culture, and workforce is unique. So, wherever your organization may be on the employee engagement spectrum, remember that improvement is an ongoing process. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither are employee expectations. Just stay focused on improvement and keep moving forward.

Why and How Can Internal Video Help You Boost Employee Morale?

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For most office-based employees, “work” no longer represents a physical location. In fact, 84% of people who worked remotely during the pandemic said they intended to mix home and office-based work when the lockdown ended. Now, with hybrid and remote work models defining so much of modern work life, employers are rightfully concerned that employees are feeling increasingly disconnected and disengaged. This is why many are turning to technology like internal video to help improve employee communications.

For some time now, savvy HR and marketing professionals have recognized the importance of video communication. And they’re onto something. For example, research says employees are 75% more likely to watch a video than read an email. People have discovered the convenience and effectiveness of video. And they’re not going back.

How Can Internal Video Improve Employee Experience?

This post-pandemic era promises greater scheduling flexibility, improved work/life balance, and happier employees. But it is also introducing a variety of challenges for employers to address.

For example, it’s harder to reach and engage people who work on a remote or hybrid schedule. When left unchecked over time, this distance can erode connections with managers, colleagues, and company culture. Without access to clear, consistent communication and recognition from managers, employees are at risk of feeling increasingly undervalued, disillusioned, and unmotivated to work.

If the pandemic taught us anything about the future of work, it’s that organizations must evolve so people stay connected, even when they’re not at the office. Over the past three years, video has played an important role in filling that gap, connecting leaders and teams through video conferencing, webinars, online learning, and study resources.

Every great company wants to create a positive employee experience and a strong company culture. And one of the most effective ways to achieve this is through enhanced communication. So, in today’s digital world, what better way to ensure that team members stay connected and informed than through internal video?

Benefits of Internal Video

There are multiple reasons why it makes sense to leverage internal video to boost staff morale. For example:

1. Video is highly effective

Whether it’s a company update or new sales strategy, internal video is the best communication format available. But it can be even more effective when combined with the power of email. Email is a great tool — and it’s clearly the most dominant business communication tool. But you can achieve much more by incorporating video.

For instance, instead of writing a hefty block of static text to communicate an important employee update via email, try writing a brief introductory one-liner and embedding a video into the message.

Video is much more engaging than written copy. That’s because people absorb video content more quickly and effectively. You can also convey much more with video than a text-based message. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then as Dr. James McQuivey puts it, a single minute of video is worth about 1.8 million words.

2. Video can illustrate complex information in a simple way

The success of a business is measured by more than just revenue and profit. It’s also about communication. Without effective internal communication, important information can get lost in translation and employees can become frustrated. This is where videos can help to transmit information in a simple, clear, and digestible way.

Studies show that videos can improve a person’s ability to remember concepts and details. In fact, when people watch a video message, they retain 95% of the message, compared with only 10% if they read the same message in written form.

3. Video helps employers connect with employees

Communication is a two-way street. It’s not enough to simply pass information along to team members. Particularly when working remotely, it’s important that staff actively develop trusted working relationships, and feel they are working together toward the same goals.

By sending regular video updates, you can bridge the gap between your onsite team and those who work remotely at least part of the time. When employees feel more connected with each other and your organization, they’ll be in a frame of mind to collaborate and perform well.

When Internal Video Can Help You Improve Company Culture

For internal corporate videos that will improve your company culture and boost morale, you’ll want to build a library of video templates. This can help you jumpstart new content production, and simplify updates whenever they’re required. Here are some recommended types of internal video to help you improve employee morale:

1. Make onboarding easier for new employees

A proper new-hire orientation is a highly effective way to help people feel welcomed and valued. In fact, thoughtful onboarding is proven to help people become more excited about their role, which in turn reduces turnover.

But onboarding can be overwhelming. New hires are typically required to absorb huge amounts of information from Day One. Traditionally, this process involves serious paperwork and in-person training.

This is one reason why induction through video training is gaining popularity. Pre-recorded videos are an efficient, effective way to present orientation information in a reusable format that significantly reduces the need for one-on-one training. By watching and learning at their own pace, employees can quickly get a sense of your company’s culture and what’s expected of them. 

2. CEO messages

In larger companies, employees — particularly newer or more junior staff — have minimal contact with the CEO. This limits opportunities to develop workforce trust and loyalty. However, by broadcasting internal video messages, a CEO can communicate about the organization’s ongoing objectives and challenges in a personal and convincing way.

It can be difficult to achieve this same direct connection with text-based email. That’s because a memo or letter can be written by anybody. Also, many people are better at in-person communication than in writing. A video demonstrates executive leadership qualities in real time, and shows how much your leaders value the opportunity to speak directly with employees about issues that matter to them.

3. Company updates

One thing is for certain — everything changes. But this doesn’t mean people are always comfortable with change. If employees are left in the dark about organizational change, it can damage staff morale as well as productivity. Timely, clear, transparent communication can minimize anxiety about business change. This is why well-crafted internal video content can help.

Internal video can be used not only to discuss the details of any organizational change, but also help employees understand the beneficial impact expected from these changes. Video gives organizations more control over the type of messages you’re sharing, as well as the pace and timing. This can minimize rumors, cut down on speculation, and give employees a forum where they can address common concerns.

4. Training and education

Training employees can be time-intensive. It can take days or weeks to address all the  requirements of a role, and how to perform effectively in that context. But new learning tools make it easy to develop and deliver internal video content for job training, how-to tutorials, skills development, compliance, and more.

Video media is particularly valuable for continuous learning, because it lets people learn at their own pace, without disrupting day-to-day responsibilities. Whenever an employee has a break in their work schedule, they can simply click on a relevant training video and resume watching from wherever they left off in their previous session. It’s a highly convenient option.

What’s more, video can help employers standardize training content and learning experiences in ways that one-on-one or even group training cannot.

5. Team and morale building

Video is a highly personal form of communication. After watching a video, people are more likely to feel a connection with the speaker. By creating this type of personal relationship with employees, they’re likely to feel part of the same team.

To rejuvenate employee connections, create some fun and exciting video updates about what’s happening day-to-day across your company. Did you recently bring on a new client? Did you just close a huge deal? Are sales up from last quarter? Has a team just completed an ambitious new project?

These are things employees want to hear about. Everyone wants to feel they contribute to their company’s success. Seeing these accomplishments highlighted in video honors the moment and reminds employees how important they are to your organization’s achievements.

Final Notes on the Power of Internal Video

Communication is the backbone of any company’s culture. And video media is a highly personal way to reach out to employees, build connections, and strengthen cultural bonds.

Employee-focused videos keep everyone in the know. They offer understanding about rules and standards, shared values, accomplishments and business progress. Now that video communication has become a highly accessible medium for all of us, it’s worth investing time and energy to embed video messaging into every aspect of the employee experience.

Avoiding Survey Fatigue: 4 Tips and a Breakthrough

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Without a doubt, employee surveys are the most widely used employee engagement tool. Surveys make it possible for employers to gather workforce feedback quickly and easily in a form that’s convenient and comfortable for participants. They are often easier to set up and manage than other feedback mechanisms. Plus, acceptance rates show that employees prefer surveys over other tools. However, you can have too much of a good thing. In fact, research indicates that a constant flow of surveys can be costly and self-defeating. That’s because it leads to survey fatigue.

What is Survey Fatigue?

Survey fatigue is a common issue that HR and business leaders should keep in mind when seeking employee feedback. On one hand, people tend to appreciate being asked for input. On the other hand, surveys can reach a point of diminishing returns when employees become emotionally tired and disengage from the process. This happens for multiple reasons:

  1. When people receive too many survey requests within a short timeframe,
  2. When survey logic, structure, or content is overly complex,
  3. When surveys are unnecessarily long or repetitive,
  4. When people feel their feedback isn’t seriously received.

Survey fatigue decreases participation rates. This, in turn, can reduce data accuracy and understanding of employee community sentiment.

How Does Survey Fatigue Affect Employee Satisfaction Programs?

The goal of a good survey is to obtain the most reliable insights from a representative cross-section of your employee base. The higher the participation rate, the more accurate your response data is likely to be.

Survey fatigue can translate into lower overall response rates that jeopardize data quality. This seriously threatens your ability to gather valuable information about workforce satisfaction, morale, cultural health, and overall employee experience.

Can you conduct an effective survey with a low response rate, if the data is representative of your overall employee community? Yes. But only if you are very sure that the lower number of respondents is actually statistically representative of the larger group. And that is difficult to accomplish.

Here’s one reason why: People with strong opinions or extreme positions aren’t affected by survey fatigue, so they’re more likely to respond. That’s because they’re highly motivated to make their voice heard.

As a result, the survey data will reflect only the most extreme views. It won’t accurately represent the majority view because survey fatigue caused other employees to abandon the feedback process. This is a type of survey bias called non-response bias.

How to Avoid Survey Fatigue

It’s important to understand the most frequent causes of survey fatigue, as well as best practices to avoid it. While there’s no single way to prevent fatigue in employee surveys, combining multiple methods can help you develop engaging, accurate surveys that yield high response and completion rates.

Here are 5 strategies to try (including one you’ve probably haven’t yet considered):

1. Limit Survey Frequency

One of the most important ways to avoid survey fatigue is to carefully time the cadence. Some organizations assume “more is better,” so they send multiple surveys every month. But that kind of pace can overwhelm employees, and may overwhelm your staff, as well. Instead, step back and consider your goals. Then develop fewer surveys, each with a specific objective. For example, you can use pulse surveys to get a quick snapshot of employee sentiment about key topics of interest. On the other hand, a full-scale engagement survey is more appropriate for measuring overall employee satisfaction and commitment.

2. Keep Surveys Concise

Long, complex surveys can be overwhelming. They’re likely to discourage employees from participating. It’s important to keep every survey targeted, concise, and to-the-point.

3. State Your Purpose Every Time

You’ll want to be sure employees understand each survey’s objectives and importance. When people know how their participation can affect their work life, they’re likely to take the time to share their opinions. For example, let’s say you want to know how employees feel about your return-to-work policy before you adjust it. Tell them upfront you’re gathering feedback about this because you’re planning to implement changes next quarter.

4. Remember, Timing Is Everything

Survey timing can have a significant impact on response. For instance, surveying employees during busy or stressful timeframes may produce inaccurate results, because people may not have the time or energy to respond as fully or thoughtfully as they normally would. Instead, distribute the survey when employees are likely to provide meaningful feedback. And be sure to keep the response window open long enough to collect data from those who want to participate.

5. Tap Into the Power of Passive Listening

Here is one feedback strategy you probably haven’t considered yet — passive listening. Thanks to new technology, these capabilities are revolutionizing the traditional survey process. By leveraging AI technology, passive listening can improve your understanding of employee morale, work culture, and trending topics in work conversations. All of this intelligence is gathered automatically in real time, and is continuously available for deeper analysis and action.

By working in the background, passive listening gives HR teams a wealth of employee sentiment insights without forcing people to respond directly to a survey. In addition, passive listening helps HR and business leaders make future surveys even better by providing a head start in understanding what employees already think about key issues.

Final Notes

Survey fatigue can harm your organization’s efforts to gather valuable information about retention, satisfaction, morale, cultural health, and the overall employee experience. But you can avoid fatigue by reducing the frequency of feedback requests, keeping surveys concise, clarifying your purpose, carefully scheduling delivery timeframes, and relying on passive listening tools to gather helpful intelligence without having to develop and distribute surveys.

By following these guidelines, you can increase overall feedback and improve data accuracy, while gathering more valuable workforce insights.

How Proactive Support Lifts Employee Engagement

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For more than two years, employees have slowly — and sometimes reluctantly — returned to their workplaces. Leaders have been trying to instill a sense of normalcy within their organizations, even as team members grapple with new and ongoing challenges. But in many situations, a critical element is still missing: personal, proactive support. Let me explain…

Today’s world is a challenging backdrop for us all. Inflation is hitting everyone’s pocketbook. The economy isn’t healthy. And geo-political instability remains a constant. Meanwhile, daily life goes on. No wonder employees sometimes seem distracted. Whether people are dealing with challenges with work, family or other areas of their lives, they often need support from their employers.

But today’s workers expect more than just generous healthcare plans and personal time off. They are looking for flexibility — not only to work from home, but to focus on family matters when necessary. They’re interested in professional guidance. And they want the kind of transparency and feedback that will help them thrive professionally and personally. In short, they’re looking for genuine, proactive support.

Where did this start? Let’s take a closer look:

The Rise of Quiet Quitting

The tumult of recent years led us all to re-examine professional norms. Workers began openly asking deep questions like these:

  • “Do I need to commute to an office each day, when I can accomplish more by working from home?”
  • “Is my current job as personally fulfilling as I would like it to be?”
  • “Does my employer give me what I need to excel in my role?”

Not surprisingly, we saw the Great Resignation wave in 2021. And that gave way to last year’s “quiet quitting” surge, when some workers decided to contribute only the minimal level of effort necessary. This trend caught-on fast. In fact, by the second half of 2022, more than 50% of U.S. workers had joined the “quiet quitter” ranks, according to Gallup.

The Next Wave: Conscious Quitting

But dissatisfied workers can’t remain quiet for long. Indeed, as former Unilever CEO, Paul Polman predicted early this year, “An era of conscious quitting is on the way.”

To get a handle on this shift, Polman commissioned a survey, called the Net Positive Employee Barometer. The results reveal that a majority of U.S. and U.K. employees are dissatisfied with corporate efforts to improve societal wellbeing and the environment.

Nearly half of respondents said they would consider quitting if their employer’s values didn’t align with their own. In fact, one-third have already quit for this reason — with even higher resignation rates among Generation Z and Millennial workers. Here’s why:

  • Younger workers believe they should rethink their commitment to an employer if the organization doesn’t demonstrate important values. Primarily, this includes Generation Z employees (born between 1997 and 2012). They’re highly socially aware. And by 2025, they will comprise almost 30% of the global workforce. They have also normalized the idea that workers can make demands on their employers.
  • Boomers and Generation X workers are also questioning workplace norms, although they’re less vocal about it. These workers were raised to “dress for the job you want”, “go above and beyond,” and “always be respectful.”

So we’re seeing a natural generational transition, hyper-accelerated by COVID and the Great Resignation. Workers are challenging the status quo. They’re looking for employers to meet them where they are and give them what they want.

But employers need to realize engagement is not one-size-fits-all. Multiple generations are involved, with different people at different points in their careers.

Proactive Support Starts With Awareness

If an employee is tuning out, do you know why? If you’re unsure, it’s time to dig deeper. When an employee performs at 85% capacity, their behavior could be about your organization, about their own circumstances, or a combination of factors. Regardless, it deserves an honest assessment. For example:

  • Is your infrastructure designed to encourage employee success?
  • Do you provide the kind of culture and resources that help people perform at their peak?
  • How well do the employee’s skills and knowledge fit their role?
  • Is the individual struggling with a personal crisis, such as a divorce?
  • What other factors may be influencing the employee’s behavior?

Employee engagement depends on an environment that promotes work-life integration. Unlike so-called “work-life balance,” work-life integration acknowledges each employee as a whole person (not just a 9-to-5 version). In daily life, this means employees are free to run an errand or tend to a family member during work hours, if needed.

This kind of freedom comes when employers trust their people to make wise choices about how to get the job done.

Mapping the Work-Life Territory

To empower people this way, HR and business leaders must clarify employee roles and responsibilities, and be sure they’re aligned with broader objectives. To get started, consider questions like these:

  • What are your company’s goals?
  • Do these goals cascade down and across your organization, so teams and individuals understand how their role (and associated responsibilities) contribute?
  • How do employees feel about their objectives?
  • Do you sense a gap between expectations and employee buy-in?
  • Are you actively listening to employees? Do you understand their mood, morale and daily experience?
  • How do you gather input and confirm employee sentiment?
  • Do you demonstrate that you’re paying attention?

How Proactive Support Works

Engagement is never perfectly consistent. In any given year, engagement will dip at some point for some people — even among high performers. This may be a response to work challenges, the organizational environment, or even personal issues, such as caring for an ill parent.

An environment of open, honest communication and support should offer enough elasticity to account for these dips.

Likewise, an individual’s capacity for engagement evolves and changes over time with their role. For example, a recent college graduate’s engagement “peak” is likely to look different than someone with 20 years of business experience.

If a dip in engagement does require intervention, start by gathering input from the individual, so you can identify the root of the problem. Often, you’ll find that an engagement drop coincides with an energy drain in the work environment. For instance:

  • Is the employee’s valuable energy being spent on the wrong things?
  • Are people required to do “focus work” in a noisy, chaotic office?
  • Have collaboration or communication tools become a distraction?
  • Are low performers or disgruntled team members creating a dysfunctional group dynamic?

Look for other signs that deserve further investigation. If a vocal person is suddenly quiet during meetings, take note. If someone stops volunteering for projects, take note. If someone is less responsive to requests than usual, take note. Talking with a core group of people (including an employee’s manager, the HR team, and co-workers) can provide a view into an employee’s contribution to the company and can shed light on issues that may not be obvious.

During the Dips: Stay Flexible, Observe, and Act

Whenever you diagnose disengagement, you’ll want to treat it with a direct approach. Earlier, I mentioned keeping a pulse on employee experience. One-on-one employee/manager meetings are key here.

A manager might say to a remote employee, “I’ve noticed a change in your availability recently. It’s been difficult to reach you over the past few weeks. Is something happening that I can support you with?”

Keep probing. Does the employee seem unaware of an issue? Is contact or communication eroding with others on the team? Could the organization take steps to help the individual re-engage? If not, does the employee no longer seem to believe in the company’s mission?

Once you know the answers to questions like these, it’s important to follow-through quickly with affected employees and leaders. The worst thing you can do is nothing at all. Unanswered issues tend to arise in pockets. But negativity can be contagious, and it can spread rapidly across an organization.

Final Thoughts on Proactive Support

Success in the future of work requires more buy-in than ever. Workers want to feel good about supporting their company’s mission. They want to believe their company trusts them and supports them, in return.

Relying on a holistic, proactive approach to the employee-employer relationship will earn you the kind of buy-in that keeps your team members engaged and motivated.

How Employee Communication Impacts Culture [Webinar]

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We need to talk — about communication. We all know communication is key. In fact, it’s never been more important. The new World of Work is continuously connected but often across generations, locations, media platforms, intra and inter-webs, and social and mobile. Communication has simply never been more of a critical skill. Good or bad, it drives organizational culture more than ever.

We’ve all been there, felt the galvanizing impact of a brilliant presentation; the drag on everyone wreaked by a maze of emails. The toll of head-shaker moments in a meeting, the fist-pump after a meaningful conversation. The effect is profound and direct. Unlike some other systems in the workplace, how we communicate — among leadership, employees, partners, candidates or other key audiences — has an instantaneous effect.

So I’m thrilled to be part of this webinar, How Employee Communication Impacts Culture, offered by my friends at CultureIQ. It’s free, on-demand, and packed with savvy insights and workable strategies on taking a hard look at your organization and finding powerful ways to make it better. You’re going to want to be in on this hot topic. Register today —and mark your calendars for October 13, 2016, at 10 AM PST/1 PM EST.

I’ll be talking to the CultureIQ team about how to:

  • Audit your organizational communication tactics, and glean what’s working and what’s not
  • Spark better communication techniques on all levels of the organization
  • Curate the best, most effective communication tools across the board

Communication Makes or Breaks Culture

Today we communicate faster and across more channels than yesterday, and tomorrow it’s going to be even faster and more complex than it is today. That means the effect of communication on culture is just as constant. And its vital importance in the workforce should never be overlooked. Among millennials, 47 percent report that open and free-flowing communication is a key factor in their staying in a job for more than five years, according to Deloitte’s 2016 Millennial Survey. Among those who leave within two years, 26 percent cite poor communication as a reason.

Shape your communication to inspire trust and engagement, to be consistent no matter which platform you use, to grow connection and build relationships — between leadership and employees, across teams and departments, into audiences and markets — and your culture will thrive, along with the people in it. I know you hear me on this. So tune in to this exciting webcast on How Employee Communication Impacts Culture, and let’s talk about how to do it right.

This post is sponsored by CultureIQ.

Photo Credit: MBA Lounge Flickr via Compfight cc

The Rules of Engagement Are Changing: 4 Ways You Can Ride the Wave Successfully

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Leaders already know that keeping their teams motivated, engaged and driven to succeed is a demanding task in itself. But in today’s world it’s even harder, because leaders have to keep their people engaged while responding to huge, disruptive changes in how we work and what we care about in the workplace. It’s a big challenge, but the first step to overcoming it is knowing what the changes are. In Hay Group’s new book, Leadership 2030, we’ve identified six “megatrends” that are transforming societies and the global business environment as we know it.

The six megatrends leaders must be prepared for

  • Globalization 2.0 — Economic power is shifting from mature Western economies to emerging markets, so we’re seeing more diverse market needs, more collaboration across countries, and global competition for talent
  • Environmental Crisis — The world is facing a disruptive combination of climate change and scarce raw materials that brings the perfect storm of challenges for businesses: increasing costs, fluctuating values and concerned stakeholders
  • Demographic change — Aging populations are changing the face of the global workforce and exacerbating the war for talent
  • Individualism — Growing freedom of choice is eroding loyalty and forcing organizations to respond to individual needs in an increasingly diverse workforce
  • Digitization — Work is going remote, and the boundaries between professional and personal lives are blurring, as people increasingly live life online
  • Technology convergence — A combination of nano, bio, information and cognitive (NBIC) sciences is set to spur a wave of powerful technological breakthroughs — speeding up the pace of change and creating new product markets

Right now, employee engagement is already a moving target. To take a line from The X-Files, “The future is out there.” To successfully keep people engaged and on track to deliver business results, leaders must respond to trends outside the organization, because they will affect what happens inside it. The six megatrends bring about a multitude of challenges – here we’ve identified four core responses to help you, as leaders, successfully navigate them.

Employee Engagement and the New Imperatives for Leadership

Imperative #1: Instil confidence in the direction your organization is taking

How engaged employees feel is influenced not only by their current work experiences, but also by their view of the future. For people to commit, especially over the long term, they need to have confidence that a company is well-led, heading in the right direction, and well-positioned to deliver products and services they know customers want.  Unfortunately, given the pressures that come with change, communicating regularly about the changes with employees can often slip, leaving them confused about the priorities for the organization. Demand for information often outstrips what you and your managers are able to supply: the consequence is a lack of clarity, which erodes confidence in leadership and strategic direction.

Technology convergence won’t just create new product opportunities; it will also increase the challenge of staying ahead of the curve. And in an increasingly global business environment, new competitors can be expected to emerge regularly. So how can you respond?

As well as having a clear and compelling vision, you need to communicate regularly and personally about changes in your organization and what they will mean for individuals and teams. Making sure you and your peers at all levels know about changes and receive the same messages about them is essential to promote consistent understanding across the organization. Managers in particular play an important “sense-making” role in times of change, helping employees understand new developments in the organization and their implications for teams and job responsibilities. You must make sure that managers at all levels are aware of and engaged with planned changes, and that they understand the importance of reinforcing key messages with their teams. If middle managers and supervisors signal to employees through their words or actions that they lack faith in their leaders, employees’ trust will decline rapidly.

Imperative #2: Have integrity

Socrates said: “Regard your good name as the richest jewel you could possibly be possessed of.” That advice applies to companies just as much as individuals. Consider a quote from Miles White, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Abbott: “Today we’re in an all-out war for reputation, our companies are battling – to an unprecedented extent – for our most vital assets: our own identities.” That battle is playing out on many different fronts. Companies are facing increasing pressure from the media and from political and regulatory scrutiny. But increasingly too there is a power shift in play, brought by digitization, toward consumers and employees. A single voice can undermine a company’s reputation. Individuals can make a huge impact with the click of a mouse. And so companies need to be ever more careful in managing their reputation, because hard work to make a good name can be undone in seconds.

To foster employee engagement, you need to give your people the sense that they are contributing to a purpose larger than themselves. The desire to work for an organization that stands for something and makes a difference is not limited to Millennials, but extends across generational groups. So, in a transparent world, where reputation is increasingly at risk, organizations need to prove they operate with a high level of integrity. For leaders, this demands high levels of openness and sincerity, demonstrated through consistent values, words, and deeds.

With critical natural resources becoming scarcer and climate change more threatening, the environmental crisis will highlight the need for all organizations to demonstrate that their operations are sustainable. Pressure will come not only from outside (societies, governments, and customers) but also from within. Showing employees that you are responding effectively to sustainability issues will be necessary to build confidence in prospects for future success. “Greenwashing” will not cut it – and in fact will damage trust.

Imperative #3: Be transparent

Importantly, employee engagement is an exchange relationship. If you want your employees to do and deliver more, it’s essential that they feel valued, believe that their extra efforts are appreciated and that, over time, there will be a balance between total rewards and contributions.

In a digital world, the four walls of an organization will have increasingly large windows. And interested eyes will be looking both in and out, which puts additional pressure on companies from an engagement and retention perspective. Social media allows your employees, especially those with highly desirable skills and experience, to promote their knowledge and accomplishments – making key talent more difficult for organizations to hide. Likewise, online resources make it easier for your employees to compare what they currently get in terms of compensation, career development opportunities, and work environment with what is on offer elsewhere.

To respond, you need to develop and reinforce strong employer brands, showcasing the unique attractions of working for your organization. You also need to recognize that rewards extend well past compensation and benefits and you should build core organizational messages around total reward offerings. In this context, line managers can effectively reward team members outside of the confines of compensation and benefits. Total rewards statements, for example, can be powerful resources for selling the rewards you offer beyond merely salary.

Imperative #4: Be flexible

Leaders are increasingly challenged with overseeing 4G workforces, with four generations of employees working side by side, each with their own needs and motivators. And, with increasing acceptance of the idea that a career should be tailored to the individual, all employees, regardless of age, are likely to value fulfillment, meaning, self-development, and recognition in their jobs

As a result, a one-size-fits-all approach to employee engagement is doomed to fail. Engagement will need to be more personal, tapping into each employee’s drivers, outlook, and expectations.

It’s important you balance traditional roles of directing and organizing team activities with more listening, coaching, mentoring, developing, and advocacy. You’ll also need to be flexible in responding to employee needs. Keeping the skill sets and expertise of Baby Boomers nearing retirement in the organization, for example, may require exploring part-time, work-from-home, or contract employment arrangements.

Finally, recognize that there are limits to the “mass customization” of engagement on the part of organizations and empower people to take responsibility for their own engagement, connecting them with the tools and resources available to help them manage their work experiences, development and careers in a personal, positive way.

Don’t Be Caught Out

To motivate and retain employees, you need to rethink your engagement strategies — because a changing world is changing the game. As part of our research looking at how the external environment is transforming engagement, we conducted a survey of 300 leaders responsible for employee engagement in Fortune 500 and FTSE 250 companies:

  • Over 80% agreed that their company needs to find new ways to engage its workforce in light of the changing environment
  • Yet just one-third feel their organizations are adapting to the megatrends
  • And only a quarter have personally started to drive change

You can avoid being caught out by:

  • Considering which megatrends will have the biggest impact on your organization and workforce
  • Identifying the changes needed in your approach to employee engagement
  • Building networks or taskforces that involve the right people and functions to make change happen
  • Regularly talking to your people across the employee lifecycle to understand how their motivators and behaviors are changing in light of the megatrends

How are you responding to the megatrends? Which do you think will have greatest impact on engagement in your organization? Tweet me your thoughts at @markroyalHG or connect with me via LinkedIn.

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For more information on how the megatrends are transforming businesses and engagement and to find out what you can do today to respond, download our new rules of engagement report or view further materials here.

photo credit: SayLuiiiis via photopin cc

Bottom-Up Leadership And Digital Skills Training

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A well-run business is like a car cruising down the highway. The road may not always be even, but the machine is designed to withstand minor shocks and keep moving smoothly. Sometimes, however, an unexpected change of environment catches the car’s “leadership” in the driver’s seat by surprise: the car hydroplanes, or hits black ice, or blows a tire. The situation is suddenly dire. In an instant, the superior vantage and planning of the executive behind the wheel is useless. The whole enterprise is at the whim of a changing, unpredictable circumstance down where the rubber meets the road.

In today’s business environment, a concerning percentage of the economy is heading toward a patch of black ice called the digital skills gap. This is the name by which we learning experts refer to the epidemic shortage of digital skills in both companies and the labor pool of job candidates. The digital skills gap already costs businesses money and productivity — $1.3 trillion annually in the U.S. — and is only growing in urgency. If skills training doesn’t become a priority among the nation’s executives, quite a few company drivers will soon be surprised at the lack of control they have over their vehicles.

The companies that avoid this fate will be the ones that embrace bottom-up leadership. This doctrine acknowledges that good insight is a type of leadership, no matter where it’s found on the organization chart. It is a manager being open to the wisdom of employees beneath her, and ground-level employees speaking up when something needs to change. Bottom-up leadership encourages communication between all nodes in the company hierarchy, which affords executives a clear and complete picture of the organization’s successes and needs. There’s a reason why modern cars devote entire computer systems to gathering data from the tires.

Front-line employees are the ones most likely to recognize a digital skills gap. They are the workers dealing with the digital tools that propel the business on a daily basis: customer relations management systems, point-of-sale software, project management, and so on. These aren’t the tools managers use to plan, recruit, and strategize, so top-down leadership may not notice when employees struggle along without proper training.

A lack of bottom-up leadership could be the reason that executives are failing to address the skills gap. According to a 2012 MIT study, executives pay lip service to the importance of digital optimization — 87% consider “digital transformation” a competitive opportunity — but in practice, only 46% invest in critically needed digital skills training. A stunning 4% offer training aligned with a digital strategy. This is an economy-wide dereliction of management.

It is up to the employees in the trenches, then, to make it known that productivity is being lost to incomplete skill sets. And it is the responsibility of executives to listen, and do something about it.

In good times, when a business is doing well and the competition is at bay, it doesn’t seem necessary to listen to the signals coming from the bottom of the totem pole. Companies can afford to label it “bottom-up leadership” and grant it an air of magnanimity. But when the tires start rattling, and the car starts careening, the trajectory of the whole operation depends on its most humble parts.

 

Jeff Fernandez is co-founder and CEO of Grovo, helping to educate the digital workforce with an end-to-end video training platform that delivers quality results in the shortest amount of time. 

photo credit: hassanrafeek via photopin cc