16 Jun 2021 · 5 min
Emilian explains how to boost employee engagement through two practices: showing employees how their survey feedback led to real changes, and connecting daily work to company strategy and purpose. Repeating these messages across email, intranet, and Slack helps staff see themselves as part of something larger.
Hi there. Today I want to talk about linking and labeling, that seemingly small but oh so important thing to think about when you're communicating with people in your organization. It's absolutely critical when it comes to organizations and leaders showing that they're listening to feedback from people in the organization, from your employees, and equally important to show them how the work that they're doing and the things that they do day to day link back and create that red thread back to the strategy of the organization and what you're trying to achieve overall. So thinking about those two things one at a time, let's start with the listening piece, the you said, we did, particularly when it comes to surveys, because employee voice, as we know, is one of the key cornerstones of employee engagement, as was identified by McLeod and Clark in their work Engage for Success around about 10 years ago now. If you haven't seen that, Well worth a look, engageforsuccess.org. And employee voice is important because we ask people to do surveys all the time. Staff surveys, culture surveys, pulse surveys, engagement surveys, and they do drive actions. We do do things as organizations as a result of the feedback that we're given. However, the bit that we miss is telling people that we're making those changes, that we're putting in place those new things, those new initiatives, because of their feedback. And that's the really important bit, because people want to know that they've been heard. People want to know that you've listened to what they've said, that you've acted upon it, and that you've done something. So if you don't make that really, really clear, they might just miss the point altogether. They won't link and label the two of those things together, what they said and what you did. So as you're going out with feedback or further information and communications after a staff survey, for example, maybe you're going out and saying, one of the things that our our staff survey said was that we're not hiring from a diverse enough background of people. So as a result of that, we've changed how we write our job ads and our job specs, and we've had a look at our roster of recruiters, and we've changed some of those as well to try and broaden that out. So thanks very much. Maybe people said that they didn't understand your strategy as an organization enough. So then you're going out and saying, and as a result of that, we've decided that we're going to run some strategy roadshows around the country, and that we'll create a pack that you can use to follow up with your leader after. So that whole, you said, we did, is really, really important. When you think then about linking and labeling more locally on teams with leaders, it's about people knowing that what they're doing every single day of the week, which could be incredibly mundane as a role, as a task, maybe it's lifting pots off the end of a production line and putting them in a box, maybe it's doing spreadsheets all day or programming code, helping them to understand what they're doing and where that fits in the bigger picture, is really powerful. That whole linking the actions that they're doing to your purpose, or the actions to your strategy, or maybe your values, can really help to see people see that red thread between what it is I do every single day of the week, and what as an organization we're trying to achieve. It makes me feel part of a bigger whole, it makes me feel more than just myself. So that whole idea of perhaps saying to your team, you know, we're working with older citizens because it's a key part of our purpose, and it aligns very strongly with our value of better together. Or perhaps, you know, you're talking about change, and you're saying that we have to upgrade all of our IT systems, and we have to think about different ways of doing things if we're to achieve our strategy of broadening our product offer to try and fend off some of the new competitors that we have jumping over the fence and trying to steal our lunch. So You know, that's really, really important to make people feel as though they're part of that bigger good. I can see the role that I'm playing, and particularly, as I said, during change, making sure that people can see the bigger picture. And you do need to make it really, really obvious for people. There are millions of communications, emails, intranet articles, maybe internal podcasts, maybe Slack, and all the other channels that you have in your organization with messages coming at people all the time. So making that link and label really obvious is absolutely key, and probably having to do it a few times as well. Once and done isn't enough. So we keep saying it over and over again until it gets into people's heads. So the next time you're writing something, the next time you're talking to your team, or maybe writing a communication to go out in your organization, just think about, pause for a second before you hit send, or before you deliver it to the team in the meeting, and think about how perhaps you can link and label either back to you said, we did from a survey or from a strategy perspective, the part they play in helping to achieve that strategy. How can you link and label that? That's all for now. Thanks, Emilien.
