Communicating reward is not a job for software companies
December 12th, 2011
By Pamela Kent, Account Director
You wouldn’t ask a web developer to do your advertising, so surely something as important as reward communication should be to a left to a specialist?…
For the past decade, various international HR management consultancies have been providing excellent brokerage and facilitation services to help companies deliver reward packages to their people. As well as advising to the highest standards on the best benefits to offer, they will also broker and supply them via sophisticated platforms that give employees the opportunity to choose their own benefits online.
Once built, these platforms are often managed on a fee per employee basis, through multi-year contracts. They can also offer communication services relating to the benefits provided by their clients to employees.
But is this always enough?
A few years into these contracts, companies are noticing that engagement scores in their employee surveys are no longer rising. Even though so much money and effort has been invested in developing and delivering reward strategy, the impact seemed to have tailed off.
Feeling compelled to act, worried HR Directors send out another email or brochure promoting the benefits they offer – sometimes they even spend more money by changing those carefully crafted benefits in their efforts to build engagement – but to no avail, those survey scores remain stubbornly static.
Why does this happen? In a word: communication.
Companies invest in reward and benefits to attract, retain and motivate talented people who will help to deliver their business strategy - it’s part of the ‘deal’. But far too many firms merely provide good reward packages and leave it at that, expecting their people to engage automatically by just looking at the software that’s provided.
The problem is that software experts are not communication experts. Just because they deliver great transactional portals for selecting and managing benefits, that doesn’t make them experts at the nuanced business of building engagement in a disparate workforce.
If you communicate your reward strategy well – in a way that’s fully aligned to your company’s brand, culture and business targets – you’ll be doing more than merely engaging your people, you’ll be making a great contribution to your overall business strategy.
HR Directors are under pressure to provide and deliver benefits on time and on budget. It’s tempting to get one supplier to provide the benefits, the platform they run on and the communications too. But doing it that way is a mistake that could cost much more to rectify than just doing it right in the first place.
Why do companies let this happen? I think it’s because that they don’t always grasp the importance of emotional engagement inside their own organisations. They do externally – I guarantee that, without exception, every successful company is expert at getting their customers to emotionally engage with their brand because if they weren’t they would quickly go out of business. But I would say only around 15-20% of companies clearly demonstrate an understanding of how important it is to use the same approach for reward communication.
Your people need to appreciate the true value of what they’re being offered and emotionally engage with it. Employees need to see reward within the wider context of their relationship with the company. They need to realise that the company respects them and has taken care to tailor their benefits, but that in return something is expected of them. In short, they need to understand the employee value proposition and buy into it.
Getting all this across and keeping it alive in people’s minds takes skill, creativity and innovation – the software platform is just a part of it. If reward communication is seen as nothing more than an afterthought, it will fail. It’s a difficult, subtle job best left to experts.
Companies need to ensure they’re using specialist people to do this specialist job – someone who really understands what makes employees tick.
The secret of effective change communication
September 15th, 2011
By Christopher Hopkins, MD
Thanks to the financial crisis, the fundamental shifts in the global economic balance of power and the extraordinary pace of technological progress, we’re expected to cope with change that’s more significant, more frequent and more intense than anything we’ve faced before.
So how do we deal with this as managers and communicators? How do we communicate about all of that change positively in a way that engages the workforce and retains the best talent at a time when money is tight and people’s fears are heightened?
Typically, the default reaction to the prospect of change is unhappiness and the reason for that unhappiness is uncertainty. People think ‘it’s all changing at work so how am I going to suffer as a consequence?’ This uncertainty is what makes good communication so vitally important.
The assumption people often make is that the outcome of change is going to be worse for them - and in truth they’re sometimes right - but in many circumstances changes are actually for the better.
Stressful and unsettling though it can be, change needs to happen. Businesses don’t make big changes without thought; they do it for positive reasons that usually involve improving the performance - and therefore wealth - of the business and ultimately for the people who work for it.
Our job and the job of anyone responsible for effecting change is ensuring that we communicate effectively to the workforce so they really understand why the company is doing what it’s doing and how it will affect the individual.
Effective change communication must be quick, open, honest and trustworthy and it must address the needs of its audience.
Ideally your initial communication should anticipate the change - to map out what people can expect. As well as laying a good foundation for your main messages later, this also helps to prevent leaks.
It’s not always wise to wait until you know all the details before you communicate. Organisations can be very nervous about communicating when it’s still unclear exactly how things are going to turn out but it’s better to say you don’t know than run the risk of appearing to hide. Hiding is always seen by employees and breeds great nervousness and panic - and of course not saying anything is itself a devastatingly effective form of communication.
People’s first reaction is always going to be to ask ‘what does this mean for me?’ No amount of explaining how important it is to the company is going to placate people’s fears about what the change will mean for them personally - in fact if you want to alienate your workforce I can’t think of many better ways to do it than to go on about macro issues, shareholder value and so on.
Trust is the key. Ultimately you want your staff to have faith that you are making good honest decisions based on a desire to do the right thing. Then even if it’s bad news they will be more inclined to believe it’s happening for the right reasons and not because of some sort of cold-hearted corporate strategy that may sever people from their jobs without concern for the impact that this has on their lives.
Here we are 500 words in and I’ve barely touched on this broad subject. Of course change is unsettling but it is designed to bring growth to the business and create a positive new culture. There are all sorts of important issues around communication technology, language and tone of voice in how this is delivered.
But I think the golden rule for change communication - remember we’re all individuals. I know you can’t always share everything but if you are seen to be telling people everything you can, you will gain their trust and that will serve you well.
Recognise the duty of delivering pension communication – and don’t miss the engagement opportunity
July 4th, 2011
By Simon Dudley, Reward Director, BP
How do you communicate effectively on a subject that is complex and many people find confusing, is financial in nature and getting it wrong could seriously damage your future level of income? In other words how do we overcome the fear factor generated by the subject?
This is the world in which pension communication lives. Surrounded by regulation and statutory disclosure, to get individuals to understand and, more importantly engage, is very challenging.
As Companies supporting pension saving, it is vital that we recognise the duty to ensure our employees understand the implications of the changes to the pension world on their future incomes in retirement. Equally important is to ensure that for the costs we incur our employees value the benefit and feel educated as to their options. To get this engagement is possible!
The world of pensions
Yet while we have seen the demise of many defined benefit plans for new hire employees in the private sector, many employees do still participate in these plans or in the ever rapidly growing defined contribution arrangements. As such these plans continue to form a key element of the employee’s reward package. Pension benefits can provide attraction and retention to employees with companies spending significant amounts of money in maintaining these plans or matching employee contributions.
We continue to see major changes coming in terms of pension provision. Auto enrolment into plans starts to roll out in 2012 with companies needing to decide to offer just the National Employees Savings Trust (NEST) or their own plans. The Government is also consulting on significant changes to the structure of State pensions and have already embarked on increasing the retirement age at which benefits can be drawn.
Perhaps an area that has not had so much attention is the implementation of much lower annual allowances and a freezing of the cap. This significantly limits the level of pension an individual can build up and hinders their ability to secure the preferential tax relief on contributions that have been available for so many years. While this has mainly hit those on higher earnings and with long service, the freezing of these allowances means that as time goes by more individuals will be caught by the restrictions and could find themselves facing a large tax bill, of which they were unaware!
Do your employees know and engage in these issues or are they part of the ostrich generation?
Communication opportunities
With the communication tools we have available, and the means of communication widening, now is a great time to bring pension benefits information into our mainstream communications to employees on their reward packages.
There continues to be a place for hard copy booklets in this area to cover some of the statutory matters but use of online interactive modelling tools, and animated video supported by face-to face workshops can generate enormous interest and raise understanding. We should also seek to modernise. While many of the decision makers are part of the baby boomer generation we must recognise that the new generations engage in different ways. What do you say to a social networking approach to pension communication?
Are you communicating your pensions’ changes effectively?
May 17th, 2011
By Christopher Hopkins, MD
Now that the Pensions Act has successfully passed through the Lords it’s time to have a long hard look at how your communication strategy will support the changes over the next 18 months.
If you’re adapting your offer in line with the new rules for 2012, will your employees understand the changes? Is communication coherent and engaging for all? Does your offer make employees feel they are working for a company that really values them as an individual and cares about their personal wellbeing? After all, that’s what will ultimately drive engagement in all areas of the workplace.
Pensions have not been communicated with much flair historically because, by their very nature, they’re driven by strict financial policy and regulation. I came across a company once that had worked hard with actuaries to produce a whopping great 180-page document detailing the inner-workings of its pension scheme. The CEO seemed surprised when take-up didn’t materialise. Of course employees were simply overwhelmed by its volume and baffled by the language.
It simply doesn’t have to be this way!
Companies aren’t legally obliged to simplify and explain the schemes they offer, but the smart companies do. For example Telefonica have, over the years, taken great effort not to anaesthetise employees with jargon and technical complexity. It makes sense to help people understand exactly what’s on offer and what it means to them. They’re hugely grateful if the technicalities are explained in ways that are digestible and meaningful. This much-needed help becomes a workplace benefit in itself.
To begin with you have to give the bigger picture, that means explaining the ‘why and how’ of the scheme rather than just the mechanics of it. Putting it in a personal, domestic context will help people understand how the pension they’re looking at could shape their family’s future.
Use your brand – align the scheme with the company’s culture - give the scheme some personality, with values and principles that reflect the company’s core brand, so employees recognise it as a valuable addition to the many benefits the company provides. Ultimately if staff see their pension as part of the value proposition their employer is making, they are more likely to appreciate the efforts being made, and engage. This way the scheme reassures employees that they’re working for a company that cares, wants to share knowledge and help individuals prepare for the future.
As the pensions market evolves employees really need to understand their benefits plan to maximise its worth to them. Yes pensions are complex, but let’s not hide behind their regulatory nature and give up on careful explanation. If you help employees understand the changes and navigate the choices they need to make – whether with face-to-face assistance or through digital communication – your pension scheme could become a pleasure rather than a pain. Communicated well, it can become a very powerful tool for engagement.
Communicate clearly to win this economic waiting game
March 31st, 2011
by Pamela Kent, Account Director
The Chancellor’s budget last week sweetened the austerity pill slightly, with fuel duty cut by 1p a litre, and some business-friendly gestures thrown in. Times are tough for many if the projections from the Office for Budget Responsibility are correct.
With corporation tax being cut by 2% in April, rather than 1% as previously planned, firms should have a little extra to invest, while reductions in regulations on businesses, and the promise of a faster planning system will provide relief to companies trying to take on staff and expand their operations.
The challenges for businesses are:
- how to inspire and motivate employees to plough on during the tough times with only the promise of better times to come
- how to retain talent and reward employees when financial benefits are not an option so they have the best team available
- how to prepare for when the good times do come that there is an embedded strategy and vision so your company hits the ground running.
What links all of these challenges is communication.
Bosses might understand and respect the long-term fitness plan being prescribed by the Government, but will their employees, who are already jittery and jaded from three years of recession? Clear, reassuring, encouraging, motivating and inspiring communication is more important now than ever before. And done well, will keep the heart of a business beating. Communications can’t just be transactional but must be cognisant of, and play to, the emotional concerns and issues of employees if the power of human capital is to really be harnessed in the last leg of this marathon.
If members of staff feel acknowledged, involved and engaged organisations will make it through. Planning and implementing a communication plan around strategy, vision and reward could even mean that you emerge stronger than before with a new culture.
Our advice is this: make sure the right sentiments are being communicated down from the top while the waiting game drags on. And invest in all manifestations of your employer brand today, so when the good times do eventually turn up, your best people haven’t cut and run.
Are you using your vision to communicate?
March 16th, 2011
By Christopher Hopkins, MD
“Pay and performance communications? Yes, we communicated it last year. We sent leaflets and posters out”. That’s the kind of thing I hear in head offices fairly often on my travels. Quite frankly when I do, my heart sinks. I know that executives have the best of intentions when using reward to drive engagement and performance. But by just talking about the collateral needed, I know very well that they’ve probably missed an opportunity to put in place everything else that’s required to help an employee truly buy-in to the organisation’s employer brand - what it stands for and what it means to them. Collateral is a means to an end, not the end itself.
All companies have an employer brand, an image they project to the world stating what it’s like to work there. But, whether companies plan and think about their employer brand, let alone communicate it well, is another matter and another article.
Communicating the employer brand is fundamental to driving performance in line with the company’s vision. Organisations need to build their employer brand, set out the EVP (Employee Value Proposition), instill their stated brand values and culture, and ‘market’ the whole thing to the business constantly and consistently. Employees then have a reason to feel involved, understand and care about what’s being asked of them. The message in the leaflet and on the poster suddenly has real resonance to them individually. Companies that do this not only achieve return on their reward strategy, but have competitive advantage through their people and improved performance.
It all boils down to understanding that communication must be a two-way thing. You can’t just push ideas and expectations out of the blue, especially not today when employees face a sustained period of pay restraint, job insecurity and extra workloads.
Ask your employees to help in the process of carving out a performance management strategy so they know what ‘performance’ means and it isn’t foisted on them. Performance doesn’t have to be just about numbers but the whole value proposition of the organisation. Performance could be sales targets, profit targets, customer service scores, or performance on Net Promoter Surveys (NPS) score from staff, health and safety achievements, CSR achievements, innovations during the year, the list goes on.
Once everyone knows and agrees how to perform better, you can build the correct communication strategy around it. That way the communication has heart, meaning and resonance. It has the power to make a real difference.
Does doing extra work always mean employees are engaged?
March 10th, 2011
By Joanne South, Account Manager
I’ve just been reading some research into engagement levels among mid and junior managers in Europe and the Middle East, and I think the research has missed the point about engagement, as well as showing the UK misses the point too, as our previous blog post discussed.
There are some interesting stats though. From the survey, the research found that 29% of respondents are disengaged which is considerably higher than much of Europe. So rather than exclusively trying to copy the American model for engagement, Europe may actually be a more useful place to look for ideas.
What is concerning though is the definition used of engagement in the survey – employees that are prepared to ‘go the extra mile’. Surely it depends on the mood of the employee the time the question was asked? What the employee may see as ‘extra mile’ may not be what the employer considers it to be, and vice versa. Action and performance don’t seem to have factored into the definition, which is the point of engagement!
An effective communication strategy is therefore critical to ensure alignment of employee engagement to the business’ vision and objectives. Engagement connects employees to the brand; it’s when employees ‘buy-in’ to the company emotionally. It isn’t a synonym for involvement which is what this survey seems to think it is.
Business strategy + Communication = Engagement = Productivity & Performance
The survey also found there was confusion about who is responsible for engagement; but none of the respondents thought it was HR! If this is indeed the case, then HR really does need a shake-up. It needs to be more focal, visible and proactive. Drive the engagement agenda, get senior executives involved.
The fact that 82% of executives said that disengaged employees are one of the top three threats they face does at least mean the issue is being taken seriously. But without a clear definition or understanding of engagement, without a joined-up proactive approach from HR and, fundamentally, without an effective communication strategy to support employees, engagement will just remain an ‘issue’.
Why is the UK still missing the point about engagement?
January 26th, 2011
By Chris Hopkins, MD
Who really understands how to achieve engagement in the workplace? My guess is that many board directors around the country are struggling with the basic concept of engagement, and entirely miss the point that employees are human beings who need some kind of emotional connection to the brand they work for, before they will buy into the company values, and give their all.
The HR industry itself seems to be ignoring the fact that engagement isn’t achievable until you have expertly marketed the organisation to the people you want to engage. Quite simply communication of an employer brand must be marketing-led, but far too frequently, it isn’t. This would explain why so many organisations are failing to instil anything like the levels of engagement that will be needed to drive performance and power long-term growth and future prosperity.
In the US, where employee engagement has been an accepted business strategy for many years, there’s real respect for the power of internal communication and the marketing of employer brand values, and I believe this is what sets US organisations apart from UK groups when it comes to tackling the issue of engagement. There’s an acceptance that the path to successfully engaging large workforces starts with good planning and brand-rich communication. Plenty of emphasis is put on designing the employer brand and clearly setting out ‘the deal’ – the Employer Value Proposition - the company offers its people, which will hook them in emotionally.
A high profile champion of employee engagement in the States is management consultant Jim Shaffer (www.jimshaffergroup.com, or follow him on LinkedIn). His view is that: “Engagement is not a synonym for involvement, as some think. It’s not an activity, program, event or the number of meetings people attend. It’s not how many suggestions people make. Employee engagement is a condition that occurs when employees share the values and purpose of the organization and are willing to ‘do whatever it takes’ to help the organization succeed.”
Shaffer’s wide experience has taught him that creating the condition of engagement is hard work but incredibly worthwhile. His clients have achieved measurable results around staff retention, productivity, customer service and ultimately improved profitability. Of course success stories here in the UK are filtering through, but I believe so much more could be achieved once the penny drops in boardrooms across the nation – employer brands need to be powerfully marketed before engagement will work its magic. Apple, Coke and Abercrombie & Fitch don’t expect brand fans to flock without meticulously-executed marketing effort, so why should employer companies? If you’re serious about engagement, it’s time to sell, sell, sell.
Embedding your values - drives performance
November 3rd, 2010
By Chris Hopkins, MD
Your company has values; you now need – more than ever - to be proactive about how they are communicated.
Through recruitment and training, reward and benefits literature, face-to-face meetings, performance metrics, and any other point of contact, your values can be turned from being wallpaper to a mechanism to support performance management. It’s vital to bring values to life through leadership style and line manager behaviour. In this way you give values resonance in what employees are doing day-to-day, and provide the vital emotional connection that will lead to engagement. It’s about showing values in action and backing that up with consistent messages delivered through exciting and impactful media. Ask yourself: What’s going to inspire them to deliver the performance of their lives? Just as marketing shows customers what’s great about your product or service, the same principles must be applied internally to show your staff why they’re working somewhere amazing.
Caburn Hope champions employee communication that actively markets a company to its employees, and that means far more than churning out HR and reward information. It’s possible to design an employee communication strategy that will sell the company’s message – its values, aspirations, ambitions – across all channels and at every vital touch-point throughout the employee lifecycle. Performance-driving communication takes effort and imagination to plan and execute because one size won’t fit all, but what’s important is that its impact can be measured - you can see the results unfolding. So follow our guidelines (below) for a strategy we believe every organisation should have in place to drive performance in 2011.
Caburn Hope outlines its Employee Communications Strategy Checklist for survival in 2011
The economy has seen three years of stagnation, and virtually every business sector has been fearful of what the future holds, prompting uncertainty in jobs and adversely affecting levels of employee engagement. Whether we agree with the practical solutions or not, the coalition government has begun to tackle the budget deficit and the economic picture is clearer. Companies are starting to plan for the future, so now on the eve of 2010, Caburn Hope believes organisations must focus new energy on their communication strategy for tomorrow’s performance.
The Employee Communication Strategy Checklist
If you haven’t done them already, here are the six things you need to consider in 2011 to boost employee engagement levels, and drive up productivity and performance:
1) Define the journey you want your Employee Communications Strategy to take you on. What is the vision? What are the objectives? What results do you expect?
2) Carry out an audit or review of the communications you already have. This will highlight your strengths and weaknesses, and show you the way forward.
3) Set out a framework and an identity, so that you have a clear set of values, a vision for the organisation and a cultural identity that you are sure will ‘fit’ with the company’s DNA and external brand identity.
4) Define a consistent style, so that you have a creative look, feel and language that will carry the communications strategy forward effectively.
5) Design a robust communication plan that will support the journey you set out to complete.
6) Ensure you have the correct communications channels and tools to competently and cost-effectively deliver the messages you’ve identified.
Switched-on organisations now realise that employee engagement drives business performance, so having the right values, and a communication strategy in place to embed those values, is vital. But it can be a daunting prospect, with many HR professionals unsure where to start, or how to make the business case to their executive boards. With this in mind, Caburn Hope will be running a series of workshops next year that will introduce the six stages listed above to companies who want to update their communication strategy, and begin to sell their employer value proposition more effectively to employees.
Watch this space for dates in 2011.
The ‘Downturn Dilemma’: Increasing performance with a reduced budget
June 22nd, 2010
By Chris Hopkins, MD
Cuts needn’t dent employee engagement levels if you communicate with care
The so-called ‘downturn dilemma’ is actually a perennial HR headache. How do you boost engagement and performance levels and get your organization competition fit, when your recruitment, and learning and development (L&D) budgets are constantly being squeezed?
There’s additional pressure now admittedly. Fast-changing policies from the new coalition government, and the likelihood of higher costs, further spending reductions and job cuts to come, not to mention the volatile economic environment, mean UK businesses really are going to have to achieve more with less in the coming year. Recent research by training company Thales found that while 79% of businesses sensibly stated employee engagement is a top priority at board level to get them through the on-going recession, 44% also said cost-cutting would take precedence over investment in L&D. Not surprisingly Thales found that companies continuing to invest in their people are recovering faster than those who’ve slashed their budgets to nothing. So how do you fill the gap between cuts and improved performance?
My immediate advice is to budget smarter, and promote your existing L&D provisions with more ingenuity and gusto. My experience when reviewing employee opinions of their employers is that many staff members don’t understand the full extent of the rewards, benefits and L&D provisions on offer to them anyway. Clear, timely communication of your reward, wellbeing and L&D policies can reassure existing employees that there are genuine opportunities for them, so long as they deliver performance now.
If you have honed down the workforce you’re likely to have retained a core of your best talent. That’s a great place to start. Prioritize your spending to leverage the skills of these promising people. Communicate creatively to keep people motivated and on-message. Telling your teams they’re the best, inspiring them with good news stories, and empowering them to drive the company forward needn’t cost very much. Also it pays to clearly signpost the career opportunities that will come to those who stay loyal to you.
Ask yourselves an important question: While the board is pre-occupied with efficiency and performance management, who is focusing on keeping the company vision, values and culture on track? Often the simple act of communicating regularly and clearly with employees can keep people engaged and motivated, even in the toughest of times.
