A 2019 Mindspace survey showed that 15 percent of employees feel no sense of purpose in their job.
Businesses and leaders can change that – and play a huge role in improving overall employee wellbeing. It’s never been more important as we continue to grapple with remote working and the pandemic.
To explore the conversation around employee happiness further we brought in the experts and got some valuable insights into how we can all make a difference to wellbeing in the workplace through our purpose and comms.
We were delighted to host a webinar taking a closer look at how purposeful communication is linked to employee happiness. Many thanks to Jane Roques-Shaw (CiiC), Global Executive Director, People Growth and Experience at Warner Media and Rachel Lewis, Occupational Psychologist at Affinity Health and Work, who joined our Managing Partner, Strategy Debra Sobel on the panel. We were thrilled to have you with us.
For those who couldn’t be there for the webinar itself, here’s a summary and the top take outs from our experts.
Debra Sobel considered two main areas around happiness – wellbeing, and how well employers are protecting the mental health of the people who work for them, and equality, diversity and inclusion.
These areas have risen up the general business agenda in a huge way. But how well are companies actually doing?
Communication plays an important role in making people feel they are being looked after at work and that their work is meaningful.
But it’s important to get across how much each specific role is connected with the bigger picture. What each employee’s ‘why’ is within an organisation’s over-arching purpose and values.
Rachel Lewis pointed out that organisations used to see these areas of discussion as a little ‘fluffy’, They weren’t central to the strategic direction of companies. This how now changed, especially over the past year. She gave us three important reasons why.
Naturally, as humans, we tend to want to make sense of things. We’ve always been in search of meaning, and our career is increasingly becoming one aspect of that. The impact and the meaning behind what we do from nine to five matters.
Jane Roques-Shaw agreed that people feeling their employment was meaningful had a definite connection to their happiness at work. Her last few roles have been specifically around employee engagement, and that businesses feel it’s now important shows by the fact that they are hiring her. Jane described how Warner Media had a new CEO and large – scale transformation last year which brought different companies and cultures together.
A clear purpose that considered all the cultures of different areas was really important to achieve this, to bring the different areas together under one business with one purpose. Jane stressed the importance of the ‘why’ of the business. Why are you here? What are your priorities? How are your behaviours and how should we be behaving? Thinking about how we inspire and motivate employees around that purpose means the business will thrive and people will perform at their best. She described how important it was to talk about that purpose story with employees so everybody knows why there are here.
Communication is a two-way relationship. We can’t expect employees to be on the receiving end only. Employees need to be encouraged to feedback and contribute their views to all kinds of topics. By pro-actively listening to employees, communications will resonate more deeply and become more relevant.
The panel considered how this can be done authentically. In the case of Warner Media, Jane Roques-Shaw said there were strong cultures in different areas of the business, and bringing them together was a challenge.
They spent time gathering employees together to talk about what’s important about the culture and values of their particular part of the business. So everybody could see their cultures interwoven within the Warner Media story. Building that narrative for purpose was done alongside employees and with their input.
Rachel Lewis talked about the importance of both informal and formal communications. She described the ‘ABC’ of psychological health.
All this feeds into evidence leading to greater happiness at work. As a default, there tends to be a reliance on formal communications cascaded throughout the organisation. These often tell good and important stories.
Yet research shows it’s informal communications that keep organisations together and are the glue that develops greater wellbeing at work. Spontaneous communication is one of the things that’s really suffered over the past year. But the reality is that these methods of us sharing information has actually been decreasing for the past fifteen years. Meetings run to stricter agendas, with less time to chat and feel connected to others.
Rachel gave EDF as an example of a company that changed that. At the beginning of every meeting they put aside time to discuss a topic. They would set a sentence, such as ‘what do you feel about drinking alcohol during team meetings?’ Everyone had to contribute to the debate. Rachel said that, although this may sound slightly bizarre, research shows that taking 5-10 minutes at the beginning of a meeting to have some kind of more informal discussion leads to greater productivity and more getting done during the rest of the meeting itself.
Debra Sobel described how Verity London is often asked how companies can get this right. Many organisations are well-meaning, and put out a lot of communications. But this can also overload employees and be ultimately unhelpful. Companies need to consider where people go for all sorts of communications and discussions and think about how to develop expectations around this in a way that doesn’t overwhelm.
Debra also stressed the importance of communications being empathetic and from a trusted source, and listening to employees around what they want to hear. Finding that balance between what you need to communicate, the right moment to do it, and in the right way is something employees will value. Lots of communications tend to be reactive, but it’s also good to be strategically proactive and plan – with communications not just coming from a specific comms department, but collaboratively and representatively across the company.
Telling company stories is an important part of building these communications in an authentic way. Debra described telling stories on a human level that employees can relate to, with consideration to your different audience across the organisation. Dig below the facts to find the story on a more emotional level and open up conversations around more difficult issues.
Rachel Lewis agreed. She stressed how Senior Management involvement in that storytelling was very important. All employees exist within a culture, and it’s senior leaders who set that culture. Rachel described a major bank, that had high levels of mental health issues within its staff. There was a stigma around admitting and talking about it, which came from the top of the organisation and ran down through it. Then the Managing Director became unwell. When he returned to work, he decided to share his mental health story. It had a transformative effect on that organisation. Unlocking those doors and creating that psychological safety through this kind of communication is really important.
Jane Roques-Shaw considered how we integrate storytelling into our communications. At Warner Media they have amazing content to base it on, courtesy of their core business activity. They use this to help bring real-life stories into the business. But you don’t have to be a media company to do this.
Jane described how Visa ran an initiative where volunteer employees were given somebody else’s story and, with no time to pre read or consider it, read it out to camera. Their reactions and emotions to the story were authentic. Then a senior leader would admit to this being their story, and the result was a very emotional and moving experience. They were stories about failure, about career issues – senior leaders had told them and allowed others to reveal them.
The discussion, and all the ideas and initiatives described, really showed how important communications were to employee happiness, and how that sense of purpose and engagement in wellbeing issues was key to that. Bringing everybody together through a shared company purpose can bring greater satisfaction and productivity at work, and a transparent communications culture that starts at the top can make a huge difference.
Webinar guests asked the panel some useful questions: on the topic of how smaller companies can engage with these issues, the panel agreed that size definitely doesn’t matter, the important thing is to listen to team and encourage that transparency. Debra Sobel said that it can be an easier, more organic process of communications, and finding champions within the team who can be given that wellbeing responsibility would be a good move. Another question asked how everybody within an organisation can be given a voice. Panel responses stressed the importance of inclusion, especially as there will always be those who are less inclined to talk. It’s up to managers to invite everybody to speak in meetings, and to proactively ask questions to involve everybody in discussions. Leaders need to learn to read body language and ensure they are doing what they can to give everybody a voice.
A final question asked how you bring an organisation together where different areas of the business have different requirements. An over-arching company purpose and set of values has real benefits here, that can be embedded throughout the organisation. You can use those shared values and narrative to tell stories around how they are lived in many different ways across the business. So that every employee can feel connected to that bigger vision.
