Appealing to the personal with internal communications

We’ve read a couple of articles recently that have brought into focus the important role demographics play in understanding the findings of surveys.

Surveys, how they’re structured, how you motivate participation and how you analyse the findings, are of particular interest to us right now as we’re helping a client find a survey partner to design and manage their first employee engagement survey.

At the weekend The Guardian published findings from a ICM poll they carried out with income protection provider Unum. We suspect Unum were a bit disappointed by the findings as even during tough economic times so oft reported by the media, 44% of respondents said the recession had had no impact on their job; 24% of respondents said they could survive for longer than six months if they no longer received their monthly salary. People do have savings to fall back on it seems.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worklifeuk/interactive/guardian-unum-work-life-survey-interactive

Beneath the top line findings to the 10 poll questions asked, The Guardian and Unum provide a useful analysis of responses subject to age, gender and geographic location. This reminded us as we plan the communication campaign for our client’s employee engagement survey that treating an employee population as a homogenous mass ignores the different perceptions employees can have of their employer subject to how long they’ve work for a business, their age and their gender.

Expectations and demands change about work and work/life balance as you go through different life stages and men and women tend to give particular emphasis to different issues. Our communication strategy could appeal to these different interest and concerns, with the aim of lifting participation. We could talk to the personal side of the individual more.

It was an article in June’s Management Today discussing the prevailing influence of Jung in corporate strategy that brought into sharper focus our consideration of how an employee’s personal inner workings can influence their perceptions of work and work/life balance.

http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/1071184/Why-Jung-matters/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH

Read the sections on the meaning of work, midlife crisis and ageing population and you can’t help but come away feeling employee communications rarely appeal to an individual’s inner workings, whereas in branding and marketing the personal response is core. Employers tend to think of their employees as types who fit the mould of their business when, as Jung would have it, their persona at work is just one they adopt.

The analysis of how Jung saw the first half of a person’s life compared to the second half is particularly interesting when trying to develop an understanding of what motivates employees. In the second half of life Jung believed people are “likely to become preoccupied with more ethical or spiritual answers to questions of meaning, purpose and fulfillment.” That’s compared to the first half when career, providing for family and achieving business goals will dominate.

Given employee populations are ageing, internal communicators should take note. An ageing population is likely to have a more balanced and less self-centered view of things – appealing traits to a business trying to manage change through collective action. So guess who you should target with your communications more.