The document discusses the importance of employee engagement for organizational success and how it correlates with customer experience and financial performance. It emphasizes the need for companies to modernize their employee engagement programs by treating employees as consumers, utilizing effective communication strategies, and understanding diverse engagement drivers. Ultimately, fostering a strong internal brand and nurturing a culture of respect and relevance can enhance both employee and customer satisfaction.

1. The
all-consuming
employee
–
Employee engagement
in the age of experience

2. Introduction
–
A quick refresher on why
CEOs care about employee
engagement
Imagine you’re a CEO and you see data proving
that investing time, money and expertise in an area
of your organization could improve your customer
experience and your financial results. Wouldn’t you
make that investment without hesitation?
That’s employee engagement: the more involved
and enthusiastic staff feel about their work and their
employer brand, the more successful that employer
will be.
But here’s the thing: companies are spending on
employee engagement initiatives, but far too often
that investment isn’t having the impact it could—
because employee engagement programs are
lackluster, behind-the-times and just plain lame.
This white paper addresses how to create better
employee engagement programs.
It’s simple: just treat employees like the
consumers they are.
Jon Paul Potts
Communications Strategist
Katie Chatfield
Creative Strategist
2

3. Employee
engagement
rankings
– For 40 years, Gallup
has studied employee
engagement and its
effect on individual and
organizational workplace
performance outcomes.¹
3
Top quartile
organizations
2.6x greater
earnings per
share growth
than competitors ranked below
average for employee engagement
Top half
organizations
70%
44%
higher success
in lowering
turnover
higher
profitability
More engaged employees make customers happier, too.
According to the same study, companies with higher employee
engagement show 86% higher success rates on customer metrics.
Forrester has shown just how valuable a better
customer experience can be:
For instance, in the hotel industry, moving from a below-average customer
experience to an above-average customer experience could mean an
annual upside of more than $1.1 billion USD for a hotel.²

4. 4
Imagine you’re a consumer-facing
brand, trying to get the attention of
people in their daily lives. Of course
you work hard to get their attention
across every conceivable touchpoint:
through phones and laptops and
tablets and rich media experiences.
Of course you think through your
messaging and understand that not all
consumers are alike; they’re people,
with human-scale differences of culture
and perspective. And of course you
never take consumers’ attention for
granted; you know you’re competing
for people’s attention so you push your
brand to be creative and cut-through.
So why do brands so often
fail to bring the same game
to their employees that they
do to their customers?
The
problem
–E
mployee
programs
aren’t what
they need
to be

5. 44
Employee communications are often flat,
uninspiring, filled with legalese and bad
clip art. Cheesy stock photo, anyone?
As an employer, you can’t take your
workforce’s attention for granted. You
need to market to them, just as you do
to your potential customers. You need to
bring creativity to your communications
and think multichannel—reinforcing the
purpose of their work as part of the brand
and business vision in the context that’s
right for them. Don’t just send out 10,000
emails and call it a day.
Equally, don’t assume that employee
engagement drivers are universal.
Operating in the multicultural,
multigenerational and multichannel world
represents new challenges for leaders
trying to drive high levels of employee
engagement. Organizations that invest
in understanding and managing the
key drivers of engagement across
multiple constituencies will drive better
performance.
Employee
programs
aren’t what
they need
to be
–
5

6. Top
engagement
drivers by
geography
6

7. United Kingdom
Australia
United States
1 Being treated with
respect
Working environment
where I can provide
good service
Work-life balance
Quality of
organizational
leadership
Type of work I do
Brazil
1
2
3
4
5
Being treated with
respect
Work-life balance
Type of work I do
Quality of people
I work with
Quality of
organizational
leadership
India
1
2
3
4
5
Type of work I do
Base pay
Quality of
organizational
leadership
Working environment
where I can provide
good service
Promotion opportunities
1
2
3
4
5
Being treated with
respect
Quality of
organizational
leadership
Work-life balance
Quality of people I
work with
Working environment
where I can provide
good service
1
2
3
4
5
Being treated with
respect
Type of work I do
Work-life balance
Base pay
Working environment
where I can provide
good service
China
1
2
3
4
5
Quality of
organizational
leadership
Base pay
Benefits
Being treated with
respect
Learning &
development
opportunities
2
3
4
5
Top five
engagement
drivers by
geography
Source: Mercer ³

8. 8
People are all different—jobs, life
stages, circumstances—and brands
need to take this into account in
employee communications in the same
way they segment their consumers.
This is why internal segmentation
is as important in employee
communications as consumer
modeling can be when you take your
brand out into the world.
Yet amidst the diversity of engagement
drivers, there is a common thread
for workers: they want to be treated
with respect by their employers
and feel inspired at their place of
employment—and that means they
want to be engaged as the consumers
they are. They expect you to be just
as truthful, transparent, inspiring, agile
and relevant as the other brands in
their lives.
But
how?

9. 9 Brand to
everyone
–
Four key
requirements
We know that there’s a correlation between employee engagement,
customer experience and financial performance. What’s the impact
on brand?
Brands that deliver relevant, compelling and consistent brand
experiences for every stakeholder, where the consumer value
proposition and the employee value proposition reinforce and
reflect each other, experience the amplification effect of a “brand to
everyone” or “B2E” approach. B2E thinking ensures that your own
people and channel partners deliver a great experience to your
end-user customers. Driving the brand from the inside out creates a
stronger foundation for effective, meaningful brand experiences with
customers and consumers.
But what are the building blocks to B2E thinking? What’s the starting
point for effective employee engagement?

10. Be
purpose
led
–
110 A night at the movies
How do you convince thousands of
Create impactful experiences
employees that a significant change in
anchored in the business and
how they do their job was a good thing?
How about a night out at the movies? A
brand’s purpose, ambition,
large telecommunications company in
and intent
Asia Pacific was launching a new internal
digital platform that all employees would
need to embrace. Since people have a
hard time adapting to change, the launch
Be true to your brand. If you’re telling
experience integrated both live and digital
your consumers one thing, don’t tell your
touchpoints to drive excitement and generate
employees something different. Your
buzz across the company, including
employees should understand how their
online banners and snail mail that invited
work connects to the brand, and be able
employees to register for a free movie
to deliver the brand to your customers.
night. These live movie nights at local movie
Develop a roadmap enabling your
houses became engaging “surprise and
people to understand the brand’s
delight moments” for the employees. They
purpose, future relevance, beliefs and
were invited to view a film of their choice,
promise.
and in return before the screening began, a
member of the company’s leadership team
Agree what success looks like, get buy-in
gave a short introduction on the new digital
at the top and engage key stakeholders.
platform and showed a 10-minute animated
video explaining the new tool. The results?
94% of employees reported they understood
the digital strategy.

11. 2
11 Build
intuitively
designed
experiences
–
Anticipate how employees will
want to participate, and design
to enable those interactions
Taking it to the next level
Employees at one of the world’s largest professional
firms saw themselves as high-performers—so
driving acceptance of a new global strategy
aimed at unlocking more discretionary effort meant
overcoming skepticism and inspiring change.
Treating the firm’s partners and staff as savvy
consumers, what could have been a ho-hum
internal communications effort was transformed
into a full-blown political-style campaign, with
local Town Halls, an employee manifesto, microsite
and leadership “stump speeches”. Nearly 100%
of the 22,000-person workforce participated, in a
campaign that 95% of employees rated as excellent.
Segment your workforce. Understand the split
across your demographics, how many people
are mobile versus desk bound, and who has
access to what channels of communication.
Anticipate how employees will participate in
communication and enable positive interaction,
immerse, engage and invite participation and
dialogue (don’t just train and communicate).
Remember that—like a good ad campaign,
which can take 12 to 18 months to take hold—
engagement takes time and change can be
difficult. Create your internal brand through a
series of experiences that build on each other
and are connected by a strong messaging
thread.

12. Create useful
employee
experiences
–
312 Add value for your employees
and help them be advocates
for your brand
Make it relevant, and make it about them.
Build a culture that celebrates the people
who live the brand, deliver it to customers,
and can articulate it clearly—no matter their
position in the organizational hierarchy.
Be creative and accessible. The quality and
sophistication of the content should be of the
same standard as you would use to talk to
your consumers.
Remember that engagement depends as
much on context and as it does on content.
Understand the world your employees live in,
and treat them as if they have other options
to get information.

13. 4 8
Measure
twice,
communicate
once
–
Understand what’s working, and
count what matters (not just what
can be counted)
Employees as celebritites
13
Scott & White Healthcare was growing fast, hiring new talent and opening
new healthcare facilities in Texas. However, there was a downside to
tremendous growth: a collection of hospitals and clinics each with their own
culture, all of them talking about the brand differently. The most relevant
way to inspire disparate staff to embrace a common cause? Tap into social
media culture and make employees the celebrities in support of a larger
culture campaign. A cultural manifesto was hung in halls and break rooms,
and placed on mousepads, videos and screen savers, on buttons and ID
clips. Unlike other corporate campaigns the staff had seen before, these
communications featured “in the moment” photography of people they knew
and worked with every day, people who served as models of the overarching
cultural values. The employees were the celebrities and heroes. Gallup scores
improved, resulting in PR Week’s award for “Employee Communications
Campaign of the Year.”
Don’t restrict yourself to an annual
survey (often managed centrally
and comprising a huge number of
questions). Yes, you’ll get detailed
reports across a large number of
metrics—but you need more than
a once a year snapshot.
Take a page from the Net
Promoter playbook: survey
employees more often, ask a few
simple questions, and simplify the
reporting. How likely would you
be to recommend this company to
a friend as a place to work? How
likely would you be to recommend
the company’s products or services
to a potential customer? What’s
the primary reason for your
response?
Let employees to use their own
words to identify opportunities
and issues. However difficult
to hear—employees tend to be
tough graders—you’ll be better
equipped to meet employee
needs.
Convene a panel of employees
from across the organization
and ask them about the health
of your brand. An employee
who feels heard can be the most
passionate brand ambassadors,
motivating peers and partnering
with leadership.

14. Everyone’s
a consumer
–
Training a lifestyle
A leading consumer electronics company was
launching a new device and needed to train sales
reps on the device. Since the new device was built
to meet the lifestyle needs of consumers, the training
was built the same way. Rather than dry presentations
and training off-sites, the sales enablement program
tapped the energy of consumer marketing to inspire
sales reps to sell the device with passion and clarity.
A nine-city training tour in the US invited reps to local
clubs to see local bands and try out the device. The
events showcased the features of the device, but also
kicked off a “Battle of the Bands” to find an ultimate
winning band. The B2B training events merged
with the sales reps’ consumer worlds, building a
passionate and engaged advance audience that
led to an amazing viral campaign at launch.
Loyal, passionate employees can
offer your brand as much benefit as
loyal, passionate consumers. They
stay longer, work harder, work more
creatively, and find ways to go the
extra mile. And along the way, they
bring you more great employees.
Just as your customers consume
your brand, so are your employees
constantly evaluating how you talk to
them, how they feel about the place
they work, and whether you are
engaging them as an employer. Treat
them with the same care and attention
as consumers, and engage them across
multiple touch points, with the same
heart, sophistication and intelligence
as you would consumers.
14

15. Talk to us
–
Contact Melinda Lindland
SVP, New Business and Group Account Director
melinda_lindland@jackmorton.com
Read our blog at
blog.jackmorton.com
Follow us on twitter
@jackmorton
Visit us online at
jackmorton.com
¹ Follow This Path: How the World’s Greatest Organizations Drive Growth by
Unleashing Human Potential, Curt Coffman and Gabriel Gonzalez-Molina.
² The Business Impact of Customer Experience (http://www.flowresulting.nl/wp-content/
uploads/2013/11/The-Business-Impact-Of-Customer-total.pdf)
³ What’s Working (2011) a survey of 30,000 workers in 17 global markets.
15
About Jack Morton
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© Jack Morton Worldwide 2014