Good habits take time, so, if you’re putting in any new communication or engagement system into your business, give it time to bed in. Or more to the point, give people time to use it regularly, and become hooked.

1. Habit-
forming in
employee
communications:
Why growth is not the
only answer

2. When you launch a new product or service, all
eyes are on the all-important growth curve.
How many people are buying it?
How many people are downloading or signing up to it?
?
As managers and business-owners, we’re looking for that
perfect rising curve, a ski ramp to success.
2

3. However, buying, downloading or signing up is not
the same as usage. In an interesting guest blog at
Nir and Far, Abhay Vardhan (founder of blippy.com)
discusses the need to create a habit, so that users
come back time and time again. While his blog
concentrates on building user habits for commercial
apps, the principals are equally useful when trying
to form the habit amongst employees of using a
new communication app or intranet.
Users, not sales
3

4. PAGE 4
Buyers, not employees
• Admittedly, with a company-led initiative, there is usually more
motivation involved in forming the habit, in that employees may be
required to use the app for specific work purposes. Yet we all know
of a new system (or six) that has floundered in the water because
employees simply haven’t used it. Many gave up and resorted to
old, tried and tested methods, even if they were less efficient or
even less accessible.

5. Downloaded by
millions, used by
few
In Vardhan’s case, his company created a new app that
was initially greeted with great enthusiasm. Users rushed
to download the app, and invited their friends to do the
same. However, they didn’t stick with it. As Vardhan says:
PAGE 5
“The app was downloaded by millions, but used by few.”
Downloaded By
Used By

6. Cohort Analysis and
Retention Rate
Vardhan decided that a different measure was required to
assess who was using the app, so he turned to two
different measures:
Cohort Analysis:
Retention Rate:
PAGE 6

7. PAGE 7
Cohort Analysis and Retention Rate
• Cohort Analysis: a cohort is a group of people who share a particular
characteristic over a period of time, such as signing up on a particular day. A
cohort analysis follows these users’ actions over a period of time.
• Retention Rate: The retention rate of a cohort for a period of time is the ratio of
number of active users at the end of the period to the number of active users at
the start of the period. A user is active on a given day if he or she has visited the
product on that day.
• Vardhan cited a fictitious app with two cohort group of people who signed up on
two particular days. Each cohort group decayed over 10 days to a user retention
rate of around 3%. Vardhan defined these remaining 3% of users as “hooked”.
• In app-land, a retention rate of 20% is the baseline for success for a free to use
social media app. An e-commerce app that can generate income may well be
profitable with considerably less users. An analysis by RJMetrics showed that
user retention by Twitter is around 22%, but is much higher for Pinterest at 45%.

8. Less than 5%
retention?
Vardhan suggests that, as a rule of thumb, if retention
rates are less than 5% four weeks after launch, then your
app has not established itself as a new habit. Cohort
analysis should be able to help determine why.
PAGE 8

9. PAGE 9
How long does it take to establish a new habit?
• Vardhan’s statement, of course, assumes that a habit can be
formed in four weeks (or less). However, there is no concerted
opinion on exactly how long it does take to form a new habit.
• In an interesting blog tracing the history of the habit-forming
timescale, James Clear cites the plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz
who noted that it took his patients a minimum of 21 days to adjust
to their new appearance:
“It requires a minimum of about 21 days for an old
mental image to dissolve and a new one to jell.”

10. PAGE 10
How long does it take to establish a new habit?
• Note the word, “minimum”. Sadly, not many self-help authors
noted that, citing 21 days as an absolute, not a minimum.
Subsequent research published in the European Journal of Social
Psychology showed the timescale was much, much longer, with
an average of 66 days and up to 254 days. As Clear summarizes:
“if you want to set your expectations appropriately, the truth is that it will probably
take you anywhere from two months to eight months to build a new behavior into
your life — not 21 days.”

11. PAGE 11
Good habits take time
• So, if you’re putting in any new communication or engagement
system into your business, give it time to bed in. Or more to the
point, give people time to use it regularly, and become hooked.
• Habits are formed by regular repetition, preferably on a daily basis.
So, ensure your new initiative gives sufficient incentive for
employees to sign in and participate every day. And if it takes over
six months for the habit to form, so be it; once it’s part of their
working lives, engaging with your system will become a habit that’s
very hard to break.

12. PAGE 12
About us
• TalkFreely is a leading employee communication app that connects
and aligns every employee with what’s important to your business.
Our multi-purpose app provides organisations with a
communications channel that builds employee engagement through
Innovation, Recognition, Collaboration, News, Surveys and more.

13. info@talkfreely.com +44 (0) 1730 207 150
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