by TIM LOTHERINGTON & BECS REFFELL | Published on August 16th, 2024

Given our collective age, extensive number of years spent in talent communications, it’s fair to say you might find us going a bit misty eyed now and then… entertaining boring our Gen Z colleagues about what used to happen in olden days. When media commission was king; where fax machines were every day; where face-to-face meetings were the norm and “hybrid” described strange plants rather than a working style.   

The world, our industry and Havas People have evolved out of sight since then. Today, talent communications remains at our core, but how we make a lasting impact on client businesses has changed dramatically.  

A great example is our work in Employee Experience (EX), helping organisations enhance the experience of their people. More than ever before, we see engagement at the top (or close to) most CEOs’ agendas, at a time there are HUGE and well documented talent challenges.   

Last time, we shared how organisations can boost engagement through EX. Here, we’ll talk you through the varied work we do across the EX space – driving engagement; simplifying and decoding corporate speak; and helping talent connect and get excited about their work and careers.  We weren’t doing this in the 1990/Noughties (depending on which of us you’re speaking to) but now, it’s everyday and hugely exciting work.  

Put simply, we provide three critical (and often overlapping) areas of support. We help organisations understand what’s important. We bring people (in particular leadership) together. And, of course, we create great comms that increase engagement throughout the entire Employee Experience.  

First up, understand what’s important 

Sometimes our clients know the exact problem to solve and have a really well-defined brief. But (unsurprisingly, given how multi-faceted EX is) we also hear “we know there’s a problem, but we just don’t know where to begin”.  

A frequent starting point is to help our clients untangle where the real challenge lies. Either way, we start with what we collectively know and what we really don’t. Companies often have a bunch of data (internal surveys or HR data) that we can work through to see what’s relevant. Macro-trends and competitor insight helps us set direction, too. This can be helpful to build a business case for investment – something we’ve done with Mars to initiate a project to enhance learning across their global organisation.  

Sometimes, bespoke research is needed to reveal the true challenge. We conducted a piece of work for a major bank comparing the ideal experience their employees desired to the reality of every day across 30 areas of the experience. The patterns of highs and lows we uncovered helped guide the client in a really focussed way; setting a benchmark and identifying the focus areas that would help us move the EX dial the most.  

Bring people together 

So, we’ve got the problem statement. We know the business challenges we’re facing. And we often already know what employees’ are seeking. How do we bring people (and particularly leaders) along for the journey? We always say that we stand or fall by how well we bring stakeholders with us – and, with so many involved in EX delivery, never is that truer than here. 

This is where we bring people together to agree on the best way forward. Using design thinking methodologies, we develop workshops that achieve consensus and leave participants engaged and energised for the next steps. A great example of this was working with Haleon to create their EVP and EX blueprint for their newly separated organisation. It’s so rare starting with a blank piece of paper, but what an opportunity to shape something from the beginning. We were given full access to multiple teams, leadership and employees to create super focussed comms and clarity about how to design the new experiences their people and business needed. 

At this point, we have to shout out our fantastic colleagues at sister agency Gate One, a transformation consulting firm, who we can collaborate with on EX projects.  An amazing benefit of being part of the Havas Group is the access to some much world-class expertise. 

How do we communicate with your people? 

Great communications clearly can’t solve all talent challenges, but it’s amazing how getting it right can have such an enormous impact.  Having moved through our process, we understand where the challenges lie; we understand where to invest, we have a plan that key stakeholders have signed up. So now we need to communicate. 

We help clients communicate complex change or a new strategy; helping their people understand their role and sign up to the journey (because, without them, any change initiative will undoubtedly fail). We help organisations create and roll out new (or refreshed) values and behaviours. We can help promote the myriad of amazing benefits on offer, like health & wellbeing and learning. We help companies make sure that the promise they’re making to current and future talent (the EVP) is communicated and delivered at vital touchpoints of the employee journey. This is exactly what we did for a global insurance firm, across eight diverse markets.  

Our comms offer can run all the way to the end of the employee journey too. For example, we recently developed and rolled out a new alumni programme for Wells Fargo (a new major benefit for employees for their life after their career at the bank).  

But it’s not just about the creating great comms. It’s about internal activation too. What’s the best drum beat? Which channels or methods should we use? How should we measure?  Of course, we plan and manage content for internal social channels, encouraging peer to peer comms. And, recently, for a huge, well-known online retailer (who’s probably ringing your doorbell as we speak) we rolled out some comms training focusing on how to upskill managers (the audience we know play a crucial role in comms and the overall employee experience).  Get the comms right, and the EX riches are untold!  

So yes, our work today is a far cry from when we joined the industry. It’s varied, amazing and we can see real impact on employees and businesses. Long may this continue. We can’t wait to see where the next few years takes us… 

Tim and Becs