Know F all about Gen Y? Get the IQ PDQ

#downwiththekids

PWC estimate that the millennial generation, or Gen Y ( born roughly between 1980 and 2000) will make up half of the global workforce by 2020. They are a generation like none other, with expectations and demands of their own that will reshape the world of work.

I’ve been in a couple of meetings recently with clients of a certain seniority and of a certain age whose lack of knowledge about them was startlingly evident. OK so they knew they had some 25 year olds milling about their office, but they didn’t know just how different they are from generations gone before them or how to even begin to engage them in the workplace.

Tech firms and TV, music and media bods and the like have it sussed, as it’s Gen Y central there; all hipster beards, BYOD, dogs in the office, gin flavoured popcorn and knowing whose Spotify playlists to follow. It’s the more established traditional, dare I say it old school employers, who make up the majority of global businesses in terms of number of employees who need to play serious catch up.

Woodreed’s been thinking about the Millennial generation at work and have written a report which helps senior leaders and internal communicators gain insight into this unique generation. We think it’s an essential read. If you’d like a look, grab yourself an organic fair trade soy latte with a shot of caramel and click here to read the report in full.

Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?

Over recent weeks I've become aware of increasing debate about the EE words for example Neil Morrison's 'Nobody wants to be engaged'. EE - not the bizarrely rebranded telecomms company but Employee Engagement. A simple term which I think most people get - employee engagement as opposed to customer engagement or audience engagement, engaging the internal audience rather than the external.

There are discussions about whether EE as a term is an obstacle to the message. Whether we can think of other things to call it. Is it happiness, wellbeing, wellness or what?

This seems like so much noise, just at a time when a groundswell is beginning to build in the wake of corporate scandals and with the support of the Engage for Success movement.  To me this is typical of so many movements in the past which end up tearing themselves apart over semantics, focussing inwards instead of outwards.

What are we doing? When there is still such a mountain to climb to convince boards to invest time, resources, intellectual capital and understanding in the need for EE why do we create a distracting sideshow that can only undermine our pitch? Someone, the unerring advocate of the importance of the inside culture Ian Buckingham I think, said "Angels on pinheads" about this the other day and I have to agree.

How can we expect people to take the important concept and its practitioners seriously when we resort to squabbling amongst ourselves?

Of course debate is healthy and should be encouraged but let’s focus it where it can achieve results – on
helping overcome the barriers, on helping people see that EE isn’t something you do to people or have done to you, that EE isn’t a tick box exercise, or a series of 'initiatives'. That EE isn't an outcome. It’s about building a healthy culture within an organisation where every employee (which means all those who take a salary from the organisation so leaders and managers too) is motivated to give of their best more often that they’re not; an environment where the people with the skills to leave choose to stay.

Surely it's far better to have a word which, ok may not be perfect but at least we all understand? A word to badge the concept and act as a shorthand for something we all need to grasp - quite simply organisations with high levels of employee engagement outperform organisations who don't on so many KPIs - net profit, revenue growth, customer satisfaction, productivity, innovation, employee turnover...

These KPIs are the important evidence we have to use to convince board level decision makers of the need to take this seriously - but you know, irrespective of these I know what kind of an organisation I'd rather work in.

"Uggh a culture we must change"

So said a respondent to Woodreed's recent survey in our Brand Inside Report.

And it seems they weren't alone, with only 29% of respondents reporting that their organisation has "a great culture of people living our values." A worrying 20% reported a culture yes, but "not the one we want" and over a quarter of respondees said their organisation had "no sense of what we stand for internally" at all.  Not great results for UK plc but, given the recent wake of corporate scandals and misdemeanours, not perhaps that surprising.

So what's the answer?

Engaging on an emotional level is four times more valuable than rational engagement when it comes to driving employee effort, yet all too often internal comms are cold and rational - devoid of the emotive power a brand can deliver.

A well defined cultural framework, grounded in brand values and delivered through a strategic and integrated internal communications programme can effectively fix the disconnect and successfully embed the values amongst employees in a sustainable way to help create the right kinds of values-based cultures for the long-term.

Employee engagement is becoming a board issue and rightly so.  What boards now need to do is direct HR and Marketing to work together, to combine their brand and people expertise and share some resources too.  But don't panic Marketeers, a little spent inside goes a very long way and don't forget there's a direct and proven link between engaged employees and your bottom line revenue.

Whose responsibility is it anyway?

A particular topic which has really galvanised readers of our Brand Inside Report was the question of who has responsibility for employee engagement inside an organisation.  One reader observed that the answer lies with the CMO in that if we can "unleash the power of the brand inside then mountains can be moved."


Another agreed that best practice must be led by the Board with "HR and Marketing working much more collegiately, dispensing with the conflicting agendas and silo approach to ensure employee engagement is a shared responsibility."



So a challenge to all brand marketers out there - are you prepared to make the necessary changes in skills, priorities and budgets to unlock the immense power your brand has to engage not only with your external audience but your internal one too?


If you're not - why not? The topic is increasingly coming to the top of the CEO/boardroom agenda and they will be looking to you as the guardian of their brand to answer for your stewardship.  With rising demands for better value returns all the time, diverting just a small part of your brand investment this way makes good, good sense. 


Let us know what you think and if you're an HRD or marketeer tell us what help you need to drive this change in your business and really create a brand-hearted culture inside. 


Of course if what's holding you back is knowing how to go about it, then the team at Woodreed would be delighted to lend you a helping hand.