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.

Internal marketing - make your brand work for you

Ronan Dunne, CEO of O2, has been saying some things* about brand lately. What's a CEO doing talking about brand? Isn't that the role of a marketing agency or team?

Source - Marketing Magazine

No, of course not and with increasing debate about how to get marketing taken seriously at the top table this is valuable endorsement of just how important brand is to an organisation's success.

Dunne's mantra, "Your brand should lead your company, rather than your company leading the brand" is music to the ears of those of us who believe that brands are as important inside a company as outside, that brands are a powerful catalyst for driving employee engagement.

Coming up with strong and effective internal communication ideas

Maybe it's no surprise that Dunne's 02 is a sponsor of Engage for Success, the national movement of leading plcs, public sector, government and trade bodies committed to overturning the UK's £26bn GDP deficit caused, they claim, by poor levels of employee engagement.

Successful organisations need strong and authentic values to engage their people and what better tool for this than brand? When brand values and employee behaviours are aligned, creating what we at Woodreed call a 'cultural framework', then the brand's power is unleashed to create engaged employees - who in turn deliver improved bottom line profit, or, in the case of not-for-profits, an increased surplus.

Employee engagement and brand

Dunne goes on to say, "Failure to invest in your brand values is a false economy" and cites O2's investment in 30,000 work-skills opportunities for young people. A clear example of HR and marketing working together, breaking down the silos that exist in so many companies where brand is the prerequisite of marketing and people are HR's responsibility.

The result of this is that often whilst external communications are carefully crafted with rigour and expertise and grounded in the brand values, internal communication ideas are often cold, process-driven, tick-box exercises devoid of the emotional values and capacity for audience engagement which the brand can deliver.

Putting the power of brand at the heart of all external and internal communication ideas is the answer.

* Marketing Magazine
This blog first appeared at FindGood's marketing blog

One step forward, two steps back

Treat employees like customers....(please)

I came across a thread on linkedin today on one of the employee engagement forums I’m part of that has seriously twisted my melons man. Yet another internal comms professional casting around for free creative ideas for an employee marketing campaign amongst the Linkedin community.

Grrrrr.

As Peter Simpson, the ex commercial director of employee engagement pioneers First Direct once said “Why would you want to be one kind of brand to customers and another to employees?” He’s so right. Emotional engagement is four times more valuable than rationale engagement in driving employee effort. There’s proof everywhere you look. Why oh why do companies still insist on lavishing all their time, effort, ideas and budget on consumer marketing while treating employee communication with a lack of reverence so acute it verges on the insulting. Crazy when you think that there’s a direct and proven link between quality internal comms and increased revenue and profitability – look after your employees and they’ll look after your customers.

For what it’s worth, here’s how I responded.    

Alas, it's one step forwards two steps back in the quest to have internal communications treated with the same reverence as external. Would anyone really ever use linked in to say 'Hey - we're launching a new consumer ad campaign, anyone got any ideas for what we can put in our ads?' Of course they wouldn't. Honestly, we are never going to get internal comms and employee engagement taken seriously as a discipline as vital to a company's success as consumer marketing unless we all start treating our employees with the same respect as we do our customers.

Take a look at this for some ways to start treating employees more like customers http://bit.ly/HkDjcQ

*Gets back in box*