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

"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.

Pret's profits prove our point

Reading the Guardian's recent piece about Pret a Manger's profit boost brought a smile to my face.


Reminded me of course of my Aussie friends' delightful insistence when first arriving in London on pronouncing that great sandwich place as Pret a Manger- rhymes with hanger (say it out loud with an upward intonation at the end and you'll crack it!)


That and the 500 new jobs Pret are creating aside, the profit boost is a cracking endorsement of Woodreed's favourite and much vaunted 'Service Profit Chain'*.  We often cite Pret in the client workshops we run as a great example of an organisation who gets the importance of a healthy internal culture which is firmly grounded in their brand values. So it's great to see yet more hard evidence for why this matters.


The Guardian writes "Service at Pret tends to be better than in comparable chains. Staff smile, chat a bit, make life marginally less horrendous...Pret treats its staff better than similar organisations do. Mystery shoppers visit every branch every week and report on the service they experience. If a branch is awarded "outstanding", as about 86% are each time, every member of staff gets an extra £1 for every hour they've worked that week. The reward is for service rather than sales."


The knock-out punch is in the final line - the reward is for service rather than sales. So there you have it - engaged employees deliver bottom line profit - FACT!


Read Guardian article in full   *The Service Profit Chain - James Heskett et al