Segment your internal communications to build better employee engagement

Employee engagement within your organization is made up of two factors: Hearts (emotional commitment) and Minds (rational commitment). Do employees understand where we are heading (Minds)? And do they really care (Hearts)?

Research by Ipsos MORI into more than 300 UK companies measured this employee engagement emotional buy-in as well as intellectual understanding. They segmented employees into four categories of buy-in:

1. Weak Links are the colleagues who neither understand your strategy nor do they care about their role in implementing it. According to the research, an alarming 39% of employees fall into this category.

2. A Bystander is someone who may understand your company’s strategy well but isn’t emotionally committed to implementing it.

3. A Loose Cannon is one of those positive types who can be highly engaged, but ignorant about where they should be applying their enthusiasm.

4. Around a third of employees are Champions – they understand the vision of the senior team and they are committed to helping make it a reality.

Connect and engage - and target your employee engagement messages

Here’s an opportunity for you to segment your employees, and communicate based on engagement levels. Don’t focus on the Weak Links. You will get better results faster by building the emotional commitment of your Bystanders and the intellectual understanding of those Loose Cannons. It’s all about segmenting your messages and targeting them for the greatest effect.

• For instance, your field sales team may be highly committed to your company and your brand. But when you introduce a new product that takes them out of their comfort zone you will need to communicate the thinking behind the launch to build an intellectual understanding of how the new line fits, supports, and improves their beloved brand.
• Or you might have a group of outsourced employees in a call center who are dealing with your customers but do not feel much attachment to your brand. They will need more heartfelt messages that are aimed at building their emotional commitment.

Webinar on Demand - An expert panel reviewed the key findings from our 'Newsweaver/Melcrum 'Internal Communication and Technology' 2014 survey. The results provide an understanding of how technology is being used; as well as the channels, the challenges, and the emerging trends in Internal Communication.