Funny thing experience. When you are looking for a job, experience tends to be the focus of the interview. What experience have you got? How is it relevant? Where did you get your experience? If the ‘experience indicators’ aren’t immediately obvious on your CV, it is highly unlikely that you’ll even get to the interview stage.
Surprising then that the emphasis given to experience at the recruitment stage is so poorly reflected by employers when they consider the experience they are providing for their employees. I wonder how different recruitment would be if, during an interview, the prospective employee was asked about their experience and they related their experience of being employed. Describing in detail how their current or former workplace made them feel. Whether or not they were rewarded, developed, trained and recognised. Whether the employing organisation truly valued them and the contribution they made. Whether they were listened to – and acknowledged. Or perhaps they would explain how they were ignored, stressed and under-resourced, motivating their current job hunt.
Public relations builds and sustains the relationships organisations need to keep their licence to operate – and that’s all the relationships, not just a select few. All relationships include the internal relations for the organisation which includes the internal communications strategy and function. If you don’t have good internal relations then your external relationships will fail and your reputation will falter – and underpinning all this is the workforce experience.
For years employee engagement has been the elusive ‘X Factor’ for organisations – ‘if we get good engagement then all’s well and our employees will magically become staunch advocates for us on social media and other external platforms’ goes the riff which, to be fair, is only one step up from the great myth of ’employee satisfaction’. It’s a myth because I might be ‘satisfied’ with my job for many reasons and those reasons will probably have nothing to do with my loyalty, commitment or care for my employer. For instance, I might tick ‘yes’ on the job satisfaction survey because the hours I work allow me to pursue a part-time career as a magician, or allow me to take care of an elderly relative, be a volunteer life-guard, pick the kids up from school – or any number of pursuits. I might tick ‘yes, I’m satisfied with my job’ because I’m frightened my manager might find out if I tick ‘no’ and make my life a misery. Satisfaction is not an adequate measure of internal relationship health and neither is engagement, which is only a mild improvement on satisfaction.
The concept of ‘engaged employee’ is a surface measure of an individual’s reaction to their workplace but not a measure of relationship health. Work has changed and as security has been substituted for flexibility so employee requirements have changed. Studies have shown that employees look for purpose in their work often before pay. That the organisation’s values must align with their own if they are to remain committed and loyal to their employer. Employee engagement requires a culture that facilitates collaboration and that collaboration helps everyone comply with what is necessary to get the job done. The experience must include a sense of place so the employee understands the environment they belong to, their place and role in achieving the purpose and the opportunity to work to and provide value.
As always, new job titles emerge to describe new times – we can find chief happiness officers, masters of contentment, experience innovators and many more besides. But the titles don’t change a core undertaking if the experience is going to be genuine – and that undertaking is internal communication. You can’t build good relationships without good communication. Communication that helps build knowledge, address behaviours or change attitudes. The internal communication strategy must be designed to convey the working experience of all those inside the organisation, listening and engaging in conversations that help inform organisational culture and any necessary change. What it must never be is ‘sending out stuff’, churning out email newsletters and uploading information to a stale old intranet – heading in that direction will take employees towards the door rather than towards the heart of the organisation.