If you open a bottle of sparkling water and then leave it, it goes flat
Pretty obvious, right? There is a metaphor incoming...
If you're embarking on a major change campaign such as a business transformation or a culture reboot then it's vital to start as you mean to continue.
The usual way of delivering these major projects is to announce the initiative, do a raft of research, and then spend weeks analysing the results before anything fresh happens. And usually the first activities are some nice words from the senior leaders about things that will happen in the future.
Think about the bottle of sparkling water...
Employees are left thinking:
- Will anything different actually happen?
- What's in it for me?
So, our advice is to plan an activity which impacts every single employee pretty much as soon as you have announced the initiative.
Yep, that's right - even before you have all the research results in.
And we're not just talking about sending them a survey to 'make them feel engaged'. A real activity which showcases this better way you're working towards.
Don't simply tell about the change, show the change - and immediately.
You know what happens otherwise...
Nicholas helped us to kick off our employee experience work at our away day - it was invaluable to have an expert shape initial engagement with the team rather than me leading as I was just learning myself! It wasn’t just about the workshop though as there was wrap-around support to ensure we brought the team with us on what employee experience is and how to do it well and how we might move forwards on next steps, such as an initial presentation and teaser video in advance of the workshop.
As a result of the workshop and follow-up guidance, plus generously sharing some helpful excerpts from the Brand Experiences book, we worked as a team to define our employee journey, the moments that matter and our target areas for improvement. We’ve now kickstarted a piece of work to re-design onboarding and people from across the team are involved.