Workplace

Working environments matter. They shape how we work and the way we feel. If organisations want to attract and retain talent, then a thoughtfully designed workspace can help improve the employee experience.  

By designing an office space with wellbeing in mind, you can lay the foundation for a thriving, engaged and fulfilled workforce. Natural plants and lighting are shown to reduce stress levels, and different types of spaces can help foster creativity and collaboration.  

People-first workspaces demonstrate a company’s commitment to the health and wellbeing of their employees. But how can you elevate a functional workspace into something much more?  

Case study: Enhancing employee wellbeing for DHL Express in Stockholm

Committed to enhancing employee mental and physical wellbeing, DHL Express wanted to revitalise its Stockholm HQ. This office makeover was about more than just aesthetics; it was about inspiring a healthy, fulfilling life for every employee. 

We were tasked with making wellbeing an integral part of the workspace. They wanted a welcoming, human-centric work environment that had wellness woven into the very fabric of the building.  

Creating a hub for employee wellbeing

So, how did we go about turning a workplace into a wellbeing hub?  

1. Design for wellbeing 

We crafted designs for 25 spaces, integrating calming elements like wellbeing messaging, wall designs, foliage, artwork and natural wood furnishings. 

2. Nature’s boost 

We ensured that natural light and greenery flooded the spaces, positively impacting physical and mental wellbeing by bringing the outside in. 

 3. Motivational messaging 

We included motivational messages that were meaningful, respectful and significant, relating to DHL’s brand heritage or to health and wellbeing. 

 5. Cultural fusion 

We brought the local culture alive through room themes and art, fostering unity and a strong sense of belonging among employees. 

The Sweden HQ was transformed into a welcoming workspace that everyone could thrive in. By prioritising wellbeing, DHL Express recognised that they could help employees feel happier, healthier, and more motivated than ever before.  

Let’s talk about turning your workspace into a hub for wellbeing.  

We’re excited to share some fantastic news: Something Big has earned a spot in the respected UK’s Best Workplaces in Consulting & Professional Services™ list by Great Place to Work®.  In the world of professional services, every interaction our team has with our clients, every project they complete, and every deadline they meet, contributes to our success. Our approach has always been simple but powerful: when our team feel happy, respected, psychologically safe and connected to our purpose, our creative is powerful, our clients succeed, and our business flourishes.

What is the UK’s Best Workplaces in Consulting & Professional Services list?

The UK’s Best Workplaces in Consulting & Professional Services™ list encompasses a broad range of knowledge-intensive roles, from legal services to management consultancy, engineering, marketing and advertising, telecoms, real estate, recruitment, travel management and more. It showcases the rich diversity of talents driving the industry forward.

The Best Workplaces in Consulting and Professional Services™ list is created using anonymous feedback from employees working in the industry about their workplace experience. The surveys asked employees to comment on how their company supports their work-life balance, sense of fulfilment, job satisfaction, psychological safety and financial security. Evaluations also included an assessment of how well the organisation was able to deliver consistency of their employee experience across all departments and seniority levels.

Benedict Gautrey, Managing Director of Great Place To Work® UK said: “While navigating this ever-changing landscape, the Best Workplaces in Consulting & Professional Services have galvanised their people proposition by placing employee wellbeing at the forefront of their company cultures – and enjoyed better business performance and staff retention as a result. It’s great to see so many examples of organisations making their workplaces truly ‘great’.”

Our commitment to our culture

At Something Big, nurturing a thriving workplace culture is vital to the success of our business. This belief has been embedded in our values for 25 years, and now, as an employee-owned certified B Corp, our dedication to our people is stronger than ever. To discover how we maintain an outstanding culture for our business’s success, check out our CEO’s article.

Join us on this journey

If you’re on a mission to foster a positive workplace culture and are looking for a creative communications agency that not only partners with one of the World’s Best Workplaces™, but also lives and breathes those principles within its own team, we’d love to hear from you.

Internal communications departments are busier than ever. Along with the usual business updates, you are now communicating on a growing list of topics from employee wellbeing to allyship, and purpose to sustainability. Technology has brought new channels like employee apps and forums that require community management and maintenance. Workplace culture is going up the corporate agenda. And to add to this noisy and busy internal communications world, the volatile and uncertain environment businesses are operating in is throwing a never-ending set of curve balls at you.

It’s no wonder then, that it can be hard to pause and reflect on what’s working and what’s not. Grab a coffee and let’s take some time to review what strategies drive effective internal communications.

1. Leading with accessibility

From accessible channels to the way communications are written, your message can only get through if it’s accessible. Let’s look at a few things that often get in the way: 

•  Literacy exclusion: In the UK, the average reading age is 9-11 years old meaning that many communications could be inaccessible to large parts of your workforce. To overcome this, lean on your trusty AI tools to help you simplify the messaging.

• Digital exclusion: We recently talked about the findings of the Communication and Digital Committee report which served as a great reminder that not all of our workforce have access or the capability to access digital channels. You can combat this by ensuring more traditional channels like posters, noticeboards and newsletters are still available.

• Neurodiversity exclusion: From careful font choices to breaking up text, and changing coloured backgrounds to introducing text-to-speech tools, there are so many opportunities available to help make communication more accessible. To make communications more effective and equitable, offering reasonable adjustments to increase accessibility is a must.

 2. Going beyond broadcast

A helpful perspective on your communication channels comes from the recent Gallagher Internal Communication and Employee Experience State of the Sector Report, categorising communication channels into three distinct buckets:

• Broadcast channels: To get an important message heard, nothing does it better than a face-to-face, virtual townhall or all-team web conference call. Interestingly, text messages are also hugely effective yet very rarely used. The use of environmental channels, like posters, banners, and TV screens is shrinking possibly due to hybrid working) but be careful not to overlook place-based employees who still rely on these formats. Reducing comms, quietening the noise, choosing the right channel, the right message and at the right time will increase cut through. Next time stakeholders ask for yet another internal email comms to go out, it’s a great opportunity to share

• Collaboration and interpersonal channels: Community is becoming king or queen, the importance and effectiveness of knowledge sharing from lunch and learns to ERGs or topic-based committee sessions is growing.

• Self-serve channels: It’s probably not a surprise that employee apps get the highest score when it comes to effectiveness but what might be surprising is that their year-on-year use has slightly decreased.  Perhaps a victim of post-pandemic more face-to-face opportunities opening up.

3. Cutting through the noise

We all feel it. The overwhelming overload of messages we’re all exposed to from the minute we wake up to the moment we fall asleep. Some suggest we’re now being bombarded by around 4,000 – 10,000 ads per day. No wonder comms teams struggle to get the cut-through you want, but adding more (countdowns to important dates, reminders, and more newsletters) is not the answer.

Reducing comms, quietening the noise, choosing the right channel, the right message and at the right time will increase cut through. Next time stakeholders ask for yet another internal email comms to go out, it’s a great opportunity to share that 35% of emails are never read.

Your workforce will prioritise urgent and business-critical messages first, leaving the latest newsletter to fester flagged and unopened. In fact, the IC Index 2023 suggests 7 in 10 UK employees say they spend 15 mins or less per day reading or reviewing updates from their employers, while 25% said they spend ‘hardly any time’ in this way.

To make the most of this narrow window, take a long hard look at what messages are being repeated in multiple channels, have the least engagement, or could be reduced to simplify your communications.  

4. Choosing clarity

“If I’d had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” 

 We’ve probably all heard this quote, but it is a great reminder that as comms teams battle to juggle their multiple projects and priorities it’s easy to overlook the importance of editing the latest article from the demanding subject matter expert, the long introduction from the senior stakeholder or the latest insert to the newsletter bulletin.

Effective communications are well-positioned, quick to the point and clear on what the audience needs to think, feel, or do. The well-established single-minded proposition approach applies well here and could help internal comms teams focus on a more disciplined approach.  

5. Building trust

We all have a choice of what we tune in and out of. Being human we make our emotional choices based on trust and likability before our rational brain even has a chance to make a conscious decision. Think about how quickly you scroll through social media streams without making rational decisions on which posts you pause on. These same emotional decisions are being made at work. Employees are quickly deciding what they trust, so it’s vital we give them clear trust signals in our communications. This could look like sharing clear facts, referencing employee feedback, being consistent with previous messages, aligning to ongoing strategies and attributing/naming articles with key recognisable figures in the business.  

6. Harnessing creativity

 We might be biased on this point because we champion the use of creativity in communications, but it’s also proven that humans process visual content 60,000 faster than text and process 80% of what we see, 20% of what we read and only 10% of what we hear. We know a creative-led communication strategy that leans all our senses is the optimal format to deliver results.

7. Understanding human psychology

Drawing on well-established psychological behaviours, such as the fear of missing out (which stems from the psychology of scarcity) and loss aversion, as well as techniques like framing and gamification, communications need to be tailored for humans rather than robots. A deep understanding of human behaviour is key to success.

8. Adapting to the environment

Whether it’s reading the room and understanding that a positive celebratory communication might not land in the wake of recent bad news, or simply getting the timing right, you act as a custodian to the employee audience, protecting them from comms overload, poorly timed or poorly positioned communications. Speak up if you feel you’re being forced into something that won’t land or face the damage it has on the reputation of internal communications.

Your partner for effective internal communications

Ready to transform your internal communications? Partner with us and unlock a world of impactful strategies that will elevate your initiatives and engage your workforce. Let’s work together to build effective internal communications strategies that resonate with your workforce.

According to the latest, rather bleak, results from the Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2023 Report, employees are stressed, angry and ready to quit.

The Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2023 Report is an annual report that measures employee engagement, wellbeing, and job opportunities around the world. The report is based on surveys of over two million employees globally, looking to represent ‘the collective voice of the global employee’.

Let’s get into the findings:

State of the Global Workplace: employee engagement and workplace stress

Employee engagement metrics have risen meaning employees are more engaged at work. However, simultaneously employees are also reporting feeling more stress:

• The European region has the lowest employee engagement, at just 13%.
• Globally, 31% of managers are engaged, compared with just 20% of individuals.
• Fully remote employees (30%) are more engaged than on-site (21%) and hybrid (24%) employees.
• U.S. and Canada are among the most engaged workers in the world, with 52% of workers reporting stress a lot of the day yesterday.
• However, while a smaller percentage of Europeans are engaged, reported stress is lower, at 39%.
• Stress is also high in East Asia (52%), a region with low employee engagement (17%).
• Stress is higher globally among young workers and those in remote or hybrid work locations.

And in terms of UK-specific stats:

• 19% of UK employees say they feel angry a lot of the day.
• 38% say they feel stress.
• Only 10% of Brits describe themselves as engaged with their jobs.

While exclusively remote and hybrid employees report higher employee engagement, they also report higher stress – which can perhaps be attributed to a less predictable or structured work life. But the results also show that employee engagement has 3.8 times as much influence on employee stress than work location.

In other words, what people are experiencing in their everyday work - their feelings of involvement and enthusiasm – matters more in reducing stress than where they are doing their work.

State of the Global Workplace: younger employees

The workplace is worse for employees under the age of 35 than it was before the pandemic. The Gallup State of the Global Workplace Report found a decline in engagement and employer satisfaction among remote Gen Z and younger millennials. This is a significant change from pre-pandemic years. Since the pandemic, younger workers have declined significantly in feeling cared about and having opportunities to develop – primarily from their manager.

• The percentage of engaged employees under the age of 35 dropped from 2019 to 2022 and actively disengaged employees increased.
• Younger workers are not feeling like someone cares about them, encourages their development or that they have opportunities to learn and grow.
• There was a significant drop in fully remote and hybrid young workers strongly agreeing that someone encourages their development.
• Less than four in 10 young remote or hybrid employees clearly know what is expected of them at work.
• Stress is higher globally among young workers particularly for those in exclusively remote or hybrid work locations.

What do the findings of the Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2023 Report tell us?

When disengaged employees were asked: What would you change about your workplace to make it better? The top answer was to improve culture.

To compare the results:

• 16% of disengaged employees specified wellbeing
• 28% wanted better pay and benefits
• 41% said engagement or culture

When investing in the workforce, organisations should consider the level of service that employees who are stressed, angry or disengaged might be offering their customers. With such deeply discontented employees, the fear is not just that employees may leave but instead that they stay and sabotage success by providing poor service, making mistakes, being inefficient or unproductive, frustrating higher-performing colleagues and slowing down innovation.

What can your business do to beat the odds?

To be successful, organisations need to beat these odds by investing in their culture, employee experience and engagement to outperform their competitors, driving the best customer service, innovation, and productivity in their industry.

• Invest in a comprehensive programme to drive employee engagement and positive culture. Great Place to Work provides an opportunity to benchmark your company data with others and is easy to implement.
• The rise in employee stress emphasises the importance of organisations addressing employee engagement and wellbeing. Start by capturing wellbeing data so you can build a proactive strategy around the findings.
• Only one in three managers is engaged at work. Senior leadership need to address this lack of engagement in their management tier.
• Managers need skills coaching to enable them to have wellbeing conversations to help employees reduce disengagement and burnout. Gallup finds the best habit for successful managers to develop is having one meaningful 15-30 minute conversation per week with each team member.
• Employees want to understand better how their work contributes to the organisation’s purpose. Communication plays a vital role in this, ensuring the whole workforce understands the journey the organisation is on, how it’s doing and where they fit in.

Unlock the potential of your business by cultivating a workplace culture that not only engages your employees but also propels your business forwards. Get in touch to explore how we can help you create a thriving culture that sets your organisation apart. We’re here to guide you every step of the way.

Most businesses report that they have made five big changes across their organisations in the past three years, and nearly 75% are expecting to make even more major changes in the next three years. All this change can stir feelings of uncertainty and apprehension among employees.

We believe there is a powerful trifecta that can greatly assist communicators in the task of communicating change to employees: authentic stories, a clear narrative, and genuine excitement for the future. By embracing these elements, organisations empower their workforce, foster unity, and turn change into a journey of transformation that leaves no one behind.

Providing a clear direction: how to create stability and direction for employees

Change without direction can lead to confusion and failure. A united and shared vision acts as a guiding beacon, leading employees through the journey of transformation.

Ofcom recently refreshed its brand and launched a new strategy to employees. Whilst the strategy and message initially landed well, there was a significant opportunity to build further engagement across the organisation. The annual employee meeting provided a flagship opportunity to create excitement and get the workforce fully invested in the strategy.

Helping employees align to the future

So how did we help employees get a clear understanding of what to expect over the next year? And how would they be empowered to contribute to the future of Ofcom?

• A hero video was just the trick to reach the workforce across the network. The video was launched at an all-employee meeting and live-streamed on their intranet to reach the entire internal workforce.
• Real employees were the focus of the video. The people of Ofcom helped to build authentic stories and an understanding of the strategy in action.
• The video celebrated the new brand look and feel, with a mix of animation and real footage showcasing the refreshed brand and creating energy and excitement for the future.
• We ensured transparency of message, with the simple narrative clearly outlining the benefits the new strategy would have on employees.

Embedding the strategy is ongoing, but realigning colleagues has helped the internal workforce feel more equipped and able to cope with changes in the future.

“AMAZING!  Thank you so much! Everyone who has seen it loves it. Please thank the team for such a great job!”

Creative Manager, Ofcom

Talk to us to find out how we can support you in offering stability and direction to employees through times of change.

We often talk about EDI, DEI, and DEIB – whichever acronym you prefer – and at the core of these concepts lies inclusion. Inclusion, in this context, involves meeting the needs of underrepresented groups, creating a positive culture of allyship, and viewing policies through the lens of a diverse range of individuals. But are you following best practices for inclusive communications in the workplace?

Let’s consider how your workforce could be experiencing exclusion from your communications.

Digital exclusion

The Communications and Digital Committee recently reported that we have reached a crisis point in digital exclusion. While many of us have embraced digital technology, there is still a gap in access and capability to use digital tools.

“7m households have no broadband or mobile internet access. 1m households have cut back or cancelled their internet packages in the last year due to affordability issues.”

As internal communications departments try to reach frontline workers and invest in more technology like employee apps, we still need to consider those this may exclude. In many workplaces, there will be employees who can’t use or don’t have access to digital communications.

“Over 4m people are unable to complete a single basic task online and 5m workers will be acutely under-skilled in basic digital skills by 2030”

Tip: Don’t ditch your traditional internal comms channels like posters, noticeboards, or printed updates. While they might not be your most effective or measurable channels, and budgets are tight, they are a vital part of an inclusive communications approach.

Literacy exclusion

In England, it’s estimated that 7.1 million adults can be described as having ‘very poor literacy skills’, with 14.9% of adults having literacy levels at or below the expected reading age of 9-11-year-olds. This means that they may not be able to read bus timetables, understand their pay slip or identify bias in the media. UK Government advice is to write for a maximum reading age of 9, even when writing for a specialist audience.

In the USA, according to the Department of Education, 54% of adults aged 16-74 years old (about 130 million people) lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level (11-12 years old).

It’s worth considering how often communications are deployed that contain company jargon, abbreviations and complex sentences that may be difficult for those with low literacy skills to access.

Tip: Try using AI tools, like Hemingway App, to help make your communications clearer and more inclusive.

Time exclusion

We’re all busy, and your workforce is no different. The Internal Communications Index for 2023 showed that 7 in 10 employees spend just 15 mins per day reading/viewing updates from their employers, whilst 25% of employees said they had ‘hardly any time at all’ to engage in internal communications.

What can we learn from this? Employees are overwhelmed with communication. As internal communication professionals, our role is to simplify, curate and guide the right comms to the right audiences at the right time, through the right channel. A ‘catch all’ approach, with repeating messages in multiple channels and multiple times, only adds to the noise and excludes employees from key information through lack of time.

Tip: Focus comms efforts on effectiveness, from personalising messages for appropriate audiences to choosing the right channel and timing. Leveraging the mantra ‘do it well do it once’ may prevent repetitive comms and overwhelming your workforce.

If you’re looking for expert guidance in shaping an inclusive internal communications strategy tailored to your business’s unique workforce, we’re here to help.