Scaling our impact, making a meaningful difference

What does impact look like when it’s in action? You’d think it would look big and impressive, like the word ‘impact’ suggests. For me, it’s often less impressive up close, merely lots of small actions and little nudges, instead though, it is progress that is more impressive.??

Here’s a close-up view of the progress we’ve been making in scaling up our impact over the last quarter:??

Making workplaces fairer, healthier and happier, for all??

Fairer?

Over the last few months, we zoomed in on the lack of equity between generations. Often overlooked, it’s ageism that is the most common form of discrimination in the workplace, with both ends of the age spectrum feeling most unfairly treated. We decided to take a look at what’s happening and as always see what role better communication could play.??

If you missed it, you can tune into our webinar here, where we had an excellent discussion on the challenges Gen Z and older workers are finding in the workplace and shared our practical tips. And if you’re looking to create a more intergenerationally friendly workplace culture, we’ve created a great off-the-shelf comms pack to get your conversation going – give us a shout here if you’d like more info.??

Healthier?

Shockingly, half of employees living with cancer are ‘afraid to tell their employers’ and a third ‘feel isolated at work’. We know better communication can go a long way to help overcome stigmas and improve colleague allyship. It’s not too late to sign up to what will be an invaluable insight from our experienced guests, register here.?

Happier??

We all feel happier when we’re surrounded by people who we feel respect us, where we can be our true selves and feel like we belong. But creating a culture of belonging in a large complex workplace isn’t easy. We’ve been looking at just what it takes, if you want to hear more about what we’ve found, give us a shout.?? ?

Creating work that works??

Constantly trying to improve our work, we’ve been focusing on some of the things that can get in the way. We took a closer look at accessibility. You can listen in to our tips on making your comms more accessible here. We’ve been getting a little worried about employee overwhelm and shared our tips on how to reduce the noise. And to make our work cut through that noise, we’ve been looking at creative bravery.?

It's been an exciting quarter for our Creative team! We've been shortlisted for several upcoming awards, received an Institute of Internal Communications Award of Excellence, and proudly brought home two Internal Communications and Engagement Awards, along with four MUSE Creative Awards.

Using and sharing our insights??

We’re continuing to lean on insights in everything we do, a huge shout out to Mercer, Gallup, Great Place to Work, Working with Cancer and more for all their wonderful research work that help us surface the real challenges in workplace culture.??

Here’s a little flavour of the insights we’re finding interesting:?

What helps employees thrive at work???

While there are some very interesting variances around the world on the drivers that impact employees, there are some consistent themes that communications and HR leaders can focus on leveraging:?

• Working for an organisation with a purpose I’m proud of??

• A sense of belonging??

• Feeling valued for my contributions??

• Having fun at work?

What we also found fascinating in the Mercer 2024 Global Talent Trends report is the de-prioritisation ,or perhaps low expectation, of having leaders who set a clear direction. Possibly this is due to greater levels of uncertainty forcing employees to focus more on the here and now with less bandwidth for the future or possibly because there are other more cultural drivers taking priority.?This potential gap between employee expectations and organisational behaviour is something to watch out for.??

Walking the talk, role modelling the change we want to see in the world?

We continue to aim to be a great role model for workplace culture, effective, inclusive employee communication and leading the way on purpose led business. It’s great to see that judging by our latest recognition as one of the UK’s Best workplaces we’re getting something right.?

This year, we’ve been ranked by Great Place to Work among the UK’s Best Workplaces?, the UK’s Best Workplaces in Advertising, Media & Marketing?, and as a Best Workplace? for Wellbeing, Women, and Development.?

Increasing collaboration??

We love collaboration and continue to scale up our efforts. Attending the Louder than Words B Corp summit recently was a great reminder that building a better future is not something any of us can do on our own so it’s a case of ‘collaboration over competition’. We’ve since scaled up our B Corp alliances, working closer with like-minded businesses so we can share best practice, support and learn from each other.??

If you want to go faster, go alone, if you want to go further go together.?

Inspiring others us to make progress

From speaker slots to hosting webinars and from sharing useful resources like our awareness days calendars to practical articles like this one we have stayed busy and continue to share our practical advice to help others accelerate their progress.??

Acting genuinely greener?

We’ve said goodbye to Facebook. That might not sound like it’s making a huge contribution to the planet but according to environmental visionary, Tanya Goodwin, Facebook is one of the largest consumers of energy on the planet. The internet in general accounts for 1.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases per year, and with the arrival of AI the growth of data centres and the ongoing cost to the planet is getting bigger by the day. One simple contribution we can all make to this is remembering that we can stop doing things just as easily as we can start new things. Closing a channel that’s not performing anymore is really important in a world of communications overload, but it’s equally easy to get anxious about losing out on something by doing so. We all need to push ourselves on what isn’t performing, what could be stopped, not only will the planet thank us but our already overwhelmed audiences might well also thank us for one less unnecessary post.??

If you too are passionate about making a real impact and creating fairer, healthier, and happier workplaces, I'd love to chat about how we can make that happen.