It Takes More Than an Email

Most of us are familiar with this scenario - an email arrives summarising the key points from the recent company-wide town hall, where leadership shared the new transformation strategy.?

Presumably, everyone is on board. Why wouldn’t they be???

United Minds , part of The Weber Shandwick Collective , conducted our 'Employees Rising' study, diving into engagement and expectations among 2,000 employees worldwide. Here is what we found - in APAC, 49% still turn to the grapevine to figure out what is really going on. Interestingly, 70% trust their co-workers, and 67% trust their direct manager — compared to only 59% who trust the CEO and top leadership.??

These stats really got me thinking about the importance of expanding the approach to engagement, going beyond the typical top-down communication approaches.??

While top-down communication is imperative, organisations must broaden their approach to ensure employees across all levels are genuinely engaged.??

Here are some of my thoughts on how to deepen employee engagement during periods of transformation:??

Make middle management a top priority ?

Middle managers are the unsung heroes in organisational transformation.??

But this cohort can be hard to engage due to high workloads, competing priorities, and the personal challenges inherent in leading through change.??

Middle managers can be set up to successfully engage their teams with:?

• Support to cascade information consistently, and effectively: Team leaders increase impact when equipped to translate organisation-wide messages for their teams. Dedicated support forums, communication toolkits, and talking points are helpful, as is coaching on leading oneself and teams through change.??

• Support to role model desired behaviors: Leaders have a powerful ability to affect change by role modelling best practice with their own behaviors. Working with leaders to design and demonstrate new, highly visible behaviors is an effective strategy to drive adoption amongst teams.??

• Connections to a likeminded community: There is power in fostering community amongst the middle management cohort. For example, United Minds recently partnered with a global client on a program to upskill and support a team of middle managers delivering a large transformation. The program included a monthly community session for leaders to share challenges and provide each other with coaching. The community has continued following the completion of the program, with many managers expressing that this level of connection, and camaraderie had previously felt like a missing piece. ?

At a business level, it is important that leaders are genuinely empowered to own the strategy and deliver. This includes having the mandate and support to manage competing priorities.?

Nurture informal leaders??

A significant opportunity exists in mobilising ‘informal leaders’ - individuals across all levels of the organisation who influence and energise others without relying on formal authority or job titles. Informal leaders are well respected, well networked, and can build pride in initiatives.??

Informal leaders can:?

• Share information and updates with peers in a way that resonates and create authentic peer-to-peer engagement?

• Provide feedback to the programme ‘from the ground’??

• Role model ‘best practice’ and reinforce changes within teams??

• Serve as a ‘pilot group’ to trial new initiatives prior to wider rollout?

Let's be clear – formal leaders who possess influence inherent in their role will always be critical to set the guardrails. But true transformation requires both formal and informal leadership.??

Expand your channels?

During a large-scale transformation, there is an opportunity to deepen impact by complementing top-down communications with engagement channels that enable multi-directional information flow. ?

For example, our team is working with an APAC-based client where a significant proportion of roles are based in warehouses, and many employees do not regularly access corporate emails or the intranet.??

Every month, teams dedicate one meeting to discuss the implementation of the new corporate strategy. One team member is nominated to lead the agenda which includes a central program update; discussion of the team’s progress; commitments to progress the strategy; and a Q&A.??

The meetings compliment regular companywide town halls led by senior leadership and have proven an effective way to deliver capture feedback, and cascade information in a manner that resonates. ?

Interested in continuing the conversation??

I would love to hear your reflections and insights into how your organisation is looking beyond traditional top-down communications to achieve genuine buy-in and authentic engagement.??

And if you would like to learn more about employee engagement levels, expectations and activism, you can check out the full global Employees Rising report here or drop me a message to learn more about trends in APAC.