Weber Shandwick and KRC Research released a report this week on Employees Rising: Seizing the Opportunity in Employee Activism. The report reveals that employee engagement is central to company success and is the underlying foundation for high-performing companies. Yet to prepare for the future workforce, employers will need to build upon engagement and embrace employee activism.
Employee activists make their engagement visible, defend their employers from criticism and act as active advocates, online and off. Many employee activists already exist today. Employers can’t afford to miss the open window of opportunity to lean in and capitalize on this movement.
The challenges revealed in the workplace presents an opportunity for leaders and communicators to better engage employees in specific areas, such as:
- Trust your employees and trust your hiring process. Employees are a companies best advocates, give them the resources to do so.
- Prepare employees for a change event with proper expectations, timelines, and tools to listen and respond to their concerns.
- Provide employees with materials to speak on the organization’s behalf (company description and objectives); recognize and reward employees that do so.
- Let employees hear from senior leaders. Assist employees in feeling connected to the organizations and its culture by having senior leaders communicate directly to all employee ranks. When a message is disseminated through a chain, often the message is altered, doesn’t convey the same energy as originally intended, and may not reach all employees.
By identifying and segmenting your employee population, you can customize messaging to six distinct groups and take advantage of your ProActivists:
For details, check out the resourceful report at Seizing the Opportunity in Employee Activism.
The report is based on a global online survey of 2,300 employees in 15 countries (United States, Canada, Brazil, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Hong Kong, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea). Respondents were between the ages of 18 and 65, worked 30 hours per week or more and were employed by an organization with over 500 employees.
Amee Kent
Red e App Marketing Director
