<p>Engaging students in the midst of a pandemic</p>


Work and play

<p>Making a real difference to local government</p>


Real difference

<p>Engaging diverse audiences for the NHS</p>


Your NHS

<p>A global challenge</p>


100% you

<p>The social mobility challenge</p>


Be the apprentices

<p>The pandemic has changed student engagement in a number of different ways. Virtual has become a norm &#8211; to attract as well as assess students. And it seems that employers are determined not to go back to old methods, but to embrace a more hybrid model. But this means different kinds of challenges &#8211; breaking through the digital noise, grabbing the passers-by, reaching out to diverse audiences and creating connected experiences that students want to be part of. We are here to support employers and help them transform engagement &#8211; from school years to graduate alumni, from initial contact to webinars, social engagement and more.</p>


Autumn Not On Campus Guide for Early Careers

Student Marketing Bootcamp

<p>No one needs another generic survey about generation z or student trends. There are enough of them already; and as we’ve seen, very few of them agree with each other. We’re focused on personalised, focused insight into the very real challenges you face – and how you can identify and engage the right people. We’ve got the experience and expertise to conduct qualitative and quantitative research that makes for better decision making.</p>
<p>Talk to us about:</p>
<p>• Audience insight<br />
• Value proposition research<br />
• Engagement analysis<br />
• Process audit<br />
• Measurement</p>


Insight

<p>What are your key audiences?  How can you realistically engage them?  How can you deliver experiences that make you the go-to employer?  These are some of the questions we look to answer in any strategy.  Combining experience, insight and innovation, we provide clients with strategies that will invariably challenge current approaches.  Because without new and divergent thinking, aren’t we simply doing the same thing and expecting a different result?</p>
<p>Talk to us about:</p>
<ul>
<li>Value proposition development</li>
<li>Channel strategy</li>
<li>Student engagement</li>
<li>Schools and campus strategy</li>
<li>Identification and targeting</li>
</ul>


Strategy

<p>We are a brand and engagement agency; so we focus heavily on how a brand story can evoke the right emotions in the audience and provoke action.  We are master storytellers, using all the tools in the communications box to engage and inspire our audiences, from the first contact right through to life inside an organisation.  Remember, communications that engages really connect with the right people and builds the brand is as much about the science as it is surprising audiences.</p>
<p>Talk to us about:</p>
<ul>
<li>Concept development</li>
<li>Social media content</li>
<li>Writing and design</li>
</ul>


CREATIVE

<p>In 2020, we’ve seen a seismic shift in the way we might work in the future – and it is more virtual and more digital, relying less on the traditional engagement opportunities.  Now more than ever brands need to invest in digital experiences that cut through the ever-increasing noise and engage people in novel and relevant ways.  It is no longer enough simply to have a website.  What is your social strategy?  How can you use Voice or AR?  What will help and support students in the best possible way?  Lots of questions.  We can help you come up with the answers.</p>
<p><strong>Talk to us about:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Website design and development</li>
<li>App development</li>
<li>AR, VR and Voice</li>
<li>Social media engagement</li>
<li>Digital marketing</li>
</ul>


DIGITAL

Student Marketing

<p>Working from home and hybrid working are here to stay, so companies must find flexible new ways to engage their people. Non desk-based staff, those working on production lines or the shop floor need special consideration. Digital employee engagement apps that can be downloaded by staff onto smartphones or tablets are a good solution for connecting a mobile workforce.</p>
<p>There’s been an explosion in digital employee engagement apps, with around 200 on the market at last count. Choosing the right app is obviously the first step. But unless the app is adopted by your employees, your investment in time and money will go to waste.</p>
<p>So how do you get your employees successfully on board with a new digital employee engagement app? We asked <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardgera/?originalSubdomain=uk">Richard Gera, Digital Communications Expert</a> and former Digital Communications Director at <a href="https://www.gsk.com/en-gb/">GSK</a>, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/motewol/?originalSubdomain=uk">Tom Lowe</a> from workplace advice platform <a href="https://www.rungway.com/product-overview">Rungway</a> to share their top tips.</p>
<h4><strong>Choose the right app</strong></h4>
<p>Choosing the right app for your organisation is obviously the best place to start. But the right app really depends on what you are trying to achieve so its worth spending time getting it right. Do you want an app that will reduce email traffic, encourage feedback or monitor employee wellbeing? Do your research. Most apps tend to be strong in one or two areas, for example some are great at social whilst others support deeper integrations with other business tools. So get an understanding of what your employees need first by listening to their feedback.</p>
<p>Then undertake some independent, external research into which apps on the market could be the right one for you. There is some great information out there such as the <a href="https://www.clearbox.co.uk/employee-apps-report/">Clearbox Employee Apps Report</a> to help you decide. Utlilise your network to identify companies that have successfully deployed an app. Ask them what went well and what they&#8217;d do differently. They’ll be more than willing to share their experiences and these learnings will be invaluable on your journey.</p>
<p><strong>Explain What’s In It for Them</strong></p>
<p>Let’s assume you are adopting the new app in response to feedback from your employees. You’ve done the focus groups and surveys; written your business case and pitched for funding to the relevant board; produced the data to show where employee engagement levels are flatlining; and have a brilliant app in mind.</p>
<p>So now you have to reflect this back to your people and explain the all-important What’s in It for Them. Telling folks that the app is going to make their lives easier just isn’t going to cut the mustard. You have to show how it’s going to help them and why. Reflect back their need for the app in the first place. For example, &#8220;Our colleagues have told us that they want to be able to give honest feedback and ask difficult questions that they wouldn&#8217;t necessarily talk about in public. <a href="https://www.rungway.com/product-overview">Rungway</a> enables you to bring up issues by posting anonymously.&#8221;</p>
<p>Leaders and employees want their organisation to be successful, so a shared vision for the app is essential in helping to drive adoption. For the app to land well, your employees need to understand the benefits the app will bring. So don&#8217;t promote individual features in isolation, but put them in a context that will resonate with employees. Linking the benefits to the company goals, mission and values is a great way to do this. For example, if &#8216;integrity&#8217; is one of your organisational values, explain how you&#8217;ll be able to have honest and open conversations using the app.</p>
<p>Then ask yourself &#8211; how does this app get your organisation closer to the employee experience you’re looking to achieve?  And why is that important?  Your employees already have lots of work apps they need to use, so it’s really important you explain how this is different.  (And if you can’t, you’ve made a bad purchase).</p>
<h4><strong>Leadership Buy in Is Essential </strong></h4>
<p>As with any transformational change, leaders need to be able to articulate its value to the wider organisation. It’s no different with an employee engagement app. Leaders should provide a consistent message on why the new app will support business goals and add to a positive employee experience. Messaging from the app&#8217;s executive sponsor should be honest, authentic and personal.</p>
<p>Leaders need be clear with employees that it&#8217;s ok to use an app, especially if the app delivers a more social experience. Thankfully we are moving away from leaders viewing social media experiences as a waste of an employee&#8217;s time. But it&#8217;s still very important that they let their teams know that it&#8217;s ok to engage on the app during working hours such as making videos, sharing photos and reacting to posts.</p>
<p>An employee engagement app isn&#8217;t something that teams should use while leaders continue to communicate via long emails. Leaders need to become a part of the experience for the app to be successfully adopted. There is some great research that shows a significant increase in the number of connections that an employee makes after they have been engaged by their senior leadership.</p>
<p>So, get your leaders role modelling use of the app, starting with the top table. Communicators can support leaders by coaching them on using the app in the early days and doing some test runs with nervous first-time users. We’re not great fans of leaders farming out their digital communications to the internal communications team – this completely misses the point of immediate and authentic interaction provided by apps. So schedule app usage into your leaders&#8217; communications plans as you would a town hall or business update.</p>
<p>To avoid inconsistent adoption, you then need leaders to follow up these message with their teams &#8211; it gives them permission to spend time on the app.  Finally, make sure leaders outside HR and Communications are role modelling on the platform too, or you’ll see usage and the quality of usage dwindle.</p>
<p>Communications and technical teams need to work hand in hand at every stage to land the app well. Collaboration is key to ensure that they are answering any questions the organisation might have, and balancing employee needs with any constraints such as budgets or information security.</p>
<p>We&#8217;re big proponents of using the Agile project management methodology to deliver change in employee experiences such as deploying an app. <a href="https://www.106comms.com/internal-communications-2/change-agile-to-succeed/">If you&#8217;re new to Agile this blog is a good place to start.</a> Agile is a method of project management with origins in software development. The Agile project is characterised by short phases of work, frequent reassessment and adaptation of plans. Agile demands that cross functional teams focus on delivering against customer needs. If you are trying to go it alone or you have misaligned goals, you are going to fail or at best only deliver mediocre adoption.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>Do you need help getting employees on board with an engagement app? Talk to Henry at Henry@106comms.com</em></p>


Five ways to get employees on board with an engagement app

<p>Employee advocacy is promotion of a company by its employees and is an effective way to drive change or build reputation from the inside out. Here are four ways to create an employee advocacy programme that really works.</p>
<h4>1. Set your goals</h4>
<p>What do you want your programme to achieve? Are you supporting a specific recruitment marketing campaign? You may be able to create fairly concrete KPIs around application metrics. Or is this more about raising the profile of your company as an employer of choice? Perhaps you want to position a particular business unit as a thought leader. Or ask your advocates to share some of the cultural aspects about working at your company.</p>
<p>Start small if there is no organised employee engagement programme in place already.</p>
<p>Think about setting a timeframe around the pilot programme: can you review success in three months time?</p>
<p>Develop a business plan to share with your leadership that includes plenty of case studies.</p>
<h4>2. Find your advocates</h4>
<p>This isn&#8217;t so daunting if you’ve identified a business area in which to trial the programme. So start by looking at your own social platforms to see which colleagues are most active, either professionally (on LinkedIn and Twitter, for example) or personally (Facebook).  Ask leadership if they know of any employee bloggers; and suggest they become advocates themselves.</p>
<p>If you are using your programme to support a particular recruitment campaign or to sell your thought leadership, then contact people in that role or business unit at the moment.</p>
<p>Take time to craft the right messages to introduce potential advocates to the programme to answer the all-important ‘What’s in it for me?’ question.</p>
<p>Think about a briefing guide or training sessions for your advocates. Discussion groups/workshops are a good way to get started – this helps to encourage a sense of community from the outset. Emphasise the collective responsibility for success – this is not a top-down, prescriptive mandate. It’s something everyone can run at their own pace.</p>
<h4>3. Plan your content</h4>
<p>Start by revisiting your strategy. Could you create top-level content areas? For one client, we worked to create ‘spotlights’ on a series of different technologies they wanted to promote. For each spotlight, we provided between 3 and 6 pieces of content designed to support that topic – useful blogs to share, a new paper on the future of that technology, pictures of events going on to support the spotlight, biographies of expects on that technology in the business etc.</p>
<p>Encourage employee advocates themselves to create and share content with the group. You could send weekly reminders and incentivise people to contribute.</p>
<p>Try to find and create different types of content designed to be shared across different platforms; short pieces, longer blogs, images, videos etc.</p>
<p>Bear in mind the 4-1-1 plan (courtesy of the Content Marketing Institute): 4 x new pieces to share; 1 x self-serving piece; 1 x re-shared piece.</p>
<p>Champion your own content! Share whatever you create, externally and internally.</p>
<h4>4. Review and recognise</h4>
<p>Go back to your original goals and review success against those. We can help to create a dashboard to measure social engagement metrics – the likes, comments, shares etc. The quality of engagement the content receives is just as the quantity of content shared.</p>
<p>Recognise contributions by encouraging networking amongst your advocates.</p>


How to launch an employee advocate programme

<p>2020 has been a year of major change. A nation of 67 million people changed their work pattern to working from home overnight.</p>
<p>Although this year has been exceptional, change is not new.  Most organisations undergo major change about once every three years. Every change is different and can be grouped into three main categories.</p>
<p>Increased risks include</p>
<ul>
<li>Cyber security threats</li>
<li>Competition</li>
<li>Compliance/legislation</li>
<li>Global headwinds and tailwinds</li>
<li>Political, social, technological, legal and environmental</li>
</ul>
<p>Crises</p>
<ul>
<li>COVID-19</li>
<li>Global response to death of George Floyd</li>
<li>Global warming</li>
<li>Remote working</li>
</ul>
<p>Opportunities and growth</p>
<ul>
<li>New strategy/product</li>
<li>Culture transform or strengthen</li>
<li>Reorganization/restructure</li>
<li>Mergers and acquisitions</li>
</ul>
<h4>What is change communications?</h4>
<p>Change communications is defined as the component of a change programme that deals specifically with communicating a compelling vision for change. Change communications is not just one-way broadcast style communications, but involves receiving input and feedback from audiences that confirms the change vision and messages have been understood.</p>
<p><strong> </strong>We asked 110 change communications professionals to share their thoughts on what works, what doesn’t, and ultimately what the secrets are to success. Here’s what they told us.</p>
<h4><strong>Technology disrupts</strong></h4>
<p>Over half of all change is down to technological disruption of one sort or another.</p>
<h4><strong>Uncertainty surrounds us</strong></h4>
<p>There is generally more uncertainty, which leads to more change which then leads to more uncertainty.</p>
<h4><strong>Change is exhausting</strong></h4>
<p>There’s so much change, more than ever and competing for bandwidth against the business-as-usual internal communications.</p>
<h4><strong>Leaders are the answer and the problem</strong></h4>
<p>Leaders are crucial to driving change and are cited as the second biggest barrier to successful change (after culture); and yet can make change stick.</p>
<h4><strong>Launch doesn’t last</strong></h4>
<p>Everyone seems to understand the message at the start of the change and when things take time and there’s a danger that leaders lose interest and momentum slows.</p>
<h4><strong>Change is slow</strong></h4>
<p>Real, meaningful, behavioural change takes time. Do we really appreciate the stages involved such as resistance, exploration, commitment and what each stage involves?</p>
<h4><strong>Change agents are pessimists</strong></h4>
<p>The more involved you are in change communications, the more pessimistic you are likely to be about the outcomes.  This could be either pragmatism or change fatigue.</p>
<h4><strong>Change isn’t for everyone</strong></h4>
<p>We don’t need to focus on everyone to make change happen. Only 12% of our participants reckoned that success is changing behaviours in over 80% of the workforce.</p>
<p>So how can we make change work in a world of change weary audiences and exhausted and overworked change communications managers?</p>
<h4><strong>Know your audience</strong></h4>
<ul>
<li>Know the context of the change with thorough research.</li>
<li>Put yourself in your audiences shoes and understand their needs through detailed segmentation and persona development</li>
<li>Tailor solutions for each audience based on the data you have gathered rather than guesswork.</li>
</ul>
<h4><strong>Listen and adapt</strong></h4>
<ul>
<li>Find ways to listen as you go through the change journey. Seeking feedback from your audiences and adjusting your plans and materials based in what you hear will ensure you get them right.</li>
<li>Accept there will be resistance so plan for it, then react and adapt quickly.</li>
</ul>
<h4><strong>Use local teams, make it relevant</strong></h4>
<ul>
<li>Middle managers are the gatekeepers of communications so focus most of your energy on them. Give them the right tools and support such as key messages, change communications toolkits or coaching sessions.</li>
<li>Find other change agents or create a change champions network. Make sure you there is constant dialogue and don&#8217;t forget its ok to tell them if you don&#8217;t know the answers to their questions.</li>
<li>Co-create your change plans and interventions with those who are impacted to give them a sense of ownership of the change.</li>
</ul>
<h4><strong>Plan well</strong></h4>
<ul>
<li>Change communications managers should be involved in planning change programmes from the start, not just asked to tidy up messages at the end.</li>
<li>Take time to plan for various scenarios because change, like people, can be unpredictable.</li>
<li>Resistance planning should be part of your overall change communications plan. Know early on where your resistance is likely to come from and how you are going to deal with it.</li>
</ul>
<h4><strong>Get your leaders involved</strong></h4>
<ul>
<li>Be an adviser to senior leaders</li>
<li>Create a senior coalition</li>
<li>Don’t let leaders hide</li>
<li>Get your CEO/MD on side, throughout</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Clear messaging</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Simple, clear messages that are free of business jargon will work best.</li>
<li>Have as much accurate information available as possible but if you don&#8217;t have all the information, say so.</li>
<li>Make your messages personal and real.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Communicate, sleep and repeat</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Don’t assume people aren’t interested and make sure you communicate with people who don&#8217;t need to know.</li>
<li>Keep a steady drumbeat of communications using of a variety of channels that allows people to find the information they need in a way that suits them best.</li>
</ul>
<p>Remember, we’re all human and some people travel along the change journey at different rates. By showing the benefit of the change rather than just the change itself can make all the difference.</p>
<p><em>106 Communications is an award-winning communications consultancy on a mission to making work better. We create communications to engage and inspire through our three expert-led practises in Internal Communications, Change Communications and Branding &amp; Marketing.</em></p>
<p><em>For change communications consultancy please contact Henry Davies on Henry@106comms.com</em></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>


Eight secrets of successful change communications

<p>Change programmes are high profile, costly and time consuming so need to bet set up to succeed. These ten tips will ensure your change communications get off to a flying start and remain steady during turbulent times.</p>
<h4>Agree sponsor engagement up front</h4>
<p>Your sponsor is a crucial advocate for the change and will be interfacing with senior stakeholders. Coaching them to tell the change story in a convincing way, and respond to stakeholder concerns, is critical. They also need to know exactly what you want them to do and when. Make sure you get this straight up front because you may find it difficult to get contact time with your sponsor once the change programme is fully underway.</p>
<h4>A good narrative is like gold dust</h4>
<p>Deep technical subject matter experts work on complex change programmes. It’s your job to contextualise the change and link it to the bigger picture, your company strategy, through a compelling change narrative. Think about neurodiversity too – different brains perceive things differently. A simple visual will be much more effective in telling a change story than a list of statistics.</p>
<h4>Coach mangers and the programme team to tell the change story</h4>
<p>A good change story creates deep engagement and motivation at an individual level, as managers guide and motivate their teams. Keeping the change vision in mind will enable the team to stay focused through ambiguity. Be prepared to adjust your narrative as it evolves.</p>
<h4>Don’t try and eat the elephant all at once.</h4>
<p>Knowing which change communications are going to move the needle is one of your greatest challenges. You will have to convince your stakeholder of your choice. So choose your top three priorities for the first month, get your sponsor to sign them off and stick to them. Getting your change narrative right, identifying your audiences and articulating what the change means to them should be your starting point. Again, be ready to pivot these changes as necessary.</p>
<h4>Become best friends with the change programme project manager</h4>
<p>The Project Manager&#8217;s job is to keep the change programme moving and if they are any good at it, will have an understanding of all the moving parts. Staying close to them will enable to you to respond with agility with changes on the horizon. They will be accountable for reporting progress against deliverables too, so ensure change communicated is well represented.</p>
<h4><strong>Be your own best advocate</strong></h4>
<p>The project team needs to understand the value that agile change communications brings, so it’s your job to coach people on what you do, how and why you do it.</p>
<h4>Your sanity depends on being part of a strong, aligned team</h4>
<p>According to the Harvard Business Review, 70% of change programmes fail. You will need to build an effective support network &#8211; either in your immediate team or in a community of practise to see you through the tough times. Potentially you may be the only change or communications manager on the project so it’s important you have a safe space to test new ideas or just let off steam. Ensuring you are working to the same priorities is important, as it’s tempting to become siloed as you support specific areas of a complex change. Meeting daily for 30 minutes will help you respond with agility.</p>
<h4>Agree the content sign-off process up front to avoid bottlenecks further down the line</h4>
<p>All sponsors and managers will have different processes for signing off content so clarify yours early on. Be clear on which individuals are being consulted on iterations of content, or whether they actually have final say.</p>
<h4>Meeting discipline is key</h4>
<p>Running an efficient meeting will speed up decision making and save time and energy. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-3-rules-running-better-meetings-like-having-less-2019-8?r=US&amp;IR=T">Elon Musk’s three rules for meetings</a> could be a place to start. Prepare an IPO (inputs, processes, outputs) or agenda before every change planning meeting, clarify who the right people are to be on the call and be ruthless with your time management.</p>
<h4>Factor in continuous improvement at every stage</h4>
<p>Ask yourselves what worked and what you could have done differently and review throughout the project.</p>
<p><i>106 Communications is an award-winning communications consultancy on a mission to making work better. We create communications to engage and inspire through our three expert-led practises in Internal Communications, Change Communications and Branding &amp; Marketing. To make sure your change communications get permission to land contact Henry Davies on Henry@106comms.com.</i></p>


How to get change communications right

<p>Scouting is a global youth service movement established in 1908 by British Soldier Lord Robert Baden Powell.</p>
<p>&#8220;Be Prepared&#8221; is the Scouting motto devised by Baden-Powell in 1907 and published in the Scouting manual a year later.</p>
<p>Upon hearing the Scouts&#8217; motto, someone asked Baden-Powell the inevitable question:</p>
<p>“Prepared for what, Lord Baden-Powell?”</p>
<p>“Why, prepared for any old thing,” he replied.</p>
<p>We can learn a lot from this attitude.</p>
<p>These are VUCA times – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous but we no longer have the luxury of time to become prepared.</p>
<h4>So like Scouts, we need to be in a permanent state of preparedness.</h4>
<p>The rate of technological change is increasing exponentially and how we prepare for change is changing too.</p>
<p>Change is no longer a systematic step by step process of start, plan, change and move on to the next change.</p>
<p>Now it&#8217;s a cycle of activity more akin to a whirlwind or a scrum with many more than two changes occurring simultaneously.</p>
<p>So where the Scouts would say &#8220;be prepared&#8221;, in change management we would say <strong>change readiness.</strong> Change readiness is the most important part of change management.</p>
<p>Robert Baden-Powell’s definition of being prepared is:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Being prepared means you are always in a state of readiness in mind and body to do your duty. Be Prepared in mind by having disciplined yourself to be obedient to every order and also by having thought out beforehand any accident or situation that might occur, so that you know the right thing to do at the right moment and are willing to do it.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Compare it with the Harvard Business Review’s definition of change readiness:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Change readiness is the ability to continuously initiate and respond to change in ways that create advantage, minimise risk and sustain performance.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Baden-Powell’s definition is person rather than organisation-centred and focuses on:</p>
<ul>
<li>Readiness in mind and body</li>
<li>Leadership</li>
<li>Planning</li>
<li>The right thing to do</li>
<li>The willingness to do it</li>
</ul>
<p>These are aspects of change readiness that still hold true a hundred years later.</p>
<p>How can we use Baden-Powell&#8217;s definition to leverage change?</p>
<h4>Always being in a <strong>state of readiness in body and mind.</strong></h4>
<p>This is about having a culture of change readiness in your organisation and embedding it in your company goals and vision, like the Scouts.</p>
<h4>Being <strong>obedient to every order</strong></h4>
<p>This is an old-fashioned sounding phrase to our ears now but supporting leaders is implicit in this sentiment.</p>
<p>A group of 14-16-year-old Scouts from Hampshire climbed Mount Everest as part of the Centenary Scouting Celebrations in 2007.</p>
<p>That takes strong leadership and change readiness should be part of every leaders’ skillset. It&#8217;s our role as communicators to coach, consult and support them here.</p>
<h4><strong>Thinking out beforehand any accident or situation</strong></h4>
<p>This is all about good planning. Scouts are obviously brilliant at this. Part of the Centenary Celebrations involved taking 40,000 14-16 year olds from 52 countries camping in Essex for two weeks, no mean feat.</p>
<p>Companies need to be constantly scanning the horizon for change and having the right tools to hand.</p>
<h4><strong>Knowing what the right thing to do is</strong></h4>
<p>This flows from understanding your organisation and the change itself so your interventions have integrity – that is – they fit well within the wholeness of the organisation.</p>
<p>It is crucial to co create interventions with those impacted by the change, testing and adjusting as you go.</p>
<p>This is where organisations need to build trust with their people by rewarding and recognising good performance. As part of the Centenary Celebrations Scouting introduced a range of new badges fit for the age, including GPS Navigation.</p>
<p>By listening to them and responding to feedback and sharing a vision of the change, future state and journey to get there.</p>
<p>All areas where communications has a huge amount to contribute.</p>
<p><i>106 Communications is an award-winning communications consultancy on a mission to making work better. We create communications to engage and inspire through our three expert-led practises in Internal Communications, Change Communications and Branding &amp; Marketing. If you need help with getting change ready, contact Henry Davies on Henry@106comms.com</i></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>


What Scouts can teach us about change readiness

<p>2020 has been a terrible year for many industries but some sectors have actually experienced rapid growth this year.</p>
<p>The impact of lockdown and working from home has had a positive impact on online grocery sales, biotech and online gaming.</p>
<p>Research shows that video gamers in the United States spent 45% more time playing video games in quarantine this year than in previous weeks.</p>
<p>Esports is another emerging industry making more than a billion dollars a year that has gained further traction.</p>
<p>The increase in the first-time download of Twitch after the epidemic in March has risen to 14% in the USA and a staggering 41% in Italy.</p>
<p>So it all looks very healthy for the gaming industry but many companies can struggle to recruit high quality talent during a period of explosive growth.</p>
<p>But how does a growing company attract and retain the best talent when there is so much competition?</p>
<p>106 Communications works with companies globally to develop what’s known as their ‘employee value proposition’ and there are four things every company – whatever size – needs to get right.</p>
<h4><strong>An innovative value proposition.</strong></h4>
<p>Last year, a thesis into ‘Talent Attraction in Swedish Gaming Industry’, two Masters students looked at Swedish gaming companies to try and find the secret sauce for attracting talent. Each company featured in the report tried to twist and turn to offer something innovative:</p>
<p>“We’re outside of Stockholm, so we offer a quality of life”</p>
<p>“We’re small and we pay really well”</p>
<p>“We all work from home, allowing far greater flexibility than competitors”</p>
<p>“We focus on unique high-end production”</p>
<p>“People are attracted by our founders”</p>
<p>“We offer interns a place to live as well as work”</p>
<p>“We offer retirement benefits!”</p>
<p>What was impressive about this is that these small, fast-growing companies knew that they had to find innovative value propositions for talent (the market has grown by nearly 200% in the last five years).</p>
<h4><strong>Real benefits – financial and non-financial.</strong></h4>
<p>Of course, companies need offer a strong benefits package. For example, King boasts 10 employee benefits that would make most young developers green with envy. Tencent focuses on its all-hands meetings and parties, gyms, and environment. Activision pushes its medical benefits (after all, it is primarily North American).</p>
<p>But non-financial benefits such as flexible working, learning and development, working from home, or coaching and mentoring, are almost as important.</p>
<h4><strong>Clear purpose and values.</strong></h4>
<p>Gaming has always attracted gamers and that won’t change. But employees are now looking to see how gaming companies are contributing into key issues such as employee wellbeing, diversity and sustainability – not simply with words, but actions.</p>
<p>This opens up the debate for gaming companies about their purpose. Entertainment has been important in a lockdown and gaming companies have benefited.  But how does this translate into a wider benefit to society and connect with generations Y and Z, who are both colleagues and consumers?</p>
<h4><strong>A strong and supportive culture.  </strong></h4>
<p>When you’re all working from home, its important to replicate the culture that seemed so apparent in the fantastic offices you used to work in.  It takes more than a ping pong table and an indoor slide. It requires leaders and managers to engage, support and listen to their people.</p>
<p>How do you answer the question, ‘what’s your culture like?’ when you can’t reference the office?  Suddenly it’s down to how you treat and respect your colleagues, how you come together as a team and how authentic you can be in the workplace. Not how impressive your offices are!</p>
<h4><strong>Stress test your employee offer.</strong></h4>
<p>The major disruption caused by the COVID-19 crisis gives companies a golden opportunity to reflect and come back stronger. Re-assessing your purpose, culture and employer value proposition will ensure it is fit for the post-lockdown COVID-19 world.</p>
<p>These are exactly the conversations we’ve been having with our clients. We’ve helped one to understand what their values mean in a COVID-19 world and how they can use them to engage talent as well as colleagues.  We’ve scrutinised their purpose, to see how it stands up in a world where gaming is bringing much-needed entertainment to people in difficult circumstances.</p>
<p><em>106 Communications is an award-winning communications consultancy on a mission to making work better. We create communications to engage and inspire through our three expert-led practises in Internal Communications, Change Communications and Branding &amp; Marketing. </em></p>
<p><em>If you’d like to improve your employee offer, contact Henry Davies at <a href="mailto:Henry@106comms.com">Henry@106comms.com</a> </em></p>
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