Why two-way culture beats top-down communications

Episode 172: Why two-way culture beats top-down communications 

“People expect something much more interactive. Employees expect not just to consume information, but to be a part of it, to participate, to have a voice. I think essentially, in my view, the world is just a very different place. And I’m not sure in many instances that companies are keeping up with that.” 

Hannah Soye 
Chief People and Culture Officer, Haiilo 
 

Nancy Goebel 

In this episode of Digital Workplace Impact, I chatted with Hannah Soye, who is the Chief People and Culture Officer at Haiilo, and the conversation really centred around what happens when internal communication stops being a broadcast function and becomes part of an organization’s cultural operating system. The conversation bridged HR, internal comms, leadership behaviours, digital employee experience – all with a practical focus on how organizations build trust, relevance and connections at scale.  

This is DWG’s Chief Executive and your host, Nancy Goebel. Digital Workplace Impact is brought to you by Digital Workplace Group. Join me now in conversation with Hannah. Happy listening! 

I’d like to extend a warm welcome to you to the Digital Workplace Impact podcast studio. Thank you for stepping out of a busy day to come into conversation with me and our audience.  

Hannah Soye  

Pleasure, thank you for inviting me to come and talk with you. 

Nancy 

I have been following your writing for a while, and there was one area that I really wanted to centre our conversation around today, and it’s based on the idea that many organizations say that they want openness, listening and employee voice, but their systems still feel like they push leaders into the more polished one-way broadcasting approach. And you’re a very thoughtful people and culture leader, and you talk about how HR sees the gap between culture aspiration and community realities, and I thought that would be an interesting launch point. 

Hannah  

Sure, yeah, it’s something I feel quite passionately about actually. And I think it’s something that, with all good intent, many businesses actually get wrong. And I think what happens is that many companies, communication systems, the way that they operate, still operate in very much this kind of traditional cascade communication style, so very much a top-down comms approach. 

And actually, firstly, I see that as quite a burden that leaders place upon themselves to own this role as, you know, it’s my job to communicate to people. I’ve got to send messages to people. And actually, that’s quite a burden that you hold as a leadership team or key roles within the business to be constantly broadcasting communications to people. And the truth is those types of communication structures really were much better suited to more hierarchical setups of organizations in days gone by, which for the vast, vast, vast majority of us just doesn’t ring true anymore. We don’t operate in these very hierarchical environments. They’re much flatter, even in large organizations with its own level of hierarchy – and just the culture of people is completely different. People expect something much more interactive. Employees expect not just to consume information, but to be a part of it, to participate, to have a voice. I think essentially in my view, the world is just a very different place. And I’m not sure in many instances that companies are keeping up with that, both in the digital communication structures and platforms that they put in place, also then their culture and method of communicating through that to their people. And I think a lot of that, in my view, is in some respects maybe not stepping outside to just think of things in a new way and in a different way within the current context of culture. But also, I think oftentimes is a result of people being fearful of losing control of the message. They’re worried. What if I allow people to participate? What’s going to happen? Is that going to have a negative output for me as a leader. 

Nancy  

I guess I’m curious to know, was there kind of a moment in your career or some sort of precipitating event that prompted you to see that organizations were getting stuck in this mode? Whether it’s through your own experience or by observing other organizations given the nature of what Haiilo does. 

Hannah  

I don’t know, was there a single moment? Maybe not, but I think it’s something that I’ve seen in many, many organizations, large and small – and I think to some degree, maybe it’s almost like companies allow their infrastructure to shape their culture rather than getting the right infrastructure to reflect and support and enable your culture – and the two go hand in hand, don’t they? And I think often when I’ve seen it go horribly wrong, and there is one company I can think of, which I won’t name, that worked very hard to communicate well, but actually created this infrastructure where it was really hard for employees to find information and it led to them having to ask so many questions of other colleagues in the business, so they ended up, that company ended up, in a situation where there was a group of people in a specific role that were like the glue. They were like the human glue that held everything together because they were the people that knew how to navigate all these horrendous systems and the complexity, what sits where, how do I find it? So the company actually inadvertently became really reliant on this very small group of people to have all the answers, which is super dangerous, isn’t it? But also really, really frustrating for all the other, I don’t know, maybe there were eight of those people in one location and a thousand of everybody else. You know, how frustrating for the thousand to be looking and not knowing where on earth to go and how to go about doing their job. They’re just reliant on trying to find it. 

Nancy  

And certainly, you know, there’s so many uncertainties around us and rolling generations of that since COVID, that it feels as though this challenge has a spotlight on it, especially when you start to think about the disruptive nature of artificial intelligence and the ability to create content automatically…

Hannah 

Right, right.

Nancy 

… and I want to come back to that. but I also want to make sure that we dig a little deeper around this challenge. And as someone who’s a Chief People & Culture Officer, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on what the real cost is when internal communications does sit in that orbit where it’s too polished or too controlled or too one-directional. 

Hannah 

Yes, I think this is a huge point actually and can’t be underestimated because employees very quickly – we as humans very quickly – recognize when a piece of communication has been overly manufactured. And there’s lots of examples we see of that in the public world, don’t we? Politicians and things like that, overly manufactured messaging and you think, everyone’s just very sceptical and rolls their eyes. And so often what happens is when it’s too overly polished, a huge amount of work has gone into creating that message and there might be a huge amount of substance in it, but actually it hasn’t had the impact that the communication is intended to have. People just lose faith in it; they don’t trust it. It reduces the credibility and therefore undermines all the effort that’s gone into creating that message and getting the output that’s needed from it. So, I think what people really want is honesty and authenticity, even when that message might be a very difficult message to hear. People will always, in my experience, buy into it when the person or the people that are communicating it are very human and very real in the nature of how they’re presenting it. 

Nancy 

You often talk about the importance of the voice of the employee and folding that into the approach alongside this quest for authenticity on the part of leadership and their messaging. And so, let’s talk a little bit about your thoughts there. 

Hannah 

Well, I think when people say ‘employee voice’ – and people have asked me before: What does that mean? What is that? – and you’re explaining that you’re actually enabling people to have a voice and you’re actually listening to it. But I think the trap that many probably people teams, HR teams, fall into is thinking ‘employee voice’ is about doing an engagement survey, which is like, ‘Well, we do an engagement survey every year.’ And of course, there is a huge amount of very useful data that might come from that. You’re able to track insights and see where people are at but, let’s be honest, it’s a point-in-time exercise. It’s not really a way of hearing somebody’s voice and how that might be changing on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. I think, in the end, listening only really matters if people actually see the evidence that somebody is acting upon what they’re saying. Are they engaging in a conversation with me? Do they want to know more? Are they probing? Are they digging? Can I see that either somebody has responded to that, even if it’s that something can’t change as a result of it, but that somebody’s listening and they’re showing me that. So there needs to be that evidence. So again, finding, creating the forums or the platforms, whether that’s digital or in real life, to create that opportunity for the employees to have a voice is really important, and then engaging in that and responding to it, participating in that discussion and that forum is super key. 

Nancy  

And that falls very much in line with what we talk about with DWG members as part of shaping digital employee experiences, not necessarily just with leadership messaging, but experiences of work across the board. 

Hannah 

Yes. 

Nancy 

And so, one of the things I’ll make it a point to do our show notes is to include a link to that research so people who want to seek greater awareness and understanding of how that can take form throughout the life cycle of engaging with employees can start to get some practical insights, some options, and understand what moments are important, when, and why.  

Hannah 

Exactly 

Nancy 

And I think that’ll be a nice amplifier for what you’ve just shared. 

Hannah 

For sure, I think that’s really useful. I think anything that brings it to life for people is helpful. The other thing I would quickly say on that point is no company, including Haiilo where I am at the moment, ever gets it right all of the time. There will always be some people that feel that they’re not being heard and there will always be times when you’re really smashing it and others when you’re not doing such a great job of it. It’s just life, isn’t it? We’re all human and we’ve all got different business demands going on at any given time that might take your eye off the ball. Maybe you’re not participating and responding and listening to people as much as you did three months ago. It ebbs and flows a little bit – but providing those constant forums and having that conversation and being authentic and showing up and saying, ‘Hey, I’m so sorry if you didn’t feel like you were heard then let’s make a point of addressing that.’ I think that’s the best we can do. 

Nancy 

I think that’s so well said. And, you know, it’s really interesting when we look at the digital communications landscape, how many organizations are still so heavily reliant on email or distribution lists as an anchor way of reaching people and that’s not enough. And so, in thinking about large organizations or frontline workers, what are your thoughts on approaches to really reaching people? 

Hannah  

Yes, I think obviously email has a huge place in the vast majority of businesses – and very rightfully so. It has a purpose, but email was never designed to be an employee experience platform. It was just a way to communicate that I can send something to you. It’s slow. We all know chat and things like that are much quicker. We’ve all adopted these different ways of working. I think what happens is that, again, for the vast majority of companies, they become very reliant on email being almost their – maybe not their sole – point of communication, but certainly their primary source of communication. 

And what happens then is you’re just competing with overload. You know, I’m sure so many people listening to this agree, ‘My gosh, yes, I know my inbox is crazy. I can’t keep up with it. I can’t manage it.’ You know, you go on holiday and you come back and you’ve got hundreds of emails to catch up with. So, when you’re trying then to communicate with people, firstly, you’re competing with that. How do you get seen? If I’ve got an urgent message – you know, as a communications leader or people and culture leader, whatever – I have an urgent message to get across, how am I going to make sure it gets in front of you? But also, when it comes back to this two-way communication, email is not it. It’s slow, it’s clunky, and it’s certainly not participative. So, I think we have to really think about how we are able to engage with people, properly engage with people from a communications perspective and thinking about the platforms you put in place to do that. Obviously, employee intranets being the key one of those, lots of companies end up with things like SharePoint and what have you, and they are a good knowledge resource. But again, they’re not an employee experience platform. They don’t enable two-way communication, they don’t enable your culture.  

Then you’ve got the added conundrum of how you reach frontline workers. Many of the listeners, I’m sure, will have people either working on factory floors or, working in hospitals, teachers, so many different workers that are frontline workers that aren’t sat glued to a laptop like I am most of my day. You know, we have to enable them to also have a great employee experience so that they can participate and they can tell us how they’re feeling and what’s going on in their world. 

Nancy  

Absolutely. 

And you know, I’m just thinking about a session we just had with a DWG member from the financial services industry, and the backdrop for this conversation was the evolution of their omnichannel strategy with the idea being that we have such a broad range of employee types in many organizations – so the frontline workers, those who are on the road or at client sites, traditional desk-based workers. And so you need to meet people where they are, because sometimes they’re not sitting in front of an intranet all day or in front of their inboxes, and getting messages to them in the right way, based on urgency of need or need to dialogue, it’s so important to get that balance right.  

And what we’ve seen this mean in practice is that it has really challenged a combination of HR and Internal Communications to come together in new and different ways. And with someone like you, who’s got both people and culture as important parts of the employee value proposition, you know that how those responsibilities align, how they work, is taking on increasing new complexity. When you start to think about culture and engagement and communications needing to be so tightly connected, I would love to hear your thoughts around how you navigate this balance of HR and Internal Communications. 

Hannah  

So yes, you’re absolutely right. Obviously, it’s about having sort of very clear responsibilities across each of those roles, isn’t it? So that you haven’t got too much overlap, you’re working very closely together to create a cohesive experience. But I think ultimately People – the HR team – really owns the experience, the employee experience. Communications teams are there to think about how you’re delivering a message and what the message is that you’re trying to land. HR are really owning the experience of that for people. They have very different jobs. Communications teams are also bringing expertise in the channels through which you do that: how to gain audience engagement and all of those things. But again, HR have a really big part to play in the experience of that for each of your different populations of employee base.  

So, going back to the frontline worker situation, I would see it as the role of the People team to think about, if my Communications team are now putting in place a mail distribution list – so they’ve gone out and found a great company tool that allows us to send messages one to many, a nice, easy way, again going back to the emails, which is a nice, easy way to communicate with people, just communicate to my frontline workers, HR’s job is to think about, ‘OK, how respectful am I being of the role that these people are playing?’, ‘If I’m now trying to reach a nurse, who’s busy on a hospital floor looking after patients, is this the best experience for him or her in that role?’

So, I think being very clear on channel narrative from the Comms team versus the experience from the HR team, and how you partner together to drive that culture, because neither of you can do it on your own. You’re each bringing insights to each other, aren’t you? And then enabling that and thinking about how that’s going to have the very best experience for people that are working with you. 

Nancy 

I think it’s also important to come back to AI and where it fits in the partnership, quote unquote. AI is certainly making it easier to produce more polished content. We talked about that very briefly early on, but you know I think bringing it back to how leaders, whether it’s leaders like you who have people and culture focus or leaders at large, ensuring that the noise control is managed and that there’s a focus on relevance, timeliness and creating a trusted space. And so how are you managing that balance in this new phase of the workplace?  

Hannah 

Yes, that’s a very good question because I think coming back again to thinking about the experience for the end user, the employee, AI has made a difficult problem even harder. So our inbox has been overloaded for years. But now not only are our inboxes overloaded, but all of our social media feeds are overloaded. Everything’s overloaded. Because suddenly AI has enabled people that were perhaps not confident communicators previously to suddenly feel really confident. Because suddenly they’ve got a thought about what they want to say and someone’s literally drafting it for them. So, I think what’s happened there is the volume of content out there in the world is absolutely overloading. And so it’s made the job of Communications teams and of People & Culture teams even harder because now we’ve got to really compete for attention to try and get those messages in front of people. So coming back to your question earlier about, you know, things that are too manufactured and too overly polished, you know, that people don’t trust it so much, they don’t find it so credible, they don’t buy into it as much. I think that’s even more so now when we can all spot when there are some pieces of content that we read that are very obviously drafted by AI. We can all see that.  

Nancy  

Yes. 

Hannah  

It’s the same structure and it’s some of the same words etc etc etc – and to some degree I think that’s okay I think there’s a lot of companies that are saying actually don’t waste time trying to polish it and make it authentic because actually that defeats the purpose of speeding up and I think that’s true in some instances. So if you and I working together on a project and I mean I don’t need to really spend time making it sound beautifully authentic before I send it to you but if I’m sending a communication out to a group of people and expecting to get buy-in from them, well, I think that’s wholly different because actually it does need time spent thinking about ‘What am I trying to say?’ ‘Is it in my voice?’ ‘Is it in my tone?’ ‘Is it saying what I want it to say?’ ‘Is it in the tone that the audience want to hear it in?’. So I think it really forces us to think about being very, very specific and very considered in the communications that we’re sending. So not overloading people with communications and really making sure that the content is relevant to the audience. So not just mass communications, let’s just send it to everyone and hope the intended audience reads it. Only send it to the targeted audience that you’re trying to reach with relevant content that you’re delivering it at the right time.  

So, if we know that – I don’t know, I’m going to make it up, this is probably a really bad example! But, if you were reaching a group of teachers perhaps, and you know that it’s in the middle of the morning, and they’re not going to be having a break at this point, why are we going to send it at that point? Like, sending it at a time when we know that they might have an opportunity to actually sit down and read it, being respectful to say, ‘Hey, I get it. I know the world you’re in. I understand that and I’m going to send it at the right time.’ And then yes, the quality and authenticity is key. 

Nancy 

And volume 

Hannah  

Absolutely. 

Nancy  

I just recently did a podcast with a leader from ING and it was centred around dealing with ‘infobesity’ in the enterprise, which dovetails this conversation quite nicely. 

Hannah  

Nice, I might use that! 

Nancy 

One of the things that we spent time talking about is the listening tour that they went on to really hone in on the signals and put measures in place to really understand the voice of the employee, yes, but also putting in a system of measurement in place so that as they were making changes they could follow the path of improvement and so I think it would be interesting to hear from you, Hannah, what signals or measures you think organizations do and should use when thinking about their communication ecosystems, their people experience ecosystems, to ensure that they’re genuinely improving that employee experience we’ve been talking about. 

Hannah  

Absolutely. 

And I think, again, this is key, isn’t it? Because I think what happens is, so often people are just measuring, you know, open rates and things like that – which obviously have a place, don’t get me wrong, particularly when you’re trying to see whether you’ve even reached them in the first place and they’ve read it. So I think that’s important, but it’s not everything. It’s not really measuring whether the things that you’re doing and the things you’re investing in are actually having an impact on your people, on retention, on things like that. So, I think looking for evidence of increase in trust and understanding how much people are participating.  

We use an engagement tool called Office Vibe. I know it’s a very popular tool and Culture Amp is another tool that’s out there, but we use Office Vibe as a business. We can see participation rates. It’s something we measure. You know, how much are people speaking up? And if we see that dropping, which we did actually some months ago, and we talked to people and said, ‘Hey, you know, we’ve noticed this drop and we really want to hear what you have to say.’ And even just having that conversation it’s risen enormously. I think it went up about 30% or something – a huge, huge increase. But yeah, behaviour change, employee advocacy, so who’s sharing the word, who’s spreading the word, who’s talking positively about us.  

And then again, if you’re able to measure these metrics through your engagement tools – things like alignment and engagement metrics are absolutely key, far more so actually than eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score), I think. In my mind, it’s more well-rounded and the platforms that are out there now give you a really well-rounded set of metrics across a whole series of different factors. I think for me those are the things that tell you if you’re communicating effectively or not. 

Nancy  

I’m thinking about the range of insight you’ve shared as part of this conversation, and I know we’re fast approaching the end of our time, and I guess my very last question would be, have we missed anything? Is there anything that you were hoping we would share as part of this conversation and haven’t? 

Hannah 

I don’t think we’ve missed anything. I think the only thing I would add is the role that I see, that I have in this process, and probably rings true to many of the listeners listening to this podcast, it’s our job to coach, encourage and work with leaders to create those forums. 

So, it’s our job to influence that and that’s the biggest investment we can make and go ahead and push that forward and then really using your comms strategies and digital channels to anchor the messaging around that or feed more data into those dialogues to keep people engaged in that topic. And that is authentic evidence to people that you really value their input and that you’re listening to them. So I think that’s probably the final thing I would say. 

Nancy 

Excellent. And I would say if I had to pick a yes and to go with that, it’s to be continuous learners. And within that, that’s the heart of where active listening and seeking that employee voice really comes to life because then you’re taking what you’re hearing and applying it in real time. And so, I think the collection becomes a really powerful set of insights to tie this conversation together. 

Hannah, a big thank you to you for joining me in the studio today. What a pleasure it’s been to chat with you, to understand your thoughts, your insights, and to have you share your wisdom with our audience. 

Hannah 

Thank you so much, I really enjoyed it. I appreciate your time as well. 

Nancy 

Digital Workplace Impact is brought to you by the Digital Workplace Group. DWG is a strategic partner covering all aspects of the evolving digital workplace industry, not only through membership but also benchmarking and boutique consulting services. For more information, visit digitalworkplacegroup.com.