The keys to communicating culture clearly

When communicators put together culture-based messaging, it needs to make an organization’s work experience feel real and accessible.

At Ragan’s Employee Culture and Communications Conference in Boston later this month, Allyse Denmark, vice president of internal communications at OneDigital, will share how comms pros can build an employer branding framework that works.

“When you ask people what it’s like to work somewhere, they don’t repeat your messaging,” Denmark told Ragan. “They describe their experience. The role of communications is to make sure those two things actually match.”

She said that employer branding falls into four core categories that can help make culture tangible and the messaging about it credible.

“It’s the work itself, the team, total rewards and the organization. Those categories show up again and again, no matter the company. What matters is identifying what’s uniquely true for your business within each of those areas — and then being able to communicate that clearly and consistently.”

Frameworks help prove culture through communication

Denmark said the difference between culture messaging that resonates with employees and comms that fall flat usually comes down to whether the outreach is backed by real employee insight. She said that when her team rolled out its four-bucket framework for culture comms, it did the groundwork necessary to fully understand what OneDigital’s employees were experiencing.

“We relied on a mix of qualitative and quantitative inputs to really understand what was true for our people,” Denmark said. “That included employee survey data, comments, trends and interviews with senior leaders and stakeholders. We even went back through years of CEO messaging.”

She added that part of that process included looking at competitors to see where the organization stood above the pack culturally.

“When you bring all of that together, you start to see clear patterns around what makes your organization unique,” Denmark told Ragan.

Denmark said this work shifts culture comms from aspirational to provable, and that evidence is needed if employees are going to buy in.

“So when we talk about our employer value proposition, we’re not just making it up,” she said. “This is what the data shows. And then we bring that to life through real employee stories, so people can actually see themselves in it.”

Line up the message across the employee journey

Denmark said that great culture-based employer branding only works if employees get consistent messaging. That means communicators need to talk about culture long after onboarding.

She said that her team completely rewrote its employee culture messaging so it could line up better with the company’s overall narrative.

“From the moment someone is considering applying, through interviews, offer letters and their first 30 days, the messaging consistently reinforces what it means to do your best work and live your best life here,” Denmark said. “It’s way more than just a campaign. It’s how we communicate at every key moment.”

Denmark added that this alignment is what prevents gaps between what organizations say and what employees experience.

“Even things like enrolling in benefits or going through open enrollment now connect back to those same themes,” she said. “It hadn’t really been looked at in that holistic way before, but now it all feels cohesive and intentional.”

That kind of clarity is the result of sustained and intentional communication over time.

“If you shook someone awake in the middle of the night and asked what the company’s commitment is to them, they should be able to tell you,” Denmark said.“ That only happens when the message is consistent and when the experience actually backs it up.

To register for the Employee Culture and Communications Conference, click here.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.