Connecting Employees to the C-Suite – linking everyday activity to corporate success
By Diana Shayon, Managing Director, Burson-Marsteller New York, and Clancey Houston, Regional Managing Director, Insights & Ideas Group, Burson-Marsteller Asia Pacific

A state of change is the new norm among Asian companies. The world of business is increasingly defined by uncertainty; swept up in the new digital 2.0 era, which is remaking the world of commerce. The volatility of stock markets is also being replicated in the everyday tenor of business across the region, creating a movable backdrop against which businesses must continue to deliver and grow. For the senior executive in China, India, Tokyo or Sydney this means finding new ways to engage employees so that business can continue to function efficiently, despite – or because of - rapid shifts in the external environment.

If change is the status quo, then the ability to have all employees pulling in one direction is the essence of good business practice. Employers around Asia Pacific tell us that their most significant engagement with employees revolves around communicating the company’s strategy and explaining what it means to them. Sound simple? Yes - but making this happen involves a concerted effort to take a business strategy outside of strategic documents and integrating the themes into day-to-day employee interactions and conversations – making them part of everyday discourse, be it by email or in person.

This process must begin with senior leadership, ensuring that managers all the way down the chain of command are equipped with the right information, the proper tools and the responsibility and accountability for helping employees make the necessary connections between their day-to-day activities and the advancement of the business.

The ability to do this is one of the most significant competitive advantages a firm can have today – yet few firms act upon this. It’s an outdated perception that a company’s corporate strategy which is, perhaps, only shared with a few top people, is too complex or detailed to distill for consumption by the broader employee base. Furthermore, the “degrees of separation” – that distance between the executive leadership and the universe of the individual employee – remains, for many, a difficult barrier to overcome. In a region where the culture of corporate hierarchy can be ingrained so thoroughly, the distance between leadership and the person in the smallest cubicle can be vast.
Sure, corporate strategy is indeed complex and often quantitative (or at least articulated that way). And it is almost always considered highly proprietary. So how can an Asian firm communicate it to the broader audience of employees?

Bridging this gap is not about pulling out the standard bag of tricks for internal communications – your internal newsletter, company Intranet, or even the CEO’s new blog. It’s a day-to-day process, and not an easy one, that begins with the basics of effective communications – who are we talking to, what do they believe or think about us, what do we need to say and how do we bridge the existing gap in understanding or knowledge?

We advise our clients to ground the answers to these questions in research and determine how effective existing channels are for delivering information. And, importantly, this research goes beyond the typical HR surveys of employee attitudes and satisfaction. Instead, we probe the employees’ ability to “connect the dots” between their day-to-day actions and how these advance the business toward its stated goals. And this is the key.

Once a company understands this, then their messages can be crafted to capture in simple terms, but never in a simplistic way, the strategic direction of the business. The process of distilling proprietary, complex, quantitative strategies to three to four succinct messages supported by ‘proof points’ involves striking the right balance. But when mastered, this messaging is the ultimate way to articulate a strategic direction in a qualitative framework so employees grasp it and are genuinely engaged.

And how do we enable this message delivery? Research tells us that employees in Asia, as elsewhere, want their information directly from their managers, so managers need to be aware of this important insight and act on it by integrating reference to the business strategy in everyday conversation. And, of course, the managers need to be able to understand the messages, be able to deliver them and, in the long term, be held accountable for their delivery.

Aligned employees who truly understand how their own actions can impact the company’s operations - what they should continue to do; do differently; do better; or do more often – can have a major influence on a company’s business success.

It’s all about empowerment – empowering individuals to fully deliver on their roles in achieving business goals, by allowing them complete awareness of where the company wants to go, and the critical role every individual has in getting it there.