Organizational NarrativesTM: A New, Powerful Approach to Making
Employee Engagement Efforts Stick
THE IMPORTANCE: STRONG CULTURE MAXIMIZES PRODUCTIVITY AND
PROFIT
In the last ten years, research highlighting the business benefits of developing a strong
organizational culture—from boosting moral to increasing productivity and profit—has
prompted a wave of investment in employee engagement. To support these efforts, a
new industry has emerged focused on “people analytics,” or applying data science to
people decisions including how to hire, engage, and retain employees. Many of these
metrics are designed to track or improve employee culture. Yet even with these new
metrics, studies show that over 75 percent of culture change initiatives fail. Why is that?
WHY CHANGE EFFORTS FAIL: LOTS OF DATA, LITTLE INSIGHT
One reason why culture change efforts frequently fall flat is that leaders tend to focus on
metrics that give a snapshot of employee satisfaction, engagement, and productivity
without revealing the mindsets that underlie behavior. For example, the classic multiple
choice employee engagement survey measures “favorability” towards aspects of the
company and its culture, but does not reveal the “why” behind those answers. Let’s say
57% of employees agree with the statement “processes are well organized and efficient
in my work group.” While you can benchmark this versus prior years and industry
standards, it is not actionable and provides little value for decision-making.
Without insight into employee motivations, leaders often launch culture and engagement
initiatives that fall flat -- failing to see where their priorities are innately aligned or
misaligned with underlying employee mindsets. We call these mindsets that employees
hold “Organizational Narratives.”
ORGANIZATIONAL NARRATIVES: A NEW TOOL FOR UNDERSTANDING AND
MEASURING EMPLOYEE MINDSETS
Organizational Narratives are the deeply-rooted, emotional stories that employees tell
themselves about a company, its mission and culture, its leadership, and its future
prospects. Like many other types of stories, Organizational Narratives are typically
anchored in beliefs and perceptions rather than objective facts. Monitor 360 applies its
proprietary Narrative AnalyticsTM process to help organizations understand, quantify,
shape, and monitor Organizational Narratives by analyzing large volumes of qualitative
employee data. This process is designed to support culture building by surfacing
opportunities to reinforce positive elements of employee culture, and address sources of
friction that impact satisfaction, commitment, and productivity. Because we quantify
Organizational Narratives, we enable leaders to make cultural decisions that are datadriven, and to set goals and track progress in shifting those critical employee mindsets.
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CASE STUDY: HARNESSING NARRATIVES TO RESONATE WITH EMPLOYEES
A major public utility company recently came to us to help them understand how they
could better engage their workforce of nearly 30,000 employees – who represented a
wide range of business lines, skills, and roles. Our client had reams of data from
employee satisfaction surveys and focus groups, but little insight into the mindsets that
shaped behavior and influenced strategic priorities like safety, productivity, and
retention. They needed a way to understand those mindsets so they could connect with
employees in a meaningful way, and effectively shape a safer, more engaged, and more
productive workplace.
THE METHOD: RIGOROUS DATA-DRIVEN METRICS TO UNCOVER BELIEFS
AT SCALE
To capture and analyze these mindsets, we followed our proven Narrative AnalyticsTM
process that combines cutting edge data analysis with rigorous qualitative analysis to
unearth our client’s Organizational Narratives. This process has five steps:
1) Leverage prior investments in employee data gathering. We examined our
client’s prior investments in employee data to identify sources of narrative-rich
content from which we could derive Organizational Narratives. These data sources
included internally captured data—“verbatim” comments from surveys, focus group
transcripts, Yammer chats—as well as external data, such as Glassdoor reviews,
public Facebook posts, and blogs.
2) Ensure data reflects the range of employee views. We validated that the
sample size was not only statistically significant, but reflected a robust range of
employees from different lines of business, functions, levels, demographics, and
more. We organized and cleaned this anonymized data, and fed it through a
proprietary data analysis tool that clusters content based on thematic similarity.
3) Analyze the data and derive Organizational Narratives. We analyzed the
content clusters and extracted narrative themes and expressions, separating them
from everyday chatter, individual grievances, and other “non-narrative” content. We
then drafted Organizational Narratives in the voice of employees, carefully examining
the data to ensure that the narratives reflected the full range of employee mindsets:
we call this the Narrative LandscapeTM. We then refined and tested these narratives
through qualitative interviews to ensure they authentically reflected the tone and
content of employee beliefs.
4) Measure Narrative ImpactTM. We quantified the Narrative Impact with proprietary
metrics to determine the volume of each narrative and how narratives changed over
different employee segments (role, tenure, business line, etc.). We also honed in on
specific behaviors or actions that triggered certain narratives.
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5) Monitor the changes over time. To help the client refine its employee
engagement strategy, we tracked shifts in these narratives to gauge the
effectiveness of different culture change initiatives over time.
THE RESULT: UNEARTHED EIGHT KEY NARRATIVES DRIVING CULTURE
Our analysis uncovered eight key narratives that cut across lines of business and key
demographics, and drove our public utility client’s organizational culture. These
narratives spanned from positive stories about company progress; to stories of
frustration with bureaucracy and structural obstacles; to entrenched mindsets
questioning leadership intentions.
One positive narrative embodied a deeply-held belief about the mission of the
organization that inspires employee dedication and commitment:
Proud to Serve - I’m proud to work at my company because this job truly
matters. We keep the lights on for millions, bringing energy, productivity, and
possibility to one of the largest economies in the world. At my company, I’ve built
new skills and worked with really great people—I love my team! Each morning,
I’m proud to put on my company shirt and contribute to my community. When I’m
out in the field, customers are happy to see me. While there’s always room for
improvement, I can’t see myself making a career anywhere else. I see a path to
grow professionally at this company, and I hope to retire as a proud employee.
On the other hand, there were narratives that questioned leadership motivations and
colored many well-intentioned employee engagement efforts:
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Climbing Ladders, But Not Poles - Outsiders in management may have good
intentions, but they’re completely out of touch with what actually happens in the
field. Executives and managers who didn’t grow up in this company and have
never gotten their hands dirty in the field don’t understand the job I do and the
craft it involves. What’s worse, they continue to push competing priorities and
conflicting metrics for safety and productivity that prevent me from practicing the
craft I know best. This disconnect is having a serious negative impact. We’ve
seen enough of management by decree—leaders need to spend more time in
the field. They need to recognize our expertise, listen to us, and start making
decisions with input from those of us that know the work.
Once we generated and analyzed these narratives, we worked closely with our public
utility client to apply the insights to priorities ranging from retention to productivity to
employee safety.
THE IMPACT: ENSURING THAT CULTURE CHANGE INVESTMENTS PAY OFF
Long-Term Strategy
Policy
Communications
Simply put, understanding Organizational Narratives can be the difference between
success and failure in culture change initiatives. To help our client leverage
Organizational Narratives to their advantage, we collaborated on a series of initiatives
designed to enhance employee engagement.
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Conducted data-driven analysis of leadership communications to
understand what could trigger each narrative
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Engaged senior leaders in a series of workshops to build awareness of how
they help shape these narratives
•
Developed a comprehensive communications strategy centered around
helping leaders attach to themes that trigger positive narratives, and avoid
themes that trigger negative narratives
•
Used data to pinpoint specific lines of business and roles where narratives
more acutely stood in the way of desired culture change
•
Identified quick wins for leaders to improve employee engagement through
targeted and easily implemented policy changes
•
Uncovered deeper cultural challenges that leaders may need to address
through carefully designed initiatives that combine open conversation, policy
reform, and long-term investment
•
Developed a set of measurable goals for culture change initiatives
•
Created a monitoring system to track narrative changes over time to
measure progress in shifting culture
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Our client made clear progress in each of these key business areas—helping them to
build a more engaged, productive, and empowered workplace. As a result of these
activities, our client:
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Increased perceptions of alignment with core employee values by intentionally
shaping communication to amplify positive narratives that resonate with
employees, like the mission-focused “Proud to Serve”
•
Demonstrated responsiveness to employee concerns by implementing targeted
policy changes to address frustrations, like management’s perceived
disconnect from the field workers revealed in narratives such as “Climbing
Ladders, But Not Poles”
•
Enabled consistent tracking of return on investment for culture change
initiatives by incorporating Organizational Narratives into existing quarterly
surveys
In sum, Organizational Narratives provide leaders with a powerful lens through which to
navigate employee culture. They offer critical insight into deeply held employee beliefs
and mindsets in a uniquely quantifiable and trackable way, and point to specific, highimpact strategies for creating a more aligned organization.
Interested in making your own employee engagement efforts stick? We can help.
The benefits of Organizational NarrativesTM for business and human resources leaders:
• Provide unique insight into employee mindsets and what drives their behavior
• Allow leaders to better diagnose business risk connected to company culture
• Offer a new, actionable toolkit to increase the success rate of critical culture
change initiatives
• Get true insight “beyond the survey” and connect the growing volume of external
and internal data to business outcomes
• Ultimately, improve employee engagement, performance, and retention
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