Perception versus reality:The gap between perception and reality in communications, technology and engagement in modern organisations.

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Contents

5.Executive summary

7.Introduction

9.Perception versus reality

13.The barriers to success

15.How can we close the gap?

17.Take one risk

Contents

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Executive summaryWe surveyed over 350 communications professionals, with 20% responding to every question. This whitepaper explores the gap between perception and reality in modern organisations and the language and practice in communications.

We have specifically explored the language used in both external and internal communications regarding innovation and technology and the day-to-day realities of communications professionals. Our research explored an ever-increasing tendency for organisations to say the ‘right thing’ while not providing communications professionals with an experience that matches the language.

Our research has immediately shown that there is a stark gap between what an organisation says and the day-to-day experience. The majority of organisations that took part in the survey have a keen focus on their communications language, presenting themselves as ‘innovative’ and ‘driven by technology’. This is a direct impact of the necessity of the landscape in which we operate. Technology and innovation are at the forefront of most organisations’ plans. To remain appealing to customers and future employees, a picture is being painted of forthright organisations that have a keen focus on technology and innovation, driving their day-to-day practice.

In some instances, this language may well be justified in terms of day-to-day operations. The products and services an organisation delivers may well be at the cutting edge of their given industry. However, we would assert that these claims can only be entirely honest if this attitude is present in all aspects of business operations.

Arguably, the most important area for these assertions to be upheld is in the space of communications. Our communications teams are the vanguard for disseminating these messages, both externally and internally. Our research has demonstrated that the reality for communications professionals, day-to-day, does not match these rhetorical assertions.

Our respondents recognised this disconnect, and,by and large, their experience does not match up to their company’s views of themselves.

In this white paper, we explore the depth of this schism; the major problems the continuation of this disconnect is likely to cause; and how we can collectively move to bring parity to what a company says and the day-to-day technology and innovation experiences. We believe solutions can be found by first recognising the problem, understanding the dangers and then taking steps to battle risk-aversion and, ultimately, take risks to redress the balance.

Executive summary

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IntroductionAll organisations are currently operating against a backdrop of huge upheaval. Changes in the way people work, buy, communicate and, ultimately, live their lives. This upheaval is being driven largely by sweeping technological advancements driven by innovation.

This zeitgeist is, of course, influencing how organisations need to present themselves to stay relevant. There is widespread recognition of this fact in the majority of UK organisations and, as a result, the language we use to describe ourselves is changing. Throughout 2016, within 17% of the campaigns and projects drp delivered, technology and innovation were either incorporated as a main objective or the driving force of the project. This rose to 20% in 2017 and has already reached 27% at this point in 2018. We can infer that many organisations are recognising and reacting to the need to ensure these topics move to the forefront of communication priorities.

For many of these organisations, the language used to describe their dedication to innovation and technology can be entirely true, to a certain extent. Often the dedication they describe refers exclusively to their core services and/ or products. Their commitment to technology and innovation seems to be falling woefully short in the discipline this whitepaper explores - communication. Marketeers and internal communicators are heavily involved in delivering the messages surrounding innovation and communication and, therefore, are perfectly placed to experience the disconnect between the language and the day-to-day operations of an organisation.

This gap falls in the realms of employee experience and trust. The Institute of Public Relations states:

“Businesses should make it a goal to close this gap, because a focus on employee experience is also demonstrably linked to bottom-line results. According to Aon Hewitt, companies that invest significantly in enabling leaders to work with employees on improving engagement are rewarded with a 29% increase in operating income versus those that don’t. Bolstering those findings, Jacob Morgan, author of The Employee Experience Advantage, notes that companies that invest in the employee experience are four times as profitable and generate twice as much revenue as businesses that don’t.”

Introduction

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Trust is vital, both, internally and externally. By allowing this gap between perception and reality to exist, and in many cases, grow, we are fuelling fires of mistrust by creating a false image of our brand’s complete picture. If our communicators have a less meaningful interaction with our brands than our customers, we invite them to feel as if they are second class citizens. And, as the custodians of your customer experience, and voice of your organisation, allowing employee experience to come second to customer experience is counter-intuitive.

As Forbes’ research into employee experience and customer experience found:

“To engaged employees the organisation’s success is personal. It matters, it’s a reflection of them and what they believe in, who they are, how they show up in the world.”

Putting our communicators on shaky ground, allowing them first-hand experience of the gap between the perception of an organisation and the reality of our day-to-day, will also perpetuate a continued problem with trust in our organisations. Trust is this decade’s most important communication currency and few organisations have large amounts in the bank. A Harvard business review survey recently revealed that 58% of employees would trust a stranger before they trusted their own boss.

Trust in organisations amongst the millennial generation has taken a beating in recent years. The Deloitte Millennial Survey revealed: “Perceptions of business are heading south. Millennials’ opinions about businesses’ motivations and ethics, which had trended up the past two years, took a sharp turn downward. There continues to be a stark mismatch between what millennials believe responsible businesses should achieve and what they perceive businesses actual priorities to be.”

With trust decreasing amongst our current and future demographics, allowing our communicators, the arbiters of our messages around innovation and technology, to mistrust us or disbelieve the messages they deliver, will invariably lead to deepening mistrust both internally and externally.

Introduction (cont)

Introduction

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Perception versus reality:Is there a problem in modern communications?

We can now infer that allowing a disconnect to persist between what we say, and our communicators’ experience is definitely damaging. Can we, however, say for certain that this disconnect exists?

The external picture continuously tells us that there is a problem. Gallup recently found that only 27% of employees believe in their organisation’s stated values.

Of the wider UK public, only 43% trust organisations, their messages or their promises and this continued pattern of internal and external mistrust is clearly a key issue.

But can we reasonably assume that our communicators are experiencing this disconnect first-hand? Our research, calling on the insight of a range of communications professionals, across disciplines and industry sectors, has provided some answers.

First, we wanted to identify if our communicators where aware of their organisation’s use of language around technology and innovation. Our communicators identified that 62% of surveyed organisations used language around technology and innovation in its external marketing and 61% see it used regularly in internal communications. A very significant 92% of organisations use language that suggests technology and innovation are vital to its future.

76% of organisations use language to describe themselves as either innovative or a market leader in innovation when communicating to customers, stakeholders and employees. 82% of these organisations use language describing their dedication to technology as either market leading or technological.

From our research, we were able to determine that the surveyed organisations are, indeed, engaged in the current zeitgeist. They recognise that to be relevant and successful, they must ensure that they permeate, not just their messaging, but their company culture. 59% of surveyed organisations have incorporated technology and innovation into their vision and value statements. Going back to Gallup’s research around employee trust in vision and values, allowing communicators, the custodian of these key cultural signifiers in organisations to mistrust our vision and values is clearly problematic.

Understanding, now, that our surveyed organisations are engaged in the rhetoric surrounding technology and innovation, we needed to understand if our communicators actually feel like their day-to-day realities reflects these perceptions. Unsurprisingly, some troubling disconnects began to appear.

At first, culturally at least, our surveyed communicators provided some positive reading. 50% believe they have the tools and freedom to be creative and innovative, although the 50% who don’t is, of course, worryingly high. 76% feel they have licence from their organisations to try new things, which is encouraging and demonstrates, at least, in part, a commitment to vision and values that have incorporated innovation. Our most surprising result from our cultural questions indicated that 70% of our communicators felt that there is freedom for failure within their organisations.

Perception versus reality

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Fear of failure and risk aversion are two serious barriers to true culture of innovation and technological development. As Daniel Kahneman wrote in Thinking, Fast and Slow,

“When assessing risk, potential losses tend to loom larger than potential gains.”

Perhaps we can infer that risk taking is permissible and failure allowed, as long as it falls within a strict set of parameters. True risk taking and real failure, the kind that can be invaluable learning tools, comes with a dedication to investment. Investment in people, in technology and in campaigns that break the mould. It is, therefore, vitally important that we understand, not only our surveyed communicators’ cultural landscape, but the physical realities of their role. If they can innovate, do they have the tools to do so effectively?

When exploring these questions, our research began to expose the disconnect at the core of the perception versus reality problem. And, while technology in itself is not the key factor in delivering effective communication, it is undeniably a vital component in the way all of us interact with and interpret the world around us. Technology is a vital vector for our messaging in 2018 and we can see that organisations are now presenting themselves as technological (82% of our surveyed organisations. If that is the case, we can hopefully assume that our communicators will have the right technology to effectively guide our messages to our internal and external audiences.

58% of our surveyed communicators told us they do not have the right technology to do their jobs effectively. This is a serious issue when it comes to communication

effectiveness today, and the in future, when technology is highly likely to take an even bigger role in the way we deliver communications. With our surveyed organisations’ rhetoric surrounding technology and innovation, we may be able to infer that this a historic problem and this new dedication to these topics means this won’t be a problem in the foreseeable future. Our communicators, however, indicated that 60% are not receiving the investment in technology they need to do their jobs today, and 56% indicate that there is no sign of this investment coming in the foreseeable future. This is an incredibly telling disconnect for our communicators to reconcile. They are delivering messages to our internal and external audiences surrounding their organisations’ dedication to technology and innovation, and yet, they can see this language is not true in their day-to-day working experiences.

A universal truth discipline is that unofficial or unmanaged communications continue at organisations, alongside official channels. This watercooler effect, or grapevine, is being magnified using technology. Externally, our communication tolerance is being shaped by the tools we have at our fingertips every day. When we walk through the doors of our workplaces in the morning, we do not shed our tolerances, we do not revert to the framework provided by our employers if we know solutions to our challenges exists that we use every day. Our research has demonstrated that a staggering 90% of communicators use their personal technology to make their jobs easier. In much the same way as the unofficial communication network, communicators are adapting to the demands of their job, even if the organisation they work for is not doing the same. When asked if they use software, websites and apps to make their jobs easier - especially those expressly prohibited by their organisation – 78% of those surveyed, indicate they do so sometimes, often or very often. It is undeniable that, if a company’s reality was truly matched to the

Perception versus reality (cont)

Perception versus reality

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picture it puts forward of itself, both questions should have indicated that 100% of our surveyed communicators neither use personal technology nor banned software to do their jobs effectively.

This is a major disconnect for communicators to contend with daily. While there may be cultural deference paid to innovation, technology, risk and freedom to fail, the very environment in which our communicators operate is not set up to allow these concepts to come to fruition. This can help us understand why there is a lack of trust across UK organisations in the statements they make and explain why, in reality, innovation in the field of communications is not progressing as it has the potential to do.

58%

Told us they do not have the right technology to do their jobs effectively

78%

Told us they sometimes, often or very often use software, websites and apps

to make their jobs easier

Fear of failure and risk aversion are two serious barriers to true culture of innovation and technological development.

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The barriers to successAs we have identified a problematic disconnect between our organisations’ perception and our communicators’ realities, it stands to reason we should explore what barriers exist to closing this gap.

Our communicators indicated that the top three barriers to communication innovation in their organisations are:

We have already identified that lack of technology is fuelling the disconnect for our employees. IT infrastructure is a very close cousin of this particular challenge. Often, communication innovation and new technologies are ‘shoehorned’ into existing IT frameworks that are simply not fit for the modern, agile communications landscape. Research from Rangewell, Managers and Forbes, all indicate that concerns around IT, internet and digital transformation are severely hampering progress and innovation. The Forbes’ research indicates that a staggering 84% of digital transformation projects in IT infrastructure do not meet their targets and fail. The managers research indicates that an intrinsic lack of ability to re-imagine a business is driving this failure.

1. Internalprocess

2.ITinfrastructure

3.Lack oftechnology

53%

49%

39%

The barriers to success

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What is particularly surprising is that internal process ranks as the number one barrier to closing the gap between perception and reality. Internal processes are entirely within the control of an organisation, and so, logically, should not rank anywhere near as high in our list of barriers. With 68% of our respondents feeling that they have the ability to make meaningful change in policy as communication experts, why then does internal process remain such a significant barrier? Two other hurdles, ranked 5th and 7th, go some way to explain this. Lack of understanding of the discipline at board level and amongst wider teams. This indicates that while our communicators can advise and recommend, confusion around the discipline is causing unfit internal processes to remain in place, hampering innovation and technological development.

Ranked 4th and 6th in our list of barriers are risk aversion and internal stakeholders. This is the distinctly human element in our challenges. The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants carried out extensive research into risk aversion in leadership in February 2018. They discovered that the overwhelming tendency of leaders and board members in business is to value protectionism over innovation.

In large organisations, breaking the mould, rewriting processes and redesigning business practices are challenging propositions. Evolutionarily speaking, we are hardwired to remember negative experiences over positive, as a learning tool. An organisation, however, is not biological and so this protectionist view is hampering our communicators’ ability to drive change and innovation and allows the gap between perception and reality to widen rather than close.

84%

Of digital transformation projects in IT infrastructure do not meet

their targets and fail

68%

Told us they feel that they have the ability to make meaningful change in policy as communication experts

The barriersto success (cont)

The barriers to success

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How can we close the gap?One barrier that we haven’t touched on yet is one of the largest factors in closing this gap - budget. Our research has already demonstrated that communicators don’t feel that enough investment is being made to address either today’s challenges, or tomorrow’s. When asked, in stark terms, if their organisation invests enough in technology and innovation for communication, 71% said no.

While a point of pain for a lot of organisations, our audience’s communication preferences and the ‘black market’ of using personal technology and software to solve communications problems in internal teams, means that this elephant in the room must be addressed. The solution already exists in the clear majority of innovative businesses. It may already exist in your own organisation under another name: The R&D budget.

We need to understand that today’s challenges are different, mainly due to the rapid advance of technology. Start-up expert Dan Perry has written that organisations usually assess their budgets by looking forward in time one year. It normally follows the pattern of deciding not a lot has changed in terms of requirements from a budget. If there is underspend, the budget will be cut and if budgets fell short, perhaps 2-3% extra will be freed up. This is no longer fit for purpose as an approach. We need to separate out our investment into a separate innovation budget for communications. This budget must not only address next year’s challenges, not only address the challenges in five years’ time as ‘blue sky thinking’ encourages, but, address challenges, 10, 15, 30 and even 50 years away. This process, sometimes called ‘black sky thinking’, as coined by Dr Rachel Armstrong, is a process fit for purpose for the modern communications reality.

Our vision, our business plan will often run five or even ten years into the future but, without budgets to match, distrust in these assertions will continue. As radically overhauling budgets and internal processes is clearly a significant barrier for our communicators to achieve

innovation success, baby steps can be taken to identify and eliminate another barrier through this process.

We can do this by systematically identifying the gaps that exist between our communicator’s experience in work and the external assertions made by our organisations. We already have two frameworks that are well established to help us do this. Our HR and communications teams will usually have a clearly mapped employee experience process. This will include several steps similar to the following:

1. Sourcing and recruiting

2. Pre-boarding

3. Onboarding (orientation and initial training)

4. Compensation and benefits

5. Ongoing learning and development

6. Ongoing engagement, communication, and community involvement

7. Rewards and recognition

8. Performance planning, feedback, and review

9. Advancement

10. Retirement, termination, or resignation

How can we close the gap?

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Simultaneously, we will often have extensive customer or client journey mapping in place. This will cover how our customers move through the following steps.

1. Awareness

2. Consideration

3. Purchase

4. Retention

5. Advocacy

Obviously, parallels can immediately be drawn between the type of process at work here. What differentiates our attention to our customer or client journeys is our focus on their communication touch points.

We will map out exactly how, why and with what technology our customers will be able to reach us. If we map this out, and subsequently do the same for our employees, side by side, we will identify if any disparities exist. If they do, we have immediately identified areas for investment. We will also identify quickly if there are internal processes in the way of closing this gap. We can then analyse these processes and ask why they don’t apply to our customers or clients. Do we have an app our customers can access freely, but not an employee app? If not, is the argument against having an employee app valid when we allow external individuals free interaction with us in this way? The answer will more than likely be no, providing us with a rational framework for challenging internal process and allocating a meaningful innovation and technology budget for our communications teams.

How can we close the gap (cont)

Type of Touch Point Available for comms with customers/ clients

Available for comms with employees

Web Platform Yes - Website/ Microsites Yes - Intranet

Social Channels Yes - Twitter, Facebook, Instagram Yes - Yammer

Live Interaction Yes - Experiential Yes - Conferences

Video Comms Yes - Video Marketing No

Augmented Reality Yes - POS App No

Virtual Reality Yes - Live Experience VR No

Apps Yes - Sales App No

AI Services No No

Our framework could look something like this:

If neither have the experience yet, then something

to address for the future

Areas we need to

address to close the gap

How can we close the gap?

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When challenges around IT infrastructure rear their head, solutions are less forthcoming. As we know, 84% of digital transformation projects fail. As the number two barrier to success, concerns about integration and physical possibility will fall into the realm of IT specialists. Using the framework above, we can at least identify where a disconnect could be occurring in our internal and external communication channels. We can ask why customers can interact with our IT infrastructure in certain ways, but our own teams cannot. Ultimately, we can at least identify real blockages that stop our rhetoric around technology and innovation matching up to the reality.

The human element, the perceived aversion to risk is at least in part, contradicted by our cultural findings. As surveyed communicators indicated, they are free to fail (70%) and empowered to try new things (76%). We need to address the disconnect between this perceived freedom, and the fact that 50% of respondents assessed their organisations as not technological or unconcerned with technology, and that 42% viewed their organisation as ‘not innovative’ or ‘unconcerned with innovation’. Contrasted with the organisation’s self-image (78% innovative or market leader and 82% technological or market leader), there is clear ground to make up.

The people problem centres around risk aversion and a desire to play it safe, rather than risk and fail. When we examine external businesses we admire, for example Google, we have a desire to emulate, but without considering its approach to failure. Google has over 20 failed products, projects and businesses under its belt. Not just small, insignificant footnotes, but huge investments including the Google notebook, Google+, and even, Google Glass (although this may get a new lease of life in the coming years). Each one of these failures is counterbalanced by an unbridled success like AdWords, Pixel and Google Assistant. Critics of this argument often point to Google’s eye-watering cash

reserves and say it’s easy to risk with a parachute that large. But this argument doesn’t hold water when you consider this has been Google’s approach since the day of its foundation. In fact, failure and risk is written into the fabric of the company. In its nine principles of innovation, number eight is ‘Fail Well’. If you do not fail often, you are not trying hard enough.

Having true cultural freedom to fail without restriction is actually a massive driver of growth. Casper Berry, former professional poker player and current motivational speaker puts this in succinct terms:

“At a poker game, if we don’t make that call, if we fold our cards, even though we could lose, we are turning down profit, we’re literally passing it up, value. It’s a great call. It is great irrespective of whether it succeeds on this occasion or not.”

Berry is talking about the fact that, in poker, the perceived risk should not be judged hand by hand, we should be judging our risk on every hand we play that week, that month, that year. What he shows is that even though it contradicts our gut feeling, in business we should take a risk on investing our communications and assess, not in isolation, but in terms of every risk we are going to take in communications, technology and innovation this year, the next year, and so on. If we do, mathematically speaking, we stand to make more money than we lose. It is the formula that underpins the insurance industry and, if applied correctly in communications, allows us to not only deliver a great experience but steal a march on our competitors and close the gap significantly between our words and actions when it comes to innovation.

How can we close the gap?

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We know, culturally, the desire is there for organisations to be as forward thinking in their communications as their language indicates.

It’s obvious that these assertions are not made cynically. The fact that they don’t bear out in reality for our communications professionals is clearly due to a number of complex factors that are either, historically engrained in organisations, or born of pressing technological and budgetary concerns. But, if we know that by addressing the human element and identifying the internal processes cited as the biggest barrier to innovation under the microscope, we could radically overhaul our communications. Then we could, without doubt, allow ourselves to take at least one risk, create one communication innovation, invest in one piece of vital technology, and use it as a case study for our future approach.

Ideally, we budget as if the project will fail. We know that we will put every measure in place to avoid that, but if we budget accordingly, it frees us up to be truly innovative. We need to deliver a project or a campaign that requires no existing comparisons. As an agency, we often receive a brief that requires a project to be unique and original, but with case studies demonstrating how it has worked for four other businesses. We need to shed this logic and take one risk, use it as a benchmark for our future innovations and underpin our philosophy moving forward. If we fail, we can learn from it and input our findings into the next project in our innovation budgets. If we succeed, we begin to build a bank of evidence for this risk-taking mentality in communications.

The choice to make business risks is presented to organisations every day. In 2000, John Antioco, a former Blockbuster CEO, was offered the chance to buy Netflix for $50million. Viewing the proposition as a ‘financial risk’ on a ‘very small niche business’, he turned it down.

We believe that the logic applies to our dedication to communication innovation. If the desire is there, we must make our realities match our perception. We believe that by understanding the issue as exposed by our research, using the frameworks and theories that already exist to support us as laid out in this white paper, and by taking one risk as the starting point, we can quickly close the gap between perception and reality and create communications teams that have the right tools and the belief in their messages to have continued meaningful impact on audiences.

We believe that the logic applies to our dedication to communication innovation.

Take one risk

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the creative communications agency0844 682 5989 anythingspossible@drpgroup.com drpgroup.com