Comms to the rescue: How to boost HR's reputation

“Often, we think about projecting a brand externally. But it’s just as important, if not more so, internally,” explains brand manager Simon Butt-Bethlendy

How can HR leaders build a better reputation for the function, and educate their organisations about what HR is, and does? Honey Wyatt assesses the approaches, and their impact.

HR has a reputation problem. For as long as the HR brand has existed, its mere utterance has sent shudders through employees worldwide. It’s an unfortunate truth that HR’s reputation has not improved with the increase of responsibilities of the role – so much so that some HR teams have rebranded to become ‘people teams’ to escape the association.

“There is a perception of the old style of HR,” says Simon Daly, employee experience strategy director for experience management platform Qualtrics. “We have to think about it differently. It’s about how you move the needle on the perception of HR as a brand.”

Internal communication teams can create shared understanding and meaning at an organisation, according to Shalini Gupta, senior internal communications manager at professional services firm Arup. So how can HR work better with the comms specialists, to improve its reputation?

Roots of the problem

HR professionals’ responsibilities have increased in recent years, and not just due to the profession moving away from mostly administrative work. HR has been tasked with keeping up with increased demands from both employees and employers.

HR often takes a reputational hit after other departments’ wrongdoings, too. Around two thirds (62%) of HR professionals report facing increasing pressure to mediate a disconnect between employees and the C-suite, a survey conducted in June by the Octopus Money team revealed. This led to 57% of HR professionals wanting to look for a new job in the next year.


Read more: Administrative reputation holding HR back


Headlines about leaders wanting to keep employees captive, move their offices across states, or enforce mass redundancies to save money, can also reflect badly on HR. Poor leadership can “really upend the work of HR and comms”, says Caroline Cubbon-King, communications consultant at All Things IC.

When this behaviour translates to tone-deaf social media posts, or companies failing to take a stand against injustices, that can worsen employees’ perception of HR, Daly explains.

He says: “People want to work for an organisation that they feel an association with.”

Daly added that the demands on organisations are increasing, and with them the demands on HR teams: “The volume and pace of change are having the biggest effect, and causing the biggest demands, on HR as a team. Connecting with employees, being involved, and how you communicate, is all critically important.”

Despite HR’s hard work, two thirds (63%) of employees do not think that HR adds anything to their experience, Octopus Money’s research found.

Further, employees perceive HR as the least productive department in their organisation, according to a survey commissioned by HR software developer Ciphr in January.

Influences on HR’s reputation

Anastasiya Saraeva, professor of reputation and responsibility at Henley Business School, believes that employees’ perception can be changed, as long as it is identified and understood. “If we want to change the perception of HR, first we need to know what triggers it,” Saraeva says. This will vary for each organisation.

Part of the disconnect between what HR does and how it is perceived could be due to people not understanding what HR is responsible for, and why its practitioners behave in a way that might annoy people, Saraeva suggests. She adds that what employees do know of HR’s role, they often do not like.

As Stephanie Kelly, CPO at Iris Software Group, explains, HR is often responsible for making the less-pleasant decisions, to the detriment of its reputation. She says: “As part of a much broader web of responsibilities, HR professionals must conduct redundancies, mediate poor performance and manage disciplinaries on behalf of the employer. The nature of these duties can foster unease towards HR.


Read more: "HR needs a PR makeover – here's what we should do about it"


“There are outdated perceptions of HR too: that they’re the enforcers of systems and processes for productivity. If you see HR as a department focused solely on making you work harder, you might not have a positive view of them. However, if you perceive HR as a team dedicated to improving the workplace and helping you reach your full potential, you’re more likely to appreciate their role.”

Cubbon-King adds: “A high proportion of employees expect their employer to comment on big issues happening in the world. Generally, organisations aren’t particularly equipped to deal with issues management, and it’s so easy to get it wrong, particularly as workforce expectations will often be vastly different.”

Communications can also impact how employees perceive HR on a daily basis, Cubbon-King continues. “HR messages are often the ones that employees are really interested in, but HR teams have a significant amount of information to communicate, from recruitment, through the whole employee lifecycle.”

When HR doesn’t collaborate with comms, information can come across as overbearing. She says: “HR is really prevalent and often doesn’t work closely enough with internal comms teams, so HR professionals can get a bad reputation for seeming to bombard employees with information.”

At the other end of the spectrum, HR can accrue a bad reputation when it is not seen as present enough within an organisation. Kelly says: “Negative perceptions thrive in an information vacuum where company decisions are shrouded from employees, or where HR doesn’t hold a broader relationship with the workforce.

“It’s important that HR and internal comms come together to identify and bridge any gaps, to prevent creating uneasy perceptions of HR.” Communication is a two-way street, after all, so “if HR leaders want to communicate, they need to start listening”, Saraeva notes.

Look in the mirror

Luckily, people working in internal comms and HR sit on a bank of information that reveals how an organisation feels about HR. They use employee surveys, employee subreddits, intranets and, of course, they speak directly with employees.

Listening to employees means looking at their experiences on a daily basis, and throughout their lifecycle at the organisation. “Employee listening shouldn’t just be limited or confined to an annual engagement survey with a limited amount of topics,” Daly explains, “it should encompass day-to-day life, or the overall experience for an employee’s time at work. That absolutely includes elements like HR and communications.

“Frequent listening connected with action can help lots of different parts of the business. It can be the catalyst for driving change, by being at the forefront of new information.”


Read more: Driving culture by listening – not telling


Once HR has a feel for how staff regard their department, they should decide how they want to be perceived. “Often, you think about projecting your brand externally through brand identity, slogans that describe what you stand for, and the narratives you build. But it’s just as important, if not more so, internally,” explains Simon Butt-Bethlendy, brand and reputation manager at the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health.

Creating an HR brand can help employees feel connected with the function, he continues: “If you build your brand, you’re building something that’s coherent and cohesive. You’re enabling colleagues to become brand ambassadors.”

Idris Arshad, head of people at charity Asthma and Lung UK, recommends that HR teams connect their brand with the company values. He says: “Usually mission and vision exercises are set aside for organisations, but they work very well for HR professionals to set out their vision.

“Mapping out how to get there is a fantastic exercise to identify purpose. It should be aligned to the organisation’s mission, vision and values. It doesn’t happen in five minutes, but it is a great way to start an away-day. It is vital for developing the identity for HR. Then it is about living that message and sticking to it consistently.”

Working with internal comms teams

Once HR knows its own brand, it’s much easier to build a business case that can be taken to the internal comms team in a quest for improving HR’s reputation, explains Sharn Kleiss, employee experience strategy lead at professional services firm Gallagher: “Comms can help HR get the pitch right on what they feel they’re there to do, and frame the message so that it lands with employees.”

However, “internal comms people are definitely not a saviour for HR’s reputation”, warns Gupta. Wanting a better reputation shouldn’t be merely a PR stunt for the HR function; it should be linked to wider business outcomes.

Gallagher’s State of the Sector 2023/24 report, drawn from a survey of 2,300 global internal communicators, revealed that these teams respond best to strategic engagement.

Kleiss, who oversaw the report, advises: “If HR wants to better connect with employees, there’s data to say that if you engage the communications team on a strategic level, they will give you the support to increase employee understanding.”

For Gupta, the best outcome involves working as a partnership to find shared values that can contribute to employees’ experiences. “Our role in internal comms is to drive trust in senior leaders and managers, together with HR, to ensure the reputation of the organisation and the leaders, and to further improve or enhance the trust,” Gupta explains.

“The more we work together and understand our common objectives, the greater the impact will be to the business’ bottom line. Engaged employees equals better productivity, which equals better business outcomes.”


Read more: How engagement between employers and employees has changed


These objectives can be used to build a communications strategy that can improve HR’s organisational presence. One way that internal comms and HR can align is to create effective HR communications for the whole of a worker’s employment.

Says Gupta: “Really focus on how we are ensuring effective communication throughout the employee lifecycle. If we work together, that will be reflected in policies and everything else.”

The personal touch

An HR brand cannot be communicated effectively without knowing how employees like to be communicated with, Daly says. “Understand from employees how they like to absorb information. Some people like on-demand listening, some people like video. There are different mediums out there,” he adds.

Personalised HR comms can play a part in engaging employees too. When employees understand how they can personally contribute to a business strategy, their belief in it boosts by 35 percentage points, according to a report from The Institute of Internal Communication published in June.

Employee data, notes Cubbon-King, can inform how HR can communicate its brand most effectively. Data-informed insights into learning, language and accessibility needs can be used to create a broad understanding of how people absorb information.

Tailored communications can help engage employees and ensure they feel listened to, Daly adds. “We live in this world of hyper personalisation,” he says. “Everything you do and look at, you want to feel like it’s tailored just for you. You want to feel like you matter.

“That happens internally within organisations as well, and the only way to do that is to genuinely listen to people and their views. Play that back in a way that resonates with them.”

Internal comms teams may also have data on how employees are feeling at any given moment. HR can take advantage of these insights to ensure that they don’t cross over with other news announcements when implementing policies, according to Kleiss.

One thing that communicators do well is know what employees want, need and feel, she says: “Simply ask comms: ‘What’s in the pipeline? What’s coming up? How are people feeling at the moment?’ and comms will have a good read on it.

“If you’re dropping information about anti-bribery training five minutes after something’s out in the news about bribery – or if the CEO’s bonus has just been announced, and then there’s a message about a pay freeze – talking to comms should help you mitigate the impact.”

Fail to plan, plan to fail

With all of these insights under their belts, HR and internal comms can start to build a strategy that will raise the profile of HR. “At the heart of effective communications is trust, transparency and a genuine human connection,” Gupta explains. This should be the lens through which HR communicates its values.

Taking a proactive approach to communicating values, rather than reactive one, is significantly more impactful at getting employees on the side of HR, Kleiss explains. “An alliance with internal comms can help HR work in a much more proactive, planned way, with the emphasis on: ‘We are listening; we are here to support you,’” she says.

To maximise HR’s time to have that open dialogue with employees, creating an employee hub could ensure that employees are constantly connected to the information they need at all times, Cubbon-King suggests.

She says: “Think about the employee lifecycle, and key moments that happen in a business every day. Create a central point for information, resources and templates, because then you could be signposting people consistently to the same information for a lot of those day-to-day queries.

“In the end, those inquiries will drop off, giving HR time to work with employees and line managers to find out whether that information was helpful, and review it accordingly.”

Stakeholders

HR and internal comms professionals are crucial to creating a supportive company culture. But leaders and line managers must be involved too, says Cubbon-King. “If there’s a broken link, the culture will be negatively impacted in some way.”

As employees’ first port of call, line managers can also be crucial in assisting with day-to-day queries. “The most trusted source of information, generally, is a line manager. It’s not the intranet, it’s not usually a platform, it’s a human,” Cubbon-King observes.

Managers can make or break an employee’s experience at a company. Nearly half (43%) of employees reported that their managers have negatively affected their mental health, research published last March by HR and workforce management company UKG shows.


Read more: Help 'accidental managers' develop key people skills


Gallagher’s report, however, highlighted that just 11% of managers were trained to communicate change effectively. Not having this training can prevent information ever reaching employees, Kleiss explains.

“When communications go out, people are asked to: ‘Speak to your manager for more information.’ Often, nobody has pre-emptively communicated with managers that there will be a communication directing people to them.”

Preparation doesn’t necessarily have to require a lot of extra work – it can mean as simple as providing managers with a list of FAQs, or a PowerPoint deck when big changes are being introduced, Cubbon-King explains. “Managers are often ready and waiting, and there’s a tumbleweed moment where nothing happens,” she says.

“That audience is critical, because if they don’t get it right, people don’t feel supported, or haven’t got the information or tools they need to do their jobs. That’s when people start looking for new roles or feel dissatisfied.”

Senior leaders can also play a part in sharing the value HR brings to an organisation with employees. According to Octopus Money’s analysis, C-suite professionals have a better perception of HR than employees. Over two thirds (65%) of C-suite professionals thought HR contributed positively to employee experience. Leaders should be heavily leveraged in HR’s reputation makeover, Cubbon-King recommends.

“It can make lives a lot easier if you’ve got an inspirational, open leadership team that is willing to stand up, answer questions, be open and transparent, and set the tone from the top.”

This can be as simple as asking the CEO to lead a town hall, or sending out a weekly email. “Our weekly CEO email has become a vital channel for sharing HR initiatives, celebrating employee achievements and highlighting company successes,” Kelly explains.

HR can also help by equipping leaders and managers with the skills to communicate effectively, Gupta explains, before sharing an anecdote from when she collaborated with HR leaders while working at Arup: “The HR team wanted to build leader capability and internal comms wanted to set them up for success, so they modelled the right behaviours,” she recalls.

“Having a good communication strategy was at the core. Right from the start, we worked with HR and agreed on audit questions together.” This set the teams up for future collaboration.

Gupta also advises HR to engage with employee advocacy groups, which can communicate HR’s role. “Make sure you include the representatives of employee advocacy groups or focus groups from different employee segments, so that HR and comms efforts are effective.”

Kelly agrees: “At Iris, we create safe spaces through belonging groups, where employees can discuss issues openly without fear of reprisal. All our communications emphasise diverse cultures and values, acknowledging both employees’ personal lives and the cognitive diversity within our workforce.”

Rolling out a reactive comms strategy

Leaders must consider how HR is perceived when considering how to navigate reactive communications, as workforce expectations will differ vastly, Cubbon-King comments. Getting stakeholder groups to go back to company values can help with deciding how to react to political turmoil, company backlash or unforeseen circumstances, she adds.

When reputation is damaged, falling back on transparent and open communication can help regain employees’ trust, according to Arshad.

“The HR brand is always there, whether you are consciously working on it or not. Being honest about what HR is doing and why, always helps when reputation is damaged. Listening to what is said without being defensive is key.

“The more aligned HR can be with the organisation, this will help repair reputation in the long run. Visibility becomes more important too; it is not a time to hide away. Get out more: to leaders, managers, team meetings, and employee voice and resource groups.”


Read more: After the riots: How to lead people during a crisis


Be transparent about when HR isn’t able to act on employees’ demands, Daly adds. “Lots of organisations like to share the shiny new thing they’re doing. They don’t always share what they’re not doing.”

“To build trust between HR and comms, and really drive that forward, you need to balance: ‘We hear you, but that’s not something that we can do right now,’” he says. “That fundamental shiff could make more organisations really thrive. It’s about honesty.”

Creating a feedback loop with employees can also help HR become more visible. Kelly adds: “Being visible across the business is key for HR professionals. Implementing feedback systems like employee surveys shows a willingness to listen and act on what’s being said. Involving staff in networks and steering groups will empower them to participate in change.”

Measuring the impact

For Kleiss, improved employee engagement is the measure of a successful collaboration between HR and internal comms. More widely, when engagement with, and awareness of, HR increases, this can benefit the business as a whole, Kelly explains.

She says: “HR practices have been shown to improve employee retention and ultimately increase a business’ productivity and financial performance, giving them a competitive advantage.

“When the value of HR is understood, it can drive more initiatives, have stronger leadership buy-in and a broader business reach, promoting greater employee engagement and satisfaction. Employees should be able to trust that HR is there to support them, creating a culture where they can do their best work.”

Bupa’s digital approach

Leaders of health insurer and healthcare provider Bupa created a digital platform in 2021, to ensure employees understood its values and culture. As a company with around 100,000 global employees – more than half of which are in customer-facing roles that had limited access to a computer – cascading messages to frontline staff was difficult.

Until 2021, Bupa had relied on intranets, emails and newsletters to communicate with employees, but found they were one-way, and didn’t allow employees to feed back how messages were received. When its new CEO, Iñaki Ereño, was appointed in 2021, leaders worked with intranet platform Workvivo to create a digital communication platform that would allow employees around the world to connect and collaborate.

The platform was based on Ereño’s vision of the company as an elephant – a large animal that is part of a herd – and the company values of being brave, caring and responsible.

The idea was to encourage employees to feel part of something much bigger, Jo Hudson, group director of internal communications explains: “Today, with Workvivo our employees can connect internationally, and share inspiring moments and photos each day. It has really strengthened our global culture. 

"On Workvivo we have specific tags for our three values, which people use to share stories of innovation, as well as to praise colleagues.”

The result is a workforce with an engagement rate of 83%, and the company ranking in the top 10% of its engagement survey partner, Glint’s, ranking. “Our global engagement survey score continues to trend upward each year, evidencing the trust we’ve built in our culture of listening and responding,” Hudson reflects.

“Workvivo allows our HR and internal communications teams to do a lot more ‘active listening’ outside traditional engagement surveys, respond more quickly to our people’s needs and get our people’s support in creating the culture we want to foster at Bupa.”

How video can help

For Chris Black, head of content and communications at production company Vizrt, video plays an essential part in humanising HR. “The HR voice needs to be a consistent part of communications throughout the board of the entire organisation. It needs to be not only a voice, but a humanised voice,” he says.

“This is where video comes in. It’s one thing to read an email; you don’t hear the tone or anything like that, but when you see that person talking, you understand exactly what they mean by their tone.”

As a global company with 700 employees in more than 40 countries, the Vizrt team uses video to give HR a presence among its remote workers – from onboarding, to town halls and learning tools.

Black says: “There are a lot of processes that HR creates for helping employees along with their journey through the organisation. Being able to take those different processes and break them up into video chunks that can be consumed when the employee sees fit, is really helpful.”

“The one process that has worked for us quite well is using learning tools. We create video snippets, place them in learning tools and use a combination of the learning platform with video and quizzes. We have a live interaction at the beginning and the end of that process so that people understand why they’re doing it.”

Bosch’s AI-fuelled approach

To create a direct line between HR and employees, engineering company Bosch created an AI-powered HR digital assistant, ROB. The tool allows employees to get fast, on-demand answers for HR questions, at any time.


Read more: AI versus human intelligence in HR: Finding the sweet spot


The software can understand, and respond to, employees’ queries in all major languages, as well as signpost them to further HR support when appropriate. It frees the HR team to focus on improving employees’ experience.

The assistant was created in collaboration with HR, explains Niklas Fehrling, vice president of HR digitalisation and global HR IT at Bosch. “ROB learns from feedback, allowing us to make continuous improvements,” he continues. “It also informs the HR team about frequently asked questions, highlighting areas where more detailed explanations may be needed.”

Since introducing ROB in April 2024, employee experience and satisfaction with HR has “improved significantly”, Fehrling says. “As well as information being quicker to find, it takes some of the pressure away from the HR team and frees them up to look at other projects.”

 

This article was published in the September/October 2024 edition of HR magazine.

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