What’s next?
n.
n.robertjohnson
Unitingpeoplethroughpurpose.
narratives

n.
The future starts today,
not tomorrow.
Pope John Paul II
narratives, stories from story-tellers, is a collection of ideas, insights and impressions from the
worlds of talent communications, employee engagement, and organizational design.
Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
narratives

narratives
The Horizon Issue.
WELCOME ... 4
Agility’s leading role: The Future of Work
EMPLOYER BRAND ... 6
The purpose infused employer brand post COVID
OUTSIDE VIEW ... 10
SALLY BREYLEY PARKER AND LORI HEFFELFINGER
implexiti
Unleashing the power of disruption
Reimagine your organization as a living system
OUTSIDE VIEW ... 16
NEIL HARRISON
Lead Consultant and Founder NH237 Consulting
It’s never been so important to understand employee motivations
EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE ... 21
They called HR first. What’s next? The human experience
OUTSIDE VIEW ... 26:
MARIL GAGEN MACDONALD
Founder and CEO, Gagen MacDonald
Five impressions of what’s next
n.robertjohnson
Unitingpeoplethroughpurpose.
The Agenda.
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
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WELCOME
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
Agility’s leading role: The Future of Work
The Future of Work has arrived. It’s here. And it’s here to stay. Organizations that are
adopting tenets found in Future of Work practices due to their navigation of COVID-19 are
emerging as market-leaders. The promise of competitive advantage is no longer the theory
or hopeful outcome of past Future of Work discussions. We’re seeing competitive advantage
playing-out in real time.
Adopting Future of Work tenets and practices in a time of a global pandemic, historic economic
turmoil, and society-changing civil unrest, however, isn’t pretty. The urgency of the crisis
response to COVID-19 rushed us past any prospect of easing into a Future of Work world.
Change, by itself, brings anxiety and uncertainty to the workforce. Change in acted in these
times takes workforce anxiety to whole new level. But change also brings something special:
hope.
One of the many outcomes of managing through the pandemic is the acceleration of agility
throughout the organization. Agility, a primary tenet of Future of Work principles, accomplishes
a lot including giving employees the reassurance that we’re tackling our challenges head-on.
Purposeful actions give people hope.
Agility’s Role in Talent Communications
HR was called first when we needed to confront the crisis. Within weeks, organizations needed
to address complex people-centered challenges ranging from establishing or expanding work
from home structures, workforce downsizing, and realignment of workflows. Management then
needed to understand, institutionalize, and implement lifesaving safety measures to protect the
workforce. This urgency forced for some a new experience: making decisions quickly. In short,
workforce actions became more agile.
‘Both management and boards have been surprised by how quickly
they can make decisions when necessary. Once you have experienced
that, it gives you the confidence to act more quickly.’
—Nora Aufreiter, Corporate Director at Scotiabank, Kroger and Cadillac Fairview
4

As we emerge from the crisis, some are embracing a more prominent definition of agility. They are using their
experiences to create a competitive advantage.
World-renown agility expert Christopher Worley’s definition of agility denotes that there is more to the management
philosophy of agility than just making decisions under duress. His view is that organization agility is the ability to
make timely, effective, and sustained change when and where it results in a performance advantage.
So, as we look here to what’s next in the worlds of talent communications and employer branding, we see a need to
connect the dots of our state of work, agility, and change management. In doing so, we draw a few conclusions.
Agility isn’t perfect.
One of the foundations of agility is the need to adopt a mindset of experimentation. By definition, the
experimentation mindset accepts that not everything will work perfectly and that mistakes will happen. The
important thing is to learn and then use that learning to be timelier and more effective when making decisions. This
viewpoint extends itself to infusing agility into talent engagement and talent marketing practices.
New skills emerge.
One key to being agile in talent communications is mastering the skills of monitoring and assessing in real time.
This includes increasing your organization’s capability to capture employee perceptions, attitudes, and emotions;
document and verify these data points; and then transform them into narratives with a focus on action and
engagement.
Change transcends internal and external audiences.
Our first motivation, as communicators and change agents, is to engage. In today’s consumer-driven communications
world, however, engagement cannot be siloed between internal and external audiences. One of the most
compelling questions asked now by candidates – either directly or subconsciously – is what did you do in response
to COVID-19? How did your business adjustments impact the people of your organization? The positive actions that
you took during this crisis are not only important for engaging and retain your employees; they also create powerful
stories to entice and inspire those who will want to join you.
Watch the Movie
The new pace of business has changed us forever. Yes, we will always have to be thoughtful and deliberate when
making critical people or functional investments. What has changed is the way in which we arrive at our decisions.
Perhaps one of the best expressions of this came from Maril Gagen MacDonald, founder and CEO of Gagen
MacDonald, during a presentation on employee experience: “in reacting to the urgency of COVID, we were forced to
watch the movie instead of reading the book.”
This inaugural issue of narratives takes a closer look at what’s next in the world of talent communications,
organizational design, and employer branding. We share our viewpoints on employer branding imperatives
post COVID-19 and the important connection between belief-driven consumers and purpose-driven employees
in creating a new human experience. We are also blessed to share insights from industry leaders Sally Breyley
Parker and Lori Heffelfinger, Neil Harrison and the aforementioned Maril Gagen MacDonald. We hope that the
conversation doesn’t end here. Please share with us your views on what’s next.
‘... change agents must engage in awareness of the
external issues facing the organization as well as its
various internal initiatives.’
References
The board’s role during crisis and beyond, McKinsey & Co., 2021
Designing HR for Digitally-Enabled Agile Organizations, Christopher G. Worley, HR + People, 2020
Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
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—Christopher G. Worley, Pepperdine Graziadio Business School
5

EMPLOYER BRAND
The purpose infused
employer brand post COVID
Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
narratives
There’s no going back. Authenticity is
the new paradigm for action.

It’s interesting to see when notions take on a new twist. Let’s look at empowerment. Long extolled as
a central driver of employee engagement, post COVID-19 empowerment takes a twist.
According to Edelman’s recently published 2021 Trust Barometer, 50 percent of your employees
are more likely now than a year ago to voice objections to management. These workers are also
more likely to engage in workplace protest. This study also found that 62 percent of employees feel
that they have the power to force corporations to change. What this means is that in addition to
empowering your employees through purpose, line of sight, and access to training and tools, you
will need to include a greater emphasis on ways to foster, interpret, and appreciate employee voice.
This illustration is just one example of how the relationship between employee and employer is
changing and evolving post COVID. This example is also important to note because it showcases
several important undercurrents that we, as employer branding leaders, need to see clearly.
• Authenticity is no longer a buzzword, it’s real. The experiences of the past year have exposed
everything. Actions taken during a crisis tells a story. Your company’s actions during the pandemic
are the story now and it will be for a long-time to come.
• A heightened and prolonged focus on workers’ safety, wellbeing, and care has created a new
level of openness within your organization. Over this past year we’ve taken great care to listen to
the worries of our employees. And we’ve followed up on their concerns. The employee voice has
taken a prominent and deserved place in our workplace culture.
• Management’s commitment to acting for the good of employees during the pandemic has
dramatically changed the employment deal. Expectations are now at a new level. The implications
of this are just starting to be understood.
All of this translates to a belief that there is no going back. But we can look back to understand
what needs to be done to move forward. This learning is needed to shape the employer branding
promises and attributes that will take hold in the hearts and minds of current and future employees.
We’ve identified three areas of critical review that links this past year’s impact to future branding
messages.
Employee Insecurity
The greatest impact on the collective psyche
of the workforce can be found in one
encompassing area: security. From physical
safety to emotional and financial wellbeing, your
employees have had a lot to worry about. It’s no
surprise that going forward, workers will need
to understand how you will address their job-
related insecurities.
Among the questions to be considered:
• How secure will my job be? Many surviving
employees saw a reduction in their hours
worked during COVID which dramatically
increased their feeling of job insecurity.
How will you reassure people that their job
is secure? (Another area of insecurity, as
observed by Edelman’s report, is that 56
percent of workers fear that the pandemic will
accelerate the rate in which companies will
replace human workers with AI and robots.)
• How safe will I be from future illness as well
as any reemergence of COVID from variants?
Which safety protocols will remain, and which
will be sidelined? What assurances are there
that safety protocols can be implemented
quickly and comprehensively in the event of a
new crisis?
• What measures are in place to address my
emotional and other wellbeing needs? What
has the organization learned from a year
of intensely caring for the wellbeing of its
employees and how will that learning be
applied to benefit me in the future?
• What programs are in place to address my
overall financial wellbeing, beyond just
a paycheck? Market leaders will engage
employees – and attract high-performing
talent – by focusing on financial wellness
programs that are designed to give
employees financial security.
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
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Culture and Employee Expectations: The New Practice of Culture Communications
What’s next is a more prominent role in what we call culture communications. Culture
communication is the space that overlaps and connects employer brand, employee value
proposition, and employee communications. It’s where employee experience (EX) becomes
the focal point and the framework for a more holistic talent communications platform.
Post COVID, communicating EX will evolve to encompass all aspects of an employee’s
employment lifecycle, including employment elements that in the past might have been
seen as being mundane or uninteresting. For example, Mercer’s recent employee attitudes
research shows that flexible working approaches are now central to EX with HR’s new focus
on work flexibility (74%), managing virtual workers (70%) and onboarding at 68 percent. The
state of virtual working – both in practice and how we communicate it – will be an enduring
legacy of 2020.
Among the questions to be considered:
• What has changed in what your current and future employees expect from you as an
employer? What are their drivers of attraction and engagement within your distinct
organization and how have those changed over the past year? Once those changes have
been identified, which will need to be institutionalized and which will play a more short-
term role?
• What are the gaps in your talent communication narratives from before COVID messaging,
during COVID messaging, and post COVID messaging? Are they wide and totally
unconnected? What amount of level-setting is needed?
• How has your talent communities’ attitudes for corporate messaging changed? How has
this impacted how and what you say? The pandemic has forced most to move at “agility-
speed” forcing leadership communication to be as open, honest, clear and concise as
never seen, or heard, before. One thing is for sure, employees will not tolerate a return to
corporate speak.
Employer Brand and Internal Communications Infrastructures
As we continue to move from being in the state of “unprecedented” to a state of what’s next,
it’s time to take stock of what has worked for us, what hasn’t, and what will emerge. We should
resist falling into a ‘resting’ mode. Now is the time to assess and act.
Among the questions to be considered:
• What has been the impact of the pandemic on our digital channels? How has changed
candidate behavior been affecting our current recruitment channels, those developed
pre-COVID? Where should be prioritize our recruitment resources? On the employee side,
what internal channels are working well and which not so well? How has the expansion of
digital tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams reshaped how we take internal messages to
our people? What’s the impact of other emerging platforms like Yammer, Slack and the
like?
• How has your storytelling processes changed? The pandemic has accelerated the need to
connect, or reconnect, your people to each other and in doing so reaffirm the importance
of connecting to your organization’s purpose. How will you leverage the stories found in
adversity and use them to convey a compelling and inspiring future?
• How will you reinsert ROI and performance measurement to your recruitment and internal
communications? As we return to “normal”, how has measurement changed within
your organization? What performance indicators are you keeping, and which are you
discarding? Again, we can’t go back so how will we build new ways to prove our worth?
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
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Perhaps the greatest learning we can share is the viewpoint that voice matters,
and authenticity is essential. In this year’s annual State of the Sector Report,
Gallagher’s 2021 data reveals that 54 percent of responders see featuring
diverse voices and inclusivity as the biggest emerging trend for the next two
to three years. Authenticity in messaging was the next largest imperative in this
data set at 46 percent. This survey of corporate communicators also found that
the topic of health and wellness as having the greatest increase at 69 percent
and purpose and strategy as the second greatest increase (65%) for 2021.
Leading employer branding and internal communications at this time is a
great responsibility. We have the opportunity to reshape, inspire and reach
new horizons. But it’s not going to be easy. If we’re not careful, we can be
overwhelmed and distracted. The key will be to stay open minded, be graceful,
and to take note of what’s driving our target-audiences’ behavior.
References
2021 Edelman Trust Barometer, Edelman, 2021
State of the Sector, 2021, Gallagher, 2021
Global Talent Trends, 2020-2021, Mercer, 2021
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
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Sally Breyley Parker and Lori Heffelfinger, implexiti
OUTSIDE VIEW
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021

narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
11
Unleashing the power of
disruption
Reimagine your organization as a living system
Imagine what organizations would be like if we stopped
designing them like clunky machines. What could
organizations achieve, and what would work feel like, if we
treated them like living beings, if we let them be fueled by
the evolutionary power of life itself?
Great companies do not just respond to crises; they seize them as an
opportunity to become better—to cast off what is no longer working
and turn to new ways of doing business. The pandemic is requiring
organizations to rethink how they enable agile, sustainable, and innovative
ways of working. It has presented a profound opportunity for organizations
to set the stage for a new way of doing business, one that will make them
more adaptable, resilient, and innovative.
The tiny yet powerful SARS-COV-2 virus that impacted every country, industry,
organization, community, family, and individual, demonstrated just how connected
everything is and that we are all part of one large ‘living’ system. It could be said that
the pandemic was a perfect storm where the “imbalanced and unstainable states of
our ecological, social, and economic systems” (Fritkop Capra) collided with dramatic
yet very illuminating consequences.
As businesses reacted to daily shifting sands, they began to question the very
nature of their organizations in ways that often broke down paradigms, highlighted
structural inequities, and exposed unproductive mindsets. Most pivoted and
improvised short-term, possibly innovative, adaptations to get through the crisis.
As they experimented, many also began to rethink the nature of “work,” … seeking
ways of doing business that are more adaptable, resilient, innovative, healthy, and
sustainable.
As organizations ready themselves for a post-disruption post-pandemic world,
how will the lessons and illuminations of 2020 shape their mid and longer-range
approaches to their business?
What we now see and know, we cannot unsee or un-know. Moving forward,
organizations must become adaptive and agile. To do so, many will need to reinvent
themselves using a new, more holistic model of business… one that expands
beyond the predominant metaphor that organizations are machines, systems built
for predictability and control, to a more holistic metaphor that organizations are
living, systems that naturally adapt and evolve to thrive.
—Frederic Laloux, 2014. Reinventing Organizations

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Why a new model/framework?
While 2020 brought tremendous uncertainty, one thing was clear. Our organizations
were not prepared. Were the events truly complete surprises, or were there signs all
along that we were not reading or just ignoring? We believe the dominant paradigm of
business as a machine has enabled a blind spot that fostered a sense of complacency.
In their essay COVID-19’s Uncomfortable Revelations About Agile and Sustainable
Organizations in a VUCA World, Christopher Worley and Claudy Jules illustrate this
point beautifully.
Prepandemic, organizations may not have used strategic scenario planning tools to prepare for a VUCA
event. The economy was strong, the market rewarded efficiency, and we believed we could manage the
risks of a tightly interdependent, just-in-time system. Rather than assume VUCA and fragility, too many
organizations assumed munificence. They repurchased shares, drained cash, and failed to invest in
people and capabilities.
Managing across VUCA contexts involves accepting inherent contradictions and embracing paradoxes
in organizational life. A company’s priorities are often out-of-sync with its economic demands.
Unfortunately… a typical leader’s first impulse may be to suppress the paradox—to stifle one point of
view and promote another as accepted wisdom. This response traps the company in a series of self-
limiting assumptions, leaving it unable to learn and adapt.
We propose that an overly mechanistic view of life and business at the heart of the
unpreparedness of our organizations and leaders. It is also driving the imbalances and
lack of sustainability we experience in our environmental, economic, and social systems.
We believe that our prevailing mindset of business as a machine creates a blind spot.
• Our drive for short-term gain blinds us to the need to invest in and for the future.
• Our desire for predictability blinds us to the need to sense and respond.
• Our need for control blinds us to the power of self-organization to foster engagement,
spark experimentation, and fuel innovation.
• Our over-focus on actions (like adapting) blinds us to the importance of becoming
adaptable.
We have a choice.
1. We can remain limited on a path to slow death within the constraints of a business as
machine model/mindset, or
2. We can release to reinvent - transcend to transform - through a business as a living
system model/mindset.
Organizations face a choice between returning to a post-COVID world that is simply
an enhanced version of yesterday or building one that is a sustainable version of
tomorrow. The risk is more than that of falling behind—it’s the possibility of never
catching up at all.
—KPMG, 2020

narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
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How a Living Systems Mindset Shapes our Thinking
Organizations are living systems – they are not machines. The machine metaphor
worked well when we faced primarily technical challenges that were easy to identify,
examined in isolation (often by an expert), and required change in just one of a few
places, allowing quick implementation of solutions.
But today, most of the challenges we face are adaptive. They are difficult to identify
because the challenge is an inherent aspect/part of the larger whole. Rather than
bringing in an expert, the people with the challenge need to address it, often requiring
work across organizational boundaries. Solutions come from experiments and
discoveries and take time to implement.
To thrive today, businesses need to
be good at handling both technical
challenges that require benefit
from a mechanistic approach and
adaptive challenges that need a living
different, more organic, or living
systems approach.
Organizational change can no longer be seen as an event to manage on a path to a
new status quo. The fact is that we live in a state of dynamic non-equilibrium, a VUCA
world. This means that organisms, ecosystems, and organizations alike are operating in
a constant state of flux. Conditions (both internal and external) are never quite the same
from day to day, and the changes we face aren’t moving us towards some ‘new state’ of
stability, order, or predictability. We are and will remain in a constant state of dynamic
non-equilibrium.
When we treat our organization as a machine, we constrain and limit our intrinsic ability
to adapt and evolve and our potential to thrive. However, when we apply living systems
principles, strategies, and insights, we transform mindsets, reshape thinking, and
unleash potential. We are positioned and equipped to take on adaptive challenges by
tapping our inherent wisdom, energy, and will.
Implications of a Living System Mindset for Your Organization
As living systems, organizations are:
• Resilient (energy is added back into system/feedback loops)
• Self-organizing around a higher purpose
• Organized to enable flow (information, ideas, resources, energy)
When we lead from this mindset, we experience shifts in our thinking and practice.
Resilience
Our organizations can persist in the face of stress and recover quickly from disruption,
often to a healthier state. Daily operations do not zap all available energy and resources.
We have space for exploration, innovation, and change. We value renewal, so our
organization’s immune system remains vibrant. Information gets where it needs to go
without delay or distortion.

Self-organizing
Shared identity and strategic direction create a clear boundary through
which we continuously sense and respond, so our organization can adapt
and thrive. Simple rules liberate and empower our people to imagine,
develop, and initiate a wide diversity of organization solutions. We support
needed change because we helped create the solutions. Relationships
build networks for the feedback and learning that allow us to reshape
decisions, change designs, and change direction as needed.
Unleashes instead of controls
Form follows function. Our structures such as teams, policies, spans
of control, roles, and accountabilities foster the flow of work (ideas,
resources, energy) that optimizes value. We align around outcomes.
We don’t create hierarchical structures or add layers of bureaucracy
to micromanage activities. We are agile by design – and change is a
capability, not an event. We make small and continuous shifts, to a remain
a good fit with our environment.
Leaders and organizations have a tremendous opportunity to take
advantage of this time to release by letting go of outdated business
models and mindsets that will sooner than later cause them to fall behind.
Releasing creates the space in which to reinvent and innovate. The
organizations that do both will continue. Some organizations have started
on this path already, most of us have temporarily adapted and are mainly
responding to the day-to-day grind and some organizations are on the
brink of bankruptcy.
We are in an increasingly complex and volatile world where disruptions
are becoming bigger and more frequent. There is no going back to where
we were: there is no new normal. There is only the opportunity to lean into
the unknown by knowing who we are (identity) and creating the conditions
in our organizations, with our leadership, and even into our communities
that allow us to thrive. Yes, it is possible, but it is not a guarantee without
a reset in our thinking and acting.
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
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narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
References
Unleashing the Power of Disruption: Reimagine Your Organization Blog by Sally Parker & Lori Heffelfinger, Heffelfinger Company and LinkedIn
Unleashing the Power of Disruption: Adaptive Leaders Blog by Sally Parker & Lori Heffelfinger, Heffelfinger Company and LinkedIn
SHRM Visionaries 2020 Conference, October 20 2020, Josh Bersin
Who Do We Choose to Be: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity, Margaret Wheatley
Work Anywhere Together, KMPG
Big Business - The End is Near …, Nathan Furr, Forbes April 21 2011
Reimagining the Post Pandemic Economic Future, McKinsey, August 14, 2020
Leading from the Roots: Nature Inspired Leadership Lessons for Today’s World, Dr. Kathleen E. Allen,2018
COVID-19’s Uncomfortable Revelations About Agile and Sustainable Organizations in a VUCA World., Worley, C; Jules, C; The Journal of Applied Behavioral,
Science 2020
The COVID Pandemic — A Systemic Analysis, Fritkof Capra. Gaia Journal, May 22 2020.
Sally Breyley Parker
Sally Breyley Parker is co-founder of TimeZero Enterprises, an
organization strategy, design, and development consultancy. Her
work unleashes the life force of organizations - naturally innovative,
productive, profitable, and healthy. Her passion is social process
innovations that release the authentic power of the human spirit.
Sally has led numerous transformation efforts for organizations in all
sectors to improve performance, culture, and wellbeing. She speaks
and teaches globally on Flourishing Living Systems and has presented
at the Academy of Management, European Organization Design
Forum (United Kingdom), Organization Design Forum, Creativity, and
Innovation in Management (Barcelona, Spain), Global Appreciative
Inquiry (Johannesburg, South Africa), and a series of Designing
Organizations for Sustainability Conferences in the US, Sweden,
and Italy. She has authored articles and chapters on living systems,
sustainability, and polarity management.
She holds master certifications in Polarity Thinking, Advanced Strategic
Organization Design, Theory U, and Biomimicry. Sally has a BA Interior
Design, a BS Cultural Anthropology, and an MA Cultural Anthropology
(coursework) Kent State University.
Lori Heffelfinger
Leadership and Organization Development Leader for over two
decades, Lori has been instrumental in helping individuals and
organizations get to the heart of issues that impact productivity,
relationships, and the bottom line.
She has extensive experience working with Fortune 100 and Mid-Market
companies in strategy implementation, organizational change, and
leadership development.
Prior to founding the Heffelfinger Company, a management
consultancy, in 2004, Lori led Organizational Effectiveness at Raytheon’s
$8B Electronic Systems business. She was a Director of Organization
& Management Development at Honeywell. She has also held Human
Resource leadership roles at Honeywell/Allied Signal, Ashland
Chemical, and Monsanto Company.
Lori holds an MS in Organization Development from Pepperdine
University, a BS in Business Administration from the University of
Nebraska, and certificates in Coaching and Organization & Systems
Development, representing eight years of post-graduate study. Lori also
teaches in the MBA and MSOD programs at Pepperdine University.
15
Releasing creates the space in which to
reinvent and innovate.
If this article strikes a chord with you and you are interested in learning more about
the conditions which cause organizations to thrive, check out the list of references
and reach out to us at implexiti.

OUTSIDE VIEW
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021

With the world, the economy and
employment in turmoil,
it’s never been so important
to understand employee
motivations
Never can there have been a year with so much of such importance unfolding
simultaneously than 2021. The transfer of power from Trump to Biden is a rich enough
mix without the added flavour and seasoning of impeachments and potential law
suits. The Brexit divorce of the UK and the EU, initially partially camouflaged by the
predominance of Covid has been pushed, eyes blinking, into the spotlight with the
growing acrimony of vaccine rollouts. Putin faces perhaps unique challenges in the
form of Navalny, public outrage and the growing encroachment of publicity and
democracy.
And against this sufficiently dramatic backdrop, employers face the challenge of if and
how to reshape the workplace, and potentially the workforce, in 2021.
To pivot or not to pivot? To chase new audiences and new customers with new
offerings? To bet the farm on AI, digitalisation and machine learning? To have
everyone working from home? To bring everyone back to the office? Or a solution
hovering between the two?
Thorny enough problems. But in the, understandable, haste to answer them, what
consideration are organisations giving the employee, the colleague, the candidate?
Where are their heads, hearts and motivations?
Neil Harrison NH237 Consulting
Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
narratives 17

Anyone working, not working, furloughed, unemployed, under-employed or running a
business will have gone through a giddying confusion of emotions over the last year.
Will I ever work again? If I do, where do I want to work? And with what sort of
employer? In what sort of sector? With what sorts of colleagues?
Idle, academic, theoretical questions? Hardly. As vaccine rates increase and hospital
admissions go in the opposite direction, there is a genuine sense of a corner being
turned. Albeit quietly. Albeit hesitantly. Albeit nervously.
And with that comes the determination of employers to start looking ahead, rather
than nervously back over their shoulders. There’s a fascinating piece of research from
global consultancy, Aon, which suggests that some 41% of all employers are seeking
to evaluate their EVP, as a result of the Covid crisis.
So, more than two fifths of all organisations are actively working to adapt the
promise they make to employees and candidates alike about the sort of employment
experience and journey they will encounter.
Given the level of change, turmoil and upheaval the vast majority of us have been
through in so many facets of our life, I’m only surprised it wasn’t a higher percentage.
No matter. However, if organisations are going to land effective new employee value
propositions, it needs to be with a clear line of sight of employee and candidate
motivations and drivers.
People have lived lives over the last year that bore little resemblance to their previous
existence. Whether those lives have been characterised by home schooling, home
baking, isolation, loneliness, chaos, noise or silence, then people emerging from
lockdown back, eventually, into employment will want different things.
And that includes their relationship with employment.
We might very well assume that people are looking for greater levels of safety, stability
and security. With death toll statistics proving stubbornly high, fear of the virus, of
transmission, even, simply, of other people, has been rife. Any return to the workplace
has to come accompanied by the confident reassurance of an employer that has
worked hard to make the office and workplace as Covid safe as possible.
The other side of that coin, that assumption, however, is progression. Many people
have seen their careers put on hold as a result of the virus and lockdowns. With so
much uncertainty, with pay freezes and cuts, furloughs and redundancies, people
have either taken jobs they perhaps wouldn’t have in a strong economy or seen a lack
of career movement with their current employer. There is likely to be a real sense of
promotional impatience. And whilst employees are likely to have been understanding
about such a situation during the worst of the pandemic, as things start to improve,
that understanding might start to wane.
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
18

So, which is it to be? Stability or movement? Safety or progression?
And our grasp of shifting, potentially contradictory, motivations doesn’t stop there.
How do we feel about community? For many, this has been one of the defining
features of the last year – the absence of community. Those communities we were part
of through, for example, schools, sports, the arts, culture, even our families, have either
withered away or become more small screen than big picture. And nowhere is this
more tangible than the workplace.
We go there to share, to collaborate, to argue, to agree, to belong.
Except we can’t any more.
Conversely, rather than community, do we want to avoid commuting, avoid cramped,
over-populated offices. Are we entirely happy with our own company, delighted
not to be squeezing onto grubby, germy tubes, trains and buses? Do we feel more
productive and flexible working to our own schedules? Is an arms-length community
such as Zoom or Teams entirely sufficient?
And is a return to normal what people are looking for? Maybe, maybe not. We clearly
want an end to what Covid has wrought – financial, familial and emotional pain. Does
that mean we want to go back to a working existence exactly as it was pre-virus? It’s
easy to nod a swift yes, before we think that the last ten months have been a major re-
set.
We’ve seen significant and sustainable initiatives such as BLM, #BeKind and #MeToo.
We’ve seen heroes and heroines emerge (villains too, I know). We’ve been enchanted
by, now sadly deceased, 100 year old pensioners raising vast sums for the NHS and
we’ve clapped nurses, doctors and care workers.
We don’t want to go back to normal. And the normal we remember isn’t going to cut
it either. We’ve moved on. When we return, our expectations of employers will have
shifted higher. We’ll want more consideration, a kinder workplace and workforce, more
in the way of empathy and flexibility. We’ll want a better idea of what’s going on – 86%
of the same Aon survey suggested that employers were putting a greater priority
on employee communications. We’ll want better training, leadership, diversity and
inclusion.
I’m going to avoid the term new normal but people certainly don’t want much to do
with the old normal either.
And as we return, what do employees want in terms of remuneration? And
conversations around this sort of subject will vary significantly from industry sector to
sector. Covid and its aftermath have definitely created the haves and the have nots.
Just like career progression, salary progression will not have moved on at the pace
many will have liked. And with unemployment numbers likely to continue with their
upward trajectory for some time to come, there may be little labour market pressure to
push up remuneration levels.
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
19

But is that, again, what employees and candidates are looking for? Or, rather than
money, are people looking to their employers for more in terms of well-being,
mental health support and nutritional input. Over remuneration, are your employees
looking for internal support groups – where colleagues who have suffered Covid
bereavements, or who are carers, those who are home schooling or those people who
want to up their exercise quota can engage and share thoughts, ideas and feelings.
In re-shaping a new workforce and workplace landscape, employers have to do more
than simply guess and assume what it is that people, with a year they – along with the
rest of the planet – will never forget, never entirely put behind them, never truly rid
themselves of, actually want from work.
As we seek to rebuild employment communities, there is a danger of rushing to
construct a workplace that relates to a past that no one wants to revisit, or a future in
which your people feel they have no place.
Whilst it is hugely warming that employers are seeking to enhance their employee
communication initiatives, such communications need to be as bottom up as they
are top down. More important, they need to be born out of an empathetic and
topical insight into the hearts, minds and motivations of your people today and the
candidates who will become your people tomorrow.
Neil Harrison
I’ve been working in the field of employer branding
and talent intelligence for more than two decades.
I work with both agencies and clients to better
understand and articulate their people proposition
- why should great talent choose them for their next
career destination? In all this time, I can’t remember an
era with more change, contrast and contradiction. With
employment landscapes shifting all the time, it’s vital
organisations have a clear, topical understanding of the
hearts and minds of their people.
Contact
Email
neilharrison237@gmail
Website and Blog
employerbrandingadvantage
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
We don’t want to go back to normal. And
the normal we remember isn’t going to cut it
either. We’ve moved on.
References
UK Benefits & Trends Survey 2021, Aon, 2021
20

EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
human

Employee experience
They called HR first.
What’s next? The human experience.
They called HR first.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the first calls didn’t go to legal. Or to finance. The
first calls went to HR. This reflection recently offered by global executive coach Jim
Smith got us thinking. What has been, and will be, the impact of such a dramatic focus
on our people?
One result of the intense focus on workers is the heightened awareness, discussion
and rethinking of the employee experience. And rightfully so.
When we think back to the immediacy of the crisis, so much had to happen in so little
time. Workforce reductions or realignment was planned, decided, and executed within
weeks. Work from home (WFH) approaches, policies, and underlying infrastructures
emerged instantly. Virtual collaboration went from being the exception to being
the rule. Change management? No longer regulated to single initiatives, change
management expertise rose to the top of critical organizational skills.
In short, all of the pre-COVID discussions about people being your most important
assets dissipated from good talking points to emerge like the Phoenix: being people-
centric became real. All of this forced us to think about our employee experience.
So, what’s next for employee experience? We see the future of employee experience
evolving to its next natural state, the human experience.
Programmatic Elements of The New Employee Experience
As the employee experience continues to evolve through COVID, we predict that we
will see the expansion of ‘human-centered’ program elements, including increased
emphasis on people support programs like:
• Proactive mental health and employee wellbeing support and services,
• Increased focus on diversity, equity and inclusion programs,
• Employee needs-based workflow and working patterns,
• Continued emphasis on enterprise-wide safety measures, and
• Heightened focus on evidence-based employee voice and culture communications
created from progressive marketing and advertising practices.
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
22

narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
These new or expanded employee programs reflect an evolution in the employee experience. Each,
on its own merit, acknowledges an organization’s commitment to care for its people. These elements
are quickly becoming institutionalized as pillars of the employee experience that current and future
workers will want.
But can we go even deeper?
Purpose + Belief = Human Experience
The next evolutionary step for the employee experience is the infusion of emotion. But not just
the emotions of your employees, the future of the employee experience includes connecting the
emotions of your customers with those held by your employees.
Hey Belief-Driven Consumer: Meet Our Purpose-Driven Employee
Many people are yearning to be a part of something bigger. These people include both your
employees and your customers. As seen in last year’s Purpose Report published by the brand
firm purpose_brand, 82 percent of people surveyed believe that brands and corporations are
responsible for doing “more good” in the world than just making a profit. This report also found that:
• 80 percent feel social consciousness can be a genuine part of a company’s brand with no ulterior
motive.
• 77 percent prefer to purchase from socially conscious companies rather than companies that are
not socially conscious.
• 80 percent feel brand purpose, or marketing and investing in causes people care about is now a
permanent part of American culture.
The Purpose Report also noted that social consciousness is intensely personal. When pressed about
why respondents are passionate about an issue, they affirmed views of personal responsibility (I
think that it’s my moral responsibility), personal belief (Because of my personal beliefs and the cause
speaks to my sense of justice) and a reflection that the issue has always been important in their lives.
These belief-driven consumers aren’t a small group. Edelman’s 2020 Trust Barometer found that
64 percent of your customers are belief-driven consumers. And they expect brands to act. These
consumers will choose, switch, avoid, and boycott a brand based on its stand on societal issues.
Belief-driven consumers want to make a difference in the world. They believe that brands can be a
powerful force for change. They expect brands to represent their beliefs and act to solve societal
problems. And they believe their wallet is their vote.
At the same time that we are seeing a rise in belief-driven consumers, employees are yearning for
more too. Many studies have found that employees are searching for greater meaning in their work
and prefer to work for companies with strong purposes. One such study, BetterUp’s Meaning and
Purpose at Work Report, found that nine out 10 workers are willing to work for less to do more
meaningful work. Moreover, a survey of participants at the Conference for Women, 80 percent said
that they would prefer a boss who helps find meaning in work over a 20 percent pay increase.
Connecting employees to purpose and meaning in work pays off. Employees thrive in companies
that clearly define and communicate how they create purposeful value in the world. Sixty-three
percent of workers in these organizations are motivated to make a difference over 31 percent, as
noted in Harvard Business Review’s 2020 article Why Are We Here?. Sixty-five percent of these
workers are passionate about their work, versus 32 percent, and more than 90 percent of purpose-
driven companies deliver growth and profits at or above industry standards. Finally, BetterUp’s
research found that highly meaningful work will generate an additional $9,078 per worker, per year.
23

All good stories must have a villain. Here’s the villain of our purpose and employee story:
employees aren’t connected to their company’s purpose or the purpose of their own
work. As found in the aforementioned Harvard Business Review article,
• Only 28 percent feel fully connected to their company’s purpose,
• Only 39 percent see the value they create,
• A mere 22 percent think that their jobs leverage their strengths, and
• Only 34 percent think that they strongly contribute to their company’s success.
Creating the Human Experience
People are striving for greater meaning, in both their work and in the buying choices they
make. They want to make a difference in their communities and in the world. This desire
extends itself to include being associated with brands that take on the task of making the
world better. Purpose-driven organizations, and smart talent communicators, will see this
phenomenon and turn it to their advantage. They will work to connect their belief-driven
consumers and followers to their purpose-driven employees. How?
Evidence-Based Branding
As new as this concept may seem, the answer to connecting belief-driven consumers and
purpose-driven employees is found in traditional branding and marketing measurement
practices. It starts with understanding your organization’s true purpose, and in turn
arriving at an understanding of why consumers connect with you. The next step is to
understand how connected your purpose is to your employees.
And then we mix.
Analyze the relationship between these two measurements with a keen eye on any
gaps. Once gaps are identified, you can create internal communications and change
management actions to improve your employees’ connection to your purpose. At the
same time, use branding platforms – consumer and employer brand – to increase the
intensity of your customers’ brand loyalty to your company.
Bottom Line
We often say that authenticity is the new paradigm of employer brand. This is a
reflection that we now live in a consumer-driven communications world, another phrase
that we imagined several years ago. What we mean is that the ever-changing digital
communications world blurs the branding lines. Consumer brands need to add talent
attraction and engagement attributes in its branding architecture while employer brands
need to go well beyond benefit offerings to answer the ultimate question: why?
The future, what’s next vision is a seamless branding world. It’s a world where belief
meets purpose. And it’s a world where we make a difference.
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
References
Purpose Report 2020, purpose_brand, 2020
Meaning and Purpose at Work, BetterUp, 2018
Edelman Trust Report, 2020, Eldeman, 2020
Why Are We Here?, Harvard Business Review, 2020
24

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS
Starting your journey to connecting belief-driven consumers and
purpose-driven employees? Here are a few places to start.
Insights
Belief-Driven Consumers and Purpose-
Driven Employees Matrix
A D
B C
A: Brand Anxiety
• Consumers love the brand but are frustrated with
consumer experience
• Will quickly move on to another brand
• Employees feel overwhelmed by the lack of
fulfillment in their work
• Employees’ frustrations hurt both consumer and
employee experiences
• Low engagement, high turnover
B: Apathy Rules
• Both customer and employee experiences are
transactional in nature
• Shared experience, however, it’s shared apathy for the
company
C: Stressed-Out
• Employees’ passion for the company are unfulfilled;
doubt creeps-in
• Hard to sustain great consumer experiences which
impacts employee morale
• Risk of “losing the faith” for employees; distinctions
between purpose of work and meaningful work are
strained
D: Emotionally Connected
• Customer and employee experiences are aligned, and
each share a deeper relationship with the other
• Customers become active brand advocates and return
shoppers
• Employees find meaning, purpose, and fulfillment which
translates in to increased company performance
BRANDING ATTRIBUTES
Consumer’s Connection to Organizational Purpose
• I believe this company’s services or products make the world
better.
• I’m proud to support this company because of its societal action.
• I’m more than a buyer, I’m a brand advocate for this company.
• This company represents my values and beliefs.
• I feel good about buying this company’s products and services.
• This company is making a difference in the world.
Employees’ Connection to Organizational Purpose
• I understand my company’s purpose.
• My company’s purpose align to my personal beliefs.
• The actions of my company’s leadership support the company’s
purpose.
• The actions of my supervisor support the company’s purpose.
• I am proud to tell my family and friends about my company’s
purpose.
• I am proud of my company’s purpose.
• My work has meaning.
• I am personally fulfilled by the work that I do.
• I am appreciated for the work that I do at my company.
• I have the tools and resources that I need to do my work.
• I am proud of the work that I do at my company.
Questions to Ask
Determine branding
attributes by probing
customers and employees
on statements like these.
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021

narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
OUTSIDE VIEW

five
impressions of what’s next from
M a r i l G a g e n
M a c D o n a l d
1
When we think of 2020, we will always remember a year of disruption. And while yes, the
specific events we encountered were largely unforeseen, the more I reflect on the year, the
more I believe it fanned the flames of changes that were already well underway.
At the end of 2019, several members of my team and I spent a considerable amount of time
hypothesizing about the forces that we felt would most prominently shape employee-employer
relationships over the decade to come. We published those here. Revisiting them a year – and
what now feels like a lifetime – later, I expected they’d seem less relevant. I was wrong. In nearly
every manner, what we experienced in 2020 served to accelerate these trends, not thwart them.
So, for my five impressions, I want to revisit these trends in the context of what we know a year
later.
Remote Work
Before most of us had ever uttered the words “social distancing”,
remote work was already poised to reshape many companies in the
years to come. We’ve ended up in the place we were always headed:
our journey was simply traveled at warp speed. It’s clear from surveys
that the vast majority of “knowledge workers” have no desire for a full
time return to the office. Companies that force the issue are going to
have real retention crises on their hands.
So, my impression is: deliberate, intentional, and multi-faceted culture
change efforts are going to skyrocket in importance. We’ll need to
use new tools and levers to create cultures that allow our teams to
accomplish our strategies while rarely entering the same room.
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
(Denotes Hyper-linked Text)
27

2
Automation
For years, we’ve been bracing for a wave of AI-empowered machines to automate
many work activities currently performed by humans, resulting in significant job
displacement. That looming reality’s timeline has been tugged forward by COVID-19.
From toll booth operators to hotel maids, many jobs that were lost to the pandemic
will come back in robotic form. While companies are compelled to harness the power
of new technologies, how they handle this transition, these displacements, and this
period of underemployment in concentrated job sectors will be a real measure of their
character. For instance, Accenture (a consultancy that advises many companies on
the adoption of new technologies), has introduced a program called People + Work
Connect that links companies preparing layoffs with others that are actively hiring.
So, my impression is: the companies that manage to execute digital transformations
while leading with humanity will become reputational and performance standouts in
the decade to come.
3
The Loneliness Epidemic
Even before we were all sent home from the office, loneliness
was gripping society. Over decades, as our home entertainment
options have exploded, we’ve become more isolated from any
sense of broader community. Traditionally, work has played a
powerful role in helping us form meaningful human connections.
In fact, research has found that people who say they have close
work friends were 96% more likely to describe themselves as
“extremely satisfied with life”.
So, my impression is: even if we’ve figured out the process,
systems, and technology side of working from home, if we don’t
find ways to generate human-to-human bonds, we’re staring down
the eventual arrival of a general malaise.
4
The Gig Economy
Over the last decade, we’ve seen explosive growth among companies like
Uber, DoorDash, and Instacart that provide technology to connect consumers
with independent contractors. With the wave of jobs lost to the pandemic,
we’re poised to see even more individuals freelancing in this way. However,
we’re still in very murky territory as to what companies and these contractors
owe each other in these arrangements. This murkiness is further complicated
by cumbersome and fragmented legal frameworks that vary state-by-state.
So, my impression is: leaders at companies that rely heavily on freelance labor
need to actively convene the dialogue that defines these relationships in a
“win-win” way. Otherwise, they’ll be defined by others.
Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
narratives 28

5
Employees Seeking Purpose and Fulfillment
We’ve seen two colliding forces recently. First, with plummeting trust
in government, religion and other traditional institutions, expectations
are rising for corporations to fill the leadership gap in society. As
consumers, we want companies to help solve society’s biggest
challenges. As employees, we want to be part of the companies that
do. Second, people increasingly value non-remunerative benefits
provided by their employers. These drivers of fulfillment include
autonomy, flexibility, creative challenge, and work-life balance.
So, my impression is: all companies should be revisiting their
employee value propositions for a post-pandemic world. What you
offered before may be losing relevance, and you don’t want to learn
that the hard way.
narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
Maril Gagen MacDonald
Founder and CEO, Gagen MacDonald
Maril is a nationally recognized leader in
communication, strategy execution and transformation.
She’s pioneered a discipline that collaborates with
corporate leaders to optimize business performance
by engaging and mobilizing their workforce behind a
company’s strategic goals, its culture and its brand.
She’s also founder of Let Go & Lead, an online
community dedicated to new philosophies and
strategies for leadership.
Maril is a recipient of Arthur W. Page Society’s
Distinguished Service Award and has been recognized
by PR Week as one of the top 25 leaders in the
industry, and one of “The 50 Most Powerful Women
in PR.” She was also recognized as a “PR All-Star” by
Inside PR. She is frequently invited to speak at major
conferences and universities. Contact
Website and Blog
gagenmacdonald
29

narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021

narratives Volume one Issue one • Q1 2021
n.
n.robertjohnson
Unitingpeoplethroughpurpose.
Our mission is to unite people through purpose as purpose-driven
employees do great things. They work harder, deliver more, and stay
longer. Uniting people through purpose identifies and communicates
an organization’s authentic employment story.
We are a boutique communications consulting practice grounded in
the core beliefs that people are united by purpose, that HR needs
to infuse advertising and marketing practices to attract and engage
talent, and that today’s digital world demands creative storytelling to
stand out.
Are you ready to unite your people through purpose?
employer brand • culture communications • employee voice
Does your purpose unite?

Published quarterly, narratives, stories from story-tellers, is a collection of ideas, insights
and impressions from the worlds of talent communications, employee engagement, and
organizational design. The opinions and views expressed in this publications are those of the
authors.
Do you have an employer branding, talent communication or organizational design story
to share? Please contact N. Robert Johnson, Managing Principal, N. Robert Johnson LLC at
nrjohnson@nrobertjohnsonllc.com.
n.
www.nrobertjohnsonllc.com
n.robertjohnson
Unitingpeoplethroughpurpose.
employer brand • culture communications • employee voice
narratives The Horizon Issue. 2021 All rights reserved.