Pay Attention!

A classic marketing objective is to build brand awareness – especially for new launches. But this simply can’t happen unless the target audience’s attention is grabbed first.

We’ve all been there in our school days. When our minds have wandered off during lessons and teachers have loudly demanded ‘Attention Please!’ before getting into the subject matter.

Today, we all pride ourselves on the ability to multi-task. This also is a form of ‘wandering off’.  How much do we really take in when we’re not actually focusing on one thing?

The word ‘Attention’ is defined as ‘the concentration of awareness on some phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli’.

It’s therefore essential that any form of external communication gets over this attention hurdle first.

The same principle must be followed when communicating and engaging with employees internally.

So, what’s the best approach to take on this? Here are five questions to ask yourself, with tips on each one:

1.      What’s distracting people from what you want to communicate?

Employees may have major distractions which pre-occupy their minds. When preparing for any form of engagement, these need to be identified. For instance, are they anxious about job security? Are they feeling overwhelmed in any way? Or do they think they’re undervalued? All of these anxieties need to be addressed or at least acknowledged up front. Otherwise, no one will listen.

2. What’s the best environment in which to engage people?

Where will the engagement take place? Informal is often more effective than formal. Town hall meetings have their uses – such as making company-wide announcements. But engaging people informally in smaller groups around the water cooler or its equivalent will result in more dialogue. People will open up and be more responsive in smaller groups. After all communication must be about listening, not just telling.

3. What’s the best way to start?

Always start strong. Any skilled conference speaker or presenter will start with a strong point to make the audience sit up and listen. It needs to be the same with any form of internal engagement. It has to have meaning and, most importantly, relevance to those on the receiving end. Using shock tactics, which are increasingly part of external comms has no place here. But a high impact starting point is an effective way to immediately inspire employees.

4. What’s in it for them?

The communicator must put themselves in the recipient’s shoes. Employees often complain that ‘no-one tells them anything’. But how much do they really need to know about every company detail? It should only be enough for them to understand the big picture, the organisation’s ambition and how, individually, they can play their part within this to drive success. That’s motivating, especially when they know the criteria for resulting personal reward.

5. How do you make engagement stick?

All too often, after employees have been fired up through some form of engagement, the next day they go back to the day job and everything is forgotten. After the excitement, the reality of day-to-day work kicks back in. Constant repetition of key messages is the way to avoid this and keep them top of mind. Also, if employees are being asked to change their ways, nothing else, such as processes which don’t fit with this, should be seen as contradictory.

Unless attention is gained as the starting point, everything else will fall on deaf ears.