Blog
Here at Message House we have been advising clients on communicating in the context of longer lives for over five years now. It’s great to see some of the research we did to support the brilliant Phoenix Insights team at Phoenix Group published this week on the vital issue of flexible working. With the new legislative changes giving people the right to request flexible work from day one of employment, the research highlights how understanding the different motivations for flexible work will help employers attract and retain a diverse workforce. It’s particularly fascinating to me that a factual description such as ‘3 days a week worker’ was just as appealing as ‘part-time’ and ‘flexible’ worker. This helps gives employers a better understanding of how to have constructive conversations with their employees about flexibility.
We all know that keeping focused on tasks at work can be challenging. It was bad enough when we were full-time in the office, with frequent, noisy interruptions or chatty colleagues. Adding all the digital tools we now have with hybrid working, along with the distractions of working from home, moments of real peace and quiet are rare. While many think about the cost to productivity, the role of internal communications in this equation often receives less attention.
With Work and Pensions secretary Mel Stride yesterday appealing to employers to give over 50s greater flexibility to attract them back to the workplace, we have been looking at workplace expectations. Message House Director Rachel Lloyd notes that while flexibility is a key criteria, indeed a non-negotiable for some, it’s not enough on its own to ensure an engaged workforce. Our research suggests that when organisations create an environment that understands and responds to differing needs and also ensure enough autonomy to make day to day work more fulfilling, employees and employers alike will benefit.
In the last 12 months, Message House has conducted more focus groups than ever before, covering a wide range of sectors, clients and objectives. These hundreds of hours across the moderating table and behind the one-way glass offer a fantastic viewpoint on the patterns that emerge in response to communications.
Message House conducted three focus groups with members of the UK general public from London, Manchester and Glasgow on Monday 11th October, exploring awareness of COP26, levels of concern around the environment and testing example messages. This letter to world leaders from the UK public is inspired by the findings.
Once upon a time, being green alone was enough to impress consumers and commentators and win praise for brands – but when every company loudly trumpets their sustainability plans, have the goalposts of expectations been moved? And in the face of an increasingly cynical public, what do brands need to do to show they’re acting truly sustainably, and not just box-ticking?
Washington folklore states that a foreign conflict cannot make or break a president unless it dominates on polling day. It’s certainly true that voters have short time horizons and Biden’s saving grace might be that the crisis in Afghanistan has occurred early in his presidency. Biden started his term in the White House by proclaiming that ‘America is back!’ but a withdrawal from a foreign conflict makes his administration look anything but an America in ascendancy. To avoid losing credibility, it will be important for Biden to frame his narrative and his decision to leave Afghanistan in an easy to swallow pill for the American people.
