In this new series of articles, we present some of the presentations from the Connect 2022 Conference. In the first part, we present a selection from the presentation of József Nógrádi, Sales & Marketing Director of Trenkwalder Recruitment Kft.
“What happened after COVID?” asked the expert, as he analyzed the pandemic of the past two years and its effect on the labor market. According to József Nógrádi,
during the first three weeks of the COVID crisis, the percentage of people working from home increased from 31% to 62%.
He added that it was noticeable that the corporate sector was not yet prepared for the new and unexpected situation, and
after the pandemic, everyone started developing solutions and there was a need for an internal platform through which colleagues could reach each other.
As József Nógrádi pointed out in his talk, home office has its negative psychological factors. For example, we were not prepared to maintain relationships in the way we used to. In his opinion, many companies still do not have the right tools for effective internal communications.
Only 13% of employees use the intranet on a daily basis
- he added.
According to Trenkwalder's expert, who relied on his knowledge and experience, employees have begun to move away from the old solutions, but have primarily migrated to social media platforms. Companies are also making an appearance there as a result. "This is problematic because since as early as 2015–17, more and more employees have started to troll company Facebook pages, while at the same time they have expressed frustration that internal communications were failing to reach them. Certainly, the overwhelming quantity of information may account for this response," József Nógrádi mentioned in his talk at the 2022 Connect Conference.
"There's a lot of noise, and that's why it's important for employees to understand the corporate message, and to respond to it too."
Even József Nógrádi acknowledged the difficulty of this task and provided an example in his talk. The majority of workers are likely to be unaware of the company's strategy, which is typically developed by upper-level decision-makers at their own level. He then emphasized:
72% of employees do not fully understand the company's strategy.
"Why do I work here?" - asked József Nógrádi, not necessarily a rhetorical question. "We could be adding value, and even stopping the tendency to leave. Because while we have superficial communication and a lot of contacts, we don't really understand our colleagues. What do they think?
It would be important to have deeper relationships. Let's find out what their goals are! I should be able to support them, and their goals should support me!"
However, only 23% of business leaders believe there is an excellent alignment between company and employee objectives.
Not only is this a sobering number, but only 40% of professionals think that workers have a "good" or "very good" understanding of how they fit into the organization's strategy.
According to Trenkwalder's Sales & Marketing Director, people are increasingly turning to multimedia content, which can be attributed to the impact of social media.
Employees are 75% more likely to watch a video than read a text. Video has become part of corporate communication.
“Organizations with effective communication programs are 3.5 times more likely to perform better than their peers, and 62% of emails sent to employees are irrelevant," József Nógrádi finally pitched to the audience, adding that instead of a lot of content, we should respond to what employees care about. It's worth looking at what's more readable: a GDPR text or pictures of a bake-off competition organized by colleagues.
"Because it's important to understand how our own employees think!" József Nógrádi finally underlined.
