What’s Your HR Story?

The power of organizational storytelling to foster engagement, attract talent, and drive change

Ever seen a two-minute animated explainer video drive an 85% increase in the number of people who read their employee handbooks? How about a series of short comics nearly doubling the number of employees who report security and compliance issues? And what about a revamped training program that singlehandedly reversed dire employee attrition rates? As an organizational storyteller, I get to experience these kinds of outcomes almost daily.

Organizations have always used the power of storytelling to sell products and create unique narratives around their brands. What’s a bit newer is how top organizations are now using creative storytelling and new types of content to accomplish specific HR and internal communications goals.
 

This isn’t to say that this growing field of organizational storytelling uses the same hyperbole and psychology of advertising to win over employees. On the contrary, it’s much more about how companies, non-profits and even governments use relevant memes, authentic voices, and powerful story structures to engage and inspire colleagues.  

From interactive choose-your-own-adventure-style onboarding programs and James Bond-like movie trailers about new initiatives to heartfelt CEO messages about the reasoning behind back-to-the-office policies, organizations are increasingly harnessing the art and science of storytelling to attract talent, shift worker behaviors, and build a shared sense of purpose.

Though I could go on and on about the unique stories I’ve seen and their surprising business impact, what’s even more interesting to me is how nearly every organization I talk with seems to be experiencing the same HR and communication challenges. With this in mind, below are five areas where top HR organizations are already making a huge impact through better organizational storytelling:  

1. Onboarding & Training

What kind of impression does your onboarding make on new hires? Given that first impressions are hard to break, your story better be good. This is why onboarding and training teams are now tapping into things like interactive content, augmented reality, and gamification to make training not only memorable and fun but much more effective.

One of our clients enhanced their onboarding with a fascinating video about how their products went from raw materials to the hands of their customers. A non-profit client tapped the cancer survivors they serve to kick off their training with inspiring stories of hope. And a financial company built a training workbook full of role-relevant games and thought-provoking puzzles—including their own versions of sudoku and Wordle. In other words, each organization needs to create stories unique to their values, mission, and more importantly, employee interests.

2. Workplace Policies & Initiatives

Whether it’s a mandated return to the office, a new drug-testing policy, or even a simple notice of corporate restructuring, most employees react to change with a lot of suspicion and resistance. And this is no surprise. Even when an organization says it governs itself based on a set of values, a lot of policy communication still ends up feeling self-serving and top-down.

However, I’ve been fortunate to witness countless companies completely flip this script through better storytelling. From empathetic surveys that give workers a voice to transparent explanations and inspiring stories that demonstrate how policies make life better for everyone, getting the story right often breaks down resistance, creates empathy and builds affinity with workers at all levels of an organization.   

3. Benefits

Though most employees care deeply about benefits, few organizations communicate them well or tie them to a bigger organizational philosophy. From what benefits are offered and how to access them to why certain vendors are selected, there are plenty of opportunities for great stories.

For example, when a major financial institution struggled to get employees to choose a healthcare plan during open enrollment, we co-created a fun video that helped workers understand the ‘alphabet soup’ behind health plan acronyms. Not only did the video result in more people choosing a plan, it demonstrated that the benefits team really cares about getting employees the right benefits for their families.

4. Performance & Compensation

Because these topics can be so complex and sensitive, many organizations steer clear from telling stories about how performance is evaluated and how compensation is calculated. The natural result of this opacity is confusion and a lot of distrust. In fact, it’s not rare to see inaccurate and unproductive narratives circulate about how raises and promotions are achieved.

Fortunately, we’ve also seen organizations prevent and combat these narratives by crafting highly transparent stories that walk employees through how things like performance reviews and promotions really work. In fact, one of the only internal videos I’ve ever seen a client achieve a 100% employee view rate on was regarding an algorithm for how bonuses are calculated. In short, workers are typically more loyal and productive when they know how internal mechanisms work.   

5. Recruiting

Your organization's story begins to form in the minds of potential employees long before they receive a job offer. This narrative is constructed from various touchpoints: job descriptions, hiring processes and interactions with your team. And each touchpoint is a new opportunity to delight recruits and differentiate your organization from competitors.

For a leading video game producer, I worked on a recruiting campaign where they replaced senior-level recruiters at job fairs with more recently hired employees, who could connect quickly with recruits and better respond to their questions and concerns. It’s probably no surprise that the company saw a surge in applicants. This same company experienced another boost in talented applicants when they communicated that new hires didn’t need to be interested in video games to apply.

While organizations have always wanted to connect more deeply with their employees, current technology and the shifting social environment have created extremely fertile grounds for organizational storytelling. Not only is there a huge appetite for new types of content (video, AR, gamification, etc.), the tools for creating them are more abundant and easier to use. Likewise, organizations have better channels for sharing content and plenty of ways to gather and analyze feedback and performance data.

In short, the time is now for HR organizations to start telling their stories in ways that rival the great content everyone is already experiencing outside of the workplace.

Author Bio

After working for a decade in Tokyo as a writer and content strategist, Seth High brought his results-oriented approach and passion for storytelling to Splainers in 2013. As executive creative director, High has helped dozens of Fortune 500 companies, startups and non-profits fine-tune their storytelling in the form of creative videos, information campaigns and training programs. In addition to writing and managing creative teams, he analyzes user research and performance data to make sure every story engages audiences and builds affinity for his clients. Seth firmly believes that any idea or initiative can be turned into a compelling human story.