New Year, New Narrative

Translating internal company narratives into policies and programs

The start of a new year is always a time filled with promise and potential. Resolutions are made, goals set, and a new story about how this year will be different, better, brighter is crafted.

As people return to work, it’s worth considering how companies can welcome back teams and set the tone for the year ahead. What is the story you want to tell about what your company is building towards? How are your employees included in that narrative? And how do your policies line up with it?

A strong company narrative gives teams an anchor point for why they do the work they do and provides a sense of belonging and being part of a larger mission. With fulfillment and meaning now central to employee expectations, there is a great opportunity for companies to set in place a narrative centered on meaning and employee appreciation and begin thinking about the internal infrastructure to back it up.

Companies aiming to create internal narratives and translate them into policies and programs should consider five key things:

1. Create space for listening

To start developing employee-facing narratives, it is important to think about what will make your staff truly feel welcome. This requires listening and learning about what is important to your employees and what meaning and fulfillment looks like to them. Creating meaningful narratives is most effective when it is inclusive and participatory, and as such, all voices need to be heard. “Employee listening” can take many forms. Surveys and interviews are standard forms of data gathering, but don’t shy away from more creative ways to unearth employee values. Learning can be fun for both you and your staff, and can be done via more dynamic avenues, such as visualization exercises, moodboarding, or facilitated music, cooking, or art classes and any other activity that allows employees to decompress and share their stories. The goal of these sessions is to allow employees to reflect on what is important to them and to vision the kind of future they’d like to see. Consider doing these activities more than once to further build trust and connection. Bonus: it will be great team bonding too!

2. Co-create your narrative

Once you’ve listened to your employees, you can see where the overlap is between employee and company values. After you’ve conducted “employee listening,” you can work with a smaller group of employees to design a new narrative together. At Next Big Thing, we call this co-creation and it starts with seeing where individual and company interests and goals align. Over the course of a workshop, your team can find points of connection that will be the beginning of a shared narrative everyone feels is reflective of the world they want to be a part of. Again, we encourage this process to be fun and bright—you are co-designing or refining a positive story for your company after all. Our co-creation workshops are designed to be motivating and uplifting for participants, encouraging participants to think about the values they attribute to their company, and what they see those values looking like in practice and action. We center artistic practices for co-creation because visual art and direct, sensory experiences are some of the strongest ways to engage people. Every company is different and no two co-creation processes are the same, but the ultimate goal is universal: company leaders and employees can reach higher emotional consensus and begin to “speak the same language”—a crucial foundation for beginning to shape a narrative. 

3. Make the narrative real

Once a narrative begins to take shape, the nice-sounding story that has been drafted needs to become a positive lived reality. This is where your internal infrastructure is essential. What are the policies and practices that will support your narrative? Our co-creation workshops ask participants to share what lived values look like in practice, so there are concrete ideas you can draw from right away. If employees are seeking to do more good for their communities, how can you support them in that? If they want more flexible work hours, what could that look like for your company? Remember: the solution may not be perfect or immediate, but a step forward is still progress. In this nascent narrative stage, having actionable next steps is critical.

4. Find opportunities to connect company initiatives to the narrative

Building infrastructure to support a narrative can be done by using and expanding existing policies or creating new ones. Often, companies will have different initiatives across departments that are siloed. Looking for opportunities to bring these into the broader fold not only boosts cross-company collaboration and strengthens the programs themselves, but provides immediate ways to adapt company practices to company narrative. For example, does your HR department plan employee appreciation events? If so, how can these be designed to more accurately cater to employee values and interests? More often, companies will need to create new policies and practices. Can you create employee resource groups or affinity resource groups to further integrate DEI practices in your workplace? Can you start a corporate social responsibility initiative that is guided by your employees values and passion areas? The infrastructure you build will be unique to your team, company, and narrative, but if you use your narrative and values as your north star, you should be well on your way to having a stronger foundation for meaning and belonging.

5. Follow up consistently and be patient and transparent

As with every start to a new year and all the resulting resolutions, the key is small, steady steps that can be sustained over time. Avoid the trap of moving fast and burning out. Creating a narrative (and culture) of belonging requires much reinforcing and trust building. Employees are more likely to respond to genuine, thoughtful efforts that offer slower, smaller change over bombast proclamations that offer no real change. Keep making space and time for listening and growing. Further, it is important to remember the narratives and stories we tell are ever evolving and the internal narratives and infrastructure at companies are no different. Set up regular touch points with your teams to check in and see how they are feeling. Continue listening. Identify what is most resonating with your team and see how you can keep expanding those areas.

The process of co-creating a narrative and supporting it with internal infrastructure is rewarding and uniting and leaders should be thinking about the power this process can have in boosting workplace culture and satisfaction. Co-creating with your team can help uncover new ways of being and working, and is a fun, creative and joyful process as teams ultimately write the story of the company—and world—they want to help build.