Compelling Company Narrative Drives Clarity and Engagement for Talent, Leadership, and Learning Programs

THE SITUATION

A talent and development team at a global technology company found itself struggling to engage employees in its many talent, leadership, and learning programs. Despite the hundreds of quality offerings available, employees were either not taking advantage of them or weren’t sure how to engage with them. The reason? According to employees, they were overwhelmed by the sheer volume, unclear how to navigate to the right program that best fit their development needs, and didn’t understand how all the pieces fit together. As a result, employees were missing out on opportunities to grow in their careers.

The head of Talent & Leadership Development turned to Blue Beyond to develop a messaging framework that would help employees clearly understand how the many different programs could support each person’s unique career journey within the context of the company’s long-term vision for growth.

WHAT WE DID

Blue Beyond partnered with the client to craft an overarching narrative with the goal of helping employees make sense of the talent and learning programs while also connecting them to the organization’s broader purpose.

Listened to employees

To begin, we conducted a series of focus groups and interviews with HR leaders and business partners to understand employees’ current experience with the company’s talent and leadership programs, what they did and didn’t know about the available offerings, and how they’d like an improved experience to feel in the future. The insight told us employees needed an explicit connection between talent offerings, career development, and the company’s growth strategy.

Created a compelling company narrative

Using data gathered from these conversations, we helped create a narrative framework that connected the talent, leadership, and learning programs to one another and to the company’s core messages. We worked with the client to craft big ideas for employees to connect to, short descriptions that expanded on these big ideas, and explanations of how the corresponding benefits impacted each individual’s learning and development.

Each message was written with intention, using carefully selected language that we knew would resonate with employees, connect to the company’s strategy, values, and brand, and feel relevant to employees regardless of where they were in their career journey. It was important that each piece of the narrative framework mapped back to the broader cohesive message that tied the programs together.

Our in-house visual communications team designed a look and feel that translated the narrative into engaging visuals. The completed package included recommendations for embedding the narrative framework across all of the team’s talent and development offerings.