Author Kevin Thomson

ICEmarq™ Benchmark Data

Conducted by Research Now

Highlights from Full Report – Jan 2011

www.thearating.wordpress.com

The UKAR Advocacy ‘A Rating’ reflects those “make or break” attitudes of every workforce which go beyond engagement into active advocacy. For all organisations this has an impact on:

•Our organisational reputation as advocated by our employees – inside and out

•Our quality of customer service for those in direct and indirect contact

•Our „word of mouth‟ messages that spread in person and in a Web 2.0 world

•Existing and potential employee perceptions of our organisation as “an employer of choice”

•The level of involvement in external activities among our communities

•The predicted level of engagement and collaboration of our employees

•Peer to peer motivation, or demotivation from the strong „dissenters‟

•Providing dialogue between leaders, managers and staff as to what makes strong advocacy

•Productivity, profitability and contribution across all areas of activity

For the organisation

•It assists the communication and HR functions in determining remedial intervention and communication strategy.

•It leads into the development of a tactical plan to enhance engagement and advocacy in each of the core areas

•It provides management with a single, simple set of measures (like NPS) against which to benchmark other measures.

The UK A Rating™ – A New Benchmark of Employee Engagement: A 2010- 2011 survey.

The 4 C’s – The benchmark provides 4 scores and one overall score covering advocacy for the key areas of an

organisations areas of operation; C1 - Customers, C2 - Company, C3 - Communities, C4 – Corporate and Collaborative

Relationships.

Overall UK Rating – The „strongly agree‟ measure creating „The Advocates‟ is 29% i.e. less than 3 in 10 employees

are strong advocates for everything their organisation does.

The Great Leadership Divide – From a high of 68% advocacy among leaders for their products and services, there is

massive advocacy gap between leaders and staff . This demonstrates a mismatch between levels of commitment - in

all areas of an organisations activity. Most important is the divide from 68% Directors to 52% Managers and only 33%

for staff for he Customer advocacy scores. A critical issue with significant implications for communication and out-dated

„team briefing‟ processes in a Web 2.0 world

The ‘Advocacy Slide’ – Advocacy for each of the 4 C‟s slides from a high of 43% for „Customer‟ advocacy for products

and services (Technology Sector) to 13% for „Collaboration‟ advocacy (Healthcare Sector)

The C4 ‘Collaboration’ Score - The average score of only 18% for Collaboration centric advocacy represents an uphill

battle for organisations gaining support for external relationships amongst employees. The gap between the highest

and lowest scores depicts a „Collaboration Advocacy Chasm‟.

Author’s Note

How strongly do your employees advocate to others all your organisations core activities?

In tough and challenging times, amid global concern over environmental issues, „positivity‟ is hard to find. The UK „A Rating‟

(UKAR) is a new benchmark for employee advocacy going beyond employee „satisfaction‟ and „engagement‟. It‟s a „positivity

index‟ for your all your activities under the 4 C‟s - Customer activities, your Company inside, your Communities and your

Collaborative relationships with partners, press and investors. It‟s goal is to find the people who „Accentuate the positive‟ –

your „Advocates‟. Stronger relationships, performance and word of mouth marketing can be built from there.

With four key questions the word of mouth positivity index gauges employee advocacy across the core activities of an

organisation. The simple approach delivers a separate A Rating (advocacy) score for your employees who say „I talk

positively about…‟ each of the 4 C‟s. This creates one overall positivity score – The A Rating.

Today‟s communicative, collaborative organisations - like Marks and Spencer, who demonstrate this with „Plan A‟ - recognise

that all an organisations relationships help build the reputation of the business and brand, from the inside out.

The question is, do the people who matter most to an organisations success, its people, talk to others positively.

The UK A Ratings for employee advocacy focus on the strongly positive advocacy answers . Why? Because strongly positive

is the true measure of an organisations communication, engagement and leadership. The „Minority Report‟ of those who

„strongly disagree‟ with being positive creates a separate focus to „eliminate the negative‟.

A New Measure for a New Set of Relationships

The UKAR was devised, and launched to coincide with the launch of BS11000 Collaborative Business Relationships at the

House of Lords Dec 7. UKAR can be run separately for any organisation or run as part of a new approach to employee

measurement due out in Q1 2011 – ICEmarq™ Surveys. UKAR forms the basis for The Advocacy Communication

Programme.

UKAR is a benchmark survey of employees for their organisation‟s key activities, representing the strongly held views of

people across the 4 C‟s.

4 C’s - Core Questions

C1 - The Customer Question – „I talk positively to people about the brands, services and products our organisation offers.‟

C2 - The Company Question – „I talk positively to people about the fact that our organisation is a good place to work.‟

C3 - The Communities Question – „I talk positively to people about the responsible way we act in our communities.‟

C4 - The Corporate + Collaboration Question – „I talk positively to people about the way our organisation acts towards

investors, suppliers and the media.‟

See Methodology - Appendix

Strong Advocates HIGHEST UK AR LOWEST UKAR

CUSTOMER Brands/Services/Products

Technology

43%

Healthcare

28%

COMPANY

Good place to work

Technology

41%

Retail & Government

25%

COMMUNITIES

Responsible way we act

Government

38%

Retail

18%

COLLABORATION

Investors/Suppliers/Media

Technology

28%

Healthcare

13%

Strong Advocacy through word of mouth amongst your colleagues, including leaders and managers is the

powerhouse for driving performance, and reinforcing attitudes and behaviours with customers, colleagues on

the community and with collaborative relationships.

© Kevin Thomson 2010

1. Overall UK Employee Advocacy - Strong advocacy i.e. the word of mouth index overall amongst employees is

29% i.e. less than 3 out of 10 who talk positively about all aspect of their organisations activities. As advocacy is a

tangible measure of employee engagement, which impacts customer service and performance (MacLeod Report),

the UKAR demonstrates a lot needs to be done. See recommendations.

2. The Great Leadership Divide - From a high of 68% advocacy among leaders for their products and services (why

not 90%+) there is massive advocacy gap between leaders and staff which demonstrates a mismatch between

levels of commitment - in all areas of an organisations activity. Most important is the divide from 68% Directors to

52% Managers and only 33% for staff for he Customer advocacy scores. A critical issue.

3. High advocacy in the Technology sector Strong advocacy is highest in 3 out of four „A Ratings‟ in the technology

sector. Whilst the figures diminish across the 4 C‟s (see Advocacy Slide) the word of mouth index is highest in the

UK. This is good news for an economy looking to drive export in this sector.

4. Low advocacy across all messages. Strong advocacy does not achieve a score of 50% or more in any sector.

This reflects on how strongly people will talk positively about the core output of their organisation. All four C‟s

demonstrate low strong advocacy. This is especially true of „Community‟ - a measure of advocacy for corporate

responsibility and „Collaboration‟ - where organisations are looking for strong collaborative external relationships.

5. The ‘Advocacy Slide’ The falling scores across the 4 C‟s shows how advocacy tails off across key areas of

organisations activities i.e. advocacy for products and services; advocacy as a place to work; advocacy for

responsibility in the community, and advocacy about external relationships.

6. More…

6. The C4 Score and ‘Collaboration Chasm’ The low Collaboration C4 score creates the gap between the highest rating

with „Customers‟ and lowest rating of all in „Collaboration‟ i.e. the critical area where good investor relationships and interest of

the media are vital, especially in a Web2.0 connected world, and where partnering and collaboration are the key to „more with

less‟. Employee advocacy can be vital in all of theses areas.

7. A great place to work? - The efforts of organisations to create „a great place to work‟ have failed to gain strong advocates

for the UK as a whole, with only a 25% UKAR in government and retail, and an overall UKAR average of only 32% - only just

over 3 in 10 employees. That leaves 7 in 10 needed as strong advocates for what they, and their organisation represent.

8. The younger generation Younger advocates demonstrate stronger advocacy for an organisations products and services but

exhibit a similar Advocacy Slide across all four areas; with a noticeable lowering of advocacy for Community issues – half that

of Customer advocacy.

9. Community Advocacy i.e. corporate responsibility comes a poor third in advocacy except in the Public Sector

10. What chance „The UK Big Society‟ when strong advocacy overall at work is low – even for products and services but

especially other activities outside the workplace.

11 The Negativity Rating – The constant 3% of those who „strongly disagree‟ that they are positive about their organisation is

good news, which needs to be tempered by the negativity index multiplier where people who are disassociated from the

organisation are more likely to tell more people and will more strongly influence those they tell. This can be assessed in

follow-up qualitative surveys

12. Highest & Lowest UKAR The highest strong advocacy scores across all areas are in technology and leisure at 43%. The

lowest strong advocacy scores rest in healthcare, retail and leisure at 13-14%. Apart from „Community‟ the public sector

scores lowest in each category.

0

5

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UK A Rating Customers Company Communities Corporate +Collaborative

Legend % Green– Strong Advocates %Amber – Strong Dissenters %

The Questions to ask? „What is happening with our communication; our engagement

strategy, and the messages our employees are giving internally, to each other, and to our

customers and communities outside?‟

© Kevin Thomson 2010

0

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50

60

70

80

Customer Company Community Corporate +Collaboration

Green – Director Amber – Manager Red- Staff

The question to ask. „Do you think your staff think like you? Are you giving right

message and getting back the wrong messages‟

© Kevin Thomson 2010

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Customer Company Community Corporate +Collaborative

Green - SME‟s (<500 people) Amber - Larger Org‟s (>500) Red - Public/3rd Sector

The Question to ask? „Is it just the customer who we think important?‟

© Kevin Thomson 2010

0

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Customer Corporate + Collaboration

Green - SME‟s (-500) Amber - Larger Org‟s (+500) Red Public/3rd Sector

The question to ask. „Is it just the customer who we think important?‟

© Kevin Thomson 2010

0

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50

Customer Company Community Collaboration

Green – 16-25 Amber 26-35 Red 36-45 Blue – 46-55 Yellow 56-65

The question to ask. „Why the Advocacy Slide across all ages?‟

© Kevin Thomson 2010

The Advocacy Slide - When measured against the 4 C‟s every metric shows the „slide‟ in advocacy for the core

activities of an organisation.

The Implications – For Customers, The Company, The Community, Collaborative Relationships From a low

average base of 29% the Advocacy Slide demonstrates the level of willingness of employees to be an advocate in each

of the critical areas that impact the organisation its customers, its staff, its communities and its collaborative

relationships with investors, suppliers and the media.

Employee Communication. It is clear that internal communication is failing to convey and/or convince employees

either simply as advocates for what the organisation delivers or for all the key areas of an organisations activities.

The Impact on Relationships – Inside and Out – The implications of low employee advocacy ratings are clear: not

only around low advocacy for „Customer‟ issues around products and services, or for internal issues „Company‟ issues

like „Visions, Missions and Values, but also for „Community‟ issues like Corporate Responsibility.

The Biggest Issue for low advocacy in an era where external relationships become critical are around the area we

have defined as „Collaboration‟

The Collaborative Technology Chasm - The Cisco Chaired Collaboration Consortium have defined the „Collaboration

Chasm‟ as between the technology trial period and the adoption phase. This A Rating UK survey clearly shows the

widest gap for employee advocacy between the top rated Customer area and Collaboration.

BS11000 - Critically in an age of collaboration, where more with less‟ is vital, where relationships with suppliers and

partners is key, low advocacy with suppliers and partnering relations implies a difficult uphill battle for joint ventures and

standards like BS11000.

• Accentuate the positive

• Conduct full A Rating Qualitative and Qualitative Surveys – Asking open questions „Why have you given this

score?‟

• A Groups – Focus Groups on Strongly Agree ratings and answers. Use the information to build a „Next Practice‟

communication strategy and plan.

• Eliminate the negative

• In-depth interviews to discover the strongly held negative views, held by people i.e. the „Detractors‟ and/or

expressed by others the „Disseminators‟.

• Build a communication and action plan to eliminate the negative and improve on low scores across the 4 C‟s.

• Create a Team Listening Face2Face Programme

• Use the „Collaboration Matrix‟ to build communication strategy – see Full Report – Q1 2011.

• Build a unified communication and learning programme with a „Blended Communication‟ approach covering the

4 C‟s i.e. information, knowledge share, e-learning, assessments, certification and communication training.

• Regularly monitor

• Use the A Rating as an on-going process

• Benchmark with UKAR and industry sector

• Benchmark against internal communication and engagement measures‟

About The A Rating UK and ICEmarq™

The A Rating UK UKAR forms part of ICEmarq™ Benchmark data. This is a soon-to-be launched

internal communication and engagement measurement service available by subscription. It allows

subscribers to build and run their own surveys using ready-to-use survey templates or the ICEmarq™

question bank and to compare results against a UK benchmark. The service launches in the UK in

early 2011.

All ICEmarq™ data comes from a survey of 2,100 UK-based people conducted online in November

2011 by Research Now™. The sample included only those who work for organisations employing at

least 50 people and used quotas for industry sector, organisation size, seniority and age to ensure it

properly represents the UK working population. The confidence interval (margin of error) is +/- 2.14%

at a 95% level of confidence.

© Kevin Thomson 2010

www.thearating.wordpress.com