Feed your employees’ hunger for purpose with a compelling corporate narrative

By Stacey Hajdak, Senior Vice President
May 30, 2023

Employee communications can often feel like going through a high school cafeteria lunch line.

I’ll have two newsletters, a town hall, and a side of social posts. Oh wait, and dessert – a slice of CEO email.   

While the meal might satisfy us in the moment, if our overall goal is a balanced diet that not only sustains but energizes us and helps fuel a long, healthy life, we need to take a more discerning, holistic, and long-term approach to what we’re choosing to add to our tray.

The same goes for communications strategy.

For employees, essential sustenance is understanding how their work and actions connect to their function, and to how their individual purpose is aligned with their work and the outcomes and impact it ultimately delivers.  

An effective way to ensure this understanding is an authentic, cohesive, and inspiring corporate narrative.  

What’s a corporate narrative?

A corporate narrative is your company’s unique, overarching story that distills your purpose, vision and impact. It’s the centerpiece of your storytelling for all audiences. Your corporate narrative is a guiding light that helps shape your content and keep it cohesive, directly impacting the brand experience of your various stakeholders.

When crafting your narrative, think about how it will resonate with all your audiences. It should broadcast a deep and authentic understanding of their wants and needs, and should be rooted in your mission, vision, values and history. It’s important to note that your narrative doesn’t come with a “the end” moment. It should live, breathe and evolve as your company and the landscape it operates within also evolve.

Who’s the corporate narrative for?

Although elements of an effective corporate narrative should be consistently present in marketing, sales, operations and communications initiatives, employees and customers are chief among stakeholders. A corporate narrative helps to drive aligned messaging across all internal and external channels, and therefore is a useful tool for holistic storytelling.

For employees, the corporate narrative aids them in understanding how their actions impact the bigger picture. They’re hungry for meaning, which comes from understanding their connection to purpose. Often, it’s a useful tool to educate employees and motivate them about the brand and business.  

Who should be involved in shaping your corporate narrative?

Creating a corporate narrative should be a joint effort. While the communications team is crucial in driving and implementing the corporate narrative, collaboration with C-suite and other key business leaders at various levels of the organization will provide well-rounded insights and perspectives that will allow the narrative to be accurate and to genuinely resonate with your audiences.

If you are asking yourself whether it’s necessary to involve leaders and managers from throughout the organization, check this out:

A McKinsey & Company study reveals that far more executives (85%) agree/strongly agree they can live their purpose in their day-today work, compared to only 15% of frontline managers and employees.

The gap is a staggering differential. And it clearly tells us that we need an array of voices to ensure the narrative effectively connects all employees to purpose. 

Here are some helpful prompts to use as you convene stakeholders to collaborate on your corporate narrative:

1. What is the purpose of your organization? How can you articulate the connection between the work your company does and meaningful impact?
2. What are the consistent key messages and themes that all audiences should know, share and act upon?
3. How do you want your narrative to impact your employees and the work you are doing?
4. What are your employees’ unmet needs and aspirations? How can you inspire them through the narrative?
5. Do you understand the challenges they face? How can you address them?
6. What actions do you want them to take? When?

How do you implement the corporate narrative?

Once your narrative is created, define a plan to cascade the key elements across stakeholder groups and make it readily accessible for reference.

Here are some tips and considerations to think about:

• Include themes and messages from the narrative across your communications channels and bring the narrative to life during in-person events and interactions. Orchestrating opportunities to engage employees in activities that illuminate and demonstrate your central messages and themes can help drive understanding, resonance, retention and ambassadorship. We call this storyDOing. Most importantly, it’s vital that the corporate narrative be – and feel – authentic to your audiences. Walk the talk!
• Equip leaders and people managers with the narrative and cascade plan to ensure understanding and alignment. These groups will be instrumental in driving implementation and consistency, as well as in providing feedback.
• Look through the lens of the full employee lifecycle in your implementation efforts. Identify opportunities to weave the narrative into your recruiting messaging, employee onboarding process and people manager messages and training.
• Be sure to adopt a human-centric storytelling model. Don’t just talk about processes – showcase the people behind the mission and the impact they create.

When you leverage core messaging and storyline as the centerpiece of your communications strategy, you’ll find you’re not only creating consistency and sustaining engagement, you will be satisfying your employees’ craving for purpose.

Contact SPI Group for expert support in developing a compelling corporate narrative with a strong connection to purpose.