Forty1, the employee engagement division of The Creative Engagement Group (TCEG), is bringing together its UK and North American businesses under one name, with a new logo; a bold, new identity; and a new combined Forty1 website.

Fuelled by a series of events over the last two years , employees have taken a stand. They have pushed away from the comfort of their desk chairs, sighed a long breath of relief, exclaimed ‘FINALLY’, and spoken up against discriminating organisational cultures.

For communicators inside organisations, the pandemic represented a many-faceted challenge. There was a huge increase in operational communications. A shift to digital channels. And an uptick in leadership communications. All put huge pressure on communicators.

The funny thing is, when we sent everyone home in March 2020, we knew that our environmental channels were dead to us. But we all assumed digital would be an easy answer to all our employer-comms prayers. Box checked.

Tight deadlines, heavy workloads, structural changes, financial security, health and safety concerns – these are just a few of the many challenges employees face today. In the new norm where we are bombarded with a constant stream of business and personal demands, effective communication is key to ensuring a workforce that is ready and able to sustain themselves, their families, and the business for the long haul. But how do we do that? We need to think of our employees as we do our external customers, because in reality, employees are our internal customers – the foundational talent who will help us meet our critical business goals.

‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ is an adage that resonates with me on a personal level. As a visual learner, and someone who is dyslexic and dyspraxic, I navigate many things through imagery and visuals. Photography plays an important role in how we perceive the world around us. The media has used photography to influence and portray what is considered ‘normal’, defining what representation should be. On the whole, we see visually appealing, white, (binary) gendered people, but is this really representing the world we live and work in? For me, this is where many campaigns and brand identities fall short – the ‘thousand words’ their photography screams are that of tokenism and misrepresentation. Their choice of photography often feels like a tick-box exercise.

Recently I watched a video of the US leader of a Pharma client of ours, where he shared the best advice he was ever given. He mentioned “treating employees like customers,” and how it changed his approach to leading and managing his teams.

Most organisations would probably agree that business has largely accepted the need to bring ‘wellbeing’ into the core of what they do. Once seen as peripheral, soft, or ‘fluffy’, the pandemic has made us begin to reconsider its centrality to core business activity. But to bring about lasting, meaningful change and to ensure it’s seen as fundamental – we’ll need to relook at existing perceptions, challenge them, and envisage the impact of this reimagining of a wellbeing 2.0.