Forty1, the employee engagement division of The Creative Engagement Group, has announced that Elizabeth Bryant has been promoted to the role of Principal Communications & Engagement Consultant.

Your favourite pack of biscuits. The fuel in your tank. The butter in your fridge. Train fare. Childcare. Your eye-watering mortgage hike. In this age of perpetual instability, one thing seems certain: this one is affecting all of us. 

As a global employee engagement consultancy, we have been observing closely as employee sentiments, expectations and wellbeing have transformed beyond recognition within the past three years. It’s hardly surprising that the back-to-back events of the pandemic, economic turbulence and political tensions have widely disrupted mental health and significantly reduced capacity to engage with work.

Boomerang employees – people who return to a previous employer – are a valuable part of the talent landscape. LinkedIn estimates that 4.5% of employees have returned to a previous employer, and 40% of employees have said they’d consider a boomerang move. It’s only a decade ago that HR teams widely reported ‘no rehire’ policies, but this has changed dramatically, and now 76% of HR professionals are open to hiring a boomerang employee (Raveendra et al., 2021).

Thousands of Matt Hancock WhatsApp messages gave us some insights into how [amongst other things] communications were used as a powerful tool to influence our feelings and behaviour during the lockdowns. It got me thinking about how organisations communicate with employees and the potential impact on their mental health and wellbeing.

Most large organisations are increasingly awash with internal communications data that provide numbers on email, intranet, and other digital platform clicks, reads, and views. But it’s not enough. We need to know more about how our communications actually make people feel.  

“Another month and already another catch-up meeting? Not much has changed, what should I say this time?”

As someone who has spent her entire career working with business leaders to help them create healthy workplace cultures, I’m fascinated by the trend known as “quiet quitting.” A similar behavior was labeled “employee disengagement” years ago by Gallup, the management consulting company. Today, the difference is that when employees sense they are leading lives of quiet desperation, they post about it on social media. Not so quiet after all.

Whichever way you look at it, the pandemic has made a lasting impact on the way we experience work. According to a McKinsey report, a majority of employees (52%) now want to work from home three days a week, would consider ‘jumping ship’ if those provisions aren’t part of the package (25%), and consider mental health a top priority in considering employment.

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.