Take it personally: the importance of personalisation in employee communication

We still have striking similarities in our tastes in music and were born a month apart in 1978. He had to leave at 9pm to get a plane to New York to DJ at a club. I had to leave to relieve our baby sitter who was looking after my three children. 

There has been a lot of research in the reward market over the last year or so about the multi-generational workforce.

According to this research, the different generations think in certain ways, like to be communicated with in certain ways and will take a different approach to making decisions.

The banks, insurers and consultancies pushing out this research tell us that as a consequence of segmenting the workforce and creating different reward and communication offers, we can increase engagement, take-up and ultimately understanding, awareness and appreciation.

Our view is that this approach may well be an improvement on blanket, one size fits all solutions, but is already out of date and not particularly effective.

The segmented methodology tells us that because I was born between 1965 and 1984 (Generation X) that I think in a similar way and react in a similar way to another person who also happens to have been born in that period.

However I would argue it matters that I am married with kids whereas the other person is single. It matters that the other person earns three times as much as I do. It matters that I have a high tolerance for risk and the other person thinks putting money in a bank account is risky. It matters that I spend 30% of my income on school fees and the other person spends 30% of their income on holidays. You get the point.

Just like the DNA that drives our make-up, there are many characteristics that will determine how we take in information and make decisions.

We need to move the debate away from segmentation and where we should all now be focused - "Personalisation".

Our research illustrates that where we personalise, employees are over 25% more likely to take action than through a segmented approach.

The evidence we see is very clear. The more you personalise, the higher the chances are that the user takes action.

Our company mantra is: Personalisation = Action = Improved Outcomes.

Technology enables us to create an exceptionally personalised experience at low cost of ownership.

Companies hold rich data about their people that can be used to create an automated and personalised experience without the employee needing to do anything.

This is key, because where someone is expected to enter information before they get anything useful back, they won't do it.

You need to hook employees into the journey by getting them to recognise themselves in what you are suggesting. In fact this is our most basic human characteristic. Self-recognition drives positive behaviours. For example a child is programmed to recognise themselves in their parents and parents bond with their children through self-recognition. It is a primitive yet exceptionally powerful device to drive action.

When we are able to create self-recognition by using a data set to profile and make suggestions to the user that they instantly recognise as 'me', this drives awareness, personal ownership and action.

New techniques in machine learning are also helping push the boundaries of what is possible on personalisation.

Machine learning basically means that technology gets smarter at doing its job by constantly analysing data sets. The more data sets the algorithm sees, the more it is able to refine its ability to see patterns and make suggestions to the user.

At Nudge we are pushing the intelligence augmentation (IA) route.

This is about making the user more effective rather than replacing the need for the user to think at all. We don't want to create users that don't need to think, we want to help them get better at thinking themselves.

This debate about augmentation versus replacement is alive at Google for example. Augmentation is used to help users get the best out of search engines versus using driver-less cars to get rid of the need for drivers at all.

Do users find this all a bit spooky?

The answer to that depends on what your motives are.

If the motive of using personalisation is to sell more products to people then the answer is yes. If the motive is genuinely altruistic people tell us they appreciate it.

So next time someone tells you not to take it personally, think again...

This article was provided by Nudge