Looking after culture in your organization is a numbers game. It’s about getting as many teams as possible thinking about what it takes to be happy at work, so they are better able to look after themselves and the organization as a whole.

Your goal for communicating about Friday Pulse is to encourage people to participate and respond honestly. A high response rate indicates both that your results are reliable and that you’ve got strong engagement, which is what is needed to look after happiness at work.

To achieve this aim, start from where people are. Remember that a lot of people have been part of staff surveys before, but it’s unlikely they’ll have ever been guaranteed their personal scores will not be seen by anyone else. It’s even more unlikely that they have been asked to discuss their experiences as a team, and this is a crucial part of looking after happiness at work.

Based on our experience with hundreds of clients, the best way to get everyone on board with the idea of measuring happiness is to think about how the initiative will benefit three main groups in your organization:

• Senior Leaders – senior members of staff and people who will be Admins of your account
• People Managers – colleagues who manage teams or groups, and
• Other employees

Each group has different needs and concerns about using Friday Pulse, and each group will get targeted benefits from using our platform regularly.

Onboarding your Friday Pulse users

Friday Pulse is set up to onboard every employee on your user list onto the platform in your launch week.

Everyone will receive an email inviting them to learn about happiness and how Friday Pulse works. This email will have a personalized message from the user of your choice, perhaps a Senior Leader or Happiness Champion.

Your first week’s question flow will include:

• Weekly questions: Happiness score question, Notes (Celebrations, Thank-yous, Frustrations, and Ideas) and that week’s Team-building question.
• Culture Profile questions: 15 questions, through which employees learn about the five key drivers of happiness at work - Connect, Be Fair, Empower, Challenge and Inspire. We’ll use the responses to these 15 questions to create your baseline Culture Profile.
• Two extra questions that are unique to the first week, measuring how everyone is feeling about using Friday Pulse and how they have understood the privacy of their scores.

While Friday Pulse does much of the leg work, there is an important role for you to play in communicating why your organization is focusing on happiness, what is expected of colleagues, and how the data is going to be used.

Your Communications Plan

The most successful communication plans build in time so that people hear the same message again and again, and again and again!

The best way to let people know about Friday Pulse is to stagger your communications: Let your leaders know first, then your managers, then other employees. This way leaders, and then managers, are well equipped to field any questions from other employees and can talk enthusiastically about the initiative.

Here’s a list of key activities, communication dates and milestones to think about:

2-4 weeks before launch

• Initial communications in the following order: Senior Leaders > People Managers > other Employees
• Follow-up communications using existing channels, giving people the opportunity to ask questions (e.g. newsletter, town hall meeting, intranet, face to face)

Launch week

• Final reminder
• Your launch! This is when the invitation will be sent from Friday Pulse to all users – it’s useful to follow this up with one or two more organization-wide messages about the initiative, while your first week’s questions are still open
• Team meetings to discuss results once questions have closed – remind teams to have these scheduled in each week

2-4 weeks after launch

• Weekly Happiness question flows continue in the second week – teams continue to meet each week to discuss how the previous week went
• Your first results call with an Organizational Coach at Friday Pulse to glean insights from the data and discuss next steps for your teams and company (Expert clients only)
• Communicate key insights to the whole organization and/or your different audiences

5+ weeks post launch

• Continue to encourage weekly team results discussions
• Champion teams with good response rates
• Remind teams ahead of each Culture Profile measure (measured every 13 weeks – see your Scheduler page in your Account Settings for the date of your next measure)

It’s helpful to anchor company-wide participation reminders around your quarterly Culture Profile. In the intervening weeks, adopt a more tailored and personal approach to support teams with low response rates.

You’ll find more tips on how to encourage and sustain engagement in our Help Centre.

Communicating to different audiences

Your different audiences will have different needs and you will have different expectations of them. Remember to tailor your communications to each audience to give them the information they need, and help them see the benefits to them of using Friday Pulse.

Read more about communicating to your three main audiences:

• Leaders
• Managers
• Other Employees