Know Your Audience and Act Accordingly
This month’s program is hosted at and presented by the AdventHealth communications team and takes a deep dive into the new internal communications program that has redefined how they engage with team members. Much of their work has been around the question of how to relate to and engage with the increasingly younger workforce that has adopted new norms and expectations for how they receive and act on information.
I remember back in 1997 reading Don Tapscott’s book Growing Up Digital, which looked at how the next generation of children would grow up in a world that included a growing online presence that did not exist before. His follow-up book in 2008, Grown up Digital revisited the participants from his earlier work a decade later to see how it had manifested.
That same year, Seth Godin published the book Tribes which dug into the issues arising from the idea that since the beginning of time, people could only gather in tribes based on geography, until the advent of the internet. Now, people could gather from all parts of the world around ideas and beliefs, transcending geography.
We can all agree that we now live in a world where two generations of people have grown up as digital natives and the impact on the workforce is undeniable.
In their book Zconomy, Jason Dorsey and Dr. Denise Villa unpack the challenges and opportunities of the Generation Z, which is flooding the workforce, at a time when there are so many significant issues causing instability.
In an interview with Texas CEO Magazine, Dorsey and Villa pointed out some of the important considerations for successfully engaging the Gen Z workforce.
“We find that Gen Z needs frequent communication. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate — it could be a text message or Slack. Even more than Millennials, they need what we call “quick-hit feedback,” something that regularly lets them know you value them as part of the team. Particularly with remote work, younger employees tell us that if they’re not getting communication from their boss, they worry that their job is on the line. We’re not just talking about praise or trophies — we’re talking about meaningful communication around alignment.”
They go on to discuss some of the requirements for connecting with Gen Z.
That ties into something else Gen Zers require for continued engagement, which is understanding how their role fits within the greater organization. This is often undervalued. When you’re an entry-level Gen Z employee, you may not have a big title, but what you do is still incredibly important. In fact, you may have more interactions with customers or clients than older workers of different generations. Showing Gen Zers how they fit in the organization is incredibly, incredibly important.
The team at AdventHealth has taken a comprehensive approach to their new design, incorporating ideas and concepts from Zconomy and other resources that are shaping the dialogue and decisions for effectively reshaping internal communications.
Our role as communications and public relations professionals is to advocate for the changes and transformation of our organizations and cultures to be more intentional and effective in how we engage and communicate with the evolving workforce. I’m proud to see our members and colleagues taking the lead in places like AdventHealth and others to challenge the status quo and ask the difficult questions necessary to build the right framework that fosters a strong culture, reputation and brand.
