Despite decades of work with clients large and small, Murray Nossel, founder of Narativ, understands through experience that there might always be skepticism in the corporate world about anything that seems 'touchy-feely.' And yet, if ever there was an organisational department that deserves a 'get out of jail free' pass on the touchy-feely front, it should be HR. However, HR Professionals tend to shy away from being seen as touchy-feely in an effort to gain more legitimacy within the business. In a world increasingly driven by data and metrics, soft skills like the touchy-feely art of storytelling go A LONG way to balancing the technologically driven environment workplaces have become (and will become more so going forward). To all the HR Professionals out there reading this post, consider this your opportunity to get all touchy-feely AND to drive positive change in your organisation through storytelling.
The Business Benefits Of Storytelling
Companies like Narativ work with businesses to help them understand the benefits of storytelling and how to apply those benefits in the workplace. Conducting such a large proportion of business activities in an online / virtual context (as we do today), means that a lot of the daily connections we make in business that is mediated by a screen (or screens). According to Narativ, 'businesses are searching for a repeatable model to create connection and improve communication inside their companies and with their customers.' For 25 years, Narativ's method of listening and storytelling in business has resulted in the creation a proven, measurable process that has had a transformative effect on teams, culture, and individuals.
Through the development of storytelling skills and a culture of sharing stories in an intelligent and conscious manner, the team at Narativ have built a robust business model. Their model proves that learning the art of storytelling means 'businesses are better able to capture and communicate mission-critical knowledge, improve listening skills to break down barriers between co-workers, increase cross-team collaboration, and tell powerful, memorable stories' both inside and outside the organisation.
So if you're an HR Professional, how can you use storytelling to improve engagement, culture, and ultimately, the bottom line in your business?
Storytelling As An Employee Engagement Strategy
The team at the HR Trend Institute advocate the use storytelling for HR as an extremely beneficial exercise for improving employee engagement. They outline the following tips when planning, crafting and delivering a story in the workplace:
- Design your story with your audience in mind.
- Stick to the rule of three.
- Connect your story to the business issues of today.
- Add facts and detail. Stories are more convincing if they contain concrete facts.
- Give some examples.
- Imagine the future.
- Avoid jargon.
- Don’t make your story too long.
- Use some pictures, (but not too many).
Storytelling And Analytics Make Great Bedfellows For Cultivating Culture
The SHRM report 'Use of Workforce Analytics for Competitive Advantage' makes a valid argument for the importance of storytelling in the context of bringing workforce analytics to life. The report illustrates that HR professionals need to be comfortable with using and sharing analytics about business performance, but that they must also have 'the ability to present findings in the manner and language convincing to senior executives.' Contributors to the report are adamant that storytelling goes hand in hand with a head for analytics in the HR Professional of the future. Ultimately, for HR the art of storytelling is a critical process for taking analytics out of the realm of the theoretical and transforming them into a purposeful and valued workplace tool.
Using data and metrics as the foundation for crafting the culture of your organisation makes for doing intelligent business. However, data, metrics and analytics can only take you so far. The culture of any business would be extremely cold and rigid if metrics were the only building blocks used for making business decisions. That's why the personal touch, that old touchy-feely side, needs to be brought back into the equation when building business culture.
Give Yourself Permission To Bring Touch-Feely Back
Many HR Professionals felt called to the profession because of the personal nature of HR. However, human resources in the twenty first century demands a lot of time and energy to be spent on other necessities. Speak to any HR Professional and they will often say that the following challenges usually get in the way of them being able to connect with employees on a personal level:
- The pressure of meeting KPIs,
- The stress of losing headcount,
- The constant change of keeping up with technological disruptions, and
- The burden of staying on top of the administrative and compliance load of the employee lifecycle.
Storytelling isn't just a method by which to engage and connect people within the organisation, it is also a channel through which HR Professionals can get more of what they want from the leadership team. This is critical to the success of HR Professionals, because if you can't access the resources you need to manage any of the above bullet points, then you will never find the time to add that personal touch back into your business and build a great workplace culture.
When you're on an aeroplane, the safety briefing advises that you should ALWAYS put the breathing mask on yourself before attending to someone else. Similarly, HR Professionals would be wise to learn how to harness the power of storytelling for themselves (as a means to having their needs met), before they can then share the art of storytelling with the rest of the business for maximum impact.
If you're ready to discover the basics of storytelling and find out how you can harness the power of story to benefit you AND then your business, we've created this FREE resource for you.
