Former IBM and Bloomberg exec launches Integral Communications Group to help major brands engage, inspire, and activate employees
NEW YORK, April 2nd, 2018—Ethan McCarty, a nationally recognized leader in the growing specialty of employee engagement, previously at IBM and most recently with Bloomberg, announced today that he is starting a new firm dedicated to helping major brands engage, inspire, and activate their employees.
“Employee engagement means much more than just communicating to employees,” McCarty says. “Integral Communications Group will work with its clients to promote employee behaviors that enhance sales, attract and retain talent, make the organization more secure, and maximize the return on the firm’s investment in its people.”
Integral, based in New York City, begins client engagements by designing strategies for bridging the gap between the client’s employee experience and its aspirations, business strategy, and values. McCarty has used that approach effectively at both IBM and Bloomberg, where he served for more than 20 years in a variety of executive roles related to employee communications, social media, and digital communications.
Many firms try, but fail, to activate employees as social media ambassadors, but Integral has proven methods for improving those outcomes. At IBM, Ethan led social strategy globally and designed and led the deployment of IBM Voices, a multi-tiered, company-wide program for educating employees about social media, identifying and maximizing the best behaviors and aligning employees to business outcomes at tremendous scale. McCarty likewise deployed a successful social advocacy program at Bloomberg that was uniquely suited to its need.
“Culture and employee engagement mean everything to a company’s reputation,” said Jason Schechter, Chief Communications Officer, Bloomberg LP. “Ethan is a true leader in our field in understanding that employees who represent the brand well, or poorly, can make or break a reputation, particularly in our digital, hyper-connected world.”
Employee communications, a once frequently-overlooked component of corporate communications, has been transformed by social and digital media, which employees use to communicate with each other and with their contacts outside the company. Employee social media activity can enhance a brand or tarnish it, making employee engagement more important than ever.
But social media alone is no silver bullet; Integral Communications Group will help its clients true-up their firm’s content and digital experience when it comes to employees. The most successful leaders know that a thoughtful communications strategy can make or break their effort to motivate their salesforce, ensure vigilant security behaviors and motivate employees to innovate. Integral Communications Group has a unique approach to evaluating and improving its clients employee digital experience, aligning editorial strategy for intranets and employee publications and counseling senior leadership on effectively communicating with employee populations of any size.
Research by Jacob Morgan, author of The Employee Experience Advantage, shows that organizations that invested most heavily in the employee experience were twice as often found in the American Customer Satisfaction Index. They were also more than twice as likely to be listed in the Forbes list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies, and were also more often to be cited in lists of best places to work.
“We are excited to launch Integral at a time when employee engagement is increasingly recognized as critical to a brand’s success,” McCarty said. “We will guide our clients to make real progress toward activating employee populations in ways that serve both the company and its people.”