[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi everyone. Within many organizations, data is king. But are we really investing in measuring the right data? In this episode, we'll explore how data around employee emotions might be one of the most critically overlooked pieces of the data analytics puzzle. I'm your host, Bill Coffin and this is the Ethic.
Foreign ethics and compliance data analytics involves collecting, organizing and analyzing program data to identify patterns of behavior and assess the program's overall effectiveness. For most ENC programs, a robust data analytics element is table stakes for running a best in class business integrity effort. Strong data analytics helps programs shift from reactive to proactive as as they detect emerging risks, monitor high risk activities and enable organizations to identify and mitigate potential problems before they reach crisis levels. But as data volumes grow to astounding levels, we must ask ourselves an important question. Are we gathering the right kind of data?
Case in point, how people feel about a particular issue is one of the most commonly overlooked data sets in employee behavior. Whether it's helping to drive ethical behavior or encouraging misconduct, the emotional drivers that weigh on every employee are too important to ignore. And yet they are an element that many data analytics programs simply don't take into account.
With us today to talk about this are Ray Day and Tony Sardella. Ray is Vice Chair at Stagwell, a digital first group of more than 72 global agencies built to drive results for the most ambitious brands in the world. He is also executive Chair of the Stagwell PR agency, Allison Worldwide. Ray is a renowned corporate communications leader and prior to joining Stagwell, he served as IBM's and Ford's chief Communications officer. Tony is group lead for Stagwell's suite of communications technology solutions for modern communicators within the company's marketing cloud. In addition, Tony leads Allison Worldwide strategy for its suite of advanced analytical solutions, allowing clients to see around corners to identify risks and and opportunities. Tony is a renowned expert in applying predictive analytics to understanding issues at the intersection of business, government and society. Ray and Tony, welcome to the Ethicast. I'm delighted that you're here and I'm really looking forward to today's conversation.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Bill. Honored to always be a part of anything that has the ethisphere stamp of approval. Longtime fan and longtime contributor. So thank you so much for having us.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:02:38] Speaker C: Yeah, likewise. Thank you, Bill.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: ENC leaders often speak about how important data analytics is to their program. But in what way? Do you think that programs might be flying at too high of an altitude when it comes to gathering and analyzing program data?
[00:02:53] Speaker B: And I'll start off, Bill, and you set it up nicely in the preamble to today's episode. And you talked about the amount of data that we have out there.
And the issue and the opportunity is not that we have too much data, it's seen through the data in my mind. I am a data geek, I'm a chief communications officer by trade, but I have spent my entire career being a data first leader because I believe that the best data equals the best strategy and it leads to the best execution and it also leads to the best identification of risk and opportunity. What I would suggest and what Tony and I have been working on is are we flying at the right altitude as we're seeing through, through the data? A lot of people see noise when they're looking at all the data out there. Tony and I, we're almost giddy about it because we see opportunity. And I would say it's both on the risk side and the opportunity side. So if we're just looking at data and not expecting the appropriate level of insights, data is useless. So I think the opportunity we all have is to really delve deeper into these multi layers of data that, that we all have and start spending more time on the insights and at the secondary and tertiary level than we typically have done. Now let Tony build on that because he spent his life as a researcher and as a data nerd like I am, but even to a more exponential extent.
[00:04:19] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Ray and Bill. One of the things building on what Ray had said is, you know, the first early challenges of data analysis about having the right data to answer the right questions. But we've really transformed from that position in historical to new reality.
The new reality is are you looking at the data with the right analytical metrics to answer the questions that you're trying to solve and decisions you're trying to make? And what we see is the analytical suites that have historically been used do not provide that level of insight to look through data and understand important aspects. And one of those is the one you brought up, Bill.
Looking at these massive amounts of data to understand the emotions that are being expressed by society, by audiences and stakeholders, with a deep understanding of how can that level of understanding of people's emotions and intensity reveal insights about opportunities and allow you to understand risks before they occur.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: Can you share with us a little bit more about how you're gauging emotion as a way to see risk?
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Typically, most companies, whether they're in the ethics and compliance side, the communication side or the marketing side, they're looking at share and they're looking at sentiment. They're looking at red, yellow, green, and they're doing it both on the positive side and the negative side. What Tony and I have really been drilling down further is the missed opportunity we see in business today is looking at emotion.
And not just the opinion or the sentiment someone has about a topic, but really how do they feel.
And when you start measuring how people feel about things, this notion of being predictive, I would suggest on the communication side and on the ENC side, it really is time that we stop being the fast people to clean up the mess in IL6 and how do we really start looking in a really systemic way at emotion to be far more predictive and eliminate that mess in IL6 to begin with? I met Tony when I was at Ford and IBM.
He had founded his own predictive analytics methodology, and I brought him in to help me with risk management, risk mitigation, as well as opportunity identification, and all centered around emotion. And I'll have Tony walk through what that magic sauce is.
[00:06:49] Speaker C: Yeah. And what was really an insight, you know, over 15 years, Ray and I have collaborated on really deepening and furthering the ability for the communications function and marketing functions to understand behavior, consumer behavior, societal behavior. And through that 15 years, what we came to greatly understand is that the ability to understand how people act is highly predicted by the level of emotional intensity that they're feeling. And so, you know, we talk about traditional metrics in the communications field of shared voice. Well, shared voice didn't predict how people would behave. In fact, even sentiment didn't predict how people would behave because they could be favorable or unfavorable on a topic or towards an entity. But it didn't mean they deeply cared. What we found was when we related their emotions, what they cared about, what they deeply felt, feeling of that was highly predictive of the type of activities. These could be positive, like buying a particular product or communicating positive word of mouth, or they could be negative. Attacking a company, collective action against a company, raising risks that a company didn't realize were important that third parties brought in. So this understanding of being able to understand those emotions we found was highly predictive and allowed us to build capabilities that seize around corners and allows the window of opportunity to take proactive actions.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: And Tony maybe just unpack that now. One of the things that he and I did, again being data nerds, we looked at all the conversation happening in the US this year, all the publicly available data that's out there, and it's out there, it's out there for grabbing.
And then we looked at what are the top conversations today happening in America. And the number one conversation, no shock is pricing, inflation, affordability.
That's a given, that's not a revelation. But the revelation is to us in business.
Why are people feeling emotional about pricing? It's not necessarily the rational. Yeah, I get I'm going to have to pay more for X, Y and Z.
But what I'm feeling is it's not fair and I've lost control. And maybe just unpack that a little bit more, Tony, because. Yeah, whether we're on the risk side or on the proactive messaging side, that is a huge, huge nuance to understand.
[00:09:15] Speaker C: Yeah. And if you unpack that aspect. So what we find is companies are very typically or communicators. They'll be on topic but not on emotion. So they might talk about pricing and that they're maybe giving a discount, but they're not hitting it at the emotional level that Ray said. So in other words, the ability to connect emotionally in your behavior, your actions and your communications to the fact that your society at large or individual audience groups are feeling a sense of lack of control or loss of control.
So the real communications in action is how do you connect with them in a way that they can regain control?
Secondly, with this feeling of companies still hitting remarkable financial outcomes and objectives, achievements, is it really fair that I may be taking on more of the affordability crisis, but companies are increasing their prices, so the real essence is how do you connect to address their feeling of a lack of fairness to make it be fair, or a feeling that there's a lack of control so they have control. And so we work with our clients to come up with both programs, actions, strategies. It's not always just decreasing your price. It's giving them a sense they have greater control. And so the ability to be on emotion, not just on topic, is something that lets us see through the noise to really lead to some actionable activities that make an impact for companies.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: Executive leadership sometimes comes down to making choices between two rights in which either option is a good one. But choosing one option inherently means declining another. Can you talk about how being aware of this on an emotional level can help top level leadership make better and even more ethical decisions?
[00:10:58] Speaker B: If all you do is spend your time on the rational side of human behavior, you will believe this is a black and white discussion.
But to the consumer, to the American or to the world citizen, this is not black and white.
And when you get into the emotional side of the discussion, it is a choice between what people believe are right and right, not right and wrong. And that's what we often in business don't understand, we don't appreciate, we don't listen enough as we're communicating, as we're dealing with risk mitigation. And Tony, maybe you can unpack without giving away any names, but a little bit of what you're doing in the medicine space today to help people understand there it is not black and white to the person buying the medicine or to the companies making the medicine. But we're in this thunderstorm of emotions and we have to help each other navigate through it.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:03] Speaker C: And you know, it really does bill your head at a good one of the preeminent. David Messick's psychologist and editor of journal Psychology had scripted as ethical dilemmas for business leaders this difficulty around making a decision where someone will benefit and some will be hurt or harmed. We don't mean deleterious like physical harm, but harmed in some other aspect.
What's always a challenge for leaders in these ethical dilemmas is the fact that they've been given the power to make these decisions.
And no more than in the area of pharmaceuticals where organizations are obviously making tough decisions about fundamental like recouping on their massive investments. You know, with some pharmaceutical companies, Only less than 10% of the billions and trillions of dollars get a return.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:51] Speaker C: And so they have to make these decisions around how do we keep enabling breakthrough discoveries so that we could bring modern medicines to society and further our wellness, our well being and our longevity in life. And so being able to unpack the aspect of how the third party are seeing these things, how audiences see those R and D, the pricing initiatives, the ability to provide them in a more affordable manner unlocks these ability to make these decisions about addressing both. So we did work with some organizations where yes, they need to put some price increases in place to recoup their R and D for both successes and failures. But doing so in a manner that empowers consumers and patients to be able to choose the best route to access those medicines at the most affordable manner and making that available to them while also increasing their prices at times was a way in which they could choose between two rights increase, but make it affordable by giving them options of how to resource them them and giving people.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: Back the control you talked about, Tony, when you meet people where they are in that spectrum, you are underscoring that I understand you don't want, you want to be in control. And here's the control that I'm offering.
[00:14:10] Speaker C: And sometimes what it does do, in fact, on the control basis for some of these organizations in the pharma sector, it greatly allows people to see that in fact, many times they're very good pricing or very matching up with the fact that these medicines may cost, but the outcomes are significantly beneficial, especially in the branded area where they're having huge impacts on it. So it does give them the power of choice and control over the decisions and their actions, which is in itself another form of feeling a sense of control. And by the way, these emotions that Ray and I have talked about and that we've studied, these are well founded neuroscience constructs. These are constructs that have been studied for numerous science centuries in regards to why do people do what they do, why do they sometimes think logically and sometimes not logically? And so the whole field of behavioral economics and psychology is always looked at those decision patterns and those are the factors that we look through the data to get the right analytic. So you can make powerful decisions, be it an ethical dilemma, a marketing decision, a communication statement, a new product positioning.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: How would you recommend ethics and compliance teams build out the capability to consider emotional data in their own data analytics efforts?
[00:15:26] Speaker B: Yeah, Bill, I think it's a really important, really important question and it's really something that all of us inside of companies need to think about. And it's not a matter of changing the investment in the data and the insights it's looking at.
Have we in the last few years audited what we're doing?
And Tony and I speak very passionately on both reputation and predictive analytics. And I would say, have we challenged the way we're measuring reputation? I was a part of a really fascinating human behavioral research study that said the half life of a skill today is about five years, three to five years, actually, which means the half life of a system is about three to five years.
Have we inside of our companies challenged our measurement system? And if we haven't, we ought to be doing so. We ought to be looking at are we really measuring reputation with a contemporary lens? And then on the analytics side, are we being reactive or have we really plumbed in a data and insight process that allows us to be truly predictive? And then the basic question that we've talked a lot about here is, are we measuring emotion? And if we're not, we need to get to it.
[00:16:43] Speaker C: And I would add, Bill, I think revisiting the analytics we use for what I'll call materiality within an ethics framework. What is material to many audience segments not just your employees, but society at large and other multitude of stakeholders that are external to your business and understanding what is material to them. Using emotion provides you a lens to understand the most important areas, not what you think is important, but what they think is material to being and needing to be addressed. And the other part of it is typically these are done in very maybe annually or beyond in the assessment of stakeholders. That's not necessary anymore. We have the ability to understand audiences in real time, what they're feeling, what's important to them, and organize it so that companies and leaders have the ability, what I'll call the window of opportunity to make decisions before it becomes an issue that's already impacting their business. See, the ability to see things early is about giving leadership power of decision and management capability, making decisions early to shape how an issue may or may not affect the business. If one doesn't have these modern systems like Ray is mentioning, then you're always dealing with them late in the life cycle, which gives you very little power of decision authority. Things are done to you. You're not dictating where they will go and how you're being a good citizen, ethical to society, to your other stakeholders. A new framework is required.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Well, Ray and Tony, thank you so much for joining us today to share how you're using the data around employee emotion and feelings to drive more targeted and impactful E and C data analytics. Thank you so much for your time.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: Honored to be here Bill.
[00:18:28] Speaker C: Likewise. Thank you Bill.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: To learn more from today's guests, please reach out directly to Ray and
[email protected] and
[email protected] we'll have both of those email addresses in the show Notes for you.
For a host of free resources on data and benchmarking, check out the Ethisphere resource
[email protected] resources. There you'll find all kinds of terrific reports, webinars and podcasts, including the 2025 ENC Trends and Employee Perceptions Report, which offers a dual lens view into program structure and how employees experience those efforts on a day to day basis.
Also, for a deep dive into the data that drives ethics and compliance, check out Ethisphere's benchmarking service, the Sphere, at sphere.ethisphere.com thanks for joining us. We hope you've enjoyed the show. For new episodes each week, subscribe to us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And if you don't mind, please follow Ethisphere on LinkedIn as well. Every like comment and share really helps our mission to make the world a better place by advancing business integrity. That's all for now, but until next time, remember, strong ethics is good business.
