It’s a question that many companies ask, particularly when they’re thinking about conducting an engagement survey for the first time. It reflects, I think, a natural desire to avoid seeking feedback when you’re concerned that something like a restructuring, a pay freeze or redundancies will have a negative impact on engagement. However, I’ve always thought that’s a rather dangerous approach. Far better to take a leaf out of Don Corleone’s book and insist on hearing bad news immediately. At least you can then act before employee disaffection begins to hit
customer satisfaction or sales or some other important metric.

With that in mind, I was very interested to hear Alex Lewis, HR Director of BAE Systems talking last week about managing engagement in times of economic adversity. The thrust of his talk was that it is in difficult times that the organisation is closest to the employees’ personal life, and a focus on engagement is most vital. And he highlighted four key employee needs.

1. People need to know where the business is going and what change will mean for them. So it’s important to deal with those concerns directly and ensure that the key strategic messages are being properly understood.
2. People will seek out their leaders and look to them for confidence. Line managers are the lens through which people view their company; managers need to involve people in the change process and support them through it.
3. People will want to be involved in working out solutions. Shared ownership will help them feel fully committed to making their solutions work.
4. People will look for honesty and integrity. Integrity is the foundation on which trust is built. Therefore, building trust is vital and people will hold managers to what they have said. Trust grows when what is said is done.

These four needs are, in fact, the four enablers of engagement that emerged from the extensive research captured in the Engaging for Success report to government (also known as the MacLeod Report) – A strong strategic narrative, Engaging managers, Employee voice and Integrity. Taken together, they include many of the
key ingredients of employee engagement.

Alex Lewis’s talk was a summary of the research carried out by one of the Engage for Success movement’s Research teams into managing engagement in adversity. That research suggests that Don Corleone was right: it’s important to get the bad news immediately. You can then start to help your people through the difficult times before engagement turns to disaffection and performance takes a dive.

Read all of 'Should you conduct an employee engagement survey in difficult times?' on the Digital Opinion blog

It’s estimated that around 70% of large companies regularly conduct engagement surveys. It’s also estimated that 90% of their engagement effort fails to get beyond measurement. Within the government sponsored “Engage for Success” movement it’s called transactional engagement and its limitations are manifest.

Companies which are really serious about engagement focus on what the “Engage for Success” movement calls transformational engagement. 90% of their engagement effort happens post-survey and focuses on building an environment which truly engages people, inspires them to give of their best, and aligns their efforts with the needs of the business.

The current imbalance between measurement and action is not, perhaps, surprising when we consider how many consultants who advise companies on engagement and engagement surveys, focus on the former rather than the latter.

However, if engagement is to be a real driver of business change and outstanding performance the balance of effort needs to shift. Engagement surveys need to be followed by structured action programmes which give everyone a voice, nourish an engaging management style, bring the company’s values to life, and imbue strategy with day to day meaning – the building blocks of an empowering and engaging work place.

Where do you stand on the measurement – action spectrum?

Read all of 'Are you into transactional or transformational engagement?' on the Digital Opinion blog

Answer: Help them find the 3 Ms of engagement

I recently read an interesting article in the Harvard Business Review in which Rosabeth Moss Kanter described the happiest people she knows as those who are dedicated to dealing with some of the most daunting problems the world has to offer, and who face those challenges with the conviction that they can do something about them. Happiness, she says, comes from the feeling that they are making a difference, and she goes on to say that she sees the same spirit in business teams creating new initiatives that they believe in.

This struck a chord. At Digital Opinion we’ve run engagement workshops that start by asking people to think about a time in which they felt fully engaged, and to recall the circumstances and feelings associated with the experience. Very frequently they talk about being seconded to a small team set up to solve a specific difficult problem. The feelings they describe are:

• A sense of ownership and responsibility
• Feeling part of a cohesive team united by a common, clearly defined goal
• A shared belief in the goal and how its achievement would benefit the broader organisation.

In fact these feelings mirror almost exactly the three primary sources of motivation that Moss Kanter has identified: mastery, membership, and meaning. Money, she says, is a distant fourth. Something that “acted as a score card, but it did not get people up-and-at ‘em … nor did it help people go home every day with a feeling of fulfilment.”

Of course, these kinds of challenges are not available to all employees every day. However, if leaders keep these three M’s of motivation in mind and seek out the kind of project-type opportunities I’ve described they could, perhaps start inspiring people with stretching goals and a renewed sense of meaning and involvement.  It’s a way of engaging people while at the same time finding innovative solutions to difficult problems.

Read all of 'How do you engage someone?' on the Digital Opinion blog

I’ve recently been involved in an discussion about employee engagement on one of the LinkedIn groups I follow. The discussion started with the observation that “…many employees are engaged with their jobs, their profession/craft, their colleagues, and even their immediate managers – but not necessarily with their organisation and senior management.” That posed an interesting question: “If employees enjoy their work and feel positive about their team, does it matter if they are not interested or engaged with the wider organisation?” Here are the thoughts I shared:

Our own research supports the starting observation. Employees do tend to be more engaged with their jobs than with their organisation. (For that reason, when we measure engagement we find it useful to separate it into two broad dimensions: fulfilment with the job and commitment to the organisation.)

There are exceptions of course. Businesses like Amazon, Apple and Google often do very well at winning their people’s commitment to the business, as do some charities and other not for profit organisations. Whether it’s because they are high profile, innovative trailblazers or because of the good works they do, people feel proud to be a part.

For many other businesses not involved in such industry changing or socially useful activities the engagement challenge can be much greater. One challenge is holding on to people with clearly defined and highly developed skill sets. They often have a value and a marketability not shared by others and this can impact their sense of commitment to their employer. Finance, IT people and healthcare professionals often fall into this category.  In these cases the commitment to the calling is typically more pronounced than the commitment to a particular employer.

Another challenge is Generation Y, today’s 20 to 30 somethings (who make up a significant proportion of the workforce in many businesses). According to recent research they see the business’s economic or social purpose and being able to feel of proud in its work as just as important as job fulfilment and more important than pay. However, many businesses are failing to recognise that, and as a result are failing to engage their Generation Y people. As a result, the majority (it’s claimed) are already planning their exit – a ticking time bomb of cost and disruption.

So, in answer to the question – yes it does matter that people are engaged with the wider organisation.

Read all of 'Does it matter if employees are not interested in or engaged with the wider organisation?' on the Digital Opinion blog

Does high engagement equate to high performance?  The conventional orthodoxy says yes. But new research from consulting firm, Leadership IQ, reviewed on the Harvard Business Review Blog Network, has set the cat among the pigeons by saying no: in 42% of cases high performers are less engaged than low performers. As might be expected, this has prompted a vigorous debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Gallup, has responded with the moral indignation of a seventeenth century inquisitor out to put a Galileo in his place, and there have been lengthy exchanges on the HBR blog site and the Engage for Success LinkedIn guru site). Even the Financial Times has had its say.

So what are we to make of it? Is it a death blow to the idea of engagement as a driver of business performance, or is there anything we can take from it? In my view it raises three important issues:

First, it reminds us of the important link between performance management and engagement. It’s not difficult to understand that poorly performing co-workers can  undermine the engagement of high performers, and our own research shows that many employees (not just high performers) believe that managers don’t deal effectively with poor performance. The challenge for many companies is to set clear expectations, hold people accountable and, as Jack Welch has said a million times, differentiate on that basis. That won’t necessarily stop high fliers from leaving but it may well raise their level of engagement while they stay.

Second, it highlights the need for effective communication. Just as companies need to listen to their customers, so too, they need to listen to their own people. They need to understand how poor performance undermines engagement, they need to get into the hearts and minds of their top performers and, above all, they need to develop the people management abilities of their line managers.

Last but not least, it raises the broader question about the links between engagement and performance. In our company we’ve long thought it useful to split engagement into two key components. The first focuses on the extent to which people are positive about their job, and feel supported and recognised for their efforts; the second focuses on the extent to which they want to stay and develop a career with their company, feel motivated to act as advocates for the company, and feel the company has a distinctive and positive culture. In our experience many companies score far better on the job dimension than company side, and it varies from sector to sector, and from discipline to discipline. People with clearly defined and highly developed skill sets tend to have a value and a marketability not shared by others and this often impacts their sense of commitment to their employer. We have seen it amongst finance and IT people and it is more pronounced amongst healthcare professionals.  In all cases the commitment to the calling is typically more pronounced than the commitment to a particular employer.

This possibly explains the apparent conundrum in the Leadership IQ research. High performers might not always have a great deal of commitment to their company, but often they can be very positive about their jobs (notwithstanding the influence of poor performers). In that sense there is no conundrum provided we see engagement as something that’s multi rather than mono-dimensional.

Read all of 'Does high engagement equate to high performance?' on the Digital Opinion blog

Detail from McCallum's organisation chart

It’s being said with increased frequency that HR is groaning under an avalanche of employee data like never before.

The results of a global survey of HR professionals, by talent firm SHL, suggest that HR is struggling to gain meaningful insights from this data. According to Ken Lahti, vice president for product development and innovation, “HR is still grappling with its ability to provide strategic data to the business on its workforce and is ill-equipped right now to take advantage of big data. They do not yet have the systems and tools required to identify people intelligence, create metrics, and link HR data sources together.”

The results of another survey, “Rethinking Human Resources in a Changing World”, published by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by professional services company KPMG, suggest that HR needs to move away from its tendency to report historical data, in favour of forward-looking analytics designed to improve business performance.

These findings made me think of an article recently published in the McKinsey Quarterly – “Big data in the age of the telegraph”. It tells the story of one Daniel McCallum who in 1854 took charge of the operations of the New York and Erie Railroad which, with 500 miles of track, was one of the longest and most complex railway systems in the world but not, alas, one of the most efficient.

The problem in managing the railroad was not lack of data – the growing use of the telegraph meant that more data was available than ever before. The problem was that no individual manager could manage it. This is where McCallum came in. His genius was to devise an organisational plan which enabled the railroad to make proper use of the data.

Modelled on a tree, the directors were the roots, the middle managers the trunk, and the frontline managers the branches. Operational responsibility was delegated along the branches to divisional superintendents who were able act on the data in real time and report key metrics back to the board. The board could then use these metrics for long-term decision making and prioritisation.

In effect, McCallum and his colleagues gained control of the railroad by giving up control – by delegating operational responsibility to the frontline. Rather than succumbing to an “avalanche” of data they stepped back and re-thought responsibilities so that data, operations and strategy were properly aligned.

So, making use of big data was just as much a business challenge in the mid-nineteenth century as it is today. Perhaps today’s companies and HR departments could do far worse than take a leaf out of McCallum’s book.

Click here to read “Big data in the age of the telegraph“

Read all of 'Using big data to drive engagement and performance' on the Digital Opinion blog

I’ve recently been following (and making a small contribution to) an on-going discussion about the relationship between engagement and communication, and thought it might be useful to share some of the ideas in this blog.

Engagement and Communication are often seen as having the same meaning. This can stop companies from properly engaging their people.

The discussion started with the observation that the terms “engagement” and “communication” are often seen, in company life, as having the same meaning, and that this is a mistake which can impede companies in their efforts to properly engage their people. It was also suggested that business leaders are particularly prone to confuse the two.

This basic premise was endorsed by communications and engagement contributors alike, and there was a consensus that “formal” communication has a very limited lifespan; a speech by the CEO may be momentarily inspiring, but how they behave afterwards has a longer term impact. It was pointed out that people can be very resistant to being told what to do, even when they believe the underlying message. On the other hand they are strongly influenced by the behaviour of the people around them, so if communications and behaviour are incongruent distrust and disaffection are quick to follow.

It was suggested that communication does have a key role to play in engagement, particularly in creating a cultural environment that is conducive to people being engaged, but that it needs to be understood in its broadest sense: something that is about speaking and listening, tailoring all those elements to the needs of the audience, and about behaviour.

I’ve always thought that engagement is driven more by the way people behave towards each other than by formal communications and I highlight management style as a key factor in the engagement mix. But it was also suggested that purpose is another critical factor: people need to buy-into something before they can fully engage with it and commit to making it happen. It’s the strong strategic narrative described by the Engage for Success movement. And that perhaps brings us to the heart of the matter. Communication has a key role to play in engagement but the nature of the communication will determine its impact.

Read all of 'Why it can be dangerous to confuse Communication with Engagement' on the Digital Opinion blog

Read all of 'Visualising employee engagement' on the Digital Opinion blog

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Visit our Resource Centre to read more articles or click here to learn more about employee engagement.

Read all of 'Employee engagement – from why it matters to what can be done about it' on the Digital Opinion blog

A winning example of employee engagement. Photo: EPA

Now that the main event has finished, is there anything we can learn from the Olympics about employee engagement? There’s no question that success on this stage can only come from total commitment. But there’s more to it than that. It’s also about single minded focus and relentless self-denial. And that takes it way beyond engagement, at least in the way we think about employee engagement in the workplace.

But what about the 70,000 Games Makers, the unpaid volunteers who came from far and wide and made such a huge contribution to the overall success of the event, while enjoying every minute. Is there anything we can learn from them? For some it was about feeling part of something big and worthwhile – something that transcends the merely commercial. For others it was about pride, championing a cause or having a brief moment in the limelight – and these are all ingredients we regularly associate with workplace engagement.

Can a business ever hope to inspire the same level of engagement?
No doubt it’s difficult. After all we’re talking about winning people’s hearts and inspiring a really high level of emotional involvement. But it’s not impossible. Some companies like Apple, Google and Amazon (and there are many more besides) get very near. And again, for their people it’s about feeling an important part of something that’s at the forefront of innovation – pushing the boundaries, breaking new ground, being part of something that’s recognised as a success. The challenge for all companies is to replicate those environments. It may not result in any new world records but it just might inspire a new will to win.

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Visit our Resource Centre to read more articles on lessons from the Olympics or click here to learn more about employee engagement.

Read all of 'Employee Engagement and the Olympics' on the Digital Opinion blog

Trust goes a long way in employee engagement

I read a couple of interesting articles last week. The first suggested that our recent decline into economic austerity has ushered in a national process of truth and reconciliation. Out go the days when it was considered almost acceptable to rig markets, avoid tax, embellish expense claims, and pocket unearned bonuses.  In comes a new sense of opprobrium and censure directed principally at bankers, politicians and the press. Fred Goodwin’s head has already rolled, as have many others; Rupert Murdoch and Bob Diamond have been summoned to explain themselves. Madam guillotine awaits the outcome.

The second article focused more specifically on the travails of the banking sector and asked “What’s led to this financial debacle? …what are the lessons for managers and leaders?” It led me to consider whether there is there anything we can learn from this about employee engagement. Ironically, Bob Diamond himself provides an interesting perspective. According to Mr Diamond a strong culture is key to corporate success. And culture, he says is about “…how people behave when no-one is watching.” It’s about people doing what they say they’ll do. In other words a strong corporate culture is built on trust.

I believe he’s right on that one, and there’s little doubt that trust is a key component of employee engagement. Some people go even further. In his book “The Speed of Trust” Stephen M.R. Covey sees trust as a hard edged success driver – “the one thing that changes everything”, and he uses some interesting correlations between trust and performance at a country level to support his ideas.

The fact is that in the long term all managers and leaders need the trust of their people, and they need to earn it through their words and actions. When words and actions diverge they begin to lose that trust. Not only the trust of their people but also of their customers and markets. The impact can be devastating for the individual and the businesses they run. Ask Bob Diamond.

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Find more articles on leadership and engagement in our Resource Centre.

Read all of 'Employee Engagement and Trust' on the Digital Opinion blog

The CIPD has just published two valuable survey reports: its latest quarterly Employee Outlook Report¹ and the Learning and Talent Development Annual Survey Report². They are valuable not so much because they provide new insight but rather because they support the findings of other research and put renewed focus on the shortcomings of many of the UK’s line managers in terms of their people management skills.  Shortcomings which, according to the CIPD, represent a significant impediment to economic growth.

In this piece I focus on four key findings. The surveys show that:

1. Employees are generally positive towards their line managers as people
2. But a significant proportion say those managers are poor at providing feedback on personal performance, coaching and discussing personal training and development needs
3. Few line managers are aware of these shortcomings
4. But 85% of organisations do recognise they lack leadership and management skills.

Our own research supports these findings, and also points to the qualities people most value in their immediate managers:

• Setting clear and consistent expectations
• Giving positive feedback and recognition for work well done
• Encouraging and supporting people’s growth and development
• Valuing people’s unique qualities
• Showing care, concern and interest in people.

As the CIPD research shows, these qualities are frequently key drivers of engagement and they’re manifestly lacking in many line managers. The result is low engagement and poor performance.

So the question is: are your line managers your Company’s Achilles heel? And if so, what’s to be done?

Clearly there are no simple answers. Changing attitudes and behaviour is a major undertaking. But perhaps a good starting point is to ask five basic questions:

1. How effective are your senior team as people managers? Do their attitudes and behaviours reflect the attributes employees most value? Are they good role models for your line managers, team leaders and supervisors?
2. Do you recruit and appoint people with the right people management attitudes and behaviours? Or do you need to review your recruitment processes?
3. Do you recognise and reward people for their performance in terms of people management and raising the level of engagement?
4. Is the way you train and coach people consistent with the development of the right people management attitudes and behaviours?
5. Are care, concern and encouragement part of your company culture? Are they really part of “the way we do things around here”?

The answers should inform your next step.

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This blog draws on the following:

¹ CIPD Quarterly Employee Outlook Report
 http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/survey-reports/employee-outlook-spring-2012.aspx
² CIPD/Cornerstone on Demand Learning and Talent Development Annual Survey Report
http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/survey-reports/learning-talent-development-2012.aspx

You may also want to visit our webpage ‘What impact do line managers have on engagement?’

Read all of 'Employee Engagement and Line Managers' on the Digital Opinion blog

Some companies make a considerable investment in employee engagement: conducting surveys to measure it, identifying the issues that affect it, and taking action to raise it. To them it’s as important as their investment in things such as talent acquisition, advertising or R&D – the life blood of their business. And they constantly measure their return on all those investments.

Nowadays there’s no shortage of statistics or case studies which prove the links between engagement and a whole range of business performance metrics. Nevertheless, there are still many companies who see an engagement survey as a cost rather than an investment.

Very often it’s because they haven’t really analysed how it could link to and drive performance in their own business, and even act as a catalyst for change. Rather they see surveys as essentially HR activities which provide feedback on employees’ attitudes and feelings and input into people policies and practices.

That doesn’t mean those surveys are without merit. They can be very useful. In many cases the engagement survey focuses on a consistent set of issues from year to year and provides a useful measure of progress over time. And companies which act on the feedback tend see a consistent rise in survey scores and engagement levels. This can support employer branding initiatives and help to promote the company as a great place to work.

However, there are often limitations to this approach. Rising survey scores are not always reflected in improvements in business performance.  And rising engagement levels do not necessarily mean that attitudes and opinions are properly aligned with the needs of the business. So perhaps we should ask the question: is the survey making as big a contribution to business success as it could be?

On the other hand companies which see engagement as an investment rather than a cost also attach importance to tracking progress over time and building their employer brand. But they go beyond that. They tend to use surveys more strategically. As part of their strategic thinking they appraise their current position and decide where they want to be in three or five years’ time. They determine the systems, processes, attitudes and behaviours that will underpin success in that future landscape. They then use the survey to measure the extent to which attitudes and opinions are in line with the new requirements rather than the old. In other words they use the survey to measure the gap between where the company is now and where it wants to be. The survey identifies what needs to be done to close the gap and guides managers in focusing on priority issues.

This approach has certain key characteristics: it focuses primarily on the needs of the business and on linking employee metrics with key business outcomes; it is forward looking and aims at aligning employee attitudes and behaviours with the future needs of the business; it’s a process rather than an event and although it’s driven by HR it’s owned by the whole company: an investment for the business rather than a cost to HR.

The alternative approach is rather different: it’s primary focus is on people issues and comparing the present with the past. As a consequence its impact on business performance is rather more limited. It’s typically an event rather than an ongoing process. It is driven by HR, and is seen as a cost to be borne by the hard-pressed HR budget.

Which approach does your company take?

Read all of 'The cost of Employee Engagement' on the Digital Opinion blog

Back in May of last year one of my blogs referred to an influential report which suggested that “…the fate of HR departments in the year ahead may hinge more on proving their value than maximising their contribution.”

Nearly twelve months down the line Neil Roden of PwC, one of the profession’s most senior figures, has resurrected the issue claiming that “…The quality of HR senior leadership is declining” and the profession is losing influence.  The reason, he says, is that “Not a lot of HR people do much on metrics and analytics, despite the fact that we all know that’s how most chief executives and chief finance officers think”.

And nowhere is that truer than in my area of expertise – employee engagement surveys. All too often the HR mindset seems to preclude a systematic approach to linking employee attitudes and behaviours with people performance metrics and key business outcomes; in some instances it seems to recoil at the very prospect. But when it does happen the results can be truly transformational: the survey becomes a vital business tool and HR quickly assumes a new and compelling relevance at the heart of the business.

Of course many companies have long understood the importance of metrics and analytics. Neil Roden quotes General Electric and in recent blogs I’ve referred to Marks and Spencer and Mitchells and Butler. Not surprisingly they all tend to be leaders in their fields.

This blog draws particularly from the following article in our Resource Centre:
“Quality of HR senior leadership is declining”, says Neil Roden – Rob MacLachlan, People Management

Read all of 'Employee Engagement and the value of HR' on the Digital Opinion blog

We can’t be sure when but we can be sure that at some point in the not too distant future the British economy will start to emerge from its long hibernation. When it does it will be interesting to see what impact growth and renewed confidence have on the employment market.

It has been said many times that companies that have handled re-organisation and redundancies with sensitivity and focused on engaging their people are likely to retain  their key players. Those that have used the spectre of redundancy to justify ever increasing demands while giving less in return are likely to haemorrhage talent.

This raises the perennial question: how can companies, regardless of their people policies, best understand and manage staff turnover. In most cases the answer is either the exit interview or the leavers’ survey. Both have their value but both have limitations. It’s often said that some employees will be less than truthful in an exit interview, and to a lesser degree that’s also an issue with leavers’ surveys. On top of that, while both approaches might help us to understand why people leave they seldom tell us anything about the journey that led to that decision.

However, recent research suggests that there is an alternative to exit interviews and leavers’ surveys; one which does enable us to track that journey, profile leavers and predict staff turnover. At its heart is a detailed analysis of employee engagement survey data which enables us to a) identify the point at which the attitudes and behaviours of leavers begin to diverge from those of their colleagues and b) develop profiles for specific categories of leaver.

These insights do not necessarily help companies to deal with the immediate triggers behind the decision to leave but they do help them pinpoint the policies, practices and behaviours which lead to disaffection over time.

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For further reading download our latest research paper:
“Using Survey Data to Predict Staff Turnover”

Read all of 'Employee Engagement and retention' on the Digital Opinion blog