Employee engagement recommendations adopted
David Macleod and Nita Clarke were commissioned by the Department for Business (BIS) to take an in-depth look at employee engagement
Lord Mandelson encouraged the independent reviewers to examine whether a wider take up of engagement approaches could impact positively on UK competitiveness and performance, and meet the challenges of increased global competition.
Engaging for success was published on 16 July 2009 after widespread consultation.
According to the authors, employee engagement levels correlate with better performance and lower rates of absenteeism, but disengaged employees cost the economy around £60bn.
Speaking at Robertson Cooper’s Business Well-Being Network annual conference on 11 November, David Macleod explained that the recommendations to the government were founded on the basic problem that while there are some exemplar organisations, there are not enough of them and too many organisations send out opinion surveys rather than any drive for culture change coming from the top.
The recommendations are:
(1) Launch of a national awareness campaign. This is to highlight the potential benefits of employee engagement and to share good practice and insight. A sponsor group has been put forward to guide and support the campaign, with members including Stephen Bubb, CEO of ACEVO, Ruth Spellman, CEO of the Chartered Management Institute (and former HR director of the NSPCC) and Will Hutton, executive vice chair of the Work Foundation.
(2) Aligning resources. This means the government, its agencies and delivery partners need to collaborate to support and build on each other’s work. This would include sector skills councils, Acas and the UK Commission for Employment and Skills.
(3) Increasing support. To improve the quality and quantity of practical support from 2010, a practitioner forum (the third sector being represented Oxfam and United Welsh) and a specialist forum (including David Guest of Kings College London and Mike Emmott of the CIPD) were proposed.
The business secretary has accepted all three recommendations and has launched a campaign asking employers what would help them engage better with their employees.
David Macleod told Caritas that the list was restricted to three to maximise likely adoption (too many recommendations reduce adoption rates). In his talk he made the point that engagement – i.e. wanting to do it could sometimes be at odds with alignment (knowing what to do).
‘We want people to “get it”’, he said. The best case scenario was the ‘high flying’ group with high levels of engagement aligned to the organisation’s objectives, and the worst case being ‘bookends’ with little engagement or alignment.
But the most common types of employees across all sectors were ‘tin soldiers’ (highly aligned but disengaged) who outnumber the engaged but not at all aligned ‘headless chickens’ by three to one. Key enablers, he found, were the following factors:
- Leadership provides a strong strategic narrative giving a line of sight between the job and the organisation’s vision.
- Engaging managers who offer clarity and training, treading people as individuals, who listen and encourage and who ensure work is organised efficiently.
- There is employee voice in the organisation for reinforcing and challenging views.
- There is organisational integrity in that values are actually reflected in behaviour.
Author: Clarissa Dann
Clarissa Dann was the editor of Caritas as well as an HR and management online service,he People Bulletin until July 2011.
She is now the editor of the specialist trade finance magazine, Trade and Forfaiting Review which can be viewed at www.tfreview.com but does write on charity finance and investment from time to time.
Clarissa has a background in legal and professional publishing, as well as business journalism and holds an MBA from
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