Job cuts... pay freezes... slashing of learning & development budgets... having to do more with less... organisations contracting to result in fewer opportunities for advancement...
According to many people we speak to there has never been a more unhappy time at work. Many employees are fed-up and itching to leave - but there aren’t the vacancies available for them to apply.
Not everyone can appear in the Best Companies to Work for league tables but all organisations can learn something from the ones that do make the grade. Last year Fluid was heavily involved with projects around ‘survivor syndrome’ and to some extent these have continued through the beginning of this year.
So what can be done?
How can employees be motivated, committed, happy and satisfied at work when there is not a huge cash bonus available?
WHAT IS EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT ANYWAY?
The Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) defines it as a combination of commitment to the organisation and its values plus a willingness to help out colleagues (organisational citizenship). It goes beyond job satisfaction and is not simply motivation. Engagement is something the employee has to offer: it cannot be ‘required’ as part of the employment contract.
“SURELY STAFF ARE GRATEFUL JUST TO HAVE A JOB RIGHT NOW”
So the less forward-thinking employers say, but this is a myth. But even in these workplaces the great and the good are tunnelling their escape route as we speak. In our experience these are the top-performing salespeople, engineers and creative/design people who even in a recession can find gainful employment elsewhere, including with competitors.
High-performers will always have a place to go, and while they may have had less mobility during the recession, your competitors are already looking around to see who is unhappy and ready to leave. Employers who continue to believe their people are just grateful to have a job will be blindsided when their top talent walks out the door. Forward-thinking employers are putting resources into succession planning, and where promotions and additional benefits are not available, then individuals with high-potential are being given flexible working, sabbaticals and coaching.
FOUR FURTHER COMMON MYTHS AROUND EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Money is the number one way to motivate employees.
Salaries and bonuses were the staple of motivation in good times, with many employers stating that people came and went for a few pence difference per hour. Companies relied primarily, even completely, on monetary rewards - a lazy approach. Money is only one factor in motivation, typically ranking in most surveys below work environment, flexibility, opportunity, and job satisfaction. Leaders must give employees what they crave: recognition, praise and the opportunity to learn and grow.
Some experts believe that money is not a motivator. However, the perception of being inadequately rewarded (monetarily or not) is a 'demotivator'. They say that the promise of more money only motivates until the payment is received then psychologically the recipient absorbs it as something that was always deserved anyway, so it is no longer a positive. Therefore it is the "promise" that is the motivator for greater efforts not the money itself.
ACTION TO TAKE: Brainstorm with your directors for new approaches to praise, recognise and reward. Make it systematic - through weekly, monthly and annual activities. Sit down with your directors and help them develop non-monetary reward systems.
If you want to motivate people, don’t let them in on the bad news.
Bad news always gets out to employees. They hate it when you hide bad news; quite rightly they consider themselves to be stakeholders in the organisation. They long for a chance to contribute and make a difference when the going gets tough. Empower people by letting them in on the news so they can help.
ACTION TO TAKE: Encourage directors to set up lunches, breakfasts, and forums where they can help you brainstorm through tough challenges and contribute to solutions going forward. Encourage directors to set up a robust feedback loop of communication through electronic and in person meetings.
Most employees know what motivates them.
People long for a purpose and often find it in their work. However, they need encouragement and guidance from leaders to help them focus on the right things. Leaders must take an active role with each individual to help them develop their interests and talents. Routine conversations about what is important to them will keep the employee engaged and help the manager know how to get the most from the individual.
Young talent especially needs to know what leaders see as their future, and are influenced by a leader’s observations and mentoring. Often such young talent craves an inspiring figure to follow, who makes an effort to ensure their and the organisation’s goals are linked/aligned by finding out what they want then proving to them that they and the organisation are their best chance of obtaining it.
ACTION TO TAKE: Ask appraisers to spend more time during appraisals asking questions about what aspects of work are important to each appraisee. Undertake an employee satisfaction survey to obtain structured feedback on the different motivational stimuli.
You simply cannot motivate everyone.
This was true in boom times when organisations were bloated, and some people you hired were marginal. Those days are over. If you have downsized effectively, you should have excellent talent on board. Assume that everyone can be engaged.
ACTION TO TAKE: Create an engagement worksheet where employees can rank what’s important to them, and how satisfied they are in each area on a sliding scale. Help managers and directors come up with low-cost resources to meet these needs, increase employee satisfaction and engagement.
THE MACLEOD REVIEW
The MacLeod Review of employee engagement (entitled ‘Engaging for Success’) was published in July 2009 and recommended that employers must fully involve their employees in the future of the business if they are to innovate and secure new opportunities. Overall, the MacLeod Review recommended:
- The government should work to raise awareness of employee engagement benefits and techniques.
- A senior sponsor group bringing together representatives from business, the public sector, not-for-profit organisations and unions, should be set up to boost understanding of this vital topic – many leading figures have already agreed to be part of this group.
- The government and its agencies should work together to ensure their support is aligned and tailored to the needs of different organisations in different sectors of the economy seeking to enhance levels of employee engagement.
- A range of more practical support for organisations who want to raise levels of employee engagement should be made available in 2010. This support should be designed in consultation with businesses and other organisations to ensure it is tailored to their needs.
The CIPD has stated that the review puts employee engagement where it belongs - at the heart of business performance.
"Converting employee engagement into bottom-line results is what employee engagement is all about. HR professionals will see this report as an endorsement of what many of them are already doing, as well as a stimulus to do more."
One of our favourite statements from the review was:
“Engaged organisations have strong values, with clear evidence of trust and fairness based on mutual respect, where two way promises and commitments - between employers and staff - are understood and are fulfilled.”
DIVIDING OUR EMPLOYEES INTO GROUPS
A question we regularly ask to new clients is what information exists to split the workforce into five distinct categories:
- Actively engaged
- Engaged
- Neutral
- Disengaged
- Actively disengaged
This information can be obtained from appraisals, customer complaints, customer compliments, interviews, meetings, performance against objectives, surveys etc.
It is surprising how few employers have any objective data for this area!
In a 2009 project we broke engagement down into a combination of pride (I’m proud to tell people I work for my organisation), satisfaction (I’m satisfied with my organisation as a place to work), advocacy (I would recommend my organisation to others as a good place to work) and retention (I rarely think about looking for a new job with another organisation). By averaging the percentages of favourable responses in these areas, an employee engagement index score was created and league tables produced.
UNCOVERING TALENT ENGAGEMENT
In 2010 most people are familiar with talent management but less so with talent engagement, which focuses on two essential questions:
What does this person need to make a high value contribution to our organisation?
What will most effectively unlock this person’s full potential?
Whether in low productivity, inefficiency, or poor retention rates, employers pay dearly for wasted talent and commitment. And whether they know it or not, this explains why they often have difficulty in innovating in every corner of the enterprise. Equally, the damage caused to individuals by allowing them to waste their potential produces strains that ultimately surface in stress, conflict and even ill health.
A. Be a creative detective
During turbulent economic times it can be tempting to insist that any investment in talent should be focused on purely functional learning; that is, making sure job holders have what they need to be effective. That would include any learning needed to do new tasks and take on new responsibilities. Yet talent engagement looks beyond these basics and to answer the above two salient questions you may need to become a creative detective. As a creative detective you visit the scene(s) of the crime where people are disengaged or where you suspect the perpetration of the crime of non-engagement.
In your search for clues, it makes sense to invite the victims to describe what might be occurring to produce their low levels of engagement. Simply asking them often produces frank answers such as: "I can’t talk to my line manager, he never listens"; or "nobody seems to care if I do a really good job or not"; or even "what I do is boring".
As you gather the evidence and the clues, you will almost certainly start acquiring a strong idea about the likely solution to the low engagement crime.
B. Discover the solution
Next you must become creative, helping others unravel the solution to higher levels of talent engagement. In your creative detective role you may need to encourage experiments that attempt to unleash talent and that inspire people to start performing at their best. While this may involve innovative solutions, it may just as easily come down to some prosaic ones, such as showing managers how to manage conflict, improving how teams operate, and encouraging line mangers to spend time talking to their employees to ensure they are fully stretched while also feeling well supported.
Less obvious approaches
These include:
- Stretch assignments: Make sure each person has at least one stretch assignment encouraging them to go beyond their present level of performance
- Comprehensive feedback: Give line managers insightful feedback on the levels of engagement of their direct reports
- Networking techniques: Use these to encourage professionals to meet others like themselves both internally and externally
- Raise profiles: Help people build their profile across the organisation, showing them what it takes to develop a strong one
- New forums: Generate new opportunities for your talent to shine or excel
- Coaching: Ask everyone to become coaches to each other, not just managers, and give them help in developing their coaching role
- Low-cost initiatives: Sponsor a low-cost talent development initiative in which leaders gain new experience across the organisation and share their learning
- Postings: Ensure your talent can post details of their experience and aspirations so they can be accessed by a wide range managers and leaders in the organisation
- Diaries: Ask people to keep a diary for a week on the best and the worst bits of their job and share these with colleagues
- Inspiration: Since there is no ideal 'end state' of engagement, focus instead on identifying what inspires people, uncovering what literally gets their juices flowing and feeling that it is worth getting up in the morning to come to work
- Community initiatives: Develop community activities that both develop teams and local partnerships while also increases personal happiness and by extension engagement
In summary
In making the case for talent engagement all employees must be willing to speak out about it and not shelter leaders and managers from uncomfortable facts. These might include disconcerting evidence about current low levels of engagement amongst the workforce.
MAINTAINING MORALE WHEN DOOM AND GLOOM IS EVERYWHERE
Whilst no magic wand exists here are some approaches that we have employed recently:
1. Get everyone involved:
In challenging times an open and honest approach tends to work best. Where people are worrying about losing their jobs, they are not concentrating on what they need to do, so let them know how the organisation is getting on (there may be limits). Try to win employees' confidence by listening to their concerns. You might be amazed by their reaction.
2. Celebrate success:
Wherever you can, ensure that you share successes with your employees. People can't take too much bad news, so it’s important to give them something to celebrate. Publicise good news such as praise from a happy client; a delivery ahead of schedule; or a real change in performance. You can create your own good news by introducing
a person or team of the month award. Over time, as the situation improves, you'll have much more to celebrate.
3. Ensure you share priorities:
It sounds obvious, but does your team know what is expected of them? Periodically review objectives and make sure that they are fitting in with the organisation’s plans and priorities – there is nothing more empowering for employees than seeing where they are making a difference!
4. Deal with performance issues:
If you have performance issues with employees, deal with them. Give them action plans and targets and make sure they are aware of the consequences of non-performance. Avoid the knee-jerk reaction of ‘getting rid’ of people under the guise of ‘redundancy’. In addition to the legal problems you will cause yourself, think what message it puts out!
EMPLOYEES SHOULD BE ASSETS
Real employee engagement starts with the recognition that your workforce stands on a tightrope between being viewed as an asset or as a liability. The employee at 3M who invented Post-It Notes might, for example, be referred to as an asset. Employees in local authorities facing huge job cuts might be considered as a liability by their senior management. Every organisation faces a delicate balance in how its workforce is viewed.
The hard work is not what organisations choose to do about employee engagement. The hard work starts by recognising that every employee you hire is a potential asset. It starts with a fundamental change in organisational behavioural attitudes from those who run these organisations. If you, as a manager or director truly believe that every employee is an asset to your organisation, then that's how you will see them and behave towards them. That change in behaviour and attitude will then reap its own reward as employees will want to give more back to the company.
This simple change in attitude towards your employees coupled with an understanding that trust, respect, recognition and appreciation, is a two-way mirror. If you expect your employees to trust, respect, recognise and appreciate you for the leadership and direction that you provide, then you must pay them the same compliment by return. There’s nothing more complicated to it than that.
Getting the most out of your people is not just a case of fitting the right peg into the right hole. Shaping a round peg from a block of wood, just so that it fits snugly into a round hole, discards the potential from what remains. Smart employers recognise that limitation, and ensure that the full potential of all the original material in every employee is used to maximum. They have to because in the world of competitive business, you just can’t afford the luxury of employee potential waiting to be discovered.
WHAT ARE THE DRIVERS OF ENGAGEMENT?
Recent research concluded that in the UK, what people want from their work is to feel excited, fulfilled and motivated by their role; to feel confidence in the future of their organisation; to feel they have a promising future; to feel their organisation supports work-life balance; to feel that safety is a priority for their organisation; to be satisfied with their level of recognition; to have opportunities to improve their skills; to have a manager who does a good job; to have leaders who are concerned about the well-being of employees and for colleagues at work to give their best.
From the long list of ten four macro drivers were pinpointed that engage employees. These were:
1. Leaders who inspire confidence in the future:
· Executive assessment/selection
· Quality of strategic plan and execution
· Leadership development
· Communication abilities/employee orientation
· Performance management systems
2. Managers who recognise employees and emphasise quality and improvement:
· Management assessment/selection
· Management development/behaviour modelling
· Performance and talent management systems
· Quality and improvement plan/initiatives
· Use of feedback systems, from customers and employees
3. Exciting work and the opportunity to improve skills:
· Employee assessment/selection
· Person-job match
· Employee involvement in decision-making
· On-the-job training/‘stretch’ assignments
· Performance and talent management systems
4. Organisation demonstrates a genuine responsibility to employees and communities:
· Safety procedures/training/compliance
· Work-life balance programmes/support
· Genuine, consistent leadership/management support
· Corporate responsibility investment level
· Public relations and employee awareness
In addition, the study revealed that UK employees want to be able to say: my manager treats employees fairly; my performance is evaluated fairly; my manager makes good use of employee ideas; work problems are corrected quickly; communication is open and two-way; my manager builds confidence in the senior leaders; my manager’s behaviour is consistent with the mission and values of the organisation; my manager assures me I have a promising future and my manager gives me the opportunity to improve my skills.
In other words, effective managers are seen as fair, they provide recognition, they’re open and communicative, they’re problem solvers, they build confidence for the employee, they behave in ways consistent with the vision and values of the organisation and they encourage their employees to develop their skills.
Each of these aspects of managerial effectiveness will be influenced by further factors. For example, to be an effective problem solver, a manager needs an awareness of the issues, a sense of urgency, knowledge of how the workplace operates and an understanding of how to create and communicate a plan for how the problem will be resolved.
Using the aspects of managerial effectiveness, it’s possible to create a framework of skills, competencies, abilities, values, attitudes, behaviours and knowledge that your managers need. You can then assess your managers against this framework and create development plans to close any gaps.
HEALTH AND HAPPINESS
Increasingly health & wellbeing initiatives are being used in a variety of ways to engage employees, as organisations seek cost-effective ways to inject energy and enthusiasm at work to create an environment where workers are ready, willing and able to focus fully on the tasks at hand. Some critics believe that it’s not the responsibility of the employer to look after the health of the workforce but in a world where improved productivity has been proven to link with a rise in levels of employee engagement it would be foolish to overlook the impact of health & wellbeing. A recent project we completed adopted the following approach:
1: Do something for employees they wouldn’t do for themselves
We all like to think we’re in good shape but there’s only one way to find out if we really are or not and that’s by screening for key health indicators such as blood pressure, cholesterol, blood glucose and bone density. Most people would love to know their numbers in these areas but chances are they won’t make time to go and have these indicators measured by themselves.
An employer that arranges for regular screenings to take place on site not only gives employees a great perk, but also will benefit from the positive action employees take on discovering how they’ve performed. Arrange these screening sessions at periodic intervals and you’ll guarantee ongoing good habits. Regular screenings become a talking point, a feature of the business calendar, and keep people on the straight and narrow between events.
On a business level, monitoring improvements with key health indicators such as a group reduction in blood pressure, cholesterol or body fat provide great material for internal and external PR.
Providing the opportunity for employees to consult with a health expert has been shown to increase participation in some programmes considerably. Once again, it’s unlikely that individuals will seek out this resource in their own time, but if they know there will be an expert on site regularly and they know they can speak confidentially about their specific health, fitness, food and lifestyle objectives, they’ll jump at the chance. These appointments can provide the key that unlocks amazing results for many people and can provide life-changing moments those employees will be extremely grateful for. In return the business benefits from individuals experiencing renewed energy and effectiveness, which translated in this instance into better customer service and increased sales.
2: Change the culture
Health & wellbeing initiatives are flexible and democratic. They appeal to workers at every level of an organisation, primarily because everyone has a vested interest in feeling good.
Senior executives don’t usually have a problem engaging with their professional roles – after all they’ve spent a lot of time working themselves into those positions but what they do care about is their effectiveness. They want to be as efficient as they can be in order to move onto the next level of their career development. Target this group with health & wellbeing initiatives that demonstrate how to manage energy better, stay focused, exercise effectively, sleep better and eat well in the midst of a busy week or a hectic travel routine and they’ll seize this opportunity with both hands.
On a wider scale for many employers, the challenge is getting people to turn up for work and giving the job their full attention while they are there. This was highlighted with the issues around snow and bad weather in January. Offering people an environment where they can attend fitness sessions, yoga classes, walking or running clubs provides then with opportunities to fit activity into their day as well as a great reason to get them into the office. Implementing some sort of theme, challenge or team element will encourage a much wider take up of initiatives and also gets people talking about health and wellbeing in a positive way rather than complaining that they feel lousy.
Arranging bite-size presentations on key themes such as eating well in the office or how to get a great night’s sleep, and tying this in with health screenings and advice on what to do with the results provides workers with information they can act upon while at work, and can also use to benefit their home life, family and friends. Providing employees with something they weren’t expecting from work but which can enhance all aspects of their lives is a brilliant way to engender loyalty.
3: Add value
In reality, most people don’t go to work to get healthy. They want a job or a career and to earn a salary. Employers who fulfil the basic requirements and then go the extra mile by enabling employees to optimise their health and wellbeing into the bargain are delivering a great incentive that helps both to retain good people and attract top talent. Health and wellbeing initiatives help organisations to stand out from the competition and send the message that the business cares about its employees, not just as members of staff or cogs in the wheel, but as individuals to be valued and this is a message that can make the difference between engaging employees fully and missing a great opportunity.
4: Watch the bottom line
Recently there are many more statistics available relating to health & wellbeing initiatives so whether you’re looking for an increase in productivity of 8.5%, a return on investment of £4 and upwards for every pound you spend in this area, or you’re simply looking to make your office a great place to work, the right initiatives will put money in the bank for the business and a smile on the face of your people.
TO CONCLUDE
A key requirement to improve employee engagement, led from the top, is the ability to articulate the vision, purpose and values of the organisation, and create a climate of trust and openness.
As the banks and politicians illustrate, that may mean regaining trust and respect (internally and externally). It may require a long hard look at purpose and values. It means facing up to any lack of “cultural fit’ between its espoused values and its exhibited values.
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Fluid
Registered Office: 2 Abbey Court, Horsforth, Leeds LS18 4SA Tel: 0113 258 7335 Fax: 0113 258 3119
Mobile: 07751 536043 Email: tim@fluidconsultinglimited.com Web: www.fluidconsultinglimited.com
