Employee Engagement is common sense isn’t it?

I think it was Lord Sieff of M&S fame who said “The problem with common sense is that it’s not very common.” Wise words indeed and for the most part, entirely relevant in today’s society.

In my view, HR has adopted a more common sense approach over the last ten years or so. Indeed the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has put a great deal of effort into supporting HR practitioners to be more relevant, “translatable” and “common sensible” (my terms) than ever before with handy tools and techniques available to members.

Having been in HR for 20 years, I have watched the profession move from being control centric, measure-hungry and define needy….to collaborative, supportive and openly challenging. This paradigm shift has enabled knowledge brokerage to surface and where possible innovation and collaboration to flourish.

Of course people will always be the most important resource in any organisation and having the right people with the right skills and behaviours can set you apart from your competitors. However, the focus on work has increasingly moved towards being knowledge centric. It would seem that the ability to “do” is less important to organisations than the ability to “know”, with technology, automation, offshoring and de-layering of supply chains in manufacturing becoming part of the norm. Warehousing, sales, marketing, service, finance, HR, management and distribution are of significant importance in a global world economy even if, for example, that business is a traditional manufacturing concern.

So how do we ensure that the knowledge inside someone’s head is captured and better yet, shared within the organisation? And if we can do that, how will we engage employees in such a way that they are willing and able to give their best? Discretionary effort is a term that I became familiar with earlier in my career and have understood a variety of interpretations from people managers along the way.

For an organisation to fully realise its human capital, it has to recognise that innovative, dedicated and well-trained people are the key to its success. Fostering a culture that promotes team-working and collaboration is key for any business and ensuring the right culture and processes to support this, is a given. It all sounds like commons sense, right?

However, in order to achieve this, there has to be a greater focus on employee development with smarter ways of measuring and rewarding employee performance. Recognition and reward is a natural part of employment but the world has changed and employee expectations of career paths and clearly defined progression routes are more complex now than ever before. Changes to employment legislation surrounding working patterns, equality and flexibility have rightly brought about a need for employers to themselves become more understanding of a modern society. And of course it doesn’t just stop there.

Employers that get engagement right also look through their entire labour supply chain in engagement, talent pooling and additional or even third party labour – one group, one goal.

Getting this right allows for successful organisations to attract the best employees without necessarily offering the security of a permanent contract. And an engaging, well thought of business is a privilege to work for. I could list my top five, but then so could most people.

It follows then that any employee engagement programme must form part of the wider business plans. It has to be a part of the critical success criteria and it must also be measureable. All too often, organisations start an engagement programme and do not know if they’ve arrived at their destination. The key to this is to define your engagement plan and ensure that key stakeholders are involved along the way.

Most importantly, engagement can only work if you communicate, communicate, communicate. If you haven’t got your communication platforms and channels right, you must focus on changing them in order to be successful in your endeavours. Ultimately employees need clarity in order to achieve joint objectives.

So employee engagement seems like common sense, it even appears to be wholly achievable if some simple steps are taken. I wonder then how many organisations truly achieve in this area and just how common successful engagement really is.

Huge thanks to Howard Sloane, Group HR Director at Peel Ports Ltd for allowing us to republish his utterly brilliant article.

 

 

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Engage & Prosper is a UK based privately owned Employee Engagement Consultancy and Social Enterprise, on a mission to help organisations develop a highly productive and fulfilling workplace culture, with their people, through enhanced employee engagement strategies, fabulous and effective internal communications platforms and tailored reward and recognition programmes.

For more information on Engage & Prosper or to discover how we can help you achieve your organisational and people goals please call +44 (0) 330 223 0464 or find out more at www.engageandprosper.com