Engaging hearts and minds

On Tuesday 27^th January the CIPD hosted its latest one-day conference on employee engagement in the attractive environs of the Guoman Tower Hotel, hard by the Thames at Tower Bridge.  Introducing the event, chair Tim Miller (director - people, property and assurance at Standard Chartered) said engagement was never more important than in bad times, given that we appear to be facing a long and deep recession.  He also maintained that managers are the fulcrum around which effective engagement is generated (or not, as the case may be).

An overview of the subject was presented by Katie Truss, director of the employee engagement consortium at Kingston Business School, which has been researching engagement with the support of the CIPD and ten unnamed (for the purposes of confidentiality) organisations.  She endorsed the view that employee engagement "matters" during a downturn, even when budgets are under severe pressure.  She defined the key characteristics of engagement as an interaction between employer and employee - a two-way process embracing what the individual does for the organisation and vice versa - and a set of behaviours, i.e. an active state rather than passive feelings.  She identified the three dimensions (emotional, intellectual and social) of effective engagement, and closed by sharing some of the initial findings of the KBS research.  One noteworthy point is that context clearly makes a difference - all the evidence suggests that a ‘one size fits all' approach simply won't work.

Kath Knight and Alex Michael, respectively HR director and employee engagement manager at the Mace Group, presented the first of several case-studies looking into different organisations' ‘journeys' along the engagement route.  The Group's initiatives to date have continue to improve engagement scores, and Kath maintained that even during a recession it's important to ensure that positive actions are continued and sustained.  And while it's never possible to engage all of the people all of the time, success can be demonstrated by the virtuous circle of the service profit chain, which sees employee satisfaction driving customer satisfaction, which in turn drives customer loyalty, revenue growth, profitability and so on.

Annette Ware, who heads up Vodafone's communications and employee experience function, illustrated the effective use of the latest communications technology to understand and drive engagement.  She stressed the importance of employees having confidence in the business and faith in the brand.  At Vodafone, engagement initiatives are supported by robust metrics including an EEI (employee engagement index) and NPS (net promoter score).  The key to success is finding ways to make business strategy ‘inspiring' in order to encourage people to engage with it.  And while the ‘rational' box can usually be ticked quite quickly, it's essential to engage people effectively on an emotional level as well - which the company does very successfully through fun events and sponsorship activities.  Naturally, as a communications company Vodafone makes full use of the latest technology in pursuing its engagement objectives.

Occupational psychologist Joyce Henderson and HR practitioner Jan Jones stressed the importance of engagement to the Department for Work and Pensions in helping the UK's biggest government department to achieve more with less.  The powerful influence of the HEO (higher executive grade) having been identified, much work is being focused on this level of first-line management, since engaged people are usually seen to be managed by engaged leaders.

A pre-lunch discussion panel involving Tim Miller, Raffaela Goodby of Birmingham City Council, Daniel Kasmir (ex BDO Stoy Hayward) and CIPD organisation and resourcing adviser Claire McCartney then looked at the problems of engaging Generation Y, but failed to reached a consensus on whether the latter was virtually a separate species of employee or whether the recession would soon see some of its well-documented preoccupations (e.g. work-life balance) fading like the morning dew.  At any event, it was agreed that Gen Y needed to be communicated with in completely different ways - and this is already proving problematic for some organisations, particularly those at the more conservative end of the professional services sector.

KPMG head of recruitment marketing Alison Heron stressed the importance of the employer brand in engaging future employees.  The brand can play a key part in helping to differentiate an employer and strengthen an organisation's reputation - something KPMG should know a bit about, as the current number one in the Sunday Times Top 100 and the recruiter of roughly a thousand graduates a year.  In ‘the age of personalisation', it's important to keep things simple: what today's brand-savvy potential recruits want to know is "What's the deal?  What's it really like to work here?  And what's in it for me?"  Taking account of different generations while remaining true to the brand can pose a real challenge, but for Alison ‘bringing the brand alive' means sticking to simple messages, reflecting the organisation's personality, providing a consistent experience for candidates, and offering a choice of communication channels.

Further ‘journeys' down the engagement route were illustrated by Sara Bruck, VP - OD at Visa Europe, and Bob Hughes, talent and employee engagement manager at Network Rail.  Sara stressed the importance of taking action at individual, divisional and corporate levels to drive engagement and thus business performance, while Bob outlined the huge operational challenges facing Network Rail that simply won't happen without an engaged workforce.  Simply improving the communication between manager and employee can do much to build engagement in itself, and Bob explained that managers at Network Rail were increasingly being trained to adopt more of a coaching style (since over-reliance on the traditional command-and-control model is likely to result in a resentful and dependent workforce).

David MacLeod, the lead on the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform's review, provided a stimulating overview of BERR's current initiative on employee engagement and its importance to UK plc, not least during a recession.  He made the point that, given the very worst scenario, nine out of ten UK businesses would survive and nine out of ten employees remain in employment - and "will they end up on their knees, or in their running-shoes?"  He's also anxious to learn what government can do to help any organisations seeking to address the issue of employee engagement.

Gemma Webb, head of people engagement at Virgin Media (the largest entity in the Virgin empire), explained how her organisation goes about engaging employees from day one.  Creating a distinctive culture for the new organisation was seen as key to the process.  A highly effective ‘Revolution' campaign has proved very successful in driving up engagement levels and encouraging people to see themselves as product champions.  And in response to an audience question about how to handle the terminally disengaged, Gemma claimed that "If you can turn around the cynic, they will be by far your most positive voice."

By the close, delegates had been treated to a rich diet of information covering every aspect of engagement.  Among the enduring themes to emerge during the day were the importance of qualities like clarity (especially in terms of setting expectations), honesty and integrity; the need for effective feedback (formal, as well as informal, in terms of letting people know that they're valued); and the crucial contribution of line management in determining whether their teams end up engaged or note.  And finally, it's clear that employee engagement shouldn't be regarded as a single strand of HR activity, but rather the outcome of a whole raft of activities.