Six months on...

It's been over six month since my last post here, so now seems a good time for an update.  It was not so much a lack of interest in blogging as a feeling that my activity at work was not something I should write about publicly at the time. 

All communicators doubtless understand the need for discretion and to observe the requirement to keep certain business matters confidential.  If we don't then how can our senior stakeholders freely share with us the essential background information we need, with confidence?  We communicators who blog about what we do must always be mindful that we tread a fine line, between sharing our professional experiences appropriately and revealing more about the challenges our companies or organisations are facing than we should.

As with many companies in the current economic climate, my employer has not enjoyed an easy time of things in recent months.  The loss of a major contract in January provided me with sufficient engagement challenges to keep me busy for some time.  In addition to the open and honest internal communication about what this loss meant for the business there were the business-as-usual requirements of supporting HR with the TUPE activity as colleagues transferred to our former client.

Barely had that detailed piece of work come to an end that a difficult restructuring programme commenced.  With the colleague population already feeling bruised and concerned by the loss of our biggest client, it had become necessary to reshape the business.  Regretably this would involve not only transformation on an extensive scale, but redundancies for a number of our colleagues too.  As many communicators who have undertaken this type of activity will confirm, you feel an overwhelming duty of care to your colleagues who are departing and you push yourself to bring your influence to bear to ensure the process is as smooth and considerate as possible.

Now that process is complete the communications plan is focused on re-establishing stability and supporting the growth agenda of the reshaped business.  While it is straightforward to align the engagement activity to the corporate plan it's not an easy task to move colleagues' minds on from what has gone before, but that is where I find myself today. Hopefully circumstances will make it easier to blog more regularly now, so do visit again soon.

Employee engagement: a matter of justice?

When it comes to employee engagement a question I have heard asked more than once is: "what do we want our engagement to achieve?". Because engagement seems to mean a variety of different things to different people, I came around to accepting the question has some merit - even though I believed the people asking it were approaching the rationale and need for communication from the wrong angle.

Generally speaking, when you break it down, organisations in the US and Europe want to improve employee engagement in order to increase employee performance, as there is evidence that shows an engaged workforce ultimately delivers better results which in turn enhances a company's bottom line. Before today I had not really considered that the desired outcomes from employee engagement in organisations elsewhere in the world might be somewhat different.

But now, having read this op-ed in the Economic Times of India, penned by Tata Executive Director, R Gopalakrishnan, I can see a rather different motivation for a focus on engagement based on the Indian philiosophical concepts of Niti  (bringing about better justice) and Nyaya (preventing injustice). Gopalakrishnan's focus here is squarely on the need to pursue corporate policies humanely. When you think about it, this is deep stuff. I cannot remember ever hearing language like this used by executives:

Prevention of injustice is very different from pursuit of perfect justice. They are two sides of the same coin, but their value perception is different. So far as the Indian legislative framework is concerned, laws pertaining to worker relations have for long needed to be updated. Labour reforms have been widely discussed, but the subject remains on the pending agenda.

However, at the firm level, managers can act on remedying the nyaya perceived by the employees in the employee-employer relation; its practice can be modernised by forward-looking managements. This requires special effort by company leaders.

I wonder if the concept of justice ever overtly crosses the minds of communicators and executives in the west when focusing on employee engagement. It may be that in many organisations the concept of justice is an ever present if unspoken factor in employee engagement.

In seeking ever more innovative ways of engaging with employees, could there be an opportunity here for organisations and communicators to take justice and make it a prominent and visible plank in their engagement strategies? Or would such language and philiosophical depth feel out of place and make people somewhat uncomfortable in our boardrooms and communications departments? Maybe that would be a good thing...

Unacceptable politicisation of employee engagement

People Management magazine carries a story about an extraordinary claim, by a co-author of a government commissioned review, that better employee engagement at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) could have prevented the near-collapse of the bank. The substance of the intervention risks making the role of the internal communicator or employee engagement manager more difficult in the future. The story explains:

Nita Clarke, joint author of the MacLeod review, told delegates at a fringe event that while two years ago RBS had “some good things to say about engaging employees”, some senior strategists were far from engaged. “It was a very small group of people at the very top who were not engaged who had hijacked the investment and capital decisions. Perhaps the world would have been a different place if they had [been engaged],” she said.

It is a quite incredible claim. The story also reports that:

Lord Young, parliamentary under-secretary for business, innovation and skills, added that better employee engagement could have stopped “people just pursuing profit without thinking about sustainable growth”.

Nita Clarke may be director of the Involvement and Participation Association (IPA), but prior to that she spent six years working in 10 Downing Street for Tony Blair as an assistant political secretary advising the PM on trade unions. Before that, Ms Clarke worked for the Unison trade union. She is married to Stephen Benn, eldest son of Labour firebrand, Tony Benn. Ms Clarke's daughter, Emily, is the Labour candidate for East Worthing and Shoreham at the next general election. She is a political animal of the first order and her assertions are politically motivated.

The published comments go way beyond the brief of examining how engagement with staff can improve productivity. They represent an attempt to write a wholly new definition of employee engagement. The commonly understood definitions of employee engagement can be read here.

To follow Ms Clarke and Lord Young's arguments to their logical conclusion, their perception of employee engagement is a dialogue where the senior leaders of an organisation seek approval from employees for the company's strategy, and employees have the opportunity to challenge the direction charted by the leadership. It also presumes the employees would have dissented from a strategy that was intended to increase the performance and profitability of the organisation. It will be interesting to see if the full review provides any evidence for this.

Regardless, it is not any definition of employee engagement that I'm familiar with. It is not about engagement as we know it, but is an unwelcome political intrusion (regardless of the political stripe) into business and an effort to tell companies how they should organise themselves. Therein resides a ticking timebomb for communicators and employee engagement specialists.

Gaining the trust of senior leaders in an organisation can be difficult at the best of times. Work we do to influence and counsel leaders and decision makers, and to facilitate effective two-way communication, will only be made harder if business leaders perceive our efforts to be grounded in a politically motivated plan to weaken the leadership's grip on the strategic direction of the organisation and transfer a portion of control to employees.

Ms Clarke and Lord Young's comments represent an unhelpful attempt to make a workplace an openly party political environment by hijacking employee engagement issues for party political ends. Politicians of all parties, and their proxies in various agencies and organisations, should abandon any designs they have on politicising this essential form of communication. They risk doing more harm than good.

Employee engagement reduces staff turnover

It was interesting to read in HR Magazine that a company has reduced its staff turnover from 75% to 1% in just 30 months, due to a focused engagement and recognition policy. It was curious however to learn that the company is actually an engagement consultancy, O.C. Tanner. Quite how an engagement consultancy experienced a 75% turnover of staff, even through mergers and acquisitions, is a mystery.

However, the lesson to take away from this is that having a defined engagement strategy is essential. At the very base level, there has to be effective two-way communication and recognition of employees when they make a valuable contribution to the business' objectives. Ensuring that everyone understands their and their team's goals and is able to input into formulating those goals, is an important ingredient in employee satisfaction and buy-in.

Engagement inclusion

We've all heard politicians and sociologists talk about social inclusion in recent years. It's succeeded in shifting the focus of politicians and agencies on problems in society that need to be resolved.

So isn't it time that internal communications professionals started to promote the concept of 'engagement inclusion' to generate a focus on problems in the business world that could be addressed with better engagement?

Although it has been something rattling around inside my head for a while, it was seeing, yet again, a valuable message like this being tucked away in the specialist pages of a media, marketing and advertising journal that has prompted this blog post. It seems to me such a waste to only ever see our unique value proposition being used as part of sales pitches for workshops and seminars. Rightly or wrongly, it makes me feel as if my profession is being used by some people as a chance to make a quick buck by preaching to the converted.

We are all familiar with the thinking in the pitch that takes up the first three paragraphs. But it seems to me that we as professionals aren't making the best use of channels (in the widest sense) to share our important value proposition with a segment of business that doesn't currently engage effectively with people in their organisations. There are plenty of organisations where there is an absence of any kind of engagement strategy or focus, and perhaps we should be working to start a discussion with them to explain what we have to offer from a professional standpoint.

Promoting the positive and substantive contribution internal communication and employee engagement can make to a business that does not engage with its people is a great opportunity to enhance the professional standing of internal communicators. Maybe the time has come for internal comms thought leaders should make use of their networks and connections to get space in mainstream publications to explain two key messages:

1. what employee engagement is about
   
2. why more businesses should embrace a professional approach to engagement
   

This could serve two purposes. First, that decision makers in small and medium enterprises gain greater awareness and understanding of internal comms and can consider making use of a valuable function that remains too far the preserve of large businesses. Second, that internal comms rightly positions itself as a professional function that plays an important and valuable role in business and can offer solutions to problems that exist in too many organisations.

I believe that communicators who are passionate about their work and view what they do as a vocational undertaking will recognise and share my sentiments. I hope they are sufficiently motivated to start a conversation about stepping up to meet this challenge of bringing engagement to those in business who do not experience it. Maybe engagement inclusion should be a topic that comes up at the numerous conferences and get togethers of professionals in our field as it is an important piece missing from our jigsaw.

A timely reminder why employee engagement matters

Executives and managers in Brisbane are being invited to attend a business breakfast where they will be told how to engage and reward their people in tough times. We need to see lots more of these sessions in the UK where thought leaders in communications and employee engagement can explain why employee engagement matters - especially in a challenging market environment.

Perhaps in the UK the message to promote interest and get business leaders to such a session should be "How better engagement with your people can boost your business". Regardless, the thinking behind the Brisbane session is excellent. Its organiser, the General Manager and Co-Founder of Pure Source Recruitment, Tracey Montgomery, hit the nail on the head in explaining why employee engagement matters:

“With redundancies and pay freezes lurking in the shadows of Brisbane’s corporate market, employee morale is under threat and this can be very dangerous to firms’ bottom lines,” she says.

“A lot of employers think because it’s a tight job market at the moment, they don’t have to try as hard to engage with their employees. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Employers need to sustain a strong corporate culture to ensure their firms continue to run efficiently and effectively in this tough market.

“With most workplaces going through tough times, employee morale and spirit may be low so there has never been a more crucial time to remind firms how to effectively engage and reward employees.”

Perhaps more internal communicators in the UK should be taking a lead in organising similar events here.