Key Driver of Engagament

[Adam Scott]

My first post so here it goes...
I am currently finishing a report on engagement in a manufacturing organisation.Which has to be submitted by Friday !
Briefly - The company has been left in the 80s in terms of forward thinking HR practices. The results of my survey indicate the serious issue that is preventing engagement is communication ( no surprise there i hear you say ! )
I need to propose some recommendations for enhancing engagement through communication
I would welcome any ideas .The main issues are the lack of organisational aims and objectives being cascaded down from Senior management and also the general lack of an employee voice.
The company has approx 120 people , small mgt team and tight resources

Any help would be welcomed

Thanks

Adam Scott

[Ian Buckingham]

In my experience Adam, the quickest route to breaking through to engagement (and I've worked extensively across the SME sector as well as large corporates) is to increase the amount of involvement in the aims and objectives throughout the organisation. Yes the Hero leaders have to be the architects of the business goals, culture and strategy but they arent the most important communicators. First line managers are. Employees will only engage if they are involved with the aims, goals and strategy, understand them in their own terms and can relate to them.
Have you considered setting up a consultation body or steering group made up of a cross-functional slice of volunteers? I'm sure they would love to be involved and it would help to really kickstart communication as well as send a strong message about future ways of working?

If you get the chance take a look at the Changeboard blogs. Changeboard is a free resource packed with ideas about employee engagement, leadership etc:
http://www.changeboard.com/hrcircles/blogs/communication/archive/20....
Alternatively take a look at Brand Engagement - you can download a free chapter on the Palgrave Macmillan site:
www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=281268

[Hugh Flouch]

I agree with Ian Adam. Line managers are often the key. It's the dialogue they have with employees that can make the biggest single difference. A research company I work for did a piece of research in a group of global companies and established strong links between employee-manager conversations and engagement and retention. You can download a copy of the research summary for free here.

The key is to start by giving the managers some moments of epiphany around this issue. A simple tool, Engaging Conversations, has done this very effectively in organisations both sides of the Atlantic.

[David Zinger]

Adam,

Your interest and passion will go a long way. It is good to have a champion for engagement.

There are many free and useful resources:
Have you read the free book from the network with over 300 key ideas. Click here for the pdf version. This book can give you lots of think about in bite size chunks.

Do employees want to voice? And how do they want to voice. This could range from team huddles to social networks like this.

What is the level of trust and integrity within the organization? Sometimes this needs to be addressed.

How about a blog by managers or leaders to be more open and transparent and to create conversations.

Instead of spending a ton of money on surveys I think if we can build quick free Google forms (you can do it for free) with just one or two questions and the results are released quickly and they lead to action can create some quick action to get engagement going.

More importantly what are the day to day communications around the workplace. Do people really show up for each other and engage in dialogue? I love the work by Jane Dutton on high quality interactions as energy is often the raw material of engagement.

I could go on but I think the key is to find the smallest and most significant things you can do so you don't tax the energy of people and engagement becomes another energy drain rather than a significant and meaningful contribution to work.

David

[Prem Rao]

Adam:

The first and most important action-in my view- is to convince the owners/top management of the value of employee engagement. Without this, starting from the bottom simply won't fly. Get them interested. Tell them success stories of other comparable organisations and show them the benefits.

Next steps will follow only after getting their buy in.

Hope this helps.All the very best.

Prem

[Peter Cash]

Hello Adam

From my experience getting the senior team to develop an understanding of the motivations of the employees can make a big difference. There is a really interesting article called "Seeing Employees as Customers" on apterinternational.com/art which you might find interesting.

Good luck


Peter