What Does An Actual Employee Enagagement Strategy or Plan Look Like?

[Graham Dodds]

Do you have an example of a real, live, on-the-ground strategy or plan for employee engagement in an organization? I'm looking for something that sets clear objectives (or desired outcomes) for engagement, the rationale for those objectives (i.e. need), identifies desired outcomes, identifies the methods that will be used, time frame etc. There are few or none on the web. Thanks

[Vicki Timman]

I wanted to share with you a resource that may spur your thought process and help you think about engagement strategy. I am an employee of Root Learning, and our organization assists our clients in development and implementation strategies to engage and help motivate people. The link below will connect you to our newsletter, "The Watercooler", in which we regularly share key insights, client experiences and other valuable resources. Please explore this to see if the information there can be of value to you as you work toward an engagement strategy for your organization. I hope that you will find this information helpful and thought-provoking.

http://www.watercoolernewsletter.com/Archives.aspx

All the best,

Vicki

[Graham Dodds]

Thanks very much for responding. The newsletter is excellent and I signed up. Appreciated.

[Peter A Hunter]

Graham
You will find the strategies, stories of implementations, ROI's, rationales, case studies and a heap of other stuff on the website, www.breakingthemould.co.uk.
This site was set up in response to exactly what you are thinking,"What can I do on Monday morning that is going to help me to engage my workforce.
The book "Breaking the Mould" is filled with stories of what happened when the workforce was allowed to engage and what happened to allow that engagement to occur.

Rather than me trying to tell you how to engage your workforce, read these stories and they will show you in a completely practical way what you need to do.

But note the way I talk about engagement.
It is not something to "Do" to the workforce.
Engagement is something that we can allow to happen by creating the right working environment.
People will become engaged when they choose to.
What we can do is to create the environment within which they are able to make that choice.

If that makes sense to you then you will have a ball on the www.breakingthemould.co.uk website.

Peter A Hunter
www.breakingthemould.co.uk

[Jean Douglas, CMC]

My opinion is that it isn't an employee engagement strategy that is needed - but that the Business Plan needs to incorporate what drives employee engagement into it. For example, an employee engagement survey shows the top driver of engagement to be work processes (as indicated by the predictive analyses of the results) then I would expect the business plan to include tactics to improve work processes. Now this might include conducting some focus groups or interviews or a process review to find out what the problems are - but this firmly sets it in the realm of the business. Fix the process - remove the problems employees are faced with and snap - engagment goes up. The other plan that is needed is the Communication plan that ties the changes to employee opinions/suggestions that the process needed fixing.

I'm not sure how you create a strategy that will make leadership take on an active role of being great role models of the organization's values and beliefs, or grow better people skills - or how you strategize a culture of courtesy, respect and sincere recognition (aka thank you).

The HR strategy that:
- is aligned with improving employee engagement would be about hiring the right people at the right time in the right jobs - e.g., hiring / promoting people managers with STRONG people skills instead of a way to increase the salary/level of a highly competent technical professional with limited if any people skills.
- sets clear requirements and steps for career advancement and tell the honest story of what it takes to climb the corporate ladder including the number/percentage of the employee population can actually make it ( I hate the " great opportunities for advancement at our company" blurbs - only a few positions are ever open so I see it as misleading advertising).
- ensures and stands behind the fact that people managers must have the time allocated to their days to manage the people instead of doing everything else and can only deal with people if it can be squeezed in.
- focuses on implementing/ supporting performance management programs (and forms and reports, etc.) that actually work in the field (lovely systems that have the best intentions - but are a burden not an advantage to the manager and the employees)
- starts mining the data they collect (or start collecting) to show the correlations between engagement and absenteeism (broken down into component parts - I would like to see a stat on productivity/absenteeim during the performance review time period). This will be relevant to senior management as it reflects costs and savings.

Basically I'm saying - stop treating employee engagement as an add-on program. It is a business issue and needs to be addressed in the business plans and in the talent management strategy.

[Rob Fox]

Hi,

You might like to have a deco at:

www.engagingideas.co.uk

Best,

Rob