Your Thoughts and Impressions of the UK MacLeod Employee Engagement Report

[David Zinger]

Click here to see a short video and to get a PDF copy of the 150 page UK MacLeod Report: Engaging for Success: Enhancing Performance through Employee Engagement. I would love to hear your thoughts, impressions, ideas, implications, criticisms, etc. about the report.

[Jon Ingham]

David, my review is here:

http://strategic-hcm.blogspot.com/2009/07/macleod-review.html .


In overview, I thought it was a more valuable document than I thought it was going to be (David MacLeod’s book on engagement isn’t one of my favourites). And it contains lots of great information on engagement which makes it almost as valuable a resource as this ning!

I just thought the conclusions were a bit lacking (I don’t see government as key to improving things) - but this is of course where it gets more difficult. If it was easy, there’d be no point in the review, and I guess the 1322 people here would be doing something else with their time.

But it’s certainly a very significant contribution to raising awareness and generating thinking - in the UK and elsewhere.

[David Zinger]

Jon,
I loved your "capital" review. I appreciate your comments about how we see people and how we treat people and how we engage people. Thanks for being so engaging Jon.
David

[Ben Simonton]

Thanks for the link, David.

The report is obviously quite valuable and well researched. It also describes quite well managerial nirvana and does a good job in presenting the benefits as well as the obstacles and hazards.

Sadly, it contends that one size doesn't fit all and thus makes no attempt to provide a script for managers to follow in order to achieve nirvana. The authors do not seem to realize that all people are the same as concerns how they respond to managerial actions. People only differ in the extent of their response, not in the direction. Thus, there is a reasonably detailed script that can be used by any manager in order to create engagement by their employees and unleash each employee's full potential of creativity, innovation, productivity, motivation, and commitment. What managers need is for the community to provide that script, the "how tos", rather than just a large number of "whats" because without that the vast majority won't be able to change.

The report's reliance on surveys is misplaced, but probably necessary not having provided a script.

Thanks again, Ben

[David Zinger]

Here are two links to some other impressions of the report:

John Ingham’s review of the report.


Also from Fishburn Hedges.

From

[Peter A Hunter]

Engaging for Success
A Review of the report by David Macleod and Nita Clarke.
Written by Peter A Hunter

Engaging for Success is a wonderfully promising report.
It was commissioned by the then UK Secretary of State for Business in the autumn of 2008 to take an in-depth look at employee engagement.

The report, in its introduction, sets itself out to report on the potential benefits of engagement for companies, organisations and individual employees, and as it states later, it is not meant to be a “How to Become Engaged” guide, which is a pity because one of the themes that runs through the report is the confusion over what engagement is and the effect that it has on performance.

The report has been created with reference to surveys of many individuals and organisations and the compilation of statistical evidence is awesome, but most of it appears to have been gathered from the same people who are suffering confusion about what engagement is.

There is no feel in this report about what a phenomenal difference an engaged workforce makes, no understanding of the market dominance that comes with engagement or the flexibility, imagination and pride that an engaged workforce generates.

The engaged workforce is the result of an extremely simple change in the way that managers manage and the result of this change is an earth shattering performance that cannot be competed with by any organisation running a conventional “Command and Control” management strategy.

We had in this report an opportunity to get rid of the confusion that surrounds the concept of engagement. What could have been an extraordinarily insightful initiative got bogged down with phrases of faint praise like this quote from the report:

“Work is good for physical and mental wellbeing”

This sounds like a line written by Harry Enfield for Mr Cholmondly-Warner, instead of the most exciting thing that has happened to our understanding of how to manage our workforce since the brilliant work of Douglas McGregor in his 1960 book, “The Human Side of Enterprise.”
To still be confused about what we should be doing after fifty years later is not encouraging.

An employee at the phone company O2 is quoted as saying:
“One thing that really stands out at the moment is the help and support we get from the management team. They’re really listening to their people.”
But in the feedback from their Head of “Employee Involvement and Experience” there does not seem to be any acknowledgement of just how key this simple statement is.
It is as if what management are doing happened by accident, instead of being the cornerstone of a deliberate policy to change the way the workforce feel about what they do, to engage them.

Later in the report we are told that barriers to engagement are “confusion and misunderstanding,” but at the same time the report quotes Professor John Oliver of the Northern Leadership Alliance as saying:

“Ninety Nine percent of failure to engage staff is due to management behaviour,”

There does not seem to be any confusion about that statement.

The barriers to engagement are created by the behaviour of the managers!

On the first day at work every employee is engaged. They are happy to be there, they know the skills that they have to bring to work and they are looking forward to being able to use them to make a difference.
The workforces natural engagement and desire to be effective is killed off by the things that management subsequently do to them.

The authors of the report tell us that there is no Silver Bullet that will cause people to engage. Perhaps that is because they are looking at the wrong end of the gun.
Instead of looking for the bullet that will make people engage they should have been looking for the bullet that would stop people from disengaging, because that one is blindingly obvious.

Find out what managers are doing that causes the workforce to disengage.
Then stop them from doing it!

Vic Bayliss, the Director of Customer services at Westminster City Council got it in a nutshell. He said that:
“Staff have seen this as a programme that is being done with them, not to them.”
In this report Vic shows a rare perception that is unfortunately not shared by the bulk of the contributors.

I sincerely hope that this report does not have the effect of turning the concept of Engagement into the level of another “Management Good Idea” that will be used, as has been stated on several different occasions in the report, as a way to get the workforce to accept what management want them to do.
When used in this way it becomes a cheap trick alongside many other “Management Good Ideas” that failed as soon as the workforce realised that management were just trying out another way to manipulate them.

Real engagement is the result of an ongoing collaboration between management and the workforce that produces the sorts of comments that were quoted by the O2 employee, not the result of a single initiative, survey or desire to manipulate.

Peter A Hunter
www.breakingthemould.co.uk

[Ben Simonton]

Great review, Peter. I could not have done such a magnificent job as you.

You write - "There is no feel in this report about what a phenomenal difference an engaged workforce makes, no understanding of the market dominance that comes with engagement or the flexibility, imagination and pride that an engaged workforce generates."

"Phenomenal" is the best possible description of what results from true engagement - north of 300% per person in productivity, extremely high morale, and a workforce that literally loves to come to work.

Unfortunately, very few have actually witnessed complete engagement as you and I have, Peter, and that makes them think that "phenomenal" gains are simply not possible. Little do they know how truly "simple" to achieve these gains actually are.

Best regards, Ben Simonton
http://www.bensimonton.com/articles.html

[Terrence Seamon]

"Find out what managers are doing that causes the workforce to disengage.
Then stop them from doing it!"

Brilliant.

Terry

[Terrence Seamon]

Thanks for sharing this video, David. I enjoyed it.

Once again we hear about the strong correlation between engaged people and good results for the organization!

I love the 4 points:
1. Clear sense of direction
2. Really engaging managers
3. Real voice for employees
4. Bringing together stated values and behaviors

Terry

[Richard Parkes Cordock]

For me, it is what the report achieves which is the most important thing.

Hopefully, it will raise the discussion of employee engagement (and its clear link back to increased company profits and performance) up to the boardroom, and place employee engagement firmly on the agenda of the CEO and other company directors.

With the governments resources behind it, getting the idea 'employee engagement' out to a wider audience in the business community is a good thing.

I agree with many of the comments that for those who already know about employee engagement, it doesn't contain much which is new, but hopefully it will start the national conversation which it promises. It certainly makes our work easier by having something of such profile to refer to.

Richard
www.enterpriseleaders.com

[Peter A Hunter]

We still have to be careful Richard.
This report appears to condone the idea that Engagement is something that managers do to people to make them do something that they want.
Is that the version of Engagement that we want convey?

Or do we want them to see Engagement as something that happens when managers stop behaving towards the workforce in a way that causes them to disengage.

In the first case the effect will be short lived and the resentment of the workforce will be increased when they realise that once again they have been manipulated by management.

In the second case we have a change in the way the workforce feel about what they do that is fueled by a change in the behaviour of management.
This is a sustainable change that produces awesome long term performance.

I would hate other people to get the wrong end of the stick by believing that this report represents anything of value just because it has the word Engagement in the title.

Peter A Hunter
www.breakingthemould.co.uk

[Alan Smith]

I find it interesting that the UK found the issue of EE important enough that the government would commission and fund this type of study. Clearly the need exists to have employees that are more passionate about their careers. In this climate of economic uncertainty, the companies that acknowledge and foster the need for passion and engagement will be those that come through the recession stronger than ever.

[Derek Irvine]

Just posted my thoughts on the report on my EE Network blog here: http://employeeengagement.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-do-you-define....