Engagement in the UK

[Stephen Booth]

With all the talk of the UK going into a recession, triggered by the US sub-prime market and the failure of Northern Rock, how do you see this impacting on employee engagement in your company?

A recession increases the fear of being fired amongst employees but fear is a poor motivator and mitigates against innovation. How can we keep our employees engaged and innovating? What advantages can we take in this recession to improve the long term engagement of employees, help the company to weather the recession and emerge stronger and more vibrant when the economy picks up again.

Stephen

[Jo]

Thanks for starting this Stephen!

I think you have picked up a very good point.

How can we use the recession positively? How can we use the short term but real distress of many people to find ways forward that put is in a better position from whence we came?

[Rob Fox]

Hi,

I sense that there is a greater appetite for systemic organizational and political change now, than in the prior two decades.

My experience, supported by some survey data, is that many people are feeling deeply frustrated by their experience at work because they have limited outlets for their energy and enthusiasm for engagement and change; and the block to this is senior management and leadership who are fast battening down corporate hatches to minimize risk, in order to preserve the position and power that they have.

The key to unlocking this is to provide core enabling engagement processes, supported by tools, that offer outlets for peoples innovative and change orientated energies and ensuring that these form bedrock - of equal importance as say the job evaluation, pay or grading systems - organizational foundations.

I for one would legislate that organizations over say 10,000 people strong, are required to design and institute engagement and innovation processes that all individuals are able (if they wish) to participate in and contribute to.

Beyond this, I feel that the key to engagement across organizations (and party politics) is to focus on discrete issues.

I believe there is one trade union who is campaigning for free broadband access for all - a fantastic idea, and a great example of issues based, change focused social good that could be inherently engaging.

The cynical, or more worldly, could well argue that leadership work to design a complacent followship, after all politics, whether organizational or social, is well defined as the persuit and preservation of power? Breaking this requires:

1) Issues that inherently enthuse

2) Processes and tools that inherently enable engagement

Interesting question by the way - not sure this answers it at all!

I

[Ian Buckingham]

I guess one way of looking at difficult times is that, should individuals have difficult choices thrust upon them (and I'm coaching a client through such a time at the moment), it is an opportunity to see the corporation for what it is and liberate yourself from the shackles of loyalty, duty and fear of failure and actively seek out a lifestyle and organisation in tune with your core values. Easier said than done though as most folk have mortgages to pay!
Of course the enlightened organisations will be looking to dust down their employer brand and be looking to retain their best people and prepare for the upturn. Would love to be able to point them out but very few names trip off the tongue.
There will doubtless be increasing opportunities for the communication, engagement and "connections" practitioners to provide professional support in order to manage inevitable bad news and tough messages (issues that engage? Yes but....), which should create opportunities for practitioners in that market and sort the "wheat" from the "chaff" but as many of the "wheatier" folk are now running boutique operations and clients tend to look for "safe pairs of hands", it's certainly going to be an interesting time!

[Ian Buckingham]

...one more thing - it's a great opportunity to test those pragmatic, harder-nosed skills to create business cases for "soft skills" interventions (i.e. prove this stuff has cost saving benefits or is cost effective and we'll consider it). Measurement and lateral thinking about outcomes will be key!

[Jo]

I can't help thinking that now might be the time to sketch out very broadly the working environments that we need in the UK (and that we know people want) and strategize how to build the institutional support for these environments.

I have always been impressed with the way Martin Seligman openly strategized the institutionalization of positive psychology.

Any one interested?

[Rob Fox]

Hi Jo,

I sense that one issue that causes frustration right now is that the experience of work that many individuals have is vastly different from the experience of work they know they could potentially have. And it is this chasm that causes frustration.

Let's face it, most people have more access to expertize and insight via google, than they do from their leadership or indeed, the internal training function.

The world is flatter, and the world of work hasn't caught up with this fact yet; we have industrial age work environments/structures/processes into which information age powered people are force fit.

Helping to liberate the potential of people means at least eliminating this lag ; so yes I wonder what these future environments might be, and how would you go about discovering/sketching them out?

Maybe its a co-creation thing?

Best,

R.

[Mike Healy]

Hi Stephen

Some great comments on here.

I think adversity is sometimes a great catalyst for engagement. Its not easy to do but if you can get a workforce to see it is not an employee v company/management thing but a competion with other companies thing this can get employees engaged. If the company and employees share a common enemy they can bond and become better engaged as they combine their efforts to fend off the competition.

People who go through adversity together tend to become very engaged ( though they not always have a succesful outcome) Miners are a classic example

[Jo]

Good morning Stephen, Ian and Rob,

I'm impressed that we generated this discussion and agreement so fast. I think we agree on the 'state of work' in the UK and the state of leadership too. I am a relative newcomer to the UK so I have the benefit of looking at conditions from outside them and I would say most people agree. They now that life should be more vital but they believe nothing can be done.

a) Maybe the cynicism and learned helplessness is right and live with it is the right advice.
or
b) Something can be done. In which case, how will things change and what will be our role as engagement specialists?

So to summarize, I am impressed by the agreement - I hope I am right! I believe we feel similarly to the public-at-large.
What next? What is the goal? How big is the goal? And what does that imply about our role?

[Ian Buckingham]

LOL! You'll find that cynicism, sarcasm and irony are simply part of the culture Jo, regardless of prevailing market conditions. This rock in the North Sea has seen so much change down the centuries that people aren't exactly fans of the "rah, rah" approach to engagement! However, avoid spoon-fed communication cascades and treat people in an authentic way that speaks to their local culture and is sensitive to their need to "criticise" as well as "suggest" and you'll find that the results will speak for themselves. The miners are a good example Stephen as is the way, in my experience, employees dealt with the BCCI debacle here, Barings scandal, Maxwells et al. The press may moan but "backs to the wall" is arguably what the Brits do best so I've little doubt there will be a creative response from the engagement community ("what, no more events?....well let's put the Top Team on a truck and get them out there....LOL!).

[Jo]

OK I'm trying to make sense of what I am hearing!

a) Having a say is important.

b) Having influence is not????

[Ian Buckingham]

Of course both are important and hopefully one leads to the other.
I believe the biggest challenge change agents and engagement professionals face is to establish employee engagement as a legitimate and professional discipline rather than a marginalised nice to have or an adjunct of channel management and tactical "newsroom" activity, as it is currently being positioned (you only have to look at the employment press to notice this pattern where employee engagement roles are now being advertised for £30k).
This will partially be achieved through damn good, inspirational yet bottom-line focused contemporary case studies (this is what we did and how we did it) and partially through thought-leadership which touches key influencers within the boardroom. I do believe Europeans in general tend to be a tad more sceptical of anything with a whiff of marketing or insincerity about it..........
That's my perspective as a lapsed southern hemisphere-loving Englishman.
I'm interested in what you would propose, Jo, having had enough time to have drawn conculsions about the way things are done over here?

[Ian Buckingham]

I've just posted this blog on a UK HR site. May enrich this lively topic further (and broaden its reach).

http://www.changeboard.com/hrcircles/blogs/communication/archive/20...

Ian