The role of employee engagement

Today is the 2^nd publication of Discuss HR, our new weekly feature.  I’m sure you’ll all agree last week started us off with a bang with Dorothy’s excellent piece.  As last week the full article is published on the group’s blog page due to LinkedIn’s word count limit. John Hepworth starts his account with the following article. (Ed Scrivener)

The role of employee engagement

According to Seijts & Crim (2006), a professor lecturing on leadership amused his audience by relating the following: “A CEO was asked by a business journalist how many people work in his company: ‘About half of them,’ the CEO responded.”

How many of us – either in line management or employed as HR specialists – can identify with the CEO’s statement? It gives the sense that although the CEO has a clear idea of ‘what good looks like’, his major issue appears to be that his employees have their own view on what constitutes working towards organisation goals. That challenge is a daily one for all CEOs in whatever business sector and whatever size of organisation. How does an organisation ensure that its workers offer their maximum contribution (and hopefully more) to the achievement of organisational performance – on a consistent basis?

“Employee engagement” as a concept means many things to many people. I sense, however, that worker commitment to the goals of an organisation is a vital component. Commitment is described by the CIPD (2006) as being an attitude to work and it sits alongside emotional responses and loyalty amongst others. Legge, writing in 1995, defined commitment thus: ‘…a strong desire to remain a member of the organisation; a strong belief in, and acceptance of, the values and goals of the organisation; and a readiness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organisation’. Let’s look at each in turn.

As an HR consultant, I often spend time coaching line managers through their own doubts about their commitment to their current organisation. Rarely is the doubt related to their commitment to their profession. More often, line managers find that managing people effectively and the pressures that come with non-achievement of goals lies at the root of their frustrations with the organisation. But above all their desire to ‘remain a member of the organisation’ is reflected in the support and internal coaching that they receive from their senior managers. I still feel that in the UK, managers who ask for help and recognise their limitations are viewed as weak and ineffective, rather than what they really are – insightful and confident in their ability. Many line managers have to cope with attitudes that seem designed to encourage them not to ‘remain a member of the organisation’.

When it comes to a belief in the value and goals of an organisation, this commitment is often missing from UK employees. I see too many companies that fail to act in a way that encourages their workers to commit to values and beliefs: the regular “away days”, the team-building sessions, the training courses in leadership [to mirror some of Dorothy’s thoughts from last week’s blog] – all fail to do their job. My simple mantra to all clients is ‘what will good look like’ when you have completed an intervention? Belief too is seen as a ‘dirty word’ or one which is the domain of the caring profession alone. I’d argue that belief is seen as weak and intangible – and yet it remains the most powerful behaviour when effectively delivering products, service and customer satisfaction. Just compare your own experiences – either face to face or online. Which companies stood out because their belief in what they were doing for you shone through?

Belief, then, is ably demonstrated in how workers deal with their customers and each other. I still hear phrases like ‘silo culture’ to describe how workers fail to work together for the benefit of the whole. ‘I’ve done my job – now it is down to that department’. Commitment to exerting considerable effort for the benefit of the whole seems to be on the decline – is this a symptom of poor management in the time of recession perhaps? And yet for me, part of ‘pulling together’ in times of crisis should see an increase in going the extra mile for your colleagues and feeling able to challenge them if they don’t respond in kind.

That CEO could well reflect on how he could work on commitment – and that could start by creating an environment that allows permission to challenge positively when commitment is not displayed.

About the author

John helps organisations, especially in the SME sector, achieve competitive advantage. He has a particular interest in translating strategic HR management into practice. Typically, this has meant focusing his efforts on recruitment & selection, performance management and training & development activities. John sees the challenge of matching the development of internal competencies with the externally driven demands of the market place as one of the key themes in developing organisational engagement, capability and performance. 

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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIn group for those involved with HR in the UK.  Next week’s Discuss HR will be published on Thursday 20^th January and will be written by Annabel Kaye, Employment Law Specialist.