Too close for comfort?

Welcome to this week’s Discuss HR, the blog written by members ofHuman Resources UK.

Today we have a rather timely article about engagement.  It won’t have escaped your attention we’reall engaging closely at the moment with the demand for networking events.  We now have confirmed events for London,Newbury, Bristol, Birmingham and Gateshead. So we’re all engaging with each other, but Sheena McLullich discussestoday whether we can engage too much with our employer and be too close forcomfort. (EdScrivener)

Too closefor comfort?

Sheena hummed "I'll do anything" all day long

I had lunch a few weeks ago with a former colleague.  Although we hadn’t seen each other for overtwo years, we’d worked together in the same company for several yearspreviously, so we had a lot of catching up to do.   After exchanging all the family news andupdating each other on our respective careers, the conversation turned to thecompany we’d both worked for.

Without going into too much detail, we had worked for a smallcompany which had grown rapidly over five years or so and had undergonesignificant changes, including a change of ownership, before being bought overby a multi-national a couple of years ago.

We’d worked very closely (and very successfully) together on anumber of key initiatives for the growing business.  It had been an exhilarating, and sometimesexhausting, time often involving long hours, last minute changes and jugglingseveral conflicting imperatives in very tight timescales.  We were part of a close-knit senior managementteam who all got on well together, socially and professionally, and no-onereally complained about the sometimes challenging environment we foundourselves in. 

Over lunch, we had a lot of fun reminiscing about the people we’dworked with and some of the more bizarre events that had taken place.  There was the time when, owing to a clericalerror, everyone had been paid twice (yes, really!)  The day we’d watched a whale swimming up theThames right in front of the office, the night out when …. I could go on, but Ireally ought to spare the blushes of any of our former colleagues who may bereading this!!

We both left the company for different, but compelling, reasonsseveral months apart.  However, I wasintrigued to discover that we’d both experienced a huge sense of loss at thetime of our respective departures and that this had also been experienced byother senior colleagues who had left the same company before and since.   Why was this?  We talked about it for a while and came tothe conclusion that we had probably all been too close to the business.

A case of ‘extreme engagement’ perhaps?   Employee engagement is a stated aim of mostorganisations and we were all totally committed to ‘our’ company.  It was never questioned or articulated but wewould all do whatever it took to get the job done with the resources we had atour disposal – and if we didn’t have the resource, we simply did itourselves.   Discretionary effort and‘going the extra mile’ was probably never considered by any of us.  In all the whirlwind of dealing with constantchange and growth challenges, we just got on with things and never reallyquestioned why we were working so hard and what the end result would actuallybe.

Now that I’ve had time to reflect however, I think that there wasa significant downside.  For severalweeks after I left I often found myself thinking deeply about my previous role,what had gone well, what I could have done differently, wondering what washappening, whether I was being missed, whether …

It was very difficult for me to ‘let go’ even though I had made mydecision to leave several months before I actually did so.  I had made such a strong emotional investmentin the business that I couldn’t simply break the attachment overnight, eventhough it was high time for me to move on to different things.

Is that such a bad thing? Many organisations would love to have such dedicated, committedemployees but is it possible that employees can become too engaged, sointerwoven into the organisation that they cannot separate themselves fromit?   What do you think?   Is this a feature of small companies only orsomething that many employees experience at some point in their career?   I’d be very interested to hear your views.

About the author

Sheena began her career in Training & Development beforemoving to a generalist HR position in 1998.  Since then she has heldsenior HR roles for several SMEs in a wide range of industries. A Fellow of theCIPD and Member of the US SHRM, she has a keen interest in EmployeeDevelopment, specifically in coaching and supporting managers to enable them toget the best from their people.  She was appointed as Director of Peoplefor SPA Future Thinking in September 2011.

Email | LinkedIn| Website

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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIngroup for those involved with HR in the UK. Next week’s Discuss HR will be published on Thursday 15th September andwill be written by HR recruitment specialist EdScrivener. 

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. 

Website

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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.