This Week’s Blog From Lisa:
Last week, I was fortunate to attend the second day of the CIPD’s Employee Engagement Conference ,at which Emma was presenting. It was primarily a chance for me to see Emma in action (given this was just my fourth day into the role here!) but also to join in with some lively conversations around all things employee engagement; a subject matter that I never tire of.
What I am always most interested in, is listening to the type of challenges that organisations are facing and seeing how trends are shifting.
It was a great turn out with around 40 people from all sorts of organisations and sectors. I thought it would be interesting to pull out some of the key challengers that came up time and again on the day:
- It’s all about the numbers…: Most people in attendance widely shared the fact that engagement within their organisations is primarily measured in statistics. While this isn’t anything unusual for large organisations (staff survey anyone!?) but few, if anyone, could put their hand up to say that they had an organisational-wide definition of employee engagement. Let’s just think about this for a moment. If there’s no definition of parameter of engagement…then what are people measuring and benchmarking against?
- …and bonuses: delegates also shared their frustrations over the fact that engagement scorings were only taken an interest in once a year, unsurprisingly around bonus time, when those with responsibility for others had to ensure their scoring had increased in order to qualify for their bonus or promotion. After all, who cares what happens the rest of the year…right?
- Need for training: HR and communications managers are calling out for better training of senior managers and leaders in how to manage and motivate their teams. There continues to be a gap between those ‘on the shop floor’ and those in charge. This was particularly evident for one engineering firm who was at risk of losing some of their brightest young talent because those who had been with the business a long time resisted the fact that they needed to evolve and work with these people in a different way.
- Token efforts or ideas which truly engage?: Lots of organisations have implemented some great ideas to help motivate their people. From ‘People Months’ through to a day in the month where internal email is banned. But again, are these being measured? Are they actually working? I have no doubt that they help facilitate communication within the business but are they the reason that people are staying with the business? Probably not.
I truly hope that 2016 is the year in which the needle shifts for some of these. These challenges aren’t new but it was inspiring to hear some of the ideas and plans that people have to eradicate these issues once and for all. As always, one of the main hurdles to overcomes is to educate senior leaders to move away from a more quantitate measure of engagement and to actually think and consider what the alternatives are.
What are your challenges and ambitions for this year? We’d love to know, comment below or get in touch on Twitter @peoplelab_
If you would like to have a chat with Lisa or Emma about how we can help your organisation, request a call-back here.
