Despite a plethora of evidence in wide ranging reports from academics, businesses and consultants over the last few years, the coalition government has set up another taskforce to help increase the understanding of employee engagement and its potential benefits. The taskforce will generate debate, share good practice and ultimately offer employers support via a new website due to launch next year. http://bis.gov.uk/news/topstories/2011/Mar/employee-engagement-task-force

But how much more evidence do we need?

Roffey Park’s 2010 research report ‘The human voice of employee engagement’ clearly establishes the crucial role of line managers in the engagement process and states that “…whatever factors are at play elsewhere in the organisation, employees day-to-day experience of work is most heavily influenced by their line manager…”

After a two year study The People and the bottom line’ report published in 2008 by the Work Foundation also  established a strong correlation between high levels of employee engagement and  high performance and identified that the current low levels in the UK could be costing our organisations dear.

The report suggests that more effective people management strategies could increase profitability by up to £1,500 per employee.

Despite these findings, relatively few organisations put emphasis on developing managers as part of their engagement strategy –rather focusing on more traditional suggestion schemes, recognition awards and corporate buy-in approaches.

The CIPD’s study, ‘Management competencies for enhancing employee engagement’ published in March this year comes to a similar conclusion and highlights the importance of  developing the right behaviours. These include

• managers giving the right levels of guidance
• constructive feedback
• appropriate levels of autonomy to staff
• setting realistic but challenging targets
• making time for employees
• treating them fairly
• making them feel valued
• managing individual performance

The current taskforce hopes to present its conclusions in 2012, although whether it will really shed any more light on existing evidence remains to be seen.

What will make a difference is organisations having a renewed emphasis on coaching and developing managers. This is what will bring a significant return on investment and an increase in profits, not waiting for the great and the good to tell us yet again what we really already know – that developing your line managers’ people management skills will improve your bottom line! 

 

 

 

 

 

How many company websites have an impressive sounding set of values proudly listed?
How many of those values include “ethical” and “integrity”?
How many of the staff in that company
a) really understand what those values mean in their role?
b) believe them?

Let’s take the belief issue first. If the latest research by the ILM and Management Today is anything to go by, then a high percentage of employees currently believe their bosses do not use ethics when making decisions. Over half of those surveyed believe their companies put financial goals ahead of ethical considerations.

The lack of trust which inevitably ensues will have a huge impact on performance, motivation and the reputation of the organisation.

It is surely an area that needs attention if organisations are to emerge from this tough market with a loyal and motivated workforce, rather than one which is jaded, cynical and ready to jump ship as soon as it is safe.

Let’s take the understanding issue then. If these values are so important, how do you ensure your teams buy into them and live and breathe them in their day to day roles?

Partly it depends on how those values are arrived at.
What is the process you go through to establish what is important?
Do you involve people at every level of the organisation?
Do you ask people what these values mean to them?
Do you get them thinking about how they demonstrate them in their roles?

For example, what does acting with integrity mean to the senior management team? What does it mean for someone working on the front line? Articulating these specific examples will help to bring them to life and give them meaning.

Once they are identified, ensure they are referred to. Talk about examples of ethical behaviour and integrity in one to ones and team meetings. And make sure your top level managers are visibly role modelling them.

Perhaps then we may start to see values which are more than just a list on a website... values which actually have meaning and build trust.

The Chartered Institute of Management has just released figures stating that 70% of the 500 managers they surveyed admitted morale in their companies had dipped in the last 6 months.

No surprise that motivation levels fall in tough times, but what are businesses doing about it? The CMI is very clear that it is down to the managers to address morale issues, but that part of the problem is that companies are not training managers to be confident in this area. Currently 20% of managers get training and the CMI think it should be at least 50%... so we have some way to go.

The danger, of course, is that in a challenging market companies cut back on training instead of investing in their managers and UK businesses may now be paying the price. The quality of a manager has such a direct impact on a team’s performance that it really isn’t worth leaving it to chance. The effect of poor management can ripple through an organisation and have far reaching effects; lack of morale leading to high staff turnover, high rates of absence and low productivity, which can all ultimately cost a lot more than training the managers in the first place!

And management development doesn’t have to be expensive; there are many ways to help your managers build key skills...

• Coaching – ongoing support can be given to managers through regular coaching and the beauty of this is that it doesn’t have to be done by an external company. Using your managers to coach other managers can be a very effective way to build skills for all concerned
• Mentoring – helping and encouraging managers to find a mentor also doesn’t cost anything and can be particularly helpful in the sharing of knowledge and expertise and in helping managers through times of change. Setting up a formal mentoring scheme can support every level in an organisation, if you have the resources to do it. Even encouraging informal mentoring will bring results
• Courses and development programmes can particularly benefit new managers. This more structured approach will provide them with the core skills needed to be effective and will  build confidence in taking on their new role
• Regular feedback – ensuring your mangers get regular feedback on how they are doing can bring very immediate results. Giving balanced feedback will ensure they know what they are doing well, but are equally aware of what they are not doing so well and help them to address these areas
• Encouraging learning through sharing experiences – shadowing, job rotation, creation of project teams to tackle organisational issues – all these will give managers the opportunity to learn from each other.

So how does your management team measure up? Are they confident in motivating their teams, especially when times are tough?

Does your company fall into the 20% who do train their managers or the 80% who cross their fingers and hope it will all be OK?

Head of HR at Google, Laszlo Bock announced to the New York Times last month that the company had identified that the qualities that make a good manager are not perhaps what they had initially imagined…

Google was a high performing organisation, able to select from the cream of well qualified engineers across the globe. But in 2009 they were alarmed to discover that staff turnover and exit interviews were increasingly citing ‘poor management’ as the reason for people leaving,   reinforcing the age-old HR adage that people leave their company because of their managers.
 
Google wanted to find out more about why individuals’ technical wizardry was not transferring well to the role of leading others.

In a project aptly named ‘Oxygen’, Google searched through results from staff surveys and a range of performance review data to determine what was needed to breathe new life into their organisation’s management performance.

The results they unearthed supported what many of us in learning organisations have long known - that technical expertise is fairly low on the list of qualities an employee looks for in their boss. What employees ideally want from their manager is more time spent managing and communicating, taking a consistent approach to performance management and coaching staff to support their career development.

These behaviours now make up the framework for the new management coaching system which Google launched in response to the findings. It claims this has already improved the performance of 75% of it’s managers, highlighting just how vital it is for managers everywhere to be measured on behaviour and management competence and not just technical ability.

At Focal Point we are about to embark on the Investors in People journey so this area is very close to our hearts!

The Department for Business (BIS) in a recent independent review, stated that a wider take up of engagement approaches would have an enormously positive impact on UK competitiveness and performance.

The agreed definition of Employee Engagement is;
‘A workplace approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to their organisations goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well-being.’

The report suggests, however that engagement levels in the UK are currently low, so it is clearly an area that many organisations need to be tackling.

http://www.bis.gov.uk/policies/employment-matters/strategies/employee-engagement

But it is a tough call. The Guardian recently highlighted how the traditional career ladder is a thing of the past; success is no longer measured by steps up the ladder, as organisations are so much flatter in structure. This means fewer opportunities for promotion and a career nowadays will mean multiple changes of direction, more of what the article calls a ‘career carousel’ whose direction is often a step sideways rather than up. http://careers.guardian.co.uk/careers-blog/time-to-step-away-from-the-career-ladder

This lack of traditional career progression can contribute to a lack of engagement and managers now need to work harder than ever at identifying what is important to their people.

Welcome to the world of ‘Career Management’, where it is vital to align organisational and individual needs.

But how to tackle this? As a starting point consider the following points…
• How clear is the vision of the company?
• Are all your managers engaged themselves and committed to the organisation?
• How clear are individuals about what is expected of them?
• How much do managers understand about what their employees want from work?
• Do your managers show appreciation and offer feedback?
• Do they treat staff as individuals - with fairness and respect?
• Do they enable employees to have a voice?

Companies which challenge themselves in these key areas and examine how they can be improved, will be the ones that create a genuinely motivated and engaged workforce and reap the benefits of increased loyalty and performance.