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! 

I have just enjoyed this week’s adventure known as Lord Sugar’s search for a business partner.  Each week I just hope that people about to join the world of work are not watching! 
 
To win you….
• mustn’t take responsibility for your own actions
• must be critical of what everyone else has done
• must somehow be a ruthless individual, who is also a great team player
• ...and then of course hug and kiss each other as if you are long lost friends when reunited after the firing 

Some years ago I worked for a boss that spent the week shouting at us and claimed it was all ok because he took us down to the pub on a Friday to “dust us all down”...but what if you didn’t go to the pub??   And what if you watch the Apprentice and think that is how to win friends and influence people? 

The programme suggests this is exactly how you need to behave to be a successful high flyer; it places no value on integrity, the ability to empathise and build relationships based on trust and respect. Equating success with aggression, back stabbing and manipulation is such dangerous ground and inevitably leads to dysfunctional teams and working relationships. Have a look at some forthright views from the real business world at 
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/youre-fired-entrepreneurs-tell-lord-sugar-2277352.html

We spend a lot of time with organisations who are trying to tackle issues around this kind of inappropriate workplace behaviour and particularly help people understand the real differences between aggressive and assertive behaviour.

The Apprentice may be good TV, but it is the antithesis of appropriate behaviour at work….

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.

Managing inappropriate behaviour during the festive season – prevention is better than cure!

The Christmas festivities are fast approaching –a time when most of us can look forward to an office party with our colleagues. But for some managers the arrival of the festive season creates an additional worry.  We encourage staff to “let their hair down” but what if this goes too far and people’s behaviour crosses the line...what should we do then? 

Managing inappropriate behaviour is one of the things most managers find difficult to deal with. And although there is a lot of advice out there surrounding your legal obligations as a manager or employer, there isn't a great deal of guidance on actually dealing with such situations. One of the key steps is to make sure your people are clear about expected standards of behaviour... it is never enough to just issue a policy. .. people never read them! You need to talk to your teams about what is acceptable and what is not and have some clear examples to ensure they really understand. Taking some simple steps like this can help prevent so many incidents from happening in the first place.
 
Take a look at our checklist for some steps that may help to ensure you  don’t end up having to have those “difficult conversations.”

We worked recently with the Markets in London - work places steeped in tradition - and helped them create a more comfortable working environment for everyone there. This was about getting people to think through that acceptable/unacceptable line and really consider the impact one person's behaviour has on another. Have a look at the case study to see how we approached this.

It is far better to try and prevent theses situiations from occurring than have to deal with them afterwards, but if you do have  an ongoing behaviour problem in your team we can help. Click here to have a look at our approach. Or call us for a chat.