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Mission to give staff a voice in the workplace
Many would agree that it is essential in business to have a motivated and productive workforce with a clear sense of purpose. But in reality, lots of companies fail to achieve even a basic understanding of "employee engagement". Business Editor Bernard Ginns reports on the issue...
MOST employers in Yorkshire have one thing in common. It is their attitude towards staff.
"Although there are so many good companies, there is still a predominant culture in Yorkshire that says, 'we employ people, they are lucky to have jobs'," said Carole Reid, the chief executive of Yorkshire and Humberside Assessment Limited, a training company.
While her organisation is seeing a slight increase in companies seeking information about Investors in People programmes, Ms Reid's view is the majority of companies in Yorkshire and the UK treat their employees in the same disregarding manner.
There is, though, another way.
The notion of employee engagement has been gaining currency and last year was deemed interesting enough to warrant a government review.
John Hutton, then the business secretary, commissioned David McLeod and Nita Clarke to look at the issue and see if it was the latest management fad or something more substantial.
Twelve months on, with the review complete and a campaign, People InterAction, underway, Ms Clarke joined a cross-section of Yorkshire's business community for a debate on employee engagement, hosted at the Yorkshire Post's headquarters.
She said: "There's a huge amount of evidence from across the country, in the private, public and not for profit sectors, that employee engagement, properly done, raises productivity, raises performance, contributes hugely to the well-being of employees, and therefore really ought to be on the top of people's agenda, in particular at the moment.
"We felt it is the best if not the only way of managing change in organisations. We were very strongly of the view that actually now was the most important time to engage with the workforce. If you want to do something better or cheaper, ask the person who is doing it, rather than bringing in a set of management consultants."
Figures show the cost of disengaged employees to the economy was between 59.4bn and 64.7bn in 2008. If organisations increased investment in good workplace practices which relate to engagement by just 10 per cent, they would increase profits by up to 1,500 per employee per year, according to the government.
Ms Clarke added: "Given that the results are so clear, why doesn't everybody do it? That's a huge challenge for the country as a whole to think about."
The report identified four key factors that allowed engagement to happen. The first is strategic management, which allows a sense of identification with the aims, purposes and values of the organisation. Second, quality of line managers.
Third, employee voice, a sense that all employees are listened to. Fourth, integrity, in which there is no mismatch between what an organisation says and does. The report recommended that a 'toolkit' be developed for SMEs, which tend not to have large HR or communications departments.
The debate started with the question of what employee engagement means for an employer.
Paul Sewell, managing director of the Hull-based Sewell Group, said: "I learnt what employee engagement was when I was a football coach. Rather than give the team a good talking to, I gave them a good listening to. Results and engagement improved. I took that from my sporting life to my business life. It's a no-brainer.
I'm surprised we have to have seminars about it. Run your companies as you would your sports team, I don't think you can go too far wrong."
The question shifted to what it means for an employee. Alex Blair, a customer service adviser atO2, said in the past, he had worked at large organisations where managers had ignored staff suggestions. His experience at the telecommunications giant, which employs more than 3,000 people in Leeds, has been different. He said effective engagement is about "having confidence and having a voice and knowing you are going to be heard".
Sara Chapman, an assistant building surveyor at LHL Group, which employs about 35 people, described employee engagement as a two-way process, regardless of the size of the organisation.
She said: "That comes down to you as well. You can't expect the company to necessarily drive you." Yorkshire – Leeds in particular – has a large number of well-paid professionals in the legal, financial and business service sectors, but there is more to employee engagement than just money, according to Neil McLean, the head of law firm DLA Piper in Leeds.
Mr McLean said the firm aligns its vision and objectives throughout its 65 offices worldwide. The challenge for him has been getting down into the business.
He said: "One thing that has always surprised me is how little comes out of the employee group in the broadest of senses, even when you're encouraging it." DLA Piper holds communication groups which get together every quarter, which were intended for employees to talk about their issues at work.
But managers got very little feedback. Part of this was due to people just wanting to go to work and get on with their jobs, but another cause may have been a reticence among staff to come up with ideas which could be seen as critical of senior people in the business, said Mr McLean.
"We have tried very hard to get away from that," he added. The law firm has since formalised the process with leaders and facilitators within the groups and made it clear it wanted honest feedback, which it received in volume.
"The employer group does not make it easy enough for the employee group to get that information into the centre comfortably," said Mr McLean.
"There is a fear factor or 'why should we bother?' That's where the employer group needs to be far more positive." Stephen Martin, chief executive of Clugston Group, said he thought the issue of employee engagement was "old wine, new bottles". Mr Martin made history in January when he went undercover in his own company, a large family-owned construction firm based in Scunthorpe, for a TV programme.
"Employees are sometimes fearful to say what they think, particularly in a recession. A challenge I had was how to give the employees a voice. When Channel 4 first approached me, I thought this was a bit dangerous, going on national TV and exposing all your weaknesses.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that this was a unique opportunity to get under the skin of the company and to let employees say what they really think because they had nothing to fear."
Clugston has changed a lot as a direct result of what was discovered, said Mr Martin. One of the major changes was to the group's communications policy, with the CEO concluding there should not be a one-size, fits-all policy. He introduced skip-level meetings, where staff have meetings with their boss's boss on a regular basis to improve the flow of information and consequently morale and motivation.
"The major impact of being undercover was I had to listen," said Mr Martin. Since the broadcast, staff are more willing to approach him and he has found the company's surveys and questionnaires get a much higher response rate. The company recently asked staff in a survey if they would consider a temporary pay cut; 87 per cent responded and 91 per cent were in favour.
His opinion was echoed by Margaret Wood, the regional chair of the Institute of Directors, when she recalled her challenges setting up an engineering business in Wakefield in a unionised environment in the 1980s.
She said: "The biggest lesson for me was to change the way I behaved. The way we communicate is so important." The quality of management is a big determining factor in the motivation of a workforce.
Chris Martin, the managing director of Leeds-based H2O Chemicals, is expanding his business from Yorkshire into 10 UK regions. He said: "We have a business plan, which is about going national.
The big challenge I am facing is the quality of line managers. We have proved we have got the products, it is about continuing to engage the people."
According to Sheena Pickersgill, of Leeds-based bus and train organisation Metro, it is important for managers to be self-aware and concentrate on self-development because if they don't believe in what they say and just regurgitate the company blurb, they will turn people off, she added.
Nita Clarke summed up what is at stake. She said: "Although times are difficult now we will come out of recession and the markets will pick up and at that point there is going to be competition for skilled workers.
These things are going to matter.
When it comes to recruitment and retention in years to come it will be those workforces that have got the buzz, where people know they are being taken seriously, that will benefit." Government could play a role in helping firms to have more constructive relations with their staff, said some.
Ms Clarke said: "The government has a big responsibility, but I knowhow hard it is to turn that supertanker around. Everyone around the table has said this is a no brainer.
But we all know too that there are large swathes of the economy where there is not a language that people speak." Anj Handa, head of employment and skills partnerships at the Leeds, York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, warned against introducing even more legislation. She said: "Policy levers aren't the best approach.
Making regulations to compel businesses to do something is the least effective way to get them involved."
In response, Ms Clarke said: "This is not a matter of more legislation. This is about getting the message of why this culture change makes a difference, both for your bottom line but also for the people you employ."
To find out more, please visit: www.businesslink.gov.uk/employeeengagement and http://twitter.com/peopleinteract
ALL CHANGE ON THE SCHOOL RUN
WHEN it launched its yellow My Bus scheme for schoolchildren aged as young as four, one of the biggest challenges faced by Metro was engaging the bus drivers to treat the children as if they were their own.
Sheena Pickersgill, the director of corporate services, said: "The bus drivers traditionally avoid the school run like the plague. So the poor souls who had last say got the school run.
"We got the bus drivers in to talk about why we're doing the scheme, how important it was and how it was going to set the scene nationally. We rolled out the scheme and then had a session for feedback.
"We put messages from the children around the room that they had written about their drivers. Some of these drivers were looking at these messages with tears in their eyes. Now they fight to be the school driver."
THE NEED TO BE A PEOPLE PERSON
The evening before the debate on employee engagement, Stephen Martin stayed in a hotel.
With the subject in mind, the chief executive of Clugston Group started talking with a waiter in the restaurant.
"I was asking him about what management was like here. He said they had just changed a manager. I asked why. He said the last one wasn't a people person, he was very good with figures. I asked why he went. He said because the figures weren't very good.
"That summed it up for me – you can have the leadership skills, the management skills but you have to give the employees a voice."
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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