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Chapter 4: Enablers of Engagement – What has to happen to make engagement work
41 Nevertheless, communication and transparency are two areas that require a greater
focus from business leaders. According to Towers Perrin, only 31 per cent of
employees feel that their senior managers communicate openly and honestly.
Moreover only 41 per cent agree that their senior managers try to be visible and
accessible. 124
The role of workplace representatives
42 During the course of our review, we received evidence from employers and trade
unions of the value of engaging with a collective voice in the workplace, as an
integral part of engagement approaches. Many companies with trade union or
collective representation pointed to the importance of aligning their industrial
relations with engagement strategies. As one said: “You don’t want to find yourself in
the position where the union tells staff not to fill in the survey.”
43 In the past, trade unions have expressed wariness about employee engagement,
regarding it as a potential alternative to the traditional model where employers
communicated with their workforce through the union machinery. They have also
expressed concern about the term ‘discretionary effort.’ As a report for the Wales
Public Service Workforce Forum put it, trade unionists felt, “the inferences were too
close to a case for effort over and above the agreed, contracted job, and so
tantamount to unpaid overtime.” 125
44 The TUC in a note to the review emphasised that properly done, engagement could
be of significant benefit to employees, and pointed to their emerging work with
Tesco and O2 as showing the importance of, “getting real employee engagement,
both for the benefits of providing ‘good work’ for employees but also in terms of
achieving better productivity through best working practice.” Organisations benefited
too: “If relationships of trust can be built around areas of common agreement, such as
health and safety, skills, performance and quality of work, these relationships can be
useful in more difficult situations, most obviously at times of downsizing, when
workforce insecurity is high.”
45 But independent voice was crucial: “If employees were to engage constructively and
put in discretionary effort they would need to be given the opportunity to put their
views to employers and be assured that their views would be at least heard, if not
acted upon. Although individual engagement between managers and employees was
important, to build the necessary trust between employees and employers, employees
should be allowed and encouraged to express their views through independent
collective representation.”
46 Employers and unions said that an independent voice could be important for the
individual employee too. Union learning reps for example acted as important
124
Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study (2007-2008)
125
A Report to the Wales Public Service Workforce Forum: May 2009.
www.wlga.gov.uk/download.phpid=2757&l=1 (last accessed 1 July 2009)
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