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Engaging for success: Enhancing performance through employee engagement
“We have a bi-annual survey and the results were critical. Action plans were
prepared by the team members but the manager took it and did something
entirely different with it. This was very disengaging.”
“I think it’s disengaging to be asked for input into something and then not have
feedback about what difference that made or whether it contributed in any way.”
25 It is, of course, important to take soundings and find out what the state of play is
within an organisation. A staff survey may be a useful means of testing out levels of
engagement, but it is not enough by itself, particularly if it leads simply to trying to
change the engagement score, rather than really fix the issues that make up the
score.
26 The Communications Lab were just one organisation pointing to the need for
engagement approaches to be bespoke for the organisation. “There is often little
consultation with employees about what engagement might mean to them. Often it is
defined in the ivory tower and measured by an impersonal on-line survey, and very
few people feel listened to via completing an online survey”. 101
27 Others pointed to the key difference between communications and listening, and
the need to “move away from transactional two-way communications to listening
and demonstrating that you have heard; trusted dialogue rather than two-way
communications,” as the Communications Lab put it.
Two levels of employee engagement
28 It has become increasingly clear to us throughout the review that there are broadly
two levels at which engagement can operate.
29 The first level sees an employee engagement strategy as essentially a set of
activities or targets. This approach often reflects a degree of compartmentalised
thinking among the senior leaders: for example they may have individual strategies
for their product positioning in the market place, their geographic focus, their IT
renewal – and a human resources strategy. The Board takes the engagement
strategy seriously; there is an annual or bi-annual survey to measure engagement
levels and the views of staff are sought; departments including HR are then tasked
to follow up the survey results. There is little about any of the component parts that
can be criticised and it certainly does bring benefits. Nonetheless, in this model,
employee engagement is still an ‘add-on’. It is not integral to the overall business
approach. It is essentially a set of transactions.
30 The second level sees employees as an integral part of developing and delivering the
overall business strategy. This strategy will cover the values and behaviours that are
required from everyone in order to deliver the company’s position in the market
101
Submitted to MacLeod Review by email, Call for Evidence
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