Employee Engagement – Myth or Reality

The following headline gave me food for thought “Employees may have no more to give as engagement makes modest gains in the US workforce”

Now I don’t know much about the workforce in the USA, but my guess is that they are about as engaged as those in the UK, and that is not very engaged. No doubt when surveyed they make all the right noises, lets face it is easier to go with the flow. After all if they say they are disengaged there will be another of those initiatives which get on everyone’s nerves, so they give management what they want to hear and that keeps them quiet for a bit!

So why do I think that there is little engagement on either side of the pond? Well for one thing if there was real engagement there would be massively improved performance across both the public and private sector, whether that was measured by customer service, profitability or some other appropriate measure.  As an example of the gap in just one possible measure I was told about is that the number of ideas generated per employee in Japan was an order of magnitude higher than in the USA (I can’t remember the actual figure it might have been x20 or x100, the precise figure doesn’t actually matter since either demonstrates that on this measure engagement is far from real).

However back to that headline. What came to mind when I saw it was utter disbelief that anyone could believe that the workforce were so engaged that they had reached saturation point in terms of discretionary effort. Whereas I would contend that the workforce are so sick of programmes, initiated from above to engage them and clearly designed only to extract additional effort,   that they have dug their heels in and said “no more”.

While management continue to believe that they can use engagement tools to drive productivity and cost savings they are doomed to fail because they are generating the resistance which will make the process fail. Unless they come to realise that the process must come from the bottom up, so that the workforce come to own the process, they will never get the results they are seeking. If they can be persuaded to create an environment and processes that allow a sceptical workforce to come to engagement in their own time and speed, then engagement will develop, and this will deliver the performance improvements they are looking for. In fact these improvements would be beyond their wildest dreams and because the workforce own the process they will fight tooth and nail to make sure it works and keeps working.

Once management take this approach, then employee engagement can become a reality, but until then it will remain a myth, a magical thing that people know exists somewhere in some Shangri La out of the reach, and people will continue to have nothing more to give.

N.B. If you are based in the USA and Canada and are interested in a process to turn the myth into reality, my colleague Peter Hunter is presenting a webinar entitled “Sustainable performance improvement through workforce engagement” see http://tinyurl.com/2wbn8nu for details.

Employee Engagement – Good for your health and wealth

As with a lot of my posts this one was prompted by a published article headlined “Two thirds of business owners fear exhaustion due to workload”

The article described how business owners risked “burn out” by not taking proper breaks and that as a result of the recession, despite recognising the risks, were either abandoning holidays or reducing the time they took off. Of course even those going away will inevitably be taking that instrument of the devil, the Blackberry, in order to stay in touch.

Now I understand that for new businesses and those with no staff, if you are not there business stops, and for these businesses I don’t have an easy answer. For the larger businesses with staff there really is no excuse. If you have developed the business in such a way that it is self-sustaining, rather than one where only the owner/manager takes all the decisions i.e. the old command and control approach, you will have no reason not to take breaks.

This ability to take breaks is just one minor benefit of developing a business where the workforce are allowed to take responsibility and demonstrate their abilities without micromanagement.

Let’s not beat about the bush, as an owner/manager it is your responsibility to train and develop your staff. If you have not got a workforce capable of taking on responsibility, it is no-ones fault but your own. You have either not employed the right people, or your management style is such that it stifles any spark of initiative at birth. If you really want to change, it will require a long-term change in approach. Quick fixes won’t deliver, but the rewards will be worth it. See my earlier blog “The cost of a disengaged workforce” to see an example of the financial benefits that can come from even the most disillusioned workforce, given time and a systematic change in the approach to managing people.

As I said this is a long term change in approach but that does not mean that you won’t get quick wins. Introducing a real employee engagement process should see a gradual freeing up of ideas which should generate real financial benefits. These are likely to come initially from a few people who see this as an opportunity to resolve issues that have been bugging them, often for years. The silent majority are likely to be initially sceptical until they see that this is not just another gimmick to exploit them, at which point the pace of change will accelerate rapidly and improvements will be seen across the business. At this stage all the owner manager has to do is to ride the wave and not do anything the block the process.

It can take some nerve to adopt this approach, which for many is counter intuitive. After all if I am not managing things what is my role? My answer to that question is – as an owner/manager your role is to create the environment in which things happen. You don’t have to have all the answers, in fact you would be amazing if you did, but you are responsible for ensuring that the person with the answer can be heard, and providing them with the resources to carry out the required actions.

So what are the benefits of getting it right. Once the process is embedded in the organisation they will be short, medium and long term.

– In the short term you will have a more efficient and effective workforce which requires less direct supervision, has lower rates of absence and labour turnover, and a better work environment, all of which have financial benefits and reduce the stress on everyone including the owner/manager. You might even be able to take that holiday and get a better work life balance now its not all down to you.

– Medium term profitability is likely to be consistently higher and once the initial hard work is done there should be more time to enjoy the benefits.

– Long term you will have developed a business which is both more profitable and not dependent on you to survive. As a result you can enjoy life more while you own the business, and it will be worth much more when and if you want to sell or retire,  and with a less stressful life you should live long enough to enjoy the proceeds.

So as the title says “Employee engagement – good for your health and wealth”

For help with introducing an employee engagement programme in your business to improve your health and wealth my contact details are:

e-mail: trevor@uniqueconsulting.co.uk
web: www.uniqueconsulting.co.uk
linkedin profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/uniqueconsulting
twitter: http://twitter.com/uniqueconsultin
blog: https://ucsideas.wordpress.com

See also http://www.breakingthemould.co.uk for other real life examples of the power of an engaged workforce (how does £2.5m savings p.a. sound?

Cost Cutting in the UK Public Sector

So now we know. In addition to the increases in taxes and VAT, the government has proposed cuts which add up to a 25% cut in public sector spending. That is some aspiration given the lamentable efforts at cost cutting made by previous governments, but it has got to be made to work if we are to avoid further huge increases in tax as the alternative.

The situation has been made worse by a commitment to protect overseas aid and the health service. This I think is a mistake. If you use an approach to cost cutting which is about improving efficiency, and this is done at a local  level where everyone can be involved, it should be applied to all areas of public spending. There is, without doubt, waste and inefficiency in the health service and the overseas aid budget and under the current policy this will continue. Where’s the sense in that. OK it was an election promise, so break it, it won’t be the first time!

Aside from that there is still the issue of how to make 25% cuts? The government have decided to send a personal letter to every public sector worker asking for their ideas about how to cut costs. Now this is a first, and congratulations to them for at least beginning to understand that they do not have all the answers, and the people who do are the ones doing the jobs. Of course they will get loads of ideas, or at least they should as there are 6 million people involved. If they don’t, they really do have a problem!

The question is, what will they do with them? They can’t implement them from the centre, as my guess is that most will be solutions to local problems, and by the time they have passed them down the chain of command to the local level, the ideas generated will be so diluted by vested interests, and it will have taken so long, that all the will to implement will have gone, and everyone will just view it as another gimmick by the politicians.

The problem with the current approach is that the idea is right but the application is wrong. If you try to manage it from the centre it becomes a very blunt instrument and everyone involved will do their damnedest to frustrate it. A typical example of this crude approach is the headcount freeze, almost standard practice in most ill-conceived cost cutting exercises imposed from the centre. What happens here is when someone leaves they are not replaced. This can cause critical problems to an organisation and increase costs rather than decrease them.

A great example I heard was on the London underground. A particular employee left (in this case was made redundant) and weeks later all the trains began breaking down. No-one could work out why as all the documented maintenance procedures were being followed. As a last resort they visited the ex employee and offered to pay him as a consultant to cure the problem, which he did at far greater cost to the business than when he was an employee. I am sure there are lots of others with similar stories of short-term savings turning into long-term cost increases defeating the whole objective.

So what is the answer? As I indicated above it has got to be local. Get the people who really know what is happening at the coal face to provide the answers, and let them implement them. It takes a brave politician to admit they don’t have all the answers, and an even braver one to loosen the reins and let others take the lead, but in my experience it works (see my blog “Cost of a disengaged workforce” for an example or read Breaking the Mould by Peter Hunter http://www.breakingthemould.co.uk ). It won’t be a magic wand, it will take time to convince public sector employees that this isn’t just another initiative which, if ignored, will go away like all its predecessors.  Persist and it will deliver beyond the wildest expectations.

The cost of a disengaged workforce

Despite years of talking about engagement the theory and the practice remain miles apart, as is shown by a recent survey of 5000 staff in UK businesses. The results showed that only 10% described their boss as accessible and even less (7%) thought that senior staff in their organisation were empowering them.

Common management styles were described as authoritarian 21%, bureaucratic (16%) and secretive 12.5%.

So what is the cause of this damning survey. Is it the recession causing a short-term firefighting mentality where engaging the workforce is seen as a nice to have, but not now. In my opinion this may be a marginal cause, but in reality British industry has always been run on the command and control principle, based on the philosophy that the master knows best, and the servant can just get on with it as he is clearly not capable of doing anything without direct prescriptive orders.

Where there has been some effort made to bring in some form of engagement it has usually been in the form of  imposed  ideas by the management as part of an ongoing initiative culture. It is seen as a magic wand which will produce an amazing change in performance overnight and unfortunately it is often sold that way by the consultants looking for a quick buck.

In my experience if you are looking for a quick fix you will get lip service paid to the changes because everyone knows that there will be a new initiative along next week once the boss has been on a new course, or read the latest management book. The result is that the changes don’t stick, the results don’t change and of course this reinforces the view that it is the feckless workforce who are at fault.

For any benefits to derive from “engaging the workforce” it first requires a change of mindset from the management of a business, or at least a willingness to suspend disbelief and consider that there may be lurking among the workforce some ideas which would benefit the business. The management need to remember that with every pair of hands they employ, a brain comes free. For many managers this is difficult as they have only ever known the command and control environment and therefore have only experienced the outcomes that it produces; a mindset among the workforce that tells them to keep any ideas to themselves because, they will either be ignored, or their idea will be stolen and someone else will take the credit.

But for the brave manager who is willing to take a chance the benefits are enormous, providing that he either learns the techniques himself or employs people who can demonstrate to both staff and management that there are benefits to all parties, both financial and in terms of self-esteem, which will then make the process unstoppable.

I will return to this subject with ideas of how the benefits of engagement can  be achieved, but in the meantime to whet the appetite here is a real life example from my own experience.

I was recruited to turn around a failing manufacturing business in Knowsley on Merseyside. For those who don’t know it, this was, and still is a deprived area with high levels of unemployment and with the perception that the workforce were at best idle and at worst a bunch of crooks. The workforce had been on strike just weeks before, the plant was run down, and had many other problems including Health & Safety and environmental problems. It also had low profitability.

Despite a lack of management, as both the General Manager and Operations Manager had left several months before, a group of supervisors without any authority or being paid had kept the place going. It was creaking a bit but there was clearly something here to work with. The first thing I did was promote several of them to the management grades they deserved for the work they had been doing, and over the next nine years I never had reason to regret those decisions. In fact many of them went on to more senior positions in the group and with other employers.

The next thing was to start a dialogue with the managers and the workforce. This took time as there were years of mistrust to overcome and my bosses to convince at the same time. It wasn’t all smooth sailing but with a consistent approach over months things began to change. Not all the workforce stayed but the ones that went were treated strictly according to disciplinary procedures, and their removal was often quietly applauded by the silent majority.

The best example of the attitude changes that  eventually  developed was a period where the factory needed to work 7 days a week including a number of bank holidays for several months to complete a massive order on time for one of our major customers. This was achieved completely with voluntary overtime.

To convince the sceptics who probably see this as fluffy bunny stuff perhaps an increase in profit from £300k p.a. to over £4m p.a. will change your mind. This was after considerable expenditure to correct the infrastructure problems and with the same number of staff (of which 80% were “the feckless group of wasters” I had inherited).

I rather think that proves my point!

For more great examples of  the power of engagement across cultures read Breaking the Mould by Peter Hunter. http://www.breakingthemould.co.uk