Employee Engagement - Maureen Scholefield's view
The current economic climate is having a profound effect on all of us. Coping with the repercussions will come under the category of “interesting”. We are hearing about increases in grievances, reports of stress, absence and sickness. We read and hear about badly handled redundancies that result in negative press for the organisation and no doubt encourage the drop in morale and motivation.
So we need to go back to basics and remember Maslow. His hierarchy of needs still has resonance. It may not be fashionable to hark back to this but Brenda Roper and I agree that the lower levels of his hierarchy fit closely with how people are feeling. People’s anxiety over the lower two levels has a direct impact on their behaviour at work.
This is the challenge that organisations now face. So how do we work to alleviate personal concerns?
It has been recognised that in times of change effective and prompt communication is critical. Effective communication also helps with motivation – if your people understand what is happening they can contribute. One of our Professional Assessment of Competence (PAC) candidates needed to shave £100k off her people budget. She gave the problem to her people and they achieved the savings without a reduction of head count or hours. This is supports my assertion that you need to engage with your people to get the best from them.
I have found a good summary of the literature available on Employee Engagement. It identifies Drivers of Engagement
- A two-way relationship between the employer and employee
- The importance of the individual being able to align themselves to the products, services and values of the organisation
- The ability of the organisation to communicate its vision, strategy, objectives and values to its staff so that they are clearly understood
- Management give staff sufficient 'elbow room' and autonomy to let them fulfill their potential
- The employer is highly effective at engaging in two-way communication with its staff, in particular encouraging upward communication
- Lastly, that management from the top to the bottom of the organisation are 'committed leaders' and that the key role of the immediate line manager/supervisor is recognised as one of the most important conduits to achieving effective employee engagement.
The CIPD Annual Survey report (2006c) defines engagement in terms of three dimensions of employee engagement:
- Emotional engagement - being very involved emotionally in one's work
- Cognitive engagement - focusing very hard whilst at work; and
- Physical engagement - being willing to 'go the extra mile' for your employer.
Meere (2005) describes three levels of engagement:
- Engaged - employees who work with passion and feel a profound connection to their organisation. They drive innovation and move the organisation forward
- Not engaged - employees who attend and participate at work but are timeserving and put no passion or energy into their work; and
- Disengaged - employees who are unhappy at work and who act out their unhappiness at work. According to Meere (2005), these employees undermine the work of their engaged colleagues on a daily basis.
I can give you an example of an engaged employee. I was having my hair done – one of life’s necessities. I noticed that the hairdresser who was preparing me for the stylist was a familiar face. Small talk is a requirement in hairdressing salons and so I asked her how long she had worked in the salon. Ten years was the reply, I then – HR hat on – asked her what kept her happy. She then proceeded to make me realise what is important to all workers.
Her reasons were:
- She enjoys working with her colleagues – it is hard work but fun
- She is regularly trained in her technical skills – new products but also recently had a training session on motivation and customer service
- She respects her manager who always has time for her
- She gets regular feedback
- Her reward package contains incentives - this enables her to increase her basic salary
- She finds that all of these points make her happy to come to work, she never feels down about coming to work
I walked out of the salon feeling good and not only because I had my hair done. Whilst we can complicate the issues I walked out realising that Maslow still has something to offer us.
