Roffey Park’s Employee Engagement Conference, Roffey Park, UK, 31 October 2008

Citation

Miles, G. (2009), "Roffey Park’s Employee Engagement Conference, Roffey Park, UK, 31 October 2008", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 8 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2009.37208bae.003

Roffey Park’s Employee Engagement Conference, Roffey Park, UK, 31 October 2008

Article Type: Resources From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 8, Issue 2

Gary MilesRoffey Park

This was Roffey Park’s second employee engagement conference, drawing an audience of HR and internal communication professionals interested to hear leading edge thinking and to share best practice in the field. Some of the highlights of the day are as follows.

Employee engagement strategies

Jo Hennessy, director of research and product development, Roffey Park, opened the event by describing the rise of employee engagement over a decade of steady if not spectacular economic growth. She claimed that with the onset of tougher economic times, organizations would continue to invest in employee engagement.

There was general agreement by those present that employee engagement is likely to remain a key strategy if organizations find themselves having to deliver targets with fewer people, if organizations find a depressed employment market means some people stay longer than they would otherwise choose to and if organizations become more risk averse and cancel their more exciting and interesting initiatives.

The theme of segmenting the workforce in order to engage different groups appropriately came up in several of the sessions, with Helena Clayton, director of business development, giving a particular focus to engaging Generation Y. For some, there was a realization that their organizational culture might be stifling this generation and that some efforts to engage this group might be falling short of the mark.

Diverse approaches to engagement

Everyone is familiar with the success story of the drinks company, Innocent, but not everyone knows the story of employee engagement underpinning this success. Karen Callaghan, head of people, somewhat surprised delegates with the company’s no nonsense, straight talking approach to engagement. With high expectations of its people, Innocent follows a robust performance management process supported by investment in development and honest regular communication to achieve outstanding business growth.

In contrast, Vodafone, winners of the Personnel Today Employee Engagement Award, has adopted a strategy of engaging employees by staging entertaining experiences. Lorna Farrar, head of employee experience, told of how the company has found new ways to exploit its own sponsorship and brand assets to engage its many employees.

How to maintain engagement during difficult times was another theme at the conference. This was made particularly practical by Mark Watkins, former head of organizational Communications, Nycomed, who shared how his pharmaceutical firm achieved this during the integration of an acquisition. Nikki Hood, head of learning and development at Yell Group, also gave practical insights into maintaining high engagement levels when her business encountered turbulence in its business environment.

Moving beyond engagement

Participants were given the chance to complete Roffey Park’s Engagement Diagnostic Tool, part of a wider engagement diagnostic service. In discussion, it was felt that it was an advantage to be able to apply this tool as a benchmarked measure of employee engagement levels in an organization as well as providing individuals with a personal engagement profile for use in their development.

Looking beyond engagement, Roffey Park has been researching the related and yet distinct area of Enlightenment at Work – an intense moment of clarity revealing someone’s place in the world, often with transformational effects for themselves and their organization. Delegates left with new ideas on how to go beyond engagement into enlightenment, finding ways to ignite energy for change in their people.