ORC International 14th annual employee engagement conference

Citation

Pritchard, K. (2010), "ORC International 14th annual employee engagement conference", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 9 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2010.37209aab.009

ORC International 14th annual employee engagement conference

Article Type: Resources From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 9, Issue 1

London, UK, 18 June 2009

The recent publication of the UK government’s major review of employee engagement has once again got HR professionals talking about this most thorny of personnel issues. So, if employee engagement is unarguably good for your organization, why does it seem that so many organizations are, well, bad at it?

The market research agency ORC International has been lending its expertise to organizations grappling with the engagement question for well over a decade. This year in fact the agency presented its 14th annual conference on the subject. Among its speakers was the co-author of the government’s employee engagement review, David MacLeod, who brought home forcibly the message that getting employees engaged will be crucial to getting Britain’s economy out of this recession.

But what is the best way to “do” employee engagement? Speakers at the ORC conference were in general agreement that it is no longer sufficient to invite responses to a staff survey once a year, or to instill a company’s core values by circulating them in a memo. Instead, speakers from well-known organizations such as Arqiva and the Ministry of Justice presented some valuable insights on how HR professionals might reach for the holy grail of a fully engaged workforce. Following are some of the actions they discussed:

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  Rob Neil, head of engagement champions networks at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), spearheaded the ministry’s employee engagement project in 2007. Innovations introduced by Neil have included the use of theatre to explain employee engagement, and the development of engagement champions throughout the organization. These champions are charged with reviewing news ways of working within the organization. To help them, the MoJ will shortly also be launching an online “e-community” space for engagement champions to share ideas and examples of good practice.

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  Derek Bradbury, group HR director for the communications company Arqiva, delivered a powerful message about the need to maintain dialogue with employees during turbulent times. The company completed a merger with National Grid Wireless in 2007 in an acquisition worth £2.5 billion. Bradbury pressed ahead with an annual staff survey in the midst of the merger activities, but used the results to positively drive forward improvements in employee relations, through local action plans set up to tackle the issues raised.

With the UK’s economy still on the ropes, there is clearly a lot at stake in the employment engagement arena. The clear message from ORC International’s 14th Annual Employee Engagement Conference is that we need to engage with staff on a more sophisticated and imaginative level. Not only that, we need to make sure that employee engagement is not simply something we do to tick the boxes; it needs to be firmly embedded in the way organizations operate. Only then will we start to see organizations really unlocking the potential of their workforce and reaping the rewards in terms of business success.

Kate PritchardDirector of employee research at ORC International