Employee engagement

Citation

Nolan, S. (2010), "Employee engagement", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 9 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2010.37209caa.001

Employee engagement

Article Type: Editorial From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 9, Issue 3

The theme of this issue of Strategic HR Review is employee engagement. There is general consensus among HR players of the importance of employee engagement, and also more often than not on its definition and the conditions it requires. In this issue, a culture of trust, making work meaningful, setting clear expectations and leadership role modeling are examples of the conditions for engagement that have been identified by several authors. The main trust of the issue, however, is to go beyond what those conditions are, to explore how to put them in place and create the right environment for engagement.

In their research paper, “Tapping the power of collective engagement”, Elizabeth Craig and Yaarit Silverstone discuss the pitfalls of individual engagement and the potential to overcome them by focusing on collective engagement. The problem with individual engagement is that people can become highly engaged, but in work that is not aligned to the strategic goals of the organization. Conversely, collective engagement is where employees are aligned to shared organizational goals and are committed to supporting each other. Through their work in this area, the authors have identified three essential conditions for collective engagement – meaningful work and career opportunities, support for employee effort and recovery, and a culture of trust and respect. In this paper they explain how individual engagement translates to collective engagement and how to begin by aligning “one team, one workgroup, and one workforce at a time.”

“Engaging employees through whole leadership” by Simon Hayward puts forward the whole leadership approach of engaging “heads, hearts and guts of employees” as a way forward at a time when the need for employee engagement is high but the climate for engagement is vulnerable. Whole leadership is a demanding concept and calls on leaders to be straightforward, real, open and honest – to mean what they say and live what they believe. The author draws on research that shows that highly engaged employees see their leaders as role models, and organizations that win the hearts and minds of employees are more likely to reap the rewards of optimal performance. Whole leadership, therefore, is a potential means to successfully achieving organizational goals through employee engagement. While it is demanding, whole leadership skills can be learned, and this is where HR and learning professionals come to the fore. They can put in place the resources to help leaders learn to engage others, and also to engage leaders themselves.

“Helping Ordnance Survey stand out from the crowd”, by Jayne Beresford and Anita Sarris details how this organization is dealing with the huge changes taking place in its business and culture and the resulting people management challenges. With its roots going back to 1791, it has changed considerably over time – from producing the first map in 1801 to becoming a key provider of digital geographic information. It was experiencing difficulties recruiting in its non-traditional areas – the technology and commercial markets – and the existence of several sub-cultures – some of longstanding loyal staff and others of newer employees – made employee engagement and motivation challenging. A comprehensive research program investigated the employer brand strengths and weaknesses, how it is perceived externally and the reality of working at the organization. Some known strengths emerged, but also some new ones, and together these are being used to create a set of values that will underpin the marketing of the organization internally and externally, in order to improve recruitment and retention. The in-depth nature of the research allows the organization to be clear about the benefits and reality of working for Ordnance Survey and therefore to manage expectations and improve engagement.

In “Building a culture of high employee engagement”, Gary Tomlinson explains how the HR team at Kia Motors developed a strategy to address poor levels of employee engagement in the UK with the aim of enhancing the brand so that it reflects the organization as an employer of choice. The strategy was based on a need to improve employee engagement in order to increase morale, reduce the costs resulting from high employee turnover and improve business performance. It was created around research into the key drivers of engagement, combined with internal employee satisfaction levels and comparison with competitor employee satisfaction levels. This combination of listening to employees and learning from external best practice resulted in a successful strategy based primarily on three areas – leadership, internal communications and employee development – while implementation was assisted by a strong communications program and visible CEO support. Engagement measures developed to assess the impact of the strategy show it to be a success and, as a result, it is now being rolled out internally on a pan-European level and shared with the global HR team.

Richard Doherty explains why employee engagement must be long-term in his best practice guide, “Making employee engagement an end-to-end practice”. This means engaging employees from before a career begins, until and after it ends, in order to impact positively on both internal and external relationships. Engaged employees will build positive customer and partner relations and, furthermore, when employees leave an organization they may become customers or partners themselves. Engagement, therefore, is a long-term issue and the employer brand is key to attracting and retaining talented employees and to good relations with partners and customers. Technology is one way of achieving strong engagement and the author looks at the role it can play in the recruitment process, candidate management, employee communications, performance management and education. Traditional people management processes, such as regular appraisals and appropriate rewards, have a valuable role to play in improving engagement levels, but technology can bring in new levels of efficiency that save time and money and boost the employer brand.

Sara Nolanshr@emeraldinsight.com