Employee engagement is a strategic issue

Citation

Emmott, M. (2010), "Employee engagement is a strategic issue", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 9 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2010.37209cab.011

Employee engagement is a strategic issue

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

Thought leaders share their views on the HR profession and its direction for the future

HR people sometimes ask what a “strategic” issue is supposed to look like. One answer could be to say: “Think about employee engagement: that is a strategic issue.” Why? Because in order to engage employees, you have to ask what the organization is trying to achieve and how its people are expected to contribute. You also have to get outside the HR “box” and think about long-term organizational sustainability.

Understanding the concept

The recent upsurge of interest in employee engagement, reflected in the UK government-inspired review by David MacLeod (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009), on the face of it owes little to academic research or thinking. The position has begun to change recently as academics debate whether engagement should be seen as reflecting attitudes, behavior or outcomes (the answer of course is all three). But some of the current soul-searching about how to define employee engagement is reminiscent of the saying that “we know it works in practice but does it work in theory?”

The concept of employee engagement is best seen as a framework that organizations can adopt for thinking about how to get the best out of their people. Although its popularity is not research-driven, it builds on earlier work for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) at the University of Bath on the importance of releasing employees’ “discretionary effort,” (Purcell et al., 2003) which goes to the heart of what makes engagement different from the one-way street of “motivation.” Work from David Guest of Kings College, University of London, on the psychological contract (Guest and Conway, 2004) also emphasizes the need for organizations to win employees’ hearts and minds, which is quite close to the idea of “emotional” engagement.

Employee engagement can also be seen as a tool to help organizations identify areas of strength and weakness, to compare findings across geographical areas or departments and over time, and to take action to remedy underperformance. Engagement initiatives can be incorporated into performance management and become an integral part of how the business is managed.

What’s in it for HR?

So what’s in it for HR professionals? Firstly it’s an opportunity to engage with the business. If engaged employees are defined as those displaying discretionary behavior, then making the business case should not be difficult. The CIPD “people and performance” model suggests that releasing discretionary behavior leads to improved business performance (CIPD, 2007).

This means that, secondly, engagement presents the HR function with a means of raising its profile and influence within organizations. Employee engagement is not an HR preserve and policies to raise it should not be “HR” policies. Engagement initiatives need to be owned by the business, however, without HR leadership and support many will fail. HR’s job is both to support the people management process and strengthen the linkage with outcomes.

Thirdly, HR professionals need to review which items in their toolkit, and which personal competencies, are likely to be most effective in increasing engagement levels. The distinctive feature of engagement initiatives is measurement, and they typically start with employee attitude surveys. But the practical issue is knowing where to focus attention in order to get most impact.

Focus on management

This is where insight and judgment are required. The numbers will only tell you so much, the question is what do they mean? Research evidence (Truss et al., 2006) suggests that a “standard” response to employee surveys by employers should include:

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  Allowing people the opportunity to feed their views upwards.

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  Keeping employees informed about what is going on.

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  Building a culture based on trust and respect.

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  Having fair processes for dealing with problems.

Different groups of employees are influenced by different factors, but one constant is that employees can not be effectively engaged unless they have a clear understanding of what it is their organization is trying to achieve (the “line of sight”).

Leadership, culture and communications should clearly be major areas of focus if engagement is to become embedded in organizations. In order to tackle some of these issues successfully, HR professionals should not be ashamed to read more widely in the literature on psychology and consumer marketing. In terms of personal competencies, a grounding in organization development (OD) can help to influence both managers’ and employees’ behavior.

HR can look for “quick wins,” for example, by helping managers adopt behaviors that will prevent and reduce stress at work. Research also shows that employees on flexible contracts tend to be more emotionally engaged, more satisfied with their work and more likely to speak positively about their organization. But the fundamentals of getting employee engagement right are to engage the leadership team and to invest in line management. All the evidence is that it is the way people are managed that keeps them happy and drives performance. In the end, the engagement agenda means getting back to basics.

Mike Emmott is the Employee Relations Adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

About the author

Mike Emmott is the Employee Relations Adviser at the CIPD. His specialist interests are employee relations and employment law. Central to Emmott’s work is his interest in the way in which industrial and economic changes are affecting working practices. Before joining the CIPD, Emmott had many years’ experience in the Employment Department. He was a member of the employment service board and subsequently deputy director of the Office of Manpower Economics. Mike Emmott can be contacted at: m.emmott@cipd.co.uk