Will all the talk of engagement ever move beyond verbal foreplay?

It isn’t very fashionable to talk about what motivates people at the moment. As we all know, it’s an employer’s market and survival and job security are understandable obsessions. But even though employees have undoubtedly slipped quite some way down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, fear and drum-banging cascade communication will never be enough to sustain performance indefinitely. And surely even the most hard-nosed FD must have one eye on the consequences of recovery.

Almost every week now we’re hearing about employee engagement studies like this one from the Hay Group. Yet we’re still shocked that, despite the fact that most business leaders identify disengaged employees as one of the top three most significant threats facing their business, very few ever “get down to” or even discuss employee engagement in the boardroom.

So what can we infer from this paradox? That the leaders don’t really care? That they feel they can get away with doing nothing? That they are wary of stirring the passions of their people if they start whispering sweet nothings and aren’t sure they’re up to dealing with the consequences? I have my theories. You make up your own minds.

I’m not sure the latest report into internal communication trends from Edelman helps though. While there’s much of interest in the report, it hardly role models effective communication in the way it’s written. And I’m frankly dumbstruck by  statements like “Employee engagement is becoming more and more about how an employee “experiences” the organization – relationships with leaders, managers, colleagues, andcustomers coupled with access to information,connectedness to conversations.” “Becoming”? If engagement hasn’t always been about actual experience, what exactly have people been talking about/doing?

Against this disconcerting backdrop, it’s interesting, however, to note the slowly swelling tide of articles stressing the importance of culture to the apparent employee engagement conundrum. One of the latest is by GE exponent Ron Ashkenas in the Harvard Business Review outlining the need to focus on evolving culture development rather than dictating change.

Regardless of the apparent gap between leadership thinking and doing, however, it’s interesting to observe that authenticity emerges time and again at the heart of the engagement and culture discussions.

Genuine, trustworthy communication is undoubtedly one of the cornerstones of employee engagement. It encourages openness and honesty and stimulates involvement, all qualities which are critical to developing and sustaining a culture of performance.

True performance cultures aren’t just short-term focused. They are sustainable and are based on mutual trust and respect. Only a fool focuses solely on the outputs without devoting time and effort to understanding and replicating the conditions that maximise returns.

Job security, pay and rations are clearly very important. But true wisdom lies with the 30 to 40 per cent of leaders who not only acknowledge but, right now, despite the downturn, aren’t fretting over definitions or business case but are putting in place systematic engagement and culture development strategies to not just survive but move ahead of the game. There are clearly genuine engagement lovers, those who talk a good game and those who dare not speak its name.

We’re intrigued to hear what category your leadership team currently falls into

The Obvious Business Case for Employee Engagement

The controversial talk about cost cutting has been relentless in the lengthy aftershock of the financial crisis. Most worryingly for organisations in general is the apparent fact that what are wrongly referred to as the “soft skills disciplines” including training and development; internal communication/employee engagement; brand engagement and culture development are constantly under threat  just when they’re needed the most.

A large part of the reason for this is that these disciplines are wrongly seen as discretionary spend, easily subject to cutbacks.

But there’s a flipside to the cost argument.

Market research leader Gallup asserts that, in 2008, the cost of disengagement to the UK economy was between £59bn – £64bn and an IES/Work Foundation report found that, if organisations increased investment in engagement practices by just 10%, they would increase profits by up to £2k per employee per year. (source Employee Engagement Today, vol 2, Autumn 09).

As someone who has first hand experience of the impact disaffected staff can have on business performance and brand management, I believe these to be conservative figures, but they still make a very strong point.

David Bolchover, in his book The Living Dead*, states that in the UK alone, doctors receive over 9 million “suspect” requests for sick notes per year. This is equivalent to the entire population of Sweden.

His book came out during the good times.

In addition one in three midweek visitors to a major theme park are reputedly “pulling a sickie” from work. Great news for the entertainment industry but worrying for HR departments. It also begs the question where do the theme park employees go when they fancy a duvet day?

A 2006 study by ISR found that a 5% improvement in the overall level of employee engagement converts into a 25-85% increase in profits for service oriented organisations.

Jack Welch, legendary former CEO of GE, identified employee engagement as the most important barometer of organizational performance (Business Week, May 3, 2006 “A Healthy Company).

The CBI reports that apparent sickness absence costs the UK economy more than £13bn a year.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s 2010 report, Creating an Engaged Workforce found that just under a third of employees are actively engaged with their work at any one time. The 2010 Putting it in Perspective report from ORC International found that although levels of job satisfaction have increased slightly across the UK, organisational pride and the confidence of employees to speak up and make their voices heard has dropped.

Business case for employee engagement at an individual business level aside, recovery of these figures alone would go a long way towards solving the national debt problem.

Yet, encouraging people to “go the extra mile” is a key goal of the new government-backed employee engagement task force and there is widespread acknowledgement that increasing levels of engagement across the UK could really help to boost productivity.

We need our organisations to function if the economy is to function. There are no organisations without people. Performance is not sustainable without engagement.

Take great care where the axe falls or you may just be cutting off your proverbial “nose to spite your face”.

What is a true brand champion?

Superman or Supernerd, what is the profile of a brand hero? Seems to me that you don’t have to have a qualification in the legacy of Marvel comics to appreciate the link between the popularity of heroic figures in popular culture and testing social circumstances.  It’s no great surprise, therefore, that the Golden Age of Superhero comics coincided with the aftermath of a catastrophic World War. But this isn’t a geeky treatise on the power of fiction and fantasy. This book is grounded in commercial reality. It’s about the superpower behind organisations, it’s about the people behind brands.

We’re all aware that these are troubled and testing times for so-called free market economics. I pointed to problems with the capitalist system in Brand Engagement but when, a few months later, single companies lost more in a year than the GDP of the nation they stem from, it would appear the scale of the issue was larger than anyone anticipated. In the first few months following the infamous credit crunch the UK government allegedly invested more in interventionist policies to stabilise the economy than they spent financing the whole of WW1. But even the dark days of international conflict gave rise to role models and heroes. Where are they now?

As former Masters of the Universe investment banks, those bastions of a certain brand of performance culture momentarily slunk into the shadows for a rethink, how many ancillary industries have we seen suffer in their wake? Seems a genuine corporate champion or two wouldn’t go amiss.

It may be popularity polls and shareprices rather than bombs that are dropping these days but as world and corporate leaders struggle with economic crises who wouldn’t welcome a caped crusader who could clear tall buildings in a single bound?  If they also had the answer to the sub-prime mortgage fiasco plumping out their codpiece, all the better.

Here in the real world, as so many political and corporate leaders appear t have embraced “the dark side” we’re more likely to bump into a bumbling Clarke Kent, a nerdy Bruce Banner or an uber slick Bruce Wayne than a Super or Batman.  The heroes who are most likely to live and work around us every day are the alter-egos of what we may expect.  They include police officers, doctors, lollipop ladies, bean counters, teachers and insurance underwriters, personal assistants, Mac wizards and spreadsheet jockeys. They’re often the little people who are able to rise above the universal and altogether natural concern for the self and put the needs of others first in their list of priorities.  They too fight for health, safety, authenticity, growth and excellence in their own modest way.  But like many of their comic book counterparts, they’re not forced or compelled to heroic acts. They do it because they choose to.

Though they seldom acknowledge it, organisations count on there being enough of these workaday superheroes in sensible shoes quietly making a stand for truth and justice within the corporate rank and file. If they aren’t wearing their underwear over their tights or aren’t sporting a natty cape and tiara, however, how do you spot them?

10 Ways to Spot an Engaged Employee

Well, if anyone is prepared to willingly bear the symbol of a brand on their breast there’s a fair chance they’re going to be substantially engaged with that brand. But what does an engaged employee actually look like? While there are variations and eccentricities, in my experience the most common traits exhibited by engaged employees are that they are:

1. Obvious  (they clearly add value although don’t always shout about it)
2. Authentic (they are themselves in the workplace)
3. Receptive (they listen and are open to new and different approaches)
4. Involved  (they are active members of the community)
5. Proactive  (they take the initiative)
6. Energised  (they do things)
7. Achievers (the things they do tend to be fruitful)
8. Advocates (they are proud and happy to recommend the brand)
9. Role models (they lead by example)
10. In demand

Delve beneath the surface of the various Best 100 Companies poll and you’ll encounter these characters and characteristics in spadefuls.  Having been privileged to have worked with a number in the past I can confirm that in each case:

- the Top Team were advocates of a culture-led approach to brand management

- they developed a very clear business case for change

- they understood the current culture and were clear about the desired future culture

- they involved and engaged all employees in the development of a compelling story about the evolution of the business

- they “professionalized” their internal communication function and ensured that line managers in particular were skilled communicators

- they insisted on partnerships between the external and internal facing communication/engagement functions, like Marketing and HR.

Doesn’t sound anything like where you work? Well next time there’s a corporate crisis just pause for a second, try to look beyond what the emails from the CEO and army of middle managers are saying and consider why the otherwise unassuming and bespectacled Jane from IT always grabs her coat and heads for the stationery cupboard when the going gets tough. After all, someone keeps the super villains at bay and the systems running!

Engagement from the inside out

In many respects it’s encouraging to hear the building buzz about employee engagement. But in some senses it has the unfortunate effect of a nagging ice-cream headache.

That’s got a lot to do with the number of prevailing misconceptions as much as the volume of the shouting about them.

Some of the most common engagement myths being perpetuated are:

1. that engagement is solely about discretion
2. that it’s just down to organisations to some how generate “it”
3. that it’s always positive

Blessing White, for example, undertakes a global engagement survey every three years. They define engagement as “someone who is both maximally satisfied with their job and makes a substantial contribution to their organization”. On that basis, their last survey informs us that employees in India are the most engaged.

Having set up countless internal communication functions across industries, supported hr teams through change programmes; marketing teams developing brands and having worked on the engagement frontline during most of the key phases in its evolution, we have a slightly different take on the engagement debate.

We believe that employee engagement is very much a two-way-street. Sure, there’s a very clear business case for organisations to embrace the concept and include it in their core strategy. They need to be very clear about what their brand stands for, vision, mission, values, behaviours and core culture. This, in effect, represents the internal brand promise which has a very direct causal relationship with reputation. But there’s an equal and complementary obligation on individuals.

It is incumbent upon all of us to understand our personal goals, aspirations, values and preferences; the way we behave; our motivators, our personal brand if you will. Why? Because it’s at the interface between the individual and organisation brand that true engagement happens.

So what’s true engagement? Well, we believe that engagement isn’t necessarily positive. In the raw, engagement is simply an attraction, a connection. We’re temporarily as engaged watching car crash tv as we are watching Band Aid or one of our cult heroes. But the engagement event doesn’t always inspire us to pick up a guitar or put our hands in our pocket. In an organisation context, cynics, for example, are often hugely engaging, as rebels often are.

From an organisation perspective, it’s clearly critical to engage people for a long time and with the right things if the outcome is going to be a good time for a long time for both parties. Sustainable engagement comes from within, it is key and that means generating enough of a connection between enough of the people to generate:

- great business results for all stakeholders

- employee advocacy

- a culture that can sustain this

At the core of this engagement relationship is authenticity – people being informed and honest about themselves and organisations being clear and honest about their brand for the sake of all stakeholder groups.

So, enough of the noise already implying that engagement is optional. Enough chatter implying that it’s a nice to have or the sole responsibility of HR departments within the organisations themselves. Enough of the relentless muttering about definitions and whether you’re a CEO or a ceo, in the immortal words of a global brand leader,  “just do it”!

Hello!

Welcome to The Brand Trilogy (TBT)

A place to meet, to explore. to challenge, to gather thoughts and ideas about the engagement movement and developing potent brands from within.

Our mission is to celebrate and unite the community of people who believe that big brands are sustained and maintained by everyday superheroes.

We aim to share the collective body of stories and  together, create the third in the brand trilogy.