Top 10 tips for re-energising deflated employees

There’s plenty of doom and gloom about. But it’s always this way in the eye of an economic storm. Yes, there’s a certain macabre fascination watching the car crash that is European finance play out before our eyes. But as the ancient wisdom goes, the fast track to feeling more empowered is to focus on what you can personally influence. We all have some degree of empowerment in the workplace whether we’re the CEO or ceo.

If the barrage of statistics are to be believed (and it’s not fair just to trust the bad news), companies with high employee engagement levels grow on average 4.5 times faster than those with low levels (Hays 2010).

We know that engaged employees are:

R- receptive

I – involved

P- proactive

E – energised and energising

So why not try these top tips to promote the engagement drive within your organisation:

1. Give recognition

If someone has done well, let them know you know it. That doesn’t mean handing out bags of “swag”. A simple thank you goes a long way to increasing engagement so catch them doing the right thing

2. Give constructive feedback

Managers giving little or no feedback to their workers fail to engage 98% of them, according to a 2009 study by Gallup. Let employees know how they are doing & what they can do to improve. It’s worth giving your first line managers in particular training on how to do this, it needn’t be expensive and “little and often” works best

3. Incentivise good work

Ensure that your HR processes are hard-wired to recognise objectives that are “on brand”, “on culture” and “on strategy”

4. Create an engaging culture

An open door policy creates an approachable feel to the office, where employees feel comfortable. But make sure the door’s open in terms of behaviour as well as literally. Ensure management have a physical presence in the office and are role models for your core values

5. Involve people

Self-managing teams are engagement nirvana. Involving people in company decisions will make them feel part of the organisation & give them a real sense of ownership

6.Keep people informed 

Don’t assume that people don’t know or don’t need to know. They will appreciate being in the loop about any changes in the company. Internal communication must do more than SOS (send out stuff)

7. Encourage suggestions & input

Let them know their opinions count…. chances are the answers to your issues can be solved in-house (that’s real innovation)

8. Promote role models

Rather than favouring favourites look to unusual suspects for examples of great practice and celebrate them. This will engage more people than you can imagine

9. Encourage training, development and a career path

Stress the benefits of working for your brand including developing new skills and having a career path in return for development. Relationships count but they need to be nurtured

10. Focus on their talents

Get to know the “real people” who work for you. Play some games. Find out what talents they have or want to have. Use these when delegating projects to ensure they are using their talents & developing in the right areas.

 
We hope these tips help but if you want to explore any of these points in more detail, do get in touch for a confidential chat.

The Why of Work

A review of the recently released book by Ulrich&Ulrich.

The first response many people will have to the Ulrichs’ book title will be to hear the Why and Work words, contrast them with the increasing pressure they probably currently feel simply keeping the show on the road and reach for the Ten Minute Manager or a similarly pragmatic and less esoteric title. I also have a strong suspicion that a considerable cadre of senior managers believe the answer to the question is “because I pay you to”,

The Ulrich’s have a damn good stab at making yet another business case for why to consider the why. In this regard they’re keeping company with many of the major research houses that have come to the same conclusion.They point, as others do, to the market value of intangibles and the track record of business leaders who value soft skills. The trouble is, the market is saturated with studies making the same case. So why are employee engagement levels still at record low levels? Well, clearly, boardrooms, in the main, are still saying one thing and doing another, safe in the knowledge that it’s an employer’s market “like it or lump it”. Will this book change that “dog in a manger” mentality? It may help… a bit. Even if the revolution has to come one leader at a time, that, at least, has to be a good thing.

The most impactful business case for their core thesis that people and businesses are more effective when they understand the why of work comes well into the book, when David shares an anecdote about the banking crisis and counter-capitalist bailout process. When asked his opinion he does point to the elephant in the room namely the glaring absence of actions to address the root cause of the problem: “If the holes are not fixed or people’s lives are not put in order, bailouts accomplish little”. Wise words indeed. But again, who is really listening? David makes the link between individual behaviour, corporate culture, work and home life. Yet all of the political talk is obsessed with structural and legislative changes.

This book implies that creating a culture in which leaders think as hard about the “how” as they do the “what”; where people create rather than exploit relationships and where colleagues examine their own motivation, values and style as well as the qualities of others can collectively be a route to addressing the root causes of the economic malaise. I can’t agree more.

Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl sums this cause and effect relationship up (as he tends to), much more effectively with a single poignant phrase, when quoting Nietzsche “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how”. The worry is that the current focus remains firmly on the suffering rather than enabling and on the “bearing” rather than re-framing and re-focusing the why.

I recently happened upon two choice quotes during the course of my workaday consultancy that illustrate why. The first is from a CEO:

“I have plenty of emotional intelligence…I just choose to ignore that voice most of the time”.

The second is from an HR director who confided privately:

“The mistake many people make is that when I say “I understand” they somehow hear “I care”.

I think we can all see the dilemma the Ulrichs faced when they wrote this book. While I would like to see more of their philosophy role-modelled in the style and structure of their writing, the reader will be left in no doubt that leaders would do well to read this and soak it up attentively and with some quiet humility. Let’s face it, few business and political leaders have too much to be arrogant about right now and could, quite frankly, do with all the help they can get.

Your service promise comes into its own in a downturn, provided you…..

….invest time and effort on teamwork and think laterally about engagement.

As we enter the final quarter of the year, glancing back at past client assignments suggests that the Indian Summer we experienced on the outside may well be reflected in a select number of boardrooms. Punchy words given the economic indicators.

Having lived through several waves of the slings and arrows of outrageous business fortune in the past, we know that economic downturns are typified by a lot of breath holding in the hope of business as usual. But it’s very difficult for organisations to operate when oxygen isn’t filtering through to key stakeholders and communication has all but disappeared.

In the darkest of days, however, there are always a select few who bravely buck the trends and recognise that engagement is the key to morale building; that collaboration leads to fresh thinking and that teamwork, which is free, can break the cycle of depression and actually lead to improvements in employee and consequently customer satisfaction. And these select few have been very busy since the Summer.

The notable avant-garde organisations this time around include a forward thinking head of internal communication who refuses just to SOS or send out stuff and has formed a partnership with the marketing function to secure budget for an engagement programme and ensure that the brand is delivered in a seamless fashion. There’s also an HR director who has pulled together a brand coalition (yes, an HRD!) to help define a service promise and most importantly ensure that the coalition is capable of delivering on those fine words by taking a champion-led approach to engagement. And we’re working with a director of learning and development who has borrowed budget from the marketing department to fund a change management training programme for the sales team based on our Hero’s journey approach in order to address sliding engagement statistics directly linked to customer satisfaction problems.

Each project is innovative, yet it remains cost neutral. Why? Because in each case, the leaders involved have recognised the causal link between customer satisfaction and employee engagement, promise making and promise keeping. In recognising this they have also acknowledged that brand is simply a hollow word unless supported by an internal culture in which on-brand values and behaviours thrive. They have consequently agreed to re-align budget along these lines and have shared responsibility for engagement inside and out.

The engagement solutions we’ve facilitated for them have been largely cost neutral as they have replaced traditional training and/or been funded by re-channeling spend on less effective initiatives whether within the HR/Comms or Marketing spheres. Why SOS when you can engage people to the point that they become self managing teams?

Tough times breed ingenuity. Viewed this way, downturns can be remarkable hot houses for initiative and innovation and yes, engagement. But as the latest engagement statistics from the US suggest employee engagement levels at an all time low (28%), it would appear that this joined-up, liberating, silo-busting thinking is sadly still in short supply. Ridiculous when, with some lateral vision, it costs nothing and with some professional, well targeted guidance, yields much!

Survey says young people behind the reality curve? We say “build it and they will come!”

It’s fascinating to read a recent study suggesting that as youth unemployment reaches a new high, 14-15 year old people’s career aspirations don’t match requirements for economic growth.

The survey claims that major British industries are facing a talent shortage unless they can shake their unattractive images. 

According to more than 1,000 young people surveyed by Magnified Learning, the jobs that are apparently essential for economic growth are “boring”:

• Less than 3% of young people considered the environment sector – marked by Cameron as a vital industry for economic growth
• Least popular was public transport with less than 2%of young people choosing a career in the sector
• Just 3% showed an interest in the energy sector

Jobs in the media and creative industries may be the only sectors to score consistently well among young people approaching working age. But then I wanted to captain the England rugby team and drive for Ferrari when I was a teenager!

Chris Horton, Director of Magnified Learning, said:

“The high levels of youth unemployment are alarming, but even more alarming is that our research shows that the industries in which there are likely to be jobs opening up for young people, are not even being considered by the vast majority of them.

“We believe tackling these negative perceptions is a two-way process, and it is important that industry leaders recognise their responsibility to engage with the next generation in order to foster new talent. It will be impossible for the UK economy to thrive if we can’t convince young Britons that such career paths are worth aspiring to.”

Of course HR functions have a part to play on the demand side of the equation. But it isn’t necessarily the one hinted at by Mr Horton.

 I’m less convinced by the traditional thinking that new talent = young talent. The bad news for these young folk is that the biggest issues we see when working with organisations currently have little to do with solely attracting fresh talent. The greatest challenge by far is re-engaging, energising and making the most of largely disengaged existing talent where investment will stay within the “family” and there will be no acquisition costs.

Once again, the call goes out to HR directors across sectors to open their eyes to the reality that the bulk of their employment brand efforts should be directed at developing truly sustainable performance cultures and liberating the potential of existing employees. Much more effective to create attractive brands from within by developing an appropriate culture and to influence perceptions of the next generation in that way than to waste time and money on external PR when the words and figures differ.

As the old saying goes “if you build it, they will come”!

Is duplicity ever the finest form of flattery?

One of the few drawbacks of being a published writer is that at some stage or another, you’re going to bump into yourself. By floating your considered thoughts, stories and approaches into the literary stream of consciousness, you create a sort of alternative reality in which they take on a life of their own and generate new stories as a consequence of how readers interpret and then use those materials.

That double-dip creative process can be extremely rewarding when your insights help clients and colleagues improve the engagement and sustainability landscape one company or one brand at a time, as you intended, especially when they acknowledge your contribution. Occasionally, however, someone over-steps the mark and shamelessly cannibalizes your content. And there’s nothing quite as tragic as coming face to face with a desperate doppleganger.

We’ve had the misfortune of encounters like this a number of times. On one occasion a client proudly presented a programme they had previously developed with one of our competitors which clearly contained our distinctive models and approaches. It had floundered when they ran out of steam. And a former colleague has frequently re-branded ours and other practitioner’s materials . In the latest raid, he not only lifted a concept from Brand Engagement but he included the unique and very distinctive first line and listed the book in the online tags. Bless him!

There’s more than a touch of Talented Mr Ripley about it all. He has, however, reminded us of a very useful tool developed “back in the day” and which Marketing supremo professor Phillip Kitchen featured in his book Marketing Metaphors and Metamorphosis in which Ian explored the importance of adapting engagement approaches to the differing needs of internal vs external stakeholders. So as we enter the Q 4 strategy and event season, let’s share it again.

BS (that’s “bullshit” for the adults), Bingo was developed over a decade ago as a lighthearted way of “keeping it real” at business conferences and events. You know how easy it is for senior leadership figures in particular to inadvertently slip into using Orwellian “double speak”, especially when they’re dealing with complex and potentially emotional subjects? BS Bingo provides participants with a fun way of applying gentle peer pressure by spotting and calling that non-sensory “double speak before it sends the participants into a trance. You should try it at the next event you attend. Just draw up a list of clichéd phrases, share them amongst a group of players and award prizes. It soon makes a difference.

As for the Doppleangers, well, we’d like to say we’re flattered, but can’t quite bring ourselves to. So we’ll give the final word to Mr Ripley, as we really can’t put it any better:

“You never meet anybody that thinks they’re a bad person.”

Come on folks.  A simple acknowledgement would be nice. More importantly, surely you have approaches, developments and case studies of your own to share….don’t you?

4 Steve Jobs, a crazy one……

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them,glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them, because they change things. They push the human race forward.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

RIP Steve Jobs…………….

What are you doing to liberate your champions?

Brand champions don’t tend to come with a unified rank. Yes there are the uber brand champions in the C suite of the Branson; Gates and Jobs* guise. But lucky for Richard, Steve and co, brand champions appear at all levels. In my first book, Brand Engagement,  I make a particular case for the chief engagement officer or ceo as the pivotal communicator within the modern business. Overwhelmingly, ceos tend to be first line managers.

In a 2009 Bring Yourself 2 Work poll of 1,000 representatives from over 700 companies, they answered the question “Who is the most important internal communicator in your organisation” as follows:

• The Hr Director (2%)
• The Chief Executive (23%)
• My Line Manager (27%)
• My Department Head (48%)
• The Marketing Director (0%)

But when we asked the same people the question “Who is the most useful internal communicator in your organisation”, the results were very different:

• The Hr Director (4%)
• The Chief Executive (12%)
• My Line Manager (57%)
• My Department Head (27%)
• The Marketing Director (0%)

Clearly status and practicality are two very different things.

This shouldn’t come as a great surprise but I wonder how highly employee engagement functions, whether in HR or otherwise, prioritise first line managers in their strategies. The first line manager population are the people who, in modern businesses, are predominantly responsible for connecting the business with the people on a day to day basis. I’ve seen nothing since in the millions of soundbites about god like CEOs and so-called liberating, stand alone, new media, social media and technology to convince me otherwise. Funky technology is fun and is useful if well applied but there’s no substitute for a pulse, voice, nurturing manner and an active, attentive set of ears. Facebook will never replace Facetime.

In an age where process re-engineering has removed layers of leadership and customer relationship managers have been upstaged by call centres; where social media solutions are being touted as communications nirvana and face to face communication is somehow seen as old-fashioned, the everyman first line manager and supervisor has literally never been so important.  He/she is the vital link in the chain between the brand promise and the delivery of that promise because they are primarily responsible for engaging the vast majority of the workforce with the core purpose, vision, mission and values of the organisation. Lasting brand engagement doesn’t happen at grandstand events alone.

It’s a fact that the organisation’s people processes, the core engagement channels like performance management; training and development; communication and recruitment thrive or wither away at the line manager’s desk not in the HR department. So what are you doing to identify, liberate, engage and celebrate the achievements of your champions?

*Re-published as a tribute to brand superhero Steve Jobs who sadly passed away today:

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them,glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them, because they change things. They push the human race forward.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

RIP to a crazy one

Another Opening Another Show

We’ve just completed another high profile brand champions engagement event to rave reviews from our client. As ever, the seemingly seamless delivery by the fab facilitation team and beaming faces belie the road of trials that eventually culminated in the gathering of champions. In this particular case, we responded to the call to help with the brand transformation process by defining and developing a compelling service promise and then creating a culture in which brand champions are identified, goals clearly defined and then performance sustained. As ever, the champions engagement event is an important, but not defining stage in the engagement programme. It’s a classic and energising milestone in the champion’s journey. But the real adventure really does start here. Fortunately, the champions’ road of change trials is going to be made all the easier by their  colleagues, comrades and allies. These include the classic brand engagement trio of HR/Marketing and Comms with strong MD/CEO support who all led by example at the gathering. They will be sustained by compelling communication and a campaign mentality. But if the business is to achieve its transformation, the leaders will do well to listen to the wisdom in the words of Cole Porter. Why? Because they really do need to recreate this drama time and again until the energy, engagement and outputs move from exceptional one-off to the norm:

Artist – Cole Porter Another op’nin, another show In Philly, Boston, or Baltimo’ A chance for stage folks to say hello! Another op’nin of another show. Another job that you hope will last Will make your future forget your past Antoher pain where the ulcers grow Another op’nin of another show. Four weeks, you rehearse and rehearse Three weeks, and it couldn’t be worse One week, will it ever be right? Then out of the hat it’s that big first night The overture is about to start You cross your fingers and hold your heart It’s curtain time and away we go - Another op’nin Just another op’nin of another show!

Here’s to a great event.

Well done to the facilitation team.

Well played brand champions.

But most importantly, here’s to the ongoing journey and not only promises made but commitments delivered time and again…….”encore, encore!”