Positive outcomes from an engaging idea

Thursday, June 03, 2010

An organisation's greatest resource is its people, David MacLeod tells Alison Thomas, and if you expect your organisation to succeed then you've got to listen to your people and treat them properly

A happy, engaged workforce gets better results than a miserable, demotivated one. It seems so obvious as to be a truism, but parts of the public and private sectors still need convincing.

So the first task of the MacLeod Review of employee engagement was to find the evidence – and now review chairman David MacLeod is on the campaign trail to get organisations to sit up and take notice.

And that should not be a daunting task, he says. Employee engagement is as simple as asking staff what they think and acting on what they say, so that the workplace benefits from more of their capability and potential.

"The better organisations in both the public and private sectors are getting at much more of this potential – and are improving their outcomes as a result," MacLeod says. "So there is nothing new to invent, but by heavens there is a lot to do to get the body corporate up to the standards of the best."

The review's research has confirmed a strong correlation between organisational performance and positive responses from staff when they are quizzed about issues such as whether they would recommend their workplace to others, and whether work brings out their creative ideas.

"In central government there is a correlation between capability review findings and engagement; in local authorities there is a correlation with Audit Commission findings, and in the private sector there is a correlation between profit performance and levels of engagement, and indeed between improving levels of engagement and improving profitability," MacLeod says.

"And we are very pleased with the fact that the importance of engagement is becoming more widely recognised, and is manifested in organisations trying to hold their people through more recessionary times."

The foundation of engagement is managers and leaders with deep respect for their employees' capabilities and who value people as individuals, MacLeod adds.

The aim now is to help organisations build on that foundation through "how to" advice on the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills website to answer the practical "what do I do about this on Monday morning?" question, including video case studies and written material.

"This is not a rocket science topic – just ask people about the strengths of the organisation and where their frustrations are. In getting that feedback it inevitably becomes clearer which strengths to build on and issues to address," MacLeod says.

"Sometimes people don't understand how their role contributes to the bigger purpose of the organisation. They get lost in the day-to-day, but there's a lot of evidence that if an organisation is collectively clear about what it is trying to do, individual efforts can be better aligned.

"Or if people joined something they believed in, but have been badly managed, then introducing help and training for managers would be the obvious step.

"And a very profound and important issue is when staff say 'I hear what the leaders are saying but I don't observe that in their behaviour'. Then you get distrust and people are much less likely to put their shoulder to the wheel. If people think behaviour and values match and there is integrity, it creates more trust and the organisation works more effectively."

That is particularly important in tough times, when budgets are shrinking and jobs being lost, MacLeod argues. Organisations that deal with such problems fairly, transparently and supportively can maintain and even improve employee engagement.

And good leadership is about being open to new ideas and being able to take criticism on the chin, he says.

"People can be fearful about the feedback they will get, and when they feel under pressure to deliver results they worry about losing control by managing in this way. But strong, confident leaders with a strong view of what they are trying to do and why they are trying to do it welcome other people's input and contribution."

It's about valuing people not as "human resources" but as human beings, MacLeod adds.

"If managers and leaders value people as individuals it creates the conditions in which they want to offer their discretionary effort. That is a win for the individual, a win for the organisation and, if you add it up, it's a win for the country as well.
"If we are going to have the public services we want we have to harness as much of our people's potential as we humanly can – to say nothing of the fact that at the moment there's a whole lot of people for whom Monday morning is an unnecessary trauma just because of the way they are managed."

After a private sector career at managing director level with ICI, Melinex and Uniquema, David MacLeod has been a senior adviser on change and performance at the Cabinet Office. He was commissioned by the then Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to undertake an in-depth review of the impact of employee engagement. The guidance arising from that review is available at: www.businesslink.gov.uk/employeeengagement