Employee Engagement: Why Debate is Critical
Dr Martin Clarke
Steve Macaulay
Many organisations have had an intense focus on the bottom line
over the last twelve months. Now, quite a few organisations are
starting to take a wider look at their culture and other issues. One
of the issues that has come up a lot is engagement – employee
engagement.
Now, Martin Clarke, you have done a lot of thought and research in
this area, why is it so important and why now?
Martin Clarke
Well as business, hopefully, emerges from recession they are going
to be faced with a challenge of retaining talent and building –
possibly rebuilding – commitment with employees who, let’s be
honest, for the last couple of years will have been subject to pay
cuts, pay freezes, a squeeze on career progression, may well have
had to take on additional duties and may well think of themselves as
survivors. And so it is really important that if organisations aren’t
already doing so, they are really thinking about how to rebuild and
refocus employee commitment.
Steve Macaulay
So let’s have a look at some of the implications of this then for
organisations and for managers leading organisations.
Martin Clarke
I think to my mind there are two approaches you can take to this,
and that is something to do with the way that you think about the
way organisations work; your mental model if you like, your mindset
about organisations.
The first one is one where organisations put a lot of focus on
developing vision and values and cascading those down through the
organisation, trying to get a lot of consistency in the policies. And I
think if you approach engagement from that perspective, what you
get is for sure some clarity, but what you get is that engagement is
something that is done to people if you like. You get organisations
trying to align their employees with the vision and values; they will
have bi-annual surveys and initiatives that come out of that. It is an
add on, if you like.
Another approach, which often runs at the same time as the first
rational model, is what I call the multi-goal model, which recognises
that organisations are full of competing and mutual interests and
those are central to the effective organisation of the business. In
that setting, what business tries to do is to actively engage with
those differences, to actually find ways of debating them and
reconciling them. From that point of view, the starting point for
engagement is actually to ask employees what they think
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March 2010
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Dr Martin Clarke
engagement is.
If I can give you one example to differentiate the two perspectives,
one business I know actually started off with its vision and values,
one of which of course was about inclusion and involvement. They
then proceeded to basically inform their employees about this,
which of course was actually not including and involving their
employees in the first place.
Steve Macaulay
So let’s have a look at some good nuts and bolts then; let’s take us
from the theory and approaches, down to the nitty gritty.
Martin Clarke
Sure. Well I think it is about first of all recognising that it has to be a
two way process, OK? So the organisations who do this well usually
start off with some sort of organisational framing, some thinking
about what this might mean for them, making sure that, if you like, it
is integral to the business strategy – it is part of the way they want to
work as a business.
Then that means that there has to be a process of talking to
employees about what that engagement means for them, building it
from the bottom upwards. So to give you some examples, M&S are
an organisation that have been really good at promoting that two
way conversation; directors have breakfast briefings with no fixed
agendas in order to enable employees to talk about what is
important for them. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in their London
offices have set up a working party of associates from across the
London offices, examining working practices to amend them,
develop them, do away with them in order to get employees to be
able to shift things that might get in the way for them and thus,
again, improve commitment.
Steve Macaulay
So engagement is an idea whose time has come, but the way you go
about it – which is essentially about listening – is really important?
Martin Clarke
Absolutely fundamental. And the leadership qualities required to
engage with engagement from the multi-goal model are particular; it
requires leaders who are absolutely prepared to listen, who value
differences, are able to value challenge and dissent and debate. And
those aren’t always easy to develop and acquire, but without them,
the danger is engagement can too easily become the next fad.
Steve Macaulay
On that note, we will leave it there. Thank you.
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February 2010
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