Employee Engagement: the Path to
Superior Performance?
Address to 13th World Human Resources
Congress, HRWithout Limits
Montreal, Canada, 29 September 2010
Professor Ed Davis AM, FAHRI
Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Economics and Business
University of Sydney Australia
Contact: emjkdavis@hotmail.com
Employee Engagement
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Definition and Approaches
Lineage
Links to Performance
Strategy
Conclusions
1. Definition and Approaches
‘A positive attitude held by the employee towards the
organisation and its values. An engaged employee is aware of
business context, and works with colleagues to improve
performance within the job for the benefit of the
organisation. The organisation must work to develop and
nurture engagement, which requires a two-way relationship
between employer and employees.’
Dilys Robinson, Employee Engagement, www.employment-studies.co.uk p. 1.
what is engagement?
• What do you think?
adaptive
behaviour
job satisfactionenjoyment
work
orientation
flow
discretionary
effort
contextual
performance
absorption
job involvement
intention to stay
persistence
pride
organisation
commitment
dedication
|Nick Vrisakis, Voice Project,
nick.vrisakis@voiceproject.com.au
initiative
intensity of
effort
extra-role
behaviour
vigour
energy
proactive
behaviour
citizenship
behaviours
activation
empower-ment
2. Lineage
Industrial democracy
 Employee and union rights
 Links to performance
Australian discussion from 1970s.
“The parties have acknowledged that the adoption of a co-operative and
participative approach is vital in achieving the structural changes and
workplace reforms necessary to meet the economic challenge.”
Confederation of Australian Industry and Australian Council of Trade Unions, ‘Joint
Statement on Participative Practices’, April 1988, p.viii, reproduced in E. M. Davis and
R. D. Lansbury (eds), Managing Together, Melbourne, Longman, 1996, pp.245-259.
Focus: employee participation in
decision-making
importance of decisions
 degree of influence
 proportion of staff involved.

Davis and Lansbury, 1996, p.2.
Employee engagement: consensual and
adversarial.
Leadership
Richard Walton, “From Control to Commitment in the Workplace”, HBR, March 1985, pp.
193-200.
Contrast ‘control’ / scientific management with commitment
approach.
flatter hierarchy
 job redesign
 team responsibilities
 training

“At the center of this philosophy is a belief that eliciting employee
commitment will lead to enhanced performance” (p. 80)
Benefits
Costs
improved quality
increased management effort
lower costs
new skills
reduced work
new relationships
increased efficiency
higher levels of ambiguity and uncertainty
decreased turnover
pain of changing
decreased absenteeism
attitudes and habits
better change management
Walton, 1985, p.80.
Peter Senge, “the Leader’s New Work: Building Learning
Organizations”, Sloan Management Review, Vol. 7, 1990,
pp.397-413.
Challenge, to “harness the collective genius of the people” at work.
New leadership required:
 build shared vision
 challenge prevailing attitudes
 encourage learning
 coaches, guides, facilitators
Chris Argyris, “Empowerment: The Emperor’s New Clothes”,
HBR, May 1998, pp.219-228.
“Managers love empowerment in theory, but the commandand-control model is what they trust and know best. For
their part, employees are often ambivalent about
empowerment – it is great as long as they are not held
personally accountable” (p.219).
Key: internal employee commitment.
Requires: managers involvement of employees in work
targets and methods.
Obstacles: conventional management thought focus on
numbers.
HIM / HPM
High Involvement Management (from 1980s)
High Performance Management.
workers involvement
teams
job flexibility
idea capturing schemes
training
(stimulus of Japanese quality circles)
“The purpose of HIM is to encourage workers to participate in ...
Continuous improvement culture, the aim being to induce higher
performance ...”
Stephen Wood and Alex Bryson, “High Involvement Management”, in W. Brown et al (eds), The
Evolution of the ModernWorkplace, Cambridge, CUP, 2009, Chapter 7.
Australia 1990s
Best practice program.
Federal government grants for ‘model’ organisations
 plans for world class performance
 benchmarking world’s best practice
 ‘full participation and commitment by management, unions
and the workforce in the change process’.
Davis and Lansbury, 1996, p.14.
End 1990s, impression: islands of excellence, widespread
resistance to change.
P.G. Gollan and E.M. Davis, “High Involvement Management and Organisational
Change”, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 37, 3, 69-91.
3. Employee Engagement: Links to
Performance
IES, Engaged employees:
lower turnover
higher levels of performance
advocates of the business
better change management
G. Robertson-Smith and C. Mackerick, Employee Engagement: a review of current thinking,
IES report no. 469, 2009.
“Improving engagement correlates with improving
performance ....”
D. MacLeod and N. Clarke, Engaging For Success: Enhancing Performance through Employee
Engagement, London, Department of Business, Innovations and Skills, 2009.
“And you thought the passengers were mad .... Airline
employees are fed up, too – with pay cuts, increased
workloads and management’s miserly ways, which leave
workers to explain to often-enraged passengers why flying
has become such a miserable experience”
(NewYork Times, 22 December 2007, p.1; quoted in G.J. Bamber et al, Up in the
Air: How Airlines can Improve their Performance by Engaging their Employees, Ithaca,
Cornell University Press, 2009, p.1).
Strategic choice: control or commitment / engagement
Contrast: Southwest and Ryanair
Any Yet ... Low Engagement Levels
UK evidence:
 Corporate Leadership Council report, highest scoring
companies, 23.8% staff, ‘highly engaged’;
lowest scoring companies, 2.9%
 20% ‘disengaged’
 Public sector, 12% ‘highly engaged’
Macleod and Clarke, 2009, p.15
Echoes in other British (Brown et al) and Australian work (Gollan and Davis).
4. Strategy
Identify the obstacles:





Conventional management wisdom, preference for control
Employees as cost
short-run focus
engagement, ‘soft and fluffy’
poor leadership and management – lack of knowledge and /
or implementation skills
(Walton, Argyris, MacLeod and Clarke)
The Managing People Chain
Recruitment
Selection
Assessment
Ed Davis 2010
5. Conclusion
Employee Engagement Matters
Not new
Lessons from the past
Requires thoughtful leadership and comprehensive
strategy.