Editor's Note: KD's at the Aberdeen Human Capital Management Summitin Manhattan this week, where he's getting his professional development game on, as well as speaking and participating in a panel. Check out the hashtag for the conference at #hcm2010nyc…
Friends… Romans… Countrymen… Lend me your ears.
I come to speak of a matter of most importance to all of us. It's been known to make some eyes glaze over though, so you might want to grab a Starbucks before I continue.
No, it's not heathcare. No, it's not a retirement calculator.
Focus for a second will you? I'm here to talk about employee engagement.
Wait!! Don't throw hard objects at my face! The body? Sure. But not the face… How would I earn a living if it was damaged?
Employee Engagement – I'll say it again now that you've calmed down. I'm at Aberdeen this week, and just heard Steve Church (Chief Operational Excellence Officer at Avnet) speak, and he said something profound, but it was a throwaway comment that you had to be listening for. Here's the money quote of the day:
"If you help employees fix broken process, you'll gain employee engagement".
You should think about that one for a second. It's easy and hard at the same time.
Employees are more stretched than they've ever been. They also know what makes sense operationally, what's plain stupid, and they also know how to fix it. They're telling you this on tools like employee surveys.
Meanwhile, we're reading the latest trendy piece of fluff on engagement. You don't need it.
What you need is simple, but hard.
You need to have the ability to stick your nose into other departments and help employees fix processes that don't work. It sounds easy, but most organizations are full of territory battles about who owns what. And HR clearly doesn't own operational process in most companies. Stick your nose into an operational process, and most department heads will respond with a full roundhouse right.
Yet it's there, courtesy of Steve Church of Avnet via the Aberdeen Conference. If you help employees fix broken process, you'll gain employee engagement.
You don't need posters or consultants. You need data/dialog on what's broken from the employee's point of view, then you need to put on your operational hat and facilitate.
Are you ready for that? If not, you're probably not ready for a real engagement initiative. If so, how do you get buy-in that it's necessary for you to have your nose in the business?
Good luck with the posters and consultants. I hope your engagement initiative goes really well.
Whoaaa a challenge to the consulting profession, how can I resist that? Actually there is a lot of truth in what you say, especially in the area of “engagement” (as opposed to those of us who work more with morale, which has been around a lot longer). Engagement has a little bit of a “fad” flavor as preached and practiced by some, as if it’s totally new and the biggest thing since color TV. It isn’t new, it has been around for a long time in other forms.
Having said that I would argue with you on only one point, but its a big one. Your operations-oriented approach is right on but is (let me go to the logic classes I took, or was it statistics?) “necessary but not sufficient”. Your quote says that “… you’ll gain employee engagement”. Right I am sure you will, but how much? Fix the operations bottlenecks, territory wars….but don’t fire the “boss from hell” who is devastating morale in his area? Don’t fix the pay for performance program which is pitting people against each other (or do you stretch operations to cover this?). What about an over-arching dog-eat-dog organization-wide culture which makes people compete for everything at all times? Don’t change the climate of fear which has crept in since the layoff two years ago? All these things erode and eventually destroy any desire for engagement on the part of employees.
Like I said, necessary but far far from sufficient. It doesn’t mean you have to hire a consultant to really climb the engagement charts; but some can be pretty good, have seen and learned a lot over decades and can add real value in helping organizations really have great, enduring employee morale and engagement. No posters required.
David
http://www.moraleatwork.com
Far be it from me to argue (well actually near be it to me to argue) but the real issue for HR isn’t “help employees fix processes that don’t work” it’s helping MANAGERS help employees fix processes that don’t work.
You may have been assuming managers are employees but we often overlook the fact that managers drive behaviors and until we get the managers on board nothing really will change.
We need HR to provide the direction and guidance to the managers – that needs to be the focus of HR – not the rank and file.
I’m with David – There is nothing that kills a good corp. culture more than a bad manager that has been hired by a bad V.P.-”Like attracts like”. Entire departments in large companies have been restructured because of it.
It is also true, that a psychological recession is not just an idea, but a real phenomenon that holds real consequences. When people are scared and depressed for a long time, despair and fear replace confidence and optimism. This anxiety plus the feeling of powerlessness are a “toxic mix” in the workplace. Chronically fearful people are too exhausted to be creative and innovative; they expect the worst to happen, and become preoccupied with the unknown. If workers are not performing, the pressure on an organization’s financial health can be devastating – imagine a company where only 25% of workers are engaged in their jobs?
Lastly, (but certainly not least), a “good consultant” can be a third-party employee advocate that provides objective opinions, leadership and facilitates an open dialogue between employees/management.