Why Research?

I got asked recently why I enjoy research. A good question, to which I probably gave a garbled answer. So I’m going to have another go.

First of all, it’s something inside me. I was a curious child (as many people have remarked). I went on to study Maths and Physics. I spend an unhealthy amount of time listening to Radio 4 and bumbling around Wikipedia. I like to know stuff. And everything thing that I learn just opens up another dozen lines of inquiry. It’s ongoing, and I love it.

It’s the right commercial thing to do too. A base of knowledge brings me closer to my clients, to understand their problems, to be able to represent them as they really are, and to show them things that they are too close to see. For me, the best client partnerships are built on this depth of knowledge; it builds genuine, mutual trust and credibility.

And the value of research cuts both ways. Clearly there’s a margin to be made in research. But when the eventual outputs are brands, communications, leadership and engagement activity – there’s hundreds of possible solutions, and what might take best effect can be trial and error. A depth of research gets you to the right solution in a far shorter time, cutting through the multiple proposals, moodboards, pilots.

There’s a reason consumer marketing invests in perpetual research - the investment is paid back straight away, and continues to be paid back every time you and your client work together. And having got your client a great solution, why wouldn’t you work together again?

And, for me, it’s the right emotional thing to do. I work in employee engagement, organisational culture, employer brand. They’re all about getting the right people doing the right things for all the right reasons. They’re about making the working day more interesting, exciting and worthwhile. And if I can make someone else’s working day better, that’s the best working day for me.

Engage For Success

Yesterday, I went to an Engage for Success event, and I was impressed. More than most, it seems to me that they’re approaching engagement from the right angles – making it real-world and practical.

It’s primarily about business performance and there’s an impressive body of evidence for it here. But it’s also about people working in the way they want, and getting meaning from work. It’s not about screwing more out of people for less, and the trade union support they have is compelling.

They’ve come up with four “enablers of engagement” that must be present in an organisation to allow engagement:

• Visible, empowering leadership providing a strong strategic narrative about the organisation, where it’s come from and where it’s going.
• Engaging managers who focus their people and give them scope, treat their people as individuals and coach and stretch their people.
• There is employee voice throughout the organisations, for reinforcing and challenging views, between functions and externally, employees are seen as central to the solution.
• There is organisational integrity – the values on the wall are reflected in day to day behaviours. There is no ‘say –do’ gap.

You can quibble about detail, but I think they're sound. Other definitions are criticised for being just about good line-management. That’s here, but so is strong leadership, employee involvement, effective communication, understood culture and sense of purpose.

And they urge that it’s not just about engagement surveys, it’s not even just about the actions after a survey. It should be an everyday part of everyone’s job, and not just HR or Comms. Each business must understand its own reality, have profound conversations with its workforce and constantly foster the right environment for engagement.

Music to my ears, naturally – there’s a need to research engagement, how it changes over time, and to help those conversations happen in a safe, anonymous, fun way. But I think there’s an opportunity for this thinking and language to really take hold. If there’s an event near you, go!