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!