Phase One – Prevention

Research suggests that only 31% of us are engaged at work! That leaves 69% of us who roll over and repeatedly slap the snooze button each morning because we have no real emotional bond to the organisation that pays our salaries each month.

Is it any wonder that the question on most leader’s lips right now is “How do we improve staff engagement?” Perhaps because there is a proven link between increased productivity and engaged staff. Or it may be because even in the greatest global economic slump of all time, finding great talent remains challenging and extremely competitive in so many fields. Or it may be because a disengaged workforce means less sales, loss of customers, diminishing market share and shareholder value…ouch!……that will do it.

According to the CIPD, 40% of staff have metaphorically resigned from their jobs, but are still at their desks working and taking a salary every month!

Let’s face it, there is little doubt that engaged employees have a heightened level of ownership and sense of responsibility. They genuinely want to do whatever it takes to satisfy the organisation and its customers. They feel valued, are motivated and will therefore go those extra miles for their colleagues and customers. They enjoy work and everyone around them can ‘feel’ it. How do we keep these employees bringing their hearts as well as their minds to work every day to ensure the organisation achieve its mission?

Just as importantly, how do we prevent the other 69% reaching across and repeatedly hitting the snooze button?

High levels of staff engagement and leadership effectiveness is no longer a luxury, it is an imperative for business growth and sustainability.

 ‘When a moaner walks in the door, morale goes flying out the window!

More than 10% disengagement in a team is unpalatable for any ambitious business’, one moaner is quite enough!.

‘When fisherman can’t take their boats out to sea; they use the time wisely to mend their nets’. The wise business knows the recession will come to an end and looks after its talent’.

Some fact on the impact of engagement on the business

• Gallup polls put the engagement ratio to disengagement in world-class organisations at 9.57 to 1 and in the average organisation at 1.83 to 1
• Organisations with only average levels of staff engagement have a higher average number of day’s absenteeism, a measureable additional financial burden on the organisation.
• The CBI reports that sickness absence costs the UK economy £13.4bn a year.
• Engaged employees in the UK take an average of 2.69 sick days per year whilst disengaged staff take 6.19. (CBI-AXA (2007), Annual Absence and Labour Turnover Survey)            
• Organisations with high levels of staff engagement win prestigious awards and have a higher rate of staff retention.  The cost of hiring and training new personnel is put at an average cost of one year’s salary per new employee.
• Engaged staff are 87 percent more likely to stay with the organisation (Corporate Leadership Council, Corporate Executive Board (2004)’Driving Performance and Retention through Employee Engagement: a quantitative analysis of effective engagement strategies’)

• According to our own survey, 62% of companies are seriously concerned about the future of talent acquisition post recession.
• According to a recent survey, 31% of employees are actively engaged in their jobs, which mean that 69% of us aren’t!
• The same survey sites 88% of highly engaged employees believe they can positively impact quality of their organization’s products, compared with only 38% of the disengaged.
• 22% year-over-year improvement in customer satisfaction / loyalty
• 21% year-over-year improvement in turnover / retention
• 70% of engaged employees have a good understanding of how to meet customer needs, while only 17% of the disengaged do.

“When you have to be financially stingy, you had better be emotionally kind” S. McConnon

A recent study by Aberdeen Group titled, Beyond Satisfaction: Engaging Employees to Retain Customers, speaks volumes about the power of

Prevention or cure?

A well led team will always be engaged!

Great news; the key really does lie in the effectiveness of the leadership. That sounds simple enough!

When we talk about leadership, we tend to think about the Inspirational Leader; the Pied Piper who has the capability of making us believe in, and do anything.. so we all follow.

When it comes to staff engagement in the 21^st Century however, Inspirational Leadership is not the magic bullet. In fact, unintentionally the ‘Inspirational Leader’ can, and very often does dysfunction his or her troops. Let’s take a look at why.

The ‘leadership’ quandary – Inspirational V Systemised Leadership

Comparing Systemised Leadership with Inspirational Leadership is a bit like comparing apples with oranges. They are both fruit, but they taste, feel, smell very different.

Inspirational Leadership is about ‘moving’ others to take action in the direction the leader wants them to go. Inspirational Leaders are focussed on the business goals; they are often charismatic, energetic and provide the fuel that drives the business to where it needs to go. They are, without a shadow of a doubt, an essential driving force behind most successful businesses.

Systemised Leadership does not rely on charismatic personalities. It does not rely on a few at the top that hold the company up like stilts; inevitably, when those stilts are taken away, the company, or part of the company collapses.

Systemised Leadership is a process; it is scientific. It works from the bottom up or inside out, fostering a culture where everyone takes responsibility for making the ‘work thing work’.

“Leadership is too important to leave in the hands of the leaders alone” Shay McConnon 

The reality of today’s workplace is that it operates in real-time where command and control no longer has a place (for the most part anyway). Systemised Leadership by its very nature creates an engaged and committed workforce, but only if we provide the process that supports this type of environment. An environment where collaborative relationships become the norm; where people listen, respect and individualise, not universalise colleagues’ needs.

Translated into layman’s terms; we are all motivated by different things, and therefore cannot be led in the same way. The way my leader acts to my colleague may motivate him, but the same thing could dysfunction me. In other words, listening to the needs of individuals around us at work is the spring board to effective leadership and making people feel they are valued at work.

Filing up with the most effective ‘fuel’

Just as Inspirational Leadership is the fuel for the business, Systemised Leadership is the fuel that is needed to create a productive and engaged workforce.

Both leadership methods are valid, and both are essential ingredients to make a business grow and thrive. Very often however, we expect the business leaders to be great at the ‘people thing’; but that is a big ask.

The business leader should ensure that Systemised Leadership is in place in the organisation and then be free to focus on taking the business where it needs to go; confident that their troops are coming with him on the journey.

So, whilst the inspirational leaders are out there motivating shareholders and inspiring customers, Systemised Leadership takes care of the people stuff.

That culprit – the ‘unmet need’!

In Shay McConnon’s work, he demonstrates how a simple ‘unmet need’ follows a process to manifest into all out dysfunctional conflict; conflict that hurts relationships and damages great businesses.

He demonstrates how the indicators are all there, but we just don’t see them. His work focuses on how to spot them and stop it in its tracks before they become moans behind the coffee machine, accusations, slammed doors, days off sick, disputes, strikes etc….

I love this process. It’s scientific, logical and allows everyone to get a clear insight into the complexities of human engagement, i.e. become more aware of what makes people tick.

So, here is a scenario as an example. I have an ‘unmet need’ insomuch as I don’t feel valued by my leader and it is affecting our relationship at work?  What do I do? Go up to him and say ‘Oi you! You are not meeting my needs; I need to feel valued by you at work”?

No, unfortunately I don’t articulate things with such precision when I am upset, annoyed or angry. Instead, out comes the ‘blocking behaviours’, depending on my personality, I may retreat into myself and disengage, sulk and disengage or even become argumentative and aggressive and ‘engage’ into battle with my leader, other colleagues and the customers may also get it.

Blocking behaviour of any type (that is any behaviour that blocks a positive action or response) is a ‘symptom of disengagement’; it is not the cause of it.

If you find yourself dealing with blocking behaviours within your team on a regular basis, you can presuppose morale is low, disengagement is high and you are in fire-fighting mode. You need to get to the cause of the ‘issue’ at the beginning of the process, the stage when it is just an ‘unmet need’.

How do we do this?

By nurturing an environment that encourages colleagues to behave openly, engage in pro-active feedback (where people regularly ‘check in’ with each other to see if they are getting it right for the other person); a place where people manage their differences. In an environment of this nature, people tend to feel motivated and feel comfortable discussing the undiscussable, without fear of being criticism or reprisals.

In an environment like this, leadership is impacting; people will be taking ownership for their actions and for managing the quality of their relationships with their leader, their colleagues and their customers (and no doubt extending that to their personal relationships too).

Though there are a number of building blocks, openness and pro-active feedback really are the two key building blocks that need to be at the very foundation of this environment.

The great news here is that if we accept that the cause of staff disengagement lies ‘locally’ and is locked into the quality of our relationships within the team, then we can safely assume that the solution can also be found right there in the team.

Yet still, so many companies still invest huge amounts of money, time, resource and energy deploying extrinsic motivational props, tricks, strategic communication and fests; many of which have no measurable or sustainable impact on staff engagement.

‘75% of people leave their jobs because of relationship issues’.

Or we could say, 75% of people are leaving their manager / colleagues, not their job or the company.

How do we stop this talent drain?

Focus on the creating collaborative, functional and rewarding relationships internally.

Once employees have developed the skill of develop rewarding relationships, they will not only build rewarding relationships with their colleagues and leader, they will also develop great relationships with their partners and friends, be more fulfilled as a person, and of course, be more inclined to extend that to your customers.

My agenda, your agenda, our agenda!

‘Great leaders concentrate on meeting the needs of their employees; then they step back and trust those employees to meet the needs of the customers. In turn, the employees then step back and trust the customers to meet the needs of shareholders and the leaders. It is true that we all have different needs, but it is critical that everyone is on the same page when it comes to the agenda’. 

Conversation, conversation, conversation

Through the ‘conversations’ that we have with our colleagues, leaders and customers on a day to day basis, we are sub-consciously providing messages and experiences to the other person/s, experiences that can either be received as positive or negative.

During these conversations, we are building relationships with others and influencing the culture and the brand of our team, function and the organisation. The more we repeat the behaviours and dialogue, the more entrenched the culture becomes.

The quality of relationships, work experiences and culture comes down to

1. Whether or not we have conversations (It’s good to talk!)

2. The content of those conversations

3. The level of skills we deploy during those conversations.

1. Whether we have those conversations.

There is a bit of a myth about ‘conversations’. I have had many managers and leaders say to me ‘it is better my team leaders don’t have difficult conversations with their team as they are not very skilled at it; and could do more harm than good’. Oh dear!

So the belief appears to be that some believe that their managers and leaders (especially 1^st line) are not skilled enough to have difficult conversations with their team members and because of this it is better not to bring very challenging stuff onto the table.(Until they have the skill to deal with it)?

In any relationship, if you are having the difficult conversations whether it is handled skilfully or not, that toxic stuff is better out that in. It is a bit like the red oil light on your car dashboard, ignore it at your peril. The unmet need that creates dissatisfaction and ultimately disengagement at work, does not go away because it is not dealt with; it escalates through the perilous process into conflict and disputes.

Conversations, whether skilled or unskilled provide the forum to bring out those early indicators. In turn they help develop the leader’s skill at having functional and productive conversations.

In balance, it is better to have the conversation, no matter how challenging they are and no matter how experienced the leader is. (Obviously it is better to provide the leader with the skill in the first place).

1. 2.      The content of those conversations – Functional v Reactive

There are two main types of content in conversations. The first is Functional: this is thoughtful, proactive and useful content and the other is Reactive: this is dysfunctional, clumsy and useless.

Both conversation types cost the business time, energy and resource; only Functional content provides increased productivity to the business while the Reactive content creates bad feeling, resentment, stress and bad experiences.

The next time you are having a conversation with anyone about anything at work, make a mental note and categorise the ‘content’ of it. Is it ‘Functional’ or ‘Reactive’?

1. 3.      The level of skills we deploy during those conversations

The level of quality of any interaction is measured by the skill, to get that skill takes a lot of practice.

People will become more skilled the more feedback they receive during conversations – with practice. This will happen faster if they are made more aware how to tune to their listening ability.

We are all born with a highly tuned listening ability (unless we are partially or fully deaf), but over the course of our lives, fuelled mainly by our early environment, our listening ability can get ‘out of tune’. Along with it can go our ability to empathise and consequently to respect the other person’s needs.

Conversations where one is not actively listening or hearing to the other’s needs, rapidly dive bomb into accusations, blame, misunderstandings and bad feeling, and are almost always unproductive.

Skilling up your people on how to have more functional and productive ‘conversations with their colleagues is probably one of the best investments you could ever make in training and development; and is an essential ingredient for implementing Systemised Leadership.

Culture is all about having conversations, whilst that is true most are dysfunctional.

What to measure and how to measure it?

We work in a world where, for the most part, if something cannot get measured, it doesn’t warrant investment of time, money or resource.

When it comes to measurability, some business leaders still believe that staff engagement is somewhat ‘out there with the fairies’. Your staff engagement warriors have a valid argument on how much disengagement costs the business both in tangible and in tangibles. The non-believers have their arguments on the other side as to why some businesses thrive on command and control.

What is paramount when it comes to measuring anything is to measure what matters to your business and that the measurements are current, logical and well thought out.

What matters?

• What matters to the business leaders and shareholders is the performance of the business.
• What matters the customers is the service, product, value and experience they receive from the business.
• What matters to the employees is that their needs are met when they go to work. (When we talk about needs being met, we are not talking about appeasement).

Just how useful is the annual staff engagement survey!

Most companies carry out a general staff survey annually, which usually includes polling for the state of staff engagement.

The general staff survey is essential to gather critical data about certain information. When it come to staff engagement however, an annual poll is pointless; it adds to value to the process of engagement and can even be counter productive.

The reason for this is three fold.

Firstly, when it comes to staff engagement, carrying out a poll of what people ‘think’ contradicts the idea of fostering a culture ownership, responsibility and engagement. This type of poll was designed around organisations that operated a command and control world, where once a year they would take a poll on ‘how the organisation and its leaders were doing’ from the employee’s opinion. Staff would complete it, then sit back, cross their arms and say (sometimes cynically, depending on what changes were made in the previous year) “What are the management going to do about it?”

“21^st Century businesses need to foster a culture of “What am I going to do about it”.

We have already noted that 75% of people leave jobs because of relationship issues and NOT because of any dissatisfaction with the company. The vast majority of those relationship issues happen right there in the local team because of ‘unmet’ needs and unskilled, dysfunctional conversations. Staff engagement is totally about how people ‘feel’, not what they ‘think’ about something extrinsic to themselves, like the company, its processes or its leaders (these are issues that get discussed and dealt with once the right environment and skills are in place).

Staff engagement is NOT a once a year event ‘to order’. The process MUST be incremental and the data must be provided in real-time team by team. Some annual surveys take weeks or even months to administer, before any data can be translated into actions. At the current speed of change, this data is historic, inaccurate and often counter productive. Counter product because the organisation is setting-up a false expectation in employees that the will improve their lot. Only they can’t if the disengagement is happening on a local basis and is caused by a break down in relationships.

The annual general staff surveys are an essential part of the HR toolbox. They are not the correct forum of solution for fixing the challenge of staff engagement.

Summary

Research has proven that engaging staff has a profound affect on the business outcomes. I think it is fair to say that the latest research also demonstrates that most of the disengagement is caused in our local teams, so we don’t have to go too far to find the solution when it breaks.

The job of business leaders is to implement a secure leadership process that fosters an environment where people feel free to behave openly and engage in proactive feedback, where they manage their differences, take ownership and feel valued and motivated. If this is created internally, it will be mirrored outside and your customers will ‘feel’ great dealing with your organisation.

Phase two – The Cure will be out shortly!