Employee engagement: HR directors' view

With a full-scale review of employee engagement practices just beginning, we asked HR directors what needed to be done to boost staff commitment.

On this page:
Tax incentives
Corporate reporting
Quality line management
The UK’s engagement gap.

John Hutton’s announcement of a report into improving staff engagement might have caught the HR industry off-guard, but senior practitioners have been quick to offer their opinions on what should be done.

Revealed by the then business secretary at the end of last month, the review aims to identify the factors that improve workforce productivity through higher levels of staff engagement. It will be led by Ministry of Justice non-executive director David MacLeod and Nita Clark, director of workplace consultation body the Involvement and Participation Association.

Hutton said at the launch: “We should have an open mind coming into this process. Maybe it’s a resources issue, but let’s look at this and get to the bottom of it. Let’s not make the mistake that the way to improve employee engagement is to revisit laws around industrial action.”

Some curmudgeonly commentators argued that the government’s first footprint in such well-trodden HR turf was long overdue. Angela O’Connor, chief people officer at the National Policing Improvement Agency, spoke for most when she said: “Engagement is not a faddy, tree-hugging invention of the HR department, it is a clear business priority with pound signs attached.”

HR directors have long been chanting this mantra, and extra resources from the government to help them achieve staff satisfaction would not go amiss.

Tax incentives

Dave Conder, director of people strategy at professional services firm KPMG, said that more subsidies for management training, and a wider range of tax-breaks for activity related to corporate social responsibility, would be high on his wishlist of what the government could do.

He added: “I would like to see this review bring together best practice, and encourage a degree of knowledge sharing by finding some way to come up with a common methodology that allows engagement in, say, M&S and KPMG to be tracked on a fair and equal footing.”

What Conder doesn’t want to see is more red tape.

“You can’t force people to be more engaged at work, nor can you lay down a one-size-fits-all structure. I wouldn’t want engagement to become over-complicated.”

Corporate reporting

Helen Giles, director of HR at charity Broadway Homelessness and Support, was cynical about the government’s ability to persuade employers to use sound engagement practices without forcing them to publish statistical evidence.

“I hope the review leads to the compulsory inclusion of engagement statistics in company accounts and brochures, and clear links between high levels of engagement and government procurement,” she said.

Giles also wants to see “better training in people skills for everyone currently booted up to management level on the basis of competencies alone”, and a better span of management control that would abolish what she calls “the nonsense of one person attempting to manage 250 others”.

A significant extension to the Investors in People scheme, and a system of compulsory and non-refundable deposits for all staff looking to bring a discrimination claim, are also on her wishlist.

“Anti-discrimination legislation is important, but too many people bring hopeless claims in a bid to mask poor performance, and it costs us a packet each time,” she said.

Quality line management

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) welcomed the timing of the review and said it would be consulting with senior level practitioners before officially responding.

Policy adviser Ben Wilmott said: “We see this as making the link between good HR practices, employee engagement and productivity, and are hoping it will trigger a real understanding by business leaders of how the people management agenda can be a source of competitive advantage.”

The CIPD’s wishlist to combat the global epidemic of under-engagement includes good-quality line management, opportunities for all employees to have a voice, comprehensive staff training and development, more flexible working, and fair pay and reward.

O’Connor stressed the link between engagement and commercial success.

“HR departments have an important role to play in ensuring they understand the emotional temperature of the organisation and are clear about what motivates and, more importantly, demotivates employees.”

O’Connor cited Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire local authorities as making “excellent strides” in improving workplace commitment.

“All three councils are seeking to strengthen the bond between high employee engagement and improved productivity,” she said.

The bond between government and HR may be a little harder to seal, however. Especially as – despite Hutton saying during the review’s launch that the government “will need to invest in something” – a spokesman for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform told Personnel Today it was too early to tell what, if any, funds the government could contribute.

The UK's engagement gap

  • Just 14% of UK workers are highly engaged on the key rational, emotional and motivational measures, while 33% are disenchanted.
  • Of 50 global companies studied over the course of 12 months, those with high employee engagement ratings had a 19% increase in operating income, and almost a 28% growth in earnings per share.