You probably
already know that many organisations have an employee engagement problem; it’s
been dropping consistently for almost a decade driven partly, but not
exclusively, by the global financial crisis. A recent survey conducted by the
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found that employee
engagement dropped again last quarter (source: CIPD Employee Outlook, Winter
2013). Survey after survey finds the same pattern repeated all over the
developed world. The link between engagement and performance is also well
established; in the UK alone the cost of the “engagement” gap is estimated to
be £29 BN every year in lost output.
You may
already be using a survey to help understand what’s contributing to and inhibiting
engagement in your organisation; there are many such surveys available and
whilst they’re great at showing high level “themes” and even comparing one
organisation with another they’re not so effective at helping to solve the problem.
Image reproduced by kind permission of People Insight (http://www.peopleinsight.co.uk/)
Contrary to popular myth engagement is not about communication, nor is it something leaders “do”. Engagement is driven by relationships and the day to day interactions that people have with each other, giving rise to the powerful emotions and perceptions we all experience about our working environment. Big organisational surveys don’t tell us enough about what’s happening with real people to make a difference; the majority of relationships and interactions we experience at work happen in our teams and social networks so it’s only at this level that reports have any actionable value. Traditional surveys don’t get close to this level of personal understanding because they’re far too broad in scope; information at an organisational level is too subject to the law of averages, making it impossible for any one person or group of people to know what they need to do differently.
360°
surveys on the other hand are too narrow in scope; they might provide a
valuable insight into individual performance against a prescribed set of
competencies but they tell us nothing about the relationships beyond those who
directly respond. They focus on individuals and it’s therefore left to just one
person to make the changes they personally deem important.
I’d
like to introduce you to Work Life Motivation. By focusing on teams and the
social networks where relationship are formed Work Life Motivation provides
actionable information that people can use to work together to drive real
improvements in motivation and engagement. Work Life Motivation doesn’t need to
replace your 360° surveys, appraisals, psychometric tools or personality
profiling; it can work with them to show the real impact on how people think
and feel about the job they do and the people they work with. Work Life
Motivation spreads the responsibility for making things better and shows how
small changes in behaviour can add up to a big improvement. Unlike broad
organisational surveys which provoke a “one size fits all” response that seldom
works, or narrow individual assessments which place all the responsibility on
just one person, Work Life Motivation shows how the small changes that each
group or team can make together end up contributing to a big difference
overall.
For
more information about Work Life Motivation and how it can help your
organisation improve motivation and engagement please contact us directly or
visit www.worklifemotivation.com
where you’ll find sample reports, pricing and relevant research material.
