28 February 2008
Generation Y hogs the spotlight in Atlanta
Jason Ryan Dorsey advises how to engage different employee groups.
Kicking off Melcrum's Employee Engagement event in Atlanta yesterday, keynote speaker Jason Ryan Dorsey (see Figure 1, below), author of My Reality Check Bounced! and Graduate to Your Perfect Job gave a lively presentation about unlocking generation Y's loyalty, creativity and performance.
His particular focus was on how generation X and baby boomers can work most effectively with generation Y.
Figure 1. Delegates queued right across the exhibition area to ask Dorsey's advice.
Hold meetings in coffee shops
Dorsey suggested that "generation Ys love to meet in coffee shops rather than the stuffy working environment."
The frequency and channels for communicating are often a source of conflict between baby boomers and their much younger generation Y counterparts. According to Dorsey, generation Y members have a need for constant contact whereas baby boomers have a tendency to be more comfortable with less frequent contact. This clash in work styles proves to be unsettling for baby boomers and frustrating for generation Ys.
Generation Y is focused on outcomes – but without feeling the need necessarily to fully understand the steps in between in reaching that outcome.
Baby boomers, says Dorsey, love the paper trail and feel isolated now that generation Y communicate mainly via text and e-mail, and also have the need to communicate often. But interestingly, within this, his presentation suggested, generation Y aren't necessarily technology savvy but they are technology dependant.
One conclusion that Dorsey and the delegates reached was that, in general, generation Y is more focused on outcomes – but without feeling the need necessarily to fully understand the steps needed to reach that outcome.
To hear more about Dorsey's ideas for engaging generation Y in the workplace, listen to his podcast interview where he says that making a bigger deal out of employee birthdays could work wonders for your engagement scores.
Recruitment responsibilities
Joan Swenson (pictured, right) chief HR officer at Kettering Health Network, spoke about moving engagement to the most strategic level, and in particular, the importance of line manager involvement in vital recruitment stages.
She suggested that, typically, an HR person is the only person who'll meet more than once with candidates prior to a job offer, yet it's the people that work with them directly that should really get a chance or make an effort to meet candidates first.
Generally, in larger organizations, only once do the line managers join in the interview to meet new candidates, but Swenson's point was that these managers really do need more detailed prior knowledge of who they're hiring. She stressed that it's also a 2-way thing: the candidates should also get a chance to discover who they'll potentially be working with.
In a podcast interview speaking to the Hub's editor, Annie Waite, prior to the conference, Swenson explains that in order to tackle employee engagement from the root, you need to be hiring candidates who, in addition to having the right skills for the job, also fit in with and buy into the company culture and values. Otherwise, she said, it's likely to continue to be a struggle to engage those people who don't connect with the core company values.
Engaging line managers
David Littlechild (pictured, left), senior manager of employee engagement in the wholesale and international banking division of financial organization, Lloyds TSB flew over from the UK to share his experiences of how his section of the Lloyds Group has successfully engaged its line managers.
The approach we took to involve every level in defining our behaviors – in their language – has helped to encourage greater collaboration within the business.
Speaking to the Hub earlier, Littlechild explained the approach that his team's used to help engage front-line managers. "For Lloyds TSB, it's about involving, informing and helping line managers and leaders to ensure that they use the information that they receive to develop meaningful insight and intelligence in their business area," he says.
"We've focused on the importance of values and behaviors in the organization. The approach we took to involve every level of employee in the business in defining our behaviors – using their language – has helped to encourage greater collaboration within the business."
All functions should drive engagement
Littlechild explained that some delegates complained of the struggle they're going through to get their senior leaders to take employee engagement seriously, but for Littlechild "the fact that Lloyds TSB created my job shows how seriously they take it and that they do believe in employee engagement's importance."
Truett Tate's arrival at Lloyds TSB Group as director in 2003, Littlechild says, "brought a different philosophy, fresh ideas and impetus to do more in the employee space."
But presumably, as employee engagement efforts need to span the entire company, Littlechild needs to be in very regular close contact with all the different functions of his organization? "Yes, I consider all the functions to be equal shareholders in employee engagement and it's important that all those areas understand what we're trying to do. Without them, engagement simply wouldn't happen."
How your intranet can affect employee engagement
Kim Arculeo (pictured, right) head of internal communication at financial services organization, ING Americas, talked about how its communications team actively uses social media tools within its intranet to make it more engaging for employees.
As long as the legal team approve the content of an employee's post, they usually post it on the site within an hour.
As long as the legal team approve the content of the post they usually post it within an hour.
(If you want to find out more about how to overhaul your intranet to help employee engagement, Hub members receive a 25% discount on the Intranet 2.0 and Portal Makeover Forum 2008 taking place May 15-16 at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, FL.)
Acting on employee feedback
Kolby Ivanhoe (pictured, left), talent development coordinator with Hendrick Health System discussed listening to employee feedback and communicating expectations. He said that once efforts are made within the organization to actually gather information about what employees think, employees expect to see something happen with the information you learn from them.
In Hendrick Health System's industry, there's a lot of competition amongst organizations for recruiting employees, so the company has to really focus its energies on employee engagement in order to retain its skilled workers, such as nurses and surgeons.
Hard-to-reach audiences
In the next session, Melcrum's CEO Victoria Mellor (see Figure 2, below) highlighted the findings of its new research report How to communicate with hard-to-reach employees.
Looking at 2 main areas: communicating with remote workers and communicating with people who don't have access to computers, Mellor discussed the methods companies are using to communicate with their employees, now that between 50-70% of employees around the world are working remotely from their manager.
(Again, Hub members can take advantage of the 25% discount offered on the full price of the report.)
Figure 2. Mellor discussed the findings of more than 50 interviews with global corporations
Pose your questions to the presenters
Today, delegates are taking part in roundtable discussions and hearing from speakers including Tom Doolittle of Caterpillar Inc, Jay Romans of Waste Management, and Jayne Nanavaty-Dahl of IBM Workplace Communications.
Hub editorial board members David Grossman and Linda Dulye both ran sold-out pre-conference workshops on Tuesday, and each chaired the conference. Hub members please pose your questions about communication issues to either of the experts via the Hub's editor.
And to those of you close to Chicago, sign up for our free networking event on March 28th, where you'll meet other Hub members and share in nibbles, informal chats and enlightened communications discussions, and watch lively and practical presentations from Unilever Foodsolutions, Motorola and Navistar.
Or if you're unable to attend, why not network with other comms practitioners by joining the Internal Comms Hub members' group on the Communicators' Network?
Other recommendations:
A communicator's guide to Generation Y
Essential techniques for employee engagement
Hub member profile: Melitta Campbell, Lloyds TSB
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