6 June, 2008
How do the items in your grocery basket relate to engagement?
Find out how tolerance, work-life balance and moderation come into play.
HR practitioners, engagement specialists and communicators gathered in London yesterday at ORC international's 13th annual employee research conference (see Figure 1, below). Presenters shared their experiences of conducting organizationwide employee surveys and how engagement has led to better performance.
Figure 1. Delegates at the 13th ORC International employee research conference
Speaking the language of IT folk
Pamela Ward, people engagement manager at IT services company Fujitsu spoke about a major research project involving 23,000 employees in 19 countries. Its survey was translated into 8 languages, with 20,000 copies distributed electronically and 3,000 in paper.
The way to persuade a technology company that engagement is important, is to use facts, figures and statistics.
Ward explained that convincing senior management within an IT company that engagement is crucial to performance is a challenging task. "The way to persuade them was to use lots of facts, figures, and statistical data – this is what makes sense to them."
What is a "line manager"?
The research also highlighted the fact that "line management" is an ambiguous term. "It means different things to people in different countries," said Ward, "so it's important to not let the survey get lost in translation."
The research team worked closely with the internal communication department at Fujitsu. "We had around 40 internal comms people around the world trying to get information and messaging about the survey out there," Ward said. They also built a separate intranet for a network of 120 people to see developments and progress on the survey.
Ward's key learning point was to clearly link survey results to actions. Her advice is to use the idea of "You said, we did!" at the forefront of everything that happens as a result of staff research findings.
Evidence-based approach at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Delegates also heard from Nicola Bowles, head of internal communications at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, (FCO) a UK government organization which employs 16,000 employees in 145 countries. Bowles described the challenge of conducting research and maintaining engagement while the organization goes through a new strategy, with the introduction of the FCO's new Secretary of State, David Miliband.
Bowles ran through how the organization employed a new engagement strategy which involved 3 main components. The aim was to make sure employees:
- Have confidence in leadership.
- Understand the need for change.
- Feel like they're constructively contributing to FCO's evolution.
Linking engagement to performance in the public sector is difficult, as there's no profitability.
Making leaders accountable
This strategy was executed using an evidence-based approach, i.e, a worldwide employee engagement survey, regular in-house pulse surveys and a stakeholder engagement survey.
"Linking engagement to performance in the public sector is difficult, as there's no profitability. We're also aiming for more transparency within the organization, making results available for all to see. All this means that leaders need to be made accountable."
Food for thought
Of course, no event is complete without roundtable discussions. Yesterday's discussions were sparked off by an interesting analogy between engagement drivers and items you might find in your grocery shopping basket.
For example, challenge was likened to green chillies, because both chillies and engagement are driven by the idea of a challenge, but tolerance to this challenge may vary. And work-life balance was analogous to red wine, because moderation is the key to both!
Have your say
What are the key drivers of engagement within your company and your sector as a whole? What are the main challenges or learnings you've encountered while conducting employee research?
Share your thoughts on these issues with other comms practitioners by joining the Internal Comms Hub members' group on the Communicators' Network.
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