In this short podcast, the speaker tackles the often‑misunderstood term ‘employee engagement’, first illustrating its practical impact with a retail scenario: a part‑time Saturday staff member decides whether to answer a ringing phone, a choice that can mean a sale or a lost customer. He defines engagement as creating an environment where employees are willing to give a small amount of discretionary effort that, when multiplied across the workforce, drives significant organisational change. The discussion then turns to the seminal ‘Engage for Success’ research by David MacLeod and Nita Clarke (commissioned by the UK Trade Secretary in 2010), which identified four key drivers of engagement: (1) an inspiring organisational story that gives purpose; (2) engaging leaders who lead rather than merely manage, especially in hybrid work contexts; (3) genuine employee voice coupled with concrete action on feedback; and (4) integrity – consistently doing what the organisation says it will do, which underpins trust. The speaker emphasizes that each driver must be lived daily, not just tokenised, and points listeners to the Engage for Success report and a related Building Better Cultures episode for deeper insight.
Chapters
Hello there. I wanted to talk a little bit about employee engagement because it's become a bit of a dirty word, I think anyway, or a misused word or a misused term that people don't really understand. And I wanted to just, I suppose, put a few things straight, if you like, with a bit of Employee Engagement 101. I was in with the CEO of a sports retailer quite recently, and he said to me, what is employee engagement anyway. And I said to him, okay, imagine one of your Saturday staff. They're part-time, they come in one day a week for 8 hours, they're probably at college, they just want to earn a few quid to have some beers with their friends on a Saturday evening, um, or put petrol in their car, whatever they're doing. They're paid minimum wage. The difference between that person being engaged and being disengaged is what they do when they've just picked up their lunch They're walking to the staff room to have their sandwich. They've got 45 minutes and they walk past a ringing phone. In that moment will dictate whether they are engaged or disengaged. Do they answer the phone? Or do they not bother? Because if they do, that might be a sale, it might be another happy customer. If they don't, it's a lost sale, or perhaps somebody else waiting on the phone for another 20 minutes and getting really, really annoyed with you and your brand. That's the difference. For me, engagement is about creating an environment in which you can get, and people are willing to give, that bit more discretionary effort. Just that tiny little bit, which if everybody gave that tiny little bit, it would roll up into a huge change in your organization. Back in 2010, David MacLeod and Nita Clarke were asked by the then UK Trade Secretary to do some research. To find out how can we get more out of British businesses? How can British businesses do more, become higher performing? The work that they did went on to become a piece of research and then a report called Engage for Success. You can find that at engageforsuccess.com. I'm going to put the, the links in the show notes for you as well. They identified 4 things, 4 things that drove employee engagement in organizations through the course of that research. Number 1 was an inspiring story. Why are we doing what we do? Let's go back to that sports retailer, because if they were telling the story in their organisation about the reason that we do what we do is to find Ireland's next Olympian, I wonder, would that make that person more or less likely to pick up that phone? That could be somebody looking to buy a pair of runners or a pair of swimming goggles because they're going to be Ireland's next Olympian. Maybe that makes the difference that wants them— will make them want to give that extra a tiny little bit of that discretionary effort that we spoke to before. Engaging leaders is the second. Do we have really, really engaging leaders in our organization? Leaders who actually lead and don't manage. Leaders who look to the work that you've done as opposed to how or where you do the work. When we look now, for example, at hybrid working, leaders that listen to their staff, leaders that take advice on board, leaders that don't pretend to have all the answers, leaders that look to lead their teams as opposed to manage, and do that in a really engaging way. The third is employee voice. Now, we've all filled in staff surveys, and we've all seen our feedback be taken and then ignored. And I say to clients all the time, if you're doing a staff survey, yes, that is definitely employee voice, but actually, to really, really make a difference, it has to be employee voice and then action. So yes, Give me a staff survey, ask me to give my feedback, but then act on that feedback and tell me that you've acted on that feedback. Link and label the feedback that I gave you back to the changes that you've made in our organization. Show me that my voice makes a difference. And of course, it's not just the annual employee survey where we have to make sure that we've got employee voice front and center. It's in how we lead people, back to the engaging leaders piece. Are we listening to our people every single day of the week? Not necessarily to their ideas or opinions, but just even to how they are. Are we listening to make sure that we can hear in their tone if they're well or if they're not well, if they're under a bit of pressure or if they're not, if they need a bit of support, if there are mental health issues. That employee voice is a really, really powerful tool in a leader's arsenal. And the third cornerstone of those four enablers of engagement. The last is a very, very simple but really important one, integrity. That whole idea that we'll do what we say we are going to do. As individuals in an organization, as leaders in an organization, as the organization itself, both internally and externally. Do we do what we say we are going to do? Because that is really important. When we start to see the one, you know, we say, we say one thing and we do another, that starts to undermine trust. And once you start to undermine trust, all bets from an employee engagement perspective are off. If your staff don't trust you as an organization, as a leader, as a CEO, then they're not going to want to follow you. They're not going to be engaged. Really, really quick 101 there on engagement. If you want a little bit more on that, I'm going to put the link to the Engage for Success report in the show notes, as I said. And also, I'm going to put a link back to an episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast where I actually spoke to David MacLeod and Nita Clark about their research, the impact it had, and the importance of employee engagement then and today. Thanks a lot for listening.
