You Can`t Kiss A JPEG

The contents of the MacLeod report saved as a word cloud.

Here are 2 other perspectives of MyCloud, which I suppose proves that it doesn’t matter which way you look at it, it says the same thing.

I’m sticking with this one for a bit.  

David MacLeod believes “Whether we are in a downturn or in better economic times, engagement is key to innovation and competitiveness.

Lord Mandelson goes one step further “organisations that truly engage and inspire their employees produce world class levels of innovation”

Other commentators (see below) have expressed their views but here’s mine:

The key word is innovation, yet I get no sense that this is high up on leadership agenda. In fact, the report says that leaders believe that innovation will become more increasingly important over the next three years yet managers appear to be increasingly less likely to encourage innovation in the workplace: less than half of all employees say that their manager encouraged and supported new ways of doing things, developing their own ideas or trying out new ideas (decline of 20% in the last year).

From the report there is no real evidence that engagement surveys measuring ‘drivers’ for engagement help drive innovation or management commitment to innovation in the workplace. This may be a case of “If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got” and conducting the same old surveys that tell us the same old thing year on year is hardly an innovative way of engaging employees.

For me the priority for change in business is for leaders to adopt more innovative ways to engage their managers and their employees.  That’s not about micro-analysis of ‘performance’ measures and ‘engagement’ scores but encouraging innovation and ideas in the workplace that are focused on competitive advantage and differentiation of your brand. That’s what inspires people. Even the micro-analysts will be inspired as they will be able to show an increase in ‘performance’ and ‘engagement’ metrics.  A win-win.

Other commentary:

Stephanie Bird, director of HR capability, CIPD, backed the report’s recommendations. “This report puts engagement where it properly belongs: at the heart of business performance. HR professionals will see this report as an endorsement of what many of them are already doing, as well as a stimulus to do more 

Paul Sweetman, director of the employee engagement, Fishburn Hedges, said: “Overall, it’s a platform for progress, but also misses a few opportunities; I think it could have gone further and provided more practical guidance on the steps that employers should be taking right now” 

Ruth Spellman, chief executive of CMI, who will be part of the sponsor group, said: ” Right now, organisations across the
UK are hampered by poor management skills, with leaders who have an inability to ‘let go’ and allow staff to take ownership of their work. The end result is talented people becoming frustrated and disengaged at best, or ready to leave, at worst.”

David Coats, associate director at The Work Foundation, believes that “The very notion of engagement fails to take account of the fundamental imbalance of power in the relationship between workers and their employers. These unavoidable realities must be part of the national debate that David McLeod has said he wishes to promote”

Lord Mandelson, the Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) today endorsed the key point that I made yesterday – the publication of the Macleod review is timely. 

So what does the 153 page report say? see here (beware it’s full of numbers)

Does it address my 3 hopes from yesterday? Yes - it does go further than the Scottish Executive review, it is more enlightening than the author’s presentation to CIPD and it does build on HMGs vision for economic recovery.

Does it make the link between brand and engagement? Well, my Acrobat word count shows ‘brand’ appear 10 times and ‘engagement’ appear 1028 times, sadly never in the same sentence.

On the other hand HR appears 298 times and 1 of the references makes the link to brand. It suggests that HR needs to be re-branded! (page 136 if you are interested)

I’ve paraphrased the key findings below:

4 broad barriers: Leadership understanding; Leadership commitment; Management culture; and Poor communications.

4 broad enablers: Shared vision; ‘Inspiring’ managers; Employees ‘given a voice’; and Leaders ‘walking the talk’.

3 recommendations: Raising awareness; Aligning resources; Collaboration and knowledge share.

Ah, now I see the link to brand – it doesn’t need to be explicit!

P.S. 3 new working groups are to be established: “High level sponsor group”; “2010 Working Group” and “Practitioner Forum”

It’s been a long time in the making but we are now on the eve of the publication of MacLeod review of employee engagement. see here

I have 3 hopes for this report

1. It goes beyond the study commissioned by the Scottish Executive 2 years earlier see here

2. It is more enlightening than the author’s presentation to ACAS CIPD in April see here

3. It builds on HMG’s vision for Britain’s economic recovery in New Industry, New Jobs published last week see here

Whatever the content, my belief is that the timing of this publication is perfect.  

We have recently witnessed British brands struggling to remain competitive under existing regulatory frameworks – BA, BT, National Express, Royal Mail, RBS, Lloyds Group to name a few. 

Lord Mandelson recently fired warning shots over the bows of British business by making it clear that HMG is not an ATM for bailing out British brands who cannot remain competitive. 

I think most business leaders understand the link  between engaged employees and performance and can also see the link between driving innovation in products and services and brand differentiation. 

I don’t think that the Macleod review will draw the explicit link between employee engagement and brand, which is unfortunate as I believe that employee brand engagement absolutely addresses why Macleod believes engagement matters in the future: realise untapped potential; enable the best of people; compete with BRIC economy; provide public services we want; innovate; bespoke.

But three hopes in one day is enough for anyone, right?