Commentary on Macleod
July 17th, 2009 by Sean TrainorI’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”