You Can`t Kiss A JPEG

Scott MacKenzie done a sterling job chairing the CIPR Inside annual conference on Internal Communications on Monday, check his blog here for a summary. I came away with a sense of optimism and confidence about the future for employee engagement. Comparing the day with the first CIPR Inside conference seven years ago the shift was notable .

From ‘Old Hack’ to ‘Cutting Edge’
Niall Cook impressed the audience with a consultants view of how social media can improve the Efficiency, Effectiveness and Efficacy of internal communications, especially with a workforce that is part of a mobile society. You might be surprised that his presentation doesn’t appear on his blog but you wont be dissapointed to learn that he posted the above photo of Scott opening the conference here on Twitpic.

From ‘Silo Thinking’ to ‘Thought Leadership’
Great to see Sharon Saxton and Leona Deakin representing HR and OD and making the link between effective communications and employee engagement. They gave specific insights on managing survivor syndrome and maintaining business performance in organisations during difficult times.

From ‘Plaudits’ to ‘Audits’
The subject of measurement was well discussed during the interactive session showing the increasing pressure on operational budgets and demonstrating return on investment.  Paul Inglefield showed us all how he has deployed best practice communications on a modest budget at Camden Council. Residents of Camden can rest assured that their council tax is being put to good use.

From ‘Mailing Lists’ to ‘Audience Insights’
Audience segmentation is a passion of mine. So it was great to hear Niall talk about the future potential of social network analysis as a tool to help understand employee behaviour.

However, the greatest insight on segmentation came earlier in the day.  In my 24 years in industry I had never appreciated the fact that all engineers are bearded, sandal wearing people who are just like their colleagues in finance  - thrive on data, have small right brains and don’t understand the value or art of communications!

I wonder why I had failed to see this.
Is it because I graduated from the dark side of arts – engineering – and cannot see the wood for the trees?
Is it because engineers like me who studied control and system theory are different to those other engineers who do boring things like design rockets?
Is it because I am the exception to the rule?

Whatever,  it just goes to show…you should always try and understand a little bit about your audience before you communicate with them or you might just end up putting your foot in it.

It’s not rocket science!

Recent research by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) shows senior management need to do more to win the trust of their employees.

The Index of Leadership Trust 2009 report suggests that employees have far more confidence in their line managers than chief executives. Interestingly, it suggests that CEOs need to demonstrate more integrity whilst line managers need to demonstrate more empathy to win the trust of their workforce.

Penny De Valk, ILM’s chief executive, said: “Teams are more effective in a trusting environment, and people work better and harder if they trust their leaders.

“For leaders, being good at their job is simply not enough anymore. The more senior you are, the more gap between what you say and what you do… is amplified.”

Listen to what Penny has to say in her interview with BNet.

Closing the gap. That’s what we help organisations do; helping them build trust between employees and leadership and management at all levels.

We know from experience that employees are influenced more by leadership actions than words. It’s all about Leadership; Leadership by example.

Last week the Prime Minister and his wife added their Tweets to thousands of heartfelt declarations from patients, nurses and other medical practitioners on Twitter’s #welovetheNHS topic.

PM: NHS often makes the difference between pain and comfort, despair and hope, life and death. Thanks for always being there,”

Sarah Brown: “#welovetheNHS – more than words can say.”

What a shame the 45,000 NHS workers* who call in sick each day dont exhibit the same level of advocacy. This is one and a half times the average for private industry.

*From a recent government review assessing links between staff habits and NHS productivity Fat, unfit NHS staff top the sick league 

Unsurprisingly, the report shows that hospitals with the poorest staff health are less productive. Three-quarters of staff  believe that the state of their health affects patient care. Disturbingly, they are proven right as hospitals with the worst staff well-being have higher patient mortality rates.

The report concludes that there must be a complete NHS culture change to make workforce health “the responsibility of every single member of staff”. It underlines the irony of the NHS’s focus on the public health agenda whilst not investing in their own staff to become exemplars.

“High quality care for all” has always been the central guiding principle for NHS staff – it’s what the NHS brand stands for. They now have evidence that there is a large gap between what they do and what they say they do.We see this gap in a lot of organisations we work with.

Closing the gap. That’s what we help organisations do; helping them to improve the health of their brand. 

We know from experience and from research that the health of any brand is directly related to the level of internal advocacy. Investment in engaging employees around the organisation’s central guiding principle (their brand) is the medicine to boost internal advocacy.

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.

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”

So, in spite of the fact that Mercedes-Benz didn’t want to ‘divert’ from its long-standing relationship with Formula 1 racing team McLaren, the German engine designer is finally considering adding corporate branding to the hottest rod on the tracks, the Brawn GP Formula 1 car. It won’t be long before we have the big names clamouring for brand association with this trail-blazing team. 

So, if modelled on the Vodafone McLaren relationship, is the likely future brand ‘Virgin Brawn Mercedes’? Interesting to see how that tripartite brand might look… 

Whatever the final team name I suspect partner brands Ray-Ban, Henri-Lloyd, MIG Investments Williams, NCE and Endless Advance will have the last laugh over this spoof image devised a while back from our friends at sniffpetrol.com. 

It will be interesting to watch how the future brand name develops, but as the name of this blog suggests, I am more interested in the brain behind Brawn GP – owner Ross Brawn.  Not only because we have something in common – we both trained as instrumentation engineers in the nuclear industry – but because I’m intrigued by this former Honda technical director’s passion for F1, something that has taken him to the top of his field as the leader of what could very well become the most successful F1 racing team in history. 

Would he have achieved the same success with Honda had it stayed in F1 and he had remained team principal? If you look at it from a rational perspective he has the same team, the same drivers and the same car design. The only difference is the Mercedes engine; which hasn’t brought the same level of success to the McLaren partnership this season.

I believe the new engine choice is testament to insightful collaboration and the commercial freedom to bring the best bits together. Unrestricted by bureaucracy, Brawn GP has had the commercial freedom to combine the winning Formula of product, people and partnerships.

On a more emotional front I imagine a team that has a new found enthusiasm and belief, with a compelling vision built on their new leader’s passion for success and zero-tolerance of mediocrity. Long may it continue.

UK Bank Holidays wouldn’t be bank holidays without a trip to the DIY centre at the local retail park.  So this weekend I thought I’d go and see what all the fuss was about. Secretly, I was on a reconnaissance mission to see the most highly engaged workforce in the UK* in action and to try and find out what drives them. (Plus my wife thought this would be an ideal opportunity to peruse the wallpaper.) 

The operation commenced at the wallpaper section of B&Qs Luton store and – as luck would have it – the wallpaper of choice didn’t have a open roll to take a sample from. Ahah! By a happy accident, here was my chance to find an unsuspecting victim for cross examination.  It took some time to find anyone walking the shop floor. “Perhaps what they meant about being otherwise ‘engaged’,” I thought. “Long lunch breaks …”. But I eventually struck gold (or was it Dayglo Orange?) when I found Michael. I knew his name because it was scribbled on his apron, just like the ones on the TV ads. I suspect that one driver for engagement is probably the fact that real people are used in their adverts.

Michael was a very approachable, affable guy who judging from his greying hair was clearly one of the 25% of 34,000 B&Q employees that are over 50. When I asked him if I could open a roll of wallpaper to take a sample, he insisted that he would need to do it for me so that he could reflect it in stock control. As he attacked the roll with his scissors, I took the opportunity to ask a question: “So, Michael. I noticed in the press recently that B&Q have scored highly in the Gallup Q12 survey again, so what is it that makes it an engaging place to work?”  I don’t think I was ready for the textbook response, paraphrased here… 

Michael came straight back with his main point that B&Q give people his age a chance: Since my retirement I was going mad looking at my four walls. One day my son visited and declared “I’ve found you the perfect job dad” holding up the advert that read “Are you retired, going up the walls, tired of retrieving neighbours’ kids ball from the garden?…” A perfect match! I went for the interview and the rest, as they say, is history.  But it’s not just old employees they value – they give youngsters a chance too, when most employers are too quick to write them off!

Michael then introduced me to a great expression that described accountability:
We operate like stores within a store. I’ve got wallpaper aisle and I know that it is my job to keep it right. If the store manager notices something wrong, he knows who to come to and its a “fair cop” – so I’ll fix it, no blaming others.  We all take personal pride and have a slight level of competitiveness over our individual areas, but not to the point where we won’t help each other. When we have a big job with restocking we will help each other out.

And… he was on a roll… and then there’s the training, not only do you get trained on all the products,  they are really hot on health & safety training, and it doesn’t matter who you are –  you could be senior management and you still go through the same rigorous programme.  And its not only formal training, you also learn a lot from others. We have specialists in each product line so when I get asked a question I don’t know, I just find the specialist and, if I have time, I listen in to the conversation. 

So, are you into DIY?” I asked.

I never used to be but I am now. You learn a lot from customers too, some of then are trade customers and know their trade inside out and are always keen to explain what they’re doing and how they are doing it. We are very customer focussed here. We take a rota to greet customers as they come in the store. We ask them if there is anything we can help them find, and direct them to the right location. Which is far better than them spending ½ hour wandering around the store, not being able to find what they’re looking for. We take customer feedback seriously. When we get feedback, it is brought up at our team meetings where we have a discussion about it and how we can improve.  Sometimes when it is positive feedback, our team manager will give us direct praise. That makes a difference.

Last year I was nominated for the store Customer Focus award and won it. I went on to win the Area and then the National Finals where I won a weekend to Barcelona, all expenses paid in a five star hotel with bus trips thrown in, plus £1000 sending money! Ok its not every day you get a bonus like that, but at the end of every day my manager always says “Thanks for your help today, Michael” The pay isn’t great, but that’s not what counts for me. What’s more important is that I get up every morning and can’t wait to get to work – not like my days with Royal Mail. And every day I get to meet lots of really interesting people!

So, unscripted and unrehearsed, Michael touched on the key drivers of engaging people, which, according to B&Q is “the cornerstone to success in the current economic market”. B&Q are making huge strides to ensure “every employee, no matter where they work, feels valued as a key part of the business” So my plea to other organisations is simple – go on “You can do it too!” To get you started see our thought piece:

Engagement Drivers

*The Gallup Great Workplace Award awarded B&Q the Gallup Workplace Award for the last three years and is the only UK business to be awarded this year

‘Quality, not Quantity’ probably sums up the contributions to this year’s more intimate Marcus Evans conference, held in Amsterdam last week.

The Brand Union co-sponsored the event, so I had the privilege of chairing day 1: eight inspiring speakers across a wide spectrum of sectors from Healthcare to Hospitality and from Food to Finance, with one thing in common; their passion for Employee Engagement. 

So, inspired by the thoughts, views and opinions stimulated by the sessions,  we’ve created a blog called “You can’t Kiss a JPEG” – an expression that’s “borrowed with pride” from HP’s Rupal Purohit Ulrich when she used it effectively to make the case for face-to-face engagement. Because, despite all the powerpoint presentations in the world, social media and Flash wizzardry, you can’t replace the power of face-to-face.Three key takeouts for me were:

1. Daniel Vannier from hospitality service provider Sodexo tapping into his 350,000 (yes that is 4 x zeros!) colleagues across the world to understand cultural differences and validating the often criticised work of Geert Hofstede.

2. Kraft’s Annica Johansson introduced a third dimension to engagement’s Hearts and Minds – Clean Hands; thereby making the strong link between employee brand engagement & employer brand with CSR. 

3. Building on all the compelling reasons that the speakers gave for investment in engagement and employer brand (especially in tough times), Joao Duarte from Italian energy giant Enel presented the highly emotive argument that “Engagement saves lives”. Who said engagement was fluffy stuff?

Our very own Pete Bell argued the case for not downing tools during a down turn, learning lessons from recent case studies. See it here: 

Peter Bell: No Time to Down Tools

Two great days concluded with table discussions on emerging topics – Measurement,  Channels and Engaging line Managers. The richness of these discussions made it apparent that the dialogue needs to continue. So, while you can’t kiss a jpeg, you can post a blog.

So join the debate. We welcome any points, posts and pixels you care to share. To stimulate your thoughts have a look at the following thought pieces:

 1. Measurement              2. Channels                 3. Engaging Line Managers