It has identified eight key factors that are critical to be an employer that staff rate highly. They comprise:

 

 

Each year, lists of the best companies to work for are compiled and candidates are entered into an accreditation scheme, under which each one submits to comprehensive and academically rigorous research into what employees really think and how engaged they are.

Here Clarke talks to HRZone about why he believes engagement is and should still be the focus of HR and the boardroom; the importance of leaders and managers communicating their vision clearly and the long-lasting effect of ongoing economic gloom and uncertainty.

Q. What impact has the recession had on employers’ commitment to engagement?

A. There are two types of organisations: those in survival mode and those in growth mode. For those in survival mode, clearly engagement is off the agenda.

 

But those organisations that feel they have plateaued very much want to reconnect with engagement because, in cutting to the bone in the recession, a lot of organisations have cut into the bone and need to find ways to communicate with their people.

 

From our surveys, we’ve found that employees often find that senior management is doing a lot of telling and not a lot of listening.

We’ve been in recession for four years now and, while people used to think things would get better next year, they aren’t thinking like that any longer. If you’re continuing in that survival mode, then that impacts engagement because people need to feel like they have a future.

The biggest single issue that organisations struggle with is clarity as they seek to answer the question: ‘What does the future hold for us?’ Even those companies that have come through the recession reasonably well have issues with clarity.

 

Their employees are constantly bombarded with negative media as well as stories from friends and family who are being impacted by the recession, which destabilises their future as it creates a sense of uncertainty. Those that have done well have over-communicated that clarity.

Q. Does this mean that employers have to remain upbeat in order to offset these feelings of uncertainty?

A. People want you to be authentic. If the company is in the wet and sticky, then employees need to know they are in the wet and sticky. It’s all about being real and honest and talking about how they as an employee can make a difference.

From a technical perspective, panic engages the medulla in the brain and shuts down the left brain and the creative right brain, and people can’t see past obstacles. And as a leader, you need to see past those obstacles.

 

People who feel that they have some sense of control have increased levels of happiness. What’s linked to individual happiness is a social support network, and colleagues in the workplace form part of that social support network. It’s quite important and, if you feel your job is under threat, then your support structure is challenged.

 

So organisational clarity is important but, for the last three years, the most highly correlated factor in our surveys is managers and it used to be leadership. The reason why that is important is that leadership is going through a bit of a crisis: leaders have lost connection and so the focus of employees is more towards managers.

What organisations struggle with is getting managers to realise how significant their role is in engaging people. Seven out of 10 people may leave their managers rather than an organisation, but there’s just not the job opportunities, so people are staying put and feeling disengaged.

 

But we know that impacts hugely on customer satisfaction.

Q. A lot of companies use their own internal engagement surveys, but is there a danger that a good score won’t tell the whole story?

A. A lot of organisations are measuring satisfaction, not engagement, and many of them are very non-challenging. So when companies say that their satisfaction levels are 80%, they are using the wrong measure and not tackling engagement.

 

But the reality becomes confusing to them – if their satisfaction levels are 80%, why do they still have so many problems? They are getting a false positive. So you need to get a good measure of engagement.

Q. What’s the first thing to do in order to encourage engagement?

 

A. The first thing is to get the senior team to buy in. If they haven’t ‘bought in’, then it’s not sustainable. You need to keep at engagement until people really get it.

 

The next phase is to get managers to understand its importance. If you feel disempowered to make a difference, then you won’t do anything. So you need to recognise the importance of engagement and help people to understand how they can make a difference.

Q. Do engagement and well-being overlap and if so, where?

A. Well-being is hugely important and is the least correlated of our eight factors. If you have an imbalance in well-being, either mental or physical such as the working day is too long, that leads to an imbalance and that will affect engagement by 76%.

Q. Do the rules for engagement hold equally true for both small and large companies?

 

A. There are differences between small, medium and large companies and we acknowledge in our lists that it’s different for large companies to engage in the same way as an organisation of 50.

 

But irrespective of size, in good organisations, the eight engagement factors are strong. Organisational clarity and managing people is important in both large and small companies – the same drivers are there.

 

The other key thing is appropriate levels of communication. Engagement is about conversations: it all comes back down to the quality of internal conversations. If those conversations are good, then that will create the right environment.