How to give real meaning to work
Employee motivation and engagement are perennial hot topics for business leaders, management and HR professionals. Every year there is a veritable avalanches of surveys, books, courses and tools published to address issues around the recruitment and retention of talent that are centred on theories of motivation and engagement. Employers have a responsibility for the environment […]
Five ways neuroscience can improve your engagement results
How to create the super powered engagement leader Engagement is a hot topic but do HR functions really care about it or has it become just another process to run i.e. ‘it’s the survey season again’, rather than the outcome of leadership and work practice? Clearly something isn’t working as all the data says our […]
History of employee engagement – from satisfaction to sustainability
Employee engagement may seem a relatively recent concept but actually it goes back over 20 years when the term first appeared in an academic journal in 1990. Prior to that, during the 70’s and 80’s, HR’s (or as it was then ‘personnel’s’) focus was on employee satisfaction. But this had little or no connection with […]
Top 10 excuses for failing to engage with engagement
Over the 25 years or so Great Place to Work® has worked with thousands of organisations across the globe we’ve heard virtually every rationale as to why they’ve not yet engaged with engagement. Whilst we fully understand these barriers or obstacles our experience shows that they are not insurmountable; they may be hurdles but not […]
10 things you didn’t know about engagement
Despite engagement being firmly established in HR circles and endorsed at government level, there is still no universally agreed definition. Engagement is an output – one of the key drivers is trust. Only around 1/3rd of employees say they are engaged, putting the UK 9th out of the world’s twelfth largest economies (based on GDP). […]
Employee engagement is about more than just a survey
I work with many organisations that have made a significant investment in money and resources, over multiple years on large unwieldy surveys producing tons of data but making very little impact on increasing or sustaining engagement. Engagement surveys are a useful and valuable diagnostic, they take a ‘temperature check’ of the organisation at point […]
Five reasons CEOs fail to engage
There is now a weight of evidence connecting employee engagement and business success, within which leadership plays a key role. Yet, much of the UK workforce remains dis-engaged. So, why aren’t our leaders engaging more? Engagement, that is to say, the sense of emotional connection and purpose that is created among employees so that they […]
The neuroscience of trust and how it can improve your engagement results
A while ago I was working with a leadership team who got into a debate about trust. The team was split with the senior leader insisting their role was to mitigate risks by putting in place policies and policing people to ensure the company was safe. His starting premise was people are not trustworthy, if […]
Key insights from Gallup employee engagement report
This is a few months' old but it’s a good read so thought I’d draw your attention to a few insightful tidbits. “TO WIN CUSTOMERS — and a bigger share of the marketplace — companies must first win the hearts and minds of their employees.” Top-level: Engagement makes a quantifiable difference to the bottom line […]
True engagement – why managers need to be seen as ‘real people’
Managers and leaders within an organisation can make a difference to engagement levels, but only if they themselves are engaged, trustworthy, authentic and crystal clear on their role and what the organisation needs from them. They must then work with their teams to align their personal goals, motivators and drivers to job satisfaction and their […]
Senior leader buy-in is fundamental to employee engagement
This piece was written by Gary Cattermole, co-founder and director of staff survey provider The Survey Initiative. It’s a common issue, organisations are eager to run an employee engagement programme but find it tricky to get their Chief Exec or members of the board to buy-in to employee engagement. Some board members may think it’s […]
Interview: Jez Langhorn, VP People, McDonald’s
Jez Langhorn, McDonald's UK VP of People, talks to us about employee engagement and how it works at the fast food giant. McDonald's recently placed on the Great Place to Work list of the top workplaces across the UK for its commitment to building a culture of trust and unity. 1.What does employee engagement truly […]
Beyond ‘omnichannel’ – customer experience in the retail sector
‘The path to purchase is evolving. Digital is empowering and informing shoppers as they make their purchasing decisions. The key to success is satisfying shopper needs for convenience, choice, and value for money.’ That’s the opinion of consumer research giant Nielsen. And as they regularly talk to more than 250,000 households around the world about […]
Managing in a low-engagement environment is exhausting – what can you do?
This article was written by Fraser Marlow, VP of Marketing & Head of Research, Chris Rice, CEO, and Mary-Ann Masarech, Engagement Practice Lead at leadership development and engagement consultancy BlessingWhite. Picture, if you will, each employee as a spinning plate. You can see your organisation as a large space with 100, 1,000, or even 50,000 plates […]
Interview: Emma Pinker, General Manager, London Vision Clinic, on employee engagement
Emma Pinker is General Manager of the London Vision Clinic, a laser eye surgery clinic. The company was recently included on the 2013 Best Workplaces List [PDF, 5.68MB] from Great Place to Work for their commitment to employee engagement. Download our academic-led employee engagement toolkit, produced in association with Great Place to Work. 1. What does […]
“What does employee engagement mean to you?” [VIDEO]
“What does employee engagement mean to you?” That’s the question we posed to attendees at the HRD conference in London in April 2013, in association with Sage. Employee engagement is such a massive question at the moment – businesses are focusing on the people within their organisations and looking for ways to drive productivity. Engagement […]
The suspicious motives of the employee engagement movement
This article was written by Karen Drury, consultant with Maven International (UK) Ltd. "A wise man … proportions his belief to the evidence."(David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding) Consider the changes made to employee legislation in the past few weeks. To bring a case for unfair dismissal against your employer, you now need to work […]
News: Firms turn to tech for employee health engagement
Employers have an appetite for new technologies to promote health engagement and positive behavioural change in the workplace, according to new research. “Emerging Technology in Health Engagement,” released by Buck Consultants and WorldatWork, examined current use and future potential of gamification, mobile apps and social media. Gamification was the most prevalent solution (62 percent) and […]
News: Renewed optimism in the workplace?
Employees are feeling more empowered to do their jobs than at any other time during 2012, according to new research. Well over half (58.6 percent) of UK workers are proud to work for their current organisation, up on the 41.7 percent reported in summer 2012. Over three quarters (76.1 percent) believe their manager gives them […]
Interview: Peter Cheese, CEO of the CIPD
Peter Cheese, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) believes we are at an inflection point in HR and that the opportunities for the profession to make an impact on the business has never been greater. With the CIPD’s centenary year in full swing, HRZone recently caught up with Cheese, to […]
