I don’t know about you, but I struggle a bit with dark mornings. I’m great at getting up and at it when the sun is shining, but at this time of the year, I struggle with motivating myself. I’m ok if I have to get up and go out to do some training, but tend to use the snooze button when I have a day working at home. So, I thought I would post about some of the things that have made me feel good over the last week or so, in the hope that it might cheer up some others who perhaps don’t feel as motivated as they would like to on grey days!

Last week, I had the following ‘feelgood moments’:

Spent an hour or so on Monday evening with one of the people I am mentoring in Toastmasters. His name is Graham too, and he never fails to get my mojo working, because whenever we meet up, he has always taken some action resulting from our last conversation. He takes responsibility, and that gives me a lift.

Wednesday evening I went to a networking event called Peterborough Does Business. It’s free, and there is a buffet. I don’t go to many local networking events, but I had decided to attend this one because Tim Johnson was speaking. He had an inspiring personal and business story to tell us, and he told us that what we needed to survive and prosper as one-man bands is Accountability – Collaboration – Training. Some great friends of mine had travelled up from Hertfordshire to see Tim, as they had worked together in the past. Daryl and Paula Hine are two of the most genuine, honest and giving people that I have ever met, and seeing them and having the time to chat really refreshed me.

On Thursday and Friday I was travelling to/from and working in Manchester. I wasn’t sure what to expect – I am probably less familiar with Manchester than any other British city. However, three separate events changed that feeling for me. I was staying in a Travelodge near Piccadilly station. Not all the people working there were inspiring, but one was. He served me at the bar in the evening, and then when I asked him to confirm which direction I needed to walk in from the hotel in order to arrive at my training venue, he disappeared for a few minutes and returned with a map that he had printed out for me, with my walking route highlighted. When I got lost, despite his directions, I stopped outside a Network Rail office building and asked the gate guard if he knew where Union Street was. He didn’t, but he found a colleague who did, and gave me perfect directions. When I finally arrived at City View House, the people who worked there were the most friendly and helpful I have come across at any serviced office complex in the U.K.

Finally, I come back to my Toastmasters friends – I spent Saturday at our East of England Division Speech Contest, which is always a great way to spend a Saturday, and more time with a new mentee, this time from China.

More feelgood moments soon – what has made you feel good recently?

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Yesterday I attended my first ever unconference. I got involved with the Connecting HR group last year, after meeting  Jon Ingham at one of the early Engage for Success Guru Group meeting. Sometimes I think things are meant to happen. I went along to a Connecting HR tweet-up in London shortly after meeting Jon, and although the meeting was in a very noisy pub (the usual private room the group has had been double-booked) I was made to feel very welcome and found that there were several kindred spirits around. By kindred spirits, I mean people who are committed to doing things differently, to creating workplaces where people want to go, rather than have to go. After attending my second tweet-up, a few months later, and keeping in touch with people through blogs and Twitter, I was told about the unconference on 21 July. ‘A whole room full of people like I meet at the tweet-ups, and for a whole day?’ I thought. ‘I’m going to have some of that!’ Then I was asked if I could get involved in organising the day. Well, I have helped to organise many events in my time, but an unconference…wow, this was going to be a new challenge. I think I might have lost a few followers on Twitter these past few months with my constant tweeting about #BraveHR and #chru13 – but it was worth it because yesterday was great. I had volunteered to be the meeter and greeter, and was determined not to sit behind a desk and check people in with a smile and a printed name badge. Just as well, because that wasn’t expected anyway. I just put the list of attendees on a table and asked people to check themselves off, then design themselves a name badge and put their Twitter handle on it if they wanted to. Meanwhile Doug Shaw and Perry Timms were beavering away setting up flipcharts for people to record their initial thoughts on. I had never been to an event where there was less stress. Soon Cass arrived, a wonderful splash of colour and energy, and the team was complete. As our first participants arrived, so did the coffee and tea, and it seemed like a few minutes later the room was full of people talking, making friends and being interested in each other. We had a lot of great conversations during the day about Brave HR and how we can change what HR does and how the function is seen in the world of business. There was no hierarchy at all, just a bunch of people who want the world of work to be a different and more enjoyable place swapping thoughts and ideas. There were senior managers and directors of companies there, the CEO of the CIPD was there, and the little old railway worker who got lucky when someone gave him the chance to move into learning and development (me!) was there, and everyone’s opinions were listened to. Not surprisingly, I didn’t hear anything that I didn’t agree with. We had some wonderful artists creating a visual wall of our conversations – more about that in a later post I’m sure, and after an excellent lunch we were taught to play the ukulele (will put in a link to this later!) and went back to discuss what a brave new world of HR might look like. I thoroughly enjoyed the day. I was privileged to be part of the team that facilitated the day, although there was very little facilitation needed. My only question. Why, after my forty years in the world of work, have we still not got how we treat people in the workplace right, and why are we still having to be brave to even talk about it? One of the most interesting quotes came right at the end of the day. A lot of people might have missed it. Apparently, a significant number of CEO’s would do their job for a third of what they get paid. Something like that would be a real step forward, especially if the money saved was used wisely. That would be a huge change in behaviour. My commitment? To get together with other Connecting HR people on the last Friday of every month (work permitting) to move this agenda forward. And to be around to help with the next Connecting HR Unconference in 2014. More soon…!

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Image above thanks to The HR Juggler 

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting a young lady called Caroline. She works for a very large multi-national company with headquarters in mainland Europe. Caroline’s employers are in everything from engineering, manufacturing to I.T. and many other areas. Caroline works as a team leader for the part of the business that provides outsourced support to a British public sector organisation.

Caroline’s boss has his Facebook page as his ‘home page’ on his work computer. He spends a lot of time playing Candy Crush on Facebook, goes home at 3.30 pm most days and always finishes early at least once a week for a golf day. If Caroline wants a decision made about anything she has to go to her bosses boss, who is understanding, but won’t confront her boss about his behaviour.

This company completes an employee survey twice a year. It is ‘in everyone’s objectives’ to complete it. Despite this, only three people in Caroline’s office of 28 people completed the last one, because ‘none of the feedback is ever acted on and nothing ever changes’. The management is very proud of the fact that the company recently passed its ISO audit with flying colours.

There is a remote HR department who come to Caroline’s site once or twice a year and ‘do a load of Powerpoint presentations’. There is an SLA in place that states that any request for HR support has to be answered within 30 days.

Caroline’s bosses boss recently asked her if she would like to go on some training courses ‘to beef up her CV a bit’. He knows she is unhappy in her role.

It’s not all bad at this company. Everyone gets free tea, coffee and fruit. There is a subsidised canteen. The money is good – Caroline’s boss earns enough in salary and bonuses to buy a new car every year and takes fabulous holidays. However, there is a rumour going round that the public sector organisation they support is looking to terminate the outsourcing contract ahead of schedule, and people are feeling very unsettled because there is no information.

What would you do? How would Brave HR address this situation?

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The picture above was taken at a previous Connecting HR Unconference. I found it on Flora Marriott’s blog.

I am involved with helping to organise the fifth Connecting HR Unconference on 21 June in London. The theme of this year’s Unconference is ‘Brave HR’. I am writing my thoughts on Brave HR – if you agree or disagree with me please feel free to comment!

My perspective on HR is formed through 16 years working in learning and development, both in a corporate environment and two spells of being a self-employed L&D professional. Of course, the learning and development profession is very much part of HR, and shares a professional body, so I know my opinion will be seen as valid by many people!

First of all, I think ‘Brave HR’ from a L&D perspective means carrying out learning needs analysis across an organisation at all levels, not just designing and delivering training to keep senior people happy. So many companies see their L&D function (or their external suppliers) as a way to ‘sheep dip’ everyone through certain types of training every so often. For example, you might hear it said that ‘we haven’t done customer service training for three years so we should do something this year’. Or the same might be said about sales training, performance management training and many other ‘soft skills’. A Brave HR professional will ensure that learning needs analysis takes place throughout the business on an ongoing basis, and that the training is designed to fit the people, not the other way around.

Another way that L&D could be more ‘Brave HR’ is by insisting that everyone who joins a company attends induction on Day One, and that the induction is thorough and bears a resemblance to what really goes on in the company. New employees should feel welcomed and valued during and after induction and should not just be sent on induction to tick a box. I was chatting to someone on a train recently who was on her way back from an induction course in London. I asked her if it was her first day with the company. ‘No’ she said ‘I have been there for six months’. I asked her how useful she had found the day. ‘It was a load of rubbish really’ she said. ‘The trainer talked about a load of stuff like visions and values, but it didn’t mean anything to me because I hadn’t seen any evidence of it in the office I work in’.

Perhaps the HR/L&D team in that organisation needed to be more ‘Brave HR’. What do you think?

If you would like to be part of this debate, you might like to join us at the 2013 Connecting HR Unconference!

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We have all been to conferences. We sit and listen to people pontificate about their specialist subject, often with the ‘aid’ of a long deck of PowerPoint slides. We sometimes rush from one room to the next in search of enlightenment or information on the latest craze. Sometimes we have a night or two in a hotel at our company’s expense (if we work for a company), and sometimes we come away hungover, but full of good intentions. Often, the good intentions disappear as soon as we get back to work and the horrible reality dawns on us: If we are going to put into practice what we learned at the conference we are going to have to be the change that we want to see in the world, to paraphrase Gandhi. Amd that means sticking our head above the corporate parapet. Hmmmm….maybe we’ll leave that until tomorrow. Trouble is, tomorrow never comes!

That’s why I was delighted when I came across a group of people that call themselves Connecting HR. These people are united in a common purpose. They genuinely want to help each other to create better workplaces, not by doing more of the same, but by doing things better, differently. When I went to my first Connecting HR tweet-up (that’s right, a lot of us blog quite a bit and tweet too) I was welcomed and made to feel part of things very quickly. Not surprisingly, I went back, and am building relationships with the Connecting HR community.

A few weeks ago, I volunteered to be part of the team organising the 2013 Connecting HR Unconference. I thought it sounded like an exciting thing to do. So what is an unconference? Well, it’s about as different from a conference as you can get. There are no sponsors, no seminars, no egos, just a bunch of conversations going on all day, which people are able to join or leave at any time. There will be no sales pitches, although there may be a few people who get up and deliver short speeches about something they’re passionate about. I’m really looking forward to it – it’s in London on 21 June 2013 and you can find out more and book here.

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David MacLeod gave us an upbeat start to the morning, thanking us for our commitment. Engage for Success Guru Group members are all volunteers who believe passionately in the value of employee engagement and wish to help promote the benefits.

Amy Armstrong from Ashridge Business School then gave us an overview of an interesting report that is just about to be published by Ashridge, entitled ‘Engagement Through CEO Eyes’. The document is copyright, but I can share a couple of points from the Executive Summary:

Three barriers emerged that stop leaders from engaging with engagement: Shortcomings in leadership capability, such as poor awareness on the part of leaders. The leader recognises that they may be a potential barrier to engagement. Here. traits such as leader pride may lead to challenging leadership behaviours. The culture and system in which U.K. business operates is seen as antithetical to engagement, such as organisational hierarchy or the drive for short term results.

The report was compiled after interviewing a number of CEO’s from public, private and third sector organisations, whose identities have been kept anonymous. For me, it was a little heartening to realise that there are at least a small group of business leaders in the U.K. who know that things have to change and that they are responsible for leading that change. How long will it take to happen? One of the comments that came out of this session was that CEO’s are ‘climate engineers’. Whether they realise it or not, that is true, and that was one of my quotes of the day.

We then moved on to table discussions around transactional vs. transformational engagement. The table I was on focussed on ‘Employee Voice’ – the third enabler of employee engagement. It was a long discussion and I wasn’t taking many notes – Jonny Gifford from the CIPD did a great job as note-taker and presenter of our thoughts and there will be more detail available on the E4S website soon! However, we thought that a company that recruited engagement champions whose role was to persuade their colleagues to complete the annual employee survey, in order that they met the completion percentage target set by their parent company was an example of transactional engagement, where a CEO who doesn’t have an office and goes around the business asking people how things can be improved and then implementing the ideas was a great example of transformational engagement. These discussions do get a little academic sometimes – I am a great believer in keeping it real!

My friend Jo Dodds then gave us a presentation on how we can all get involved through social media and blogging (smugly, I have been doing this for months!) and it was over to David MacLeod for thanks and to close the meeting.

My thoughts twenty hours later: How many organisations are changing the way they engage with and manage their people as a result of the work of the Engage for Success movement? At the next Guru Group meeting I would like to see some evidence that the work we are all doing is making a difference.

Here is some more on Engagement through the CEO’s Eyes

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Chris Ogle is the driving force behind a business community called Link4Growth. I have been involved with Link4Growth for a year or so now, because I like groups of people that try to challenge ‘the norm’. Chris Ogle delivered the workshop that I attended this morning. Here are a few ideas that I picked up this morning.

• Google + improves our capability to participate
• Why should I spend time on yet another social media platform? (It is that, but it is so much more than that)
• Twitter and HootSuite are about conversation, Facebook is social with some business, Linked In is a ‘traditional’ business network, Google + is a new way of connecting, working and building relationships
• G+ is about creating a platform to deliver what we will demand in the future
• It will give you recommendations about who you ought to be connecting with
• You can see people you know who are nearby
• G+ wants to learn from us!

(By now you are probably thinking I have lost my marbles – I haven’t, trust me, stay with me!)

• Google are already piloting driverless cars to pick people up from airports in the U.S. (I didn’t know that either, taxi drivers will be quaking in their boots!)
• Google + wants to see who we connect and talk with, see what we’re interested in and see what we publish – the more it knows about us, the better it can serve us – and that means if we use Google + well we will be doing our own search engine optimisation.
• I have been blogging, tweeting and sharing information online for two years now, this will soon be the only way to get to the top of page 1 of Google – all the other SEO tricks will soon be redundant.
• On Google + you create one profile and that becomes ‘who you are’ – what your passion is, in seven words!
• Then, you will be found for your niche, be able to build influence, learn and develop, and give back and support others.
• Google will assess from your online contributions whether (or not) you are an expert in what you say you are, and rank you accordingly.

These were just some of the tips I picked up this morning. It was enough to make me set a whole day aside next Monday to properly set myself up on Google + (I am already there but haven’t done anything yet – a bit like an empty storefront).

Oh, and then there is Hangouts – I am planning to do some webinars this year with a business associate of mine and Google + Hangouts can be used for that purpose. You can have ten participants, but the invited audience can be unlimited, and private or public.

So, I will set myself up on there next week – Monday will be ‘geek day’ for me – and then I will invite some of my contacts to join me on circles there, for a start!

The post Google Plus – Why I Am Getting Involved appeared first on Graham Frost.

 In early December, I wrote a guest blog post for Alison Chisnell, on her HR Juggler blog. You can read it here. It summed up my 2012 quite well, and with the benefit of a month’s hindsight, I wouldn’t change a word of it, except for giving the England cricket team’s fortunes more prominence than world peace, perhaps!

What I would like to see in 2013 is more justice. There may not be a lot that I can do about world peace, apart from being open and honest about my views and being the change that I want to see in the world (what a powerful quote that is from Ghandi, when you really think about it) but I can make a difference in other ways. I am a member of the Engage for Success movement for a reason. I still hear too many stories about people who are totally taken advantage of by their employers and feel powerless to do anything about it because they are in fear of losing their jobs. On the other hand, there are still too many status-obsessed senior managers who think they are more important than the people they support, who are very likely to be serving their external customers. It alarms me that some senior people in well-known organisations are still so hopelessly out of touch with reality. If I can make a small positive difference in this area during 2013 while earning enough money to live on, I will feel that 2013 has been a worthwhile year.

I also want to become more involved with the Connecting HR group, because from what I saw in the latter part of 2012, there are a lot of my kindred spirits at large there – people who are not satisfied with the status quo. I have also signed up to a quite controversial and ground-breaking accountability programme to help cure me of my tendency to procrastinate!

Personally, I want to spend more time with the people I love, win two or three rounds of the Toastmasters International Speech Contest, continue to be able to listen to wonderful music, get to a couple of days of Test match cricket (and listen to the rest on the radio), and continue with my fitness regime that has me feeling better at 56 than I did at 36. Oh, and see more peace, justice, tolerance, love and equality in the world.

A very Happy New Year to everyone who reads this.

The post Looking Forward appeared first on Graham Frost.

It was off to Canterbury in the Garden of England yesterday for the ‘Engaging Workplaces for a Sustainable Future’ Conference at the University of Kent Business School. I was struck by the fact that there were ‘real people’ directing us from the car park to the conference venue and that they had real smiles on their faces. It’s always great when you turn up at a conference about employee engagement and the people at the venue seem interested in helping you – it certainly created a very positive first impression for me.

After a welcome from Professor John Baldock, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research at Kent University (whose boss was in Australia – why did he tell us that?) it was over to two people who have become familiar to me over the past few months that I have been involved with the Engage for Success Movement. David MacLeod and Nita Clarke are a great double act. They have a huge enthusiasm for the topic of employee engagement and that is infectious. I knew about employee engagement before it acquired that ‘tag’, but not everyone did, and David and Nita did a great job of reminding us why we were there, and how much work there is still left to do.

Our first speaker was Professor David Guest from King’s College London. I have seen a number of academics speak, and David was up there with the better ones! He suggested that engagement might be the opposite of burn-out – and that focus on job satisfaction alone is not enough. David asked the question: ‘What do you do to encourage employees to be more engaged?’

Professor Guest made reference to the Gallup 12 – the 12 questions we have used for some time now to determine employee engagement levels, and told us that he had come up with ‘The Guest 12’:

• Clear organisational values about workforce management
• Select people with a propensity for engagement
• Invest in human capital and employability
• Extensive 2-way communication
• Reward (promote) managers based on quality and management of people with a balanced scorecard
• Demonstrate positive organisational support
• Develop and maintain a relational psychological contract
• Optimise job security and flexible working
• Promote fairness of treatment and trust in management, including through employee voice
• Design jobs to build in autonomy, challenge and a full utilisation of skills
• Promote self-efficacy
• Challenging but manageable workload

Wow…! You could have a whole week just discussing those twelve points and how to put them into practice in your organisation. I wonder if that’s why we don’t change, because we’re too busy doing things the way we do them to stop and think?

Russell Grossman was our second speaker. He is Director of Communications for The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and spoke about the journey that his Government department is on, doing more with less people. Russell spoke about the core values of Respect – Fairness – Pride – Camaraderie that have been created within BIS. He told us that doing employee engagement well costs no more than doing it badly, in fact, it is cheaper in the long run to do it well. Here are some of the salient points from his presentation:

• When designing change, publish and keep to milestones
• Communicate directly with people – you cannot over-communicate
• Openness, clear communication, flexibility and innovation are key
• BIS ‘de-layered’ from 10 layers of management to 6 in seven months
• No-one is more than three levels away from ‘someone important’ (at this point the little voice in my head asked ‘Isn’t everyone important?’)
• Leaders create energy – is it positive energy?

Next up we had the Practitioner Forum – three case studies on ‘What Works in Practice’. This was chaired by Dr Ian Dodds, CEO of Ian Dodds Consulting. The first speaker was Kirsteen Coupar, Employee Relations and Employee Engagement Manager at University of Greenwich.

Kirsteen told us that she encourages her colleagues to see people as solutions, not problems. She advised us to talk to our people individually, face-to-face, about how they feel about working for you. There needs to be cross-organisational communication, and the values and behaviours of the organisation need to be agreed in collaboration with all the stakeholders. We need to make people feel that they have influence.

Next we heard from Karen Bowes, H.R. Director of Capital One, the financial services company. I have to confess that this was my favourite presentation of the day, because Karen made me want to go and work for Capital One!

In 2009, only 25% of Capital One’s U.K. employees were engaged, so they started a ‘Let’s Make Life Better’ initiative and involved everyone!

Capital One’s core values are: Truly meeting consumer needs – Giving people what they expect from us – Lasting customer relationships – Culture of Innovation

Corporate Social Responsibility links with Employee Engagement

Employees were invited to make a video telling Capital One management how Capital One is already making life better – and they will do it again next year

99% of employees now know why the vision is important

Events run throughout the year to keep employees connected

There are leadership blogs that are accessible to all employees.

Capital One is now recognised as one of the Best Companies to Work For in the U.K. and is recommended as a financial services provider by Which? magazine.

I was even more impressed with Karen when she had to leave early to catch her childrens’ nativity – because it told me that she has her work/life balance right!

Sharon Derwent, Head of Employee Engagement at BT was then honest enough to admit that she envied Capital One’s employee engagement scores, and told us what BT are doing in this area. There is no ‘recipe’, just basic steps:

Set clear expectations – Remove barriers – Educate and inform all stakeholders – Emphasise achievement – Embed in everything you do

BT carry out a quarterly survey of all its people. People in BT care about Data – Profit – Commercial

34% of people disengaged correlates to a £2bn. salary bill each year that is being paid to people who are disengaged. That should make the accountants sit up!

• 33% of U.K. employees actively engaged
• 7/10 people don’t trust their manager
• Engaged employees generate 43% more revenue than their disengaged colleagues
• Engaged employees are 87% less likeely to leave their employer
• They take 4 days less sick leave per year
• Your people are your best marketing asset
• You wouldn’t go to the doctor and accept the medication that they gave the last patient, so don’t expect one ‘engagement tool’ to work for everyone

The final speaker before lunch was Harry Donalsdon, a Regional Secretary with the GMB Trade Union.

Harry reminded us of the 20 – 50 – 30 rule : 20% of people will be willing participants, 50% will be somewhere in the middle, and 30% will criticise. Harry advised us to focus on the 50% in the middle rather than the 30% that criticise.

We need to explanin the rationale for change – everyone wants to know ‘What’s In It For Me’

Be honest – promise problems

Over-communicate

Show your commitment

Ensure people are trained and have necessary skills

Adversarial relationships are ‘of the last century’

Employees need to participate in culture change – non-participation is a defence mechanism or ‘refuge’

Employees have to be given a real opportunity to influence decisions that affect them.

During lunch, I was impressed by the efforts of the hospitality team at Kent University to ensure that we were well looked after. I made a point of thanking two of the people who were part of the team – I wonder how many other delegates took the opportunity to do so? Too often, people who work at these events are just seen as ‘part of the furniture’ – catching them doing the right thing is part of employee engagement and those of us who are part of this movement should be setting an example!

After lunch, we were treated to an Academic Forum. I would have preferred something livelier immediately after lunch, but I’m sure others would have felt differently. I found Kent University’s Dr Mark Gilman’s presentation on how they are engaging with SME’s through offering them coaching and mentoring programmes interesting, as SME’s are probably the most difficult audience to engage with on the topic of employee engagement. Dr Kerstin Alfes of Kingston University and Professor Clare Kelleher from Cranfield School of Management also presented – I will leave it to others to comment on those presentations, valid and well-reasoned though they were.

I had been looking forward to hearing Peter Cheese speak, and I wasn’t disappointed. I came across him at a conference I went to a few years ago and was impressed with his vitality and enthusiasm. I think he is just what the CIPD needs in a Chief Executive, and I’m looking forward to seeing what he does with the Institute in the coming months and years.

Peter spoke passionately about the need for performance management, recognition, progression and career management. He is concerned about the dramatic fall in engagement among middle managers and feels that the profession needs to be deeply worried about middle managers.

Peter spoke about Dan Pink’s model of Purpose – Autonomy – Mastery and believes that we need to put people management back at the heart of what we do. We need to be authentic, purpose and values led, and there has to be consistency between word and deed. We need to move from the outmoded model of command and control to engagement and empowerment, and we need to find the ability to manage diversity.

If you want a sustainable business you have got to worry about your people

If I do not trust the leadership, why would I want to engage?

Unfortunately, I had to leave the conference before the final session (and then spent 5 hours in traffic congestion, but that’s another story!)

My impression of the day? Personally, sadness that this is still having to be talked about rather than being done, but pleased that it is officially on the agenda and that people with influence are serious about driving it forward. To conclude, in the words of Peter Cheese:

• We need to re-examine the purpose of our business
• Look again at our values
• Align leadership at all levels
• Run leadership development programmes
• Monitor engagement and support leaders and managers to be accountable
• ‘We have taught generations of managers to be intellectual about management instead of emotional’

The post Engaging Workplaces for a Sustainable Future – 17 December 2012 appeared first on Graham Frost.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending the launch event for Engage for Success, the initiative that is aimed at getting the U.K. economy growing again through employee engagement.

Leaving aside my incredulity that anyone who runs a business would think that employee engagement was an option, rather than a necessity, it was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. Of course ‘an enjoyable afternoon’ is not enough. According to People Management there were 300 H.R. leaders there, so that’s 300 people that will be going away doing something differently as a result of attending, isn’t it. Isn’t it?

David MacLeod and Nita Clarke, the driving forces behind the Engage for Success movement, kicked off the afternoon.

• ‘The Engage for Success movement is based on the energy, enthusaism and commitment of individuals’
• Everything is being done ‘pro bono’ by people who believe in the movement (including the website www.engageforsuccess.org which has been designed and is supported by Thomson Reuters)
• People are human beings, not human resources
• Engage for Success events have already taken place in many places, including Lewisham Town Hall and Harrods!
• Growth and employee well-being are people management priorities
• Employee Engagement should be part of the ‘zeitgeist’ of organisations

The first speaker was Archie Norman, former CEO of Asda Stores and now CEO of ITV. David MacLeod introduced him by saying that when Archie Norman left Asda the company was eight times more valuable than it was when he joined.

Archie told us that when he joined Asda the company was struggling against its own culture – hierarchies, privileges, cars and other benefits.

People were commodities. The company had managed to take the joy out of what people do. It was a ‘production line’ era.

Archie told the story of an early store visit during his time with Asda. He spoke to one of the cashiers on the till, and asked her how things were.

‘My teachers told me that if I didn’t persevere with my school work I would end up working on a till at Asda’ replied the wonam. ‘She was right’.

There was no sense of pride in working for the company and the business was struggling badly.

Employee Engagement is not a ‘nice thing to do’ or a ‘fashion’. It’s an essential part of running a company.

All work is voluntary – piecework is a thing of the past.

In the old Asda, bonuses created a transactional mentality.

The workplace is a community where people should find respect – hierarchy is dead.

A job title doesn’t make someone superior.

People want to believe in who they work for.

Young people come to work in search of values.

People will come on any journey if you can persuade them to join you.

Go to a supermarket and listen to the ‘crackle’ around the place. That will tell you what it’s like to work there.

Middle management never tell the truth.

Health-driven absenteeism should never be more than 2%

Our job is to give people pride

All we have is our people and our values – ‘values to die for’.

In struggling businesses, the people on the front line know they’re struggling – it’s managers that are in denial.

Everyone in the organisation deserves equal respect.

Do what you can to improve the process every day.

Why do we have job titles on badges?

If people write to the boss they should get a reply. (Archie signed 10,000 letters to Asda team members in 4 years).

You have to be big on recognition to get people on board.

You measure sales every week – do the same with morale and attitude of people and hold people accountable for it.

If you are quicker on check-out, filling shelves or cleaning the floor than someone else, you should be recognised for it.

Engagement is not an H.R. responsibility.

The best route to engagement is to shame the company into doing it.

Leadership team have to live the values.

People come to work to shine!

Archie was followed by two gentleman from Thomson Reuters who gave us a tour of the website and told us that since it was launched a few weeks ago, it has had 11,000 unique visitirs, 60,000 page views, the average time spent on the site is five minutes, and there have been 11 Engage for Success practitioner events so far. These are regional or local events where professionals can get together and discuss employee engagement-related issues. www.engageforsuccess.org

Tanith Dodge, H.R. Director of Marks and Spencer, then gave us the evidence that employee engagement works from a financial perspective.

Some of the statistics: 70% of employees do not trust their manager – in the U.K. we have 6% lower engagement than other large economies – only 30% of employees are actively engaged – this is like only having 30% of the lights working, or 30% of computers functioning – who would tolerate that?

We know more about our customers than we do about our colleagues.

70% of engaged employees have a good understanding of customer needs.

In a contact centre environment, engaged staff are able to speak to 800 more customers each per year.

More information on the evidence is available here

It is proven beyond doubt that companies with high levels of employee engagement enjoy higher sales, and lower absence.

Engaged employees take, on average, 2.7 sick days per year, where dis-engaged employees take 6.2 days – this alone costs the U.K. economy £17 billion per year.

Engaged employees perform better, harder, longer and smarter. They work more vigorously and offer innovative suggestions. Beyond any doubt.

We then had a session where all delegates were invited, on their tables, to come up with ideas to keep the Engage for Success momentum going – these all rfevolved around communication and the people in the room taking responsibility for sharing the message with a wider audience in a variety of different ways. Hence this blog post!

The next speaker was Jo Swinson – Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. I wasn’t looking forward to hearing a politician speak, but Jo was self-assured, a polished speaker, and actually had relevant experience, as she recounted het experiences of being a dis-engaged employee in a fast food restaurant, where she couldn’t wait for her shift to finish, and then an engaged employee in a retail position, where she felt part of the team and enjoyed providing her customers with great service. Jo siad that you could ‘feel’ engagement in a workplace. She asked us what type of employee we wanted. My expectations of her were totally exceeded – a politician who has lived in the real world is a rarity these days.

Finally, we were entertained by the Royal Mail choir – a workplace choir that was recently seen in a t.v. reality show. I was particularly impressed when they lost their track during one of the songs and went back to the beginning. Maybe that is what a lot of companies need to do regarding employee engagement. Start with a blank sheet of paper. Admit they have got it all wrong, and start again.

My commitment to the Engage for Success cause is to communicate the message relentlessly all that I can! What is yours?

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