Interview on Essential Techniques for Employee Engagement (Part 5)

Conclusion

This is the fifth in a five part series interview with Graeme Ginsberg from London. Graeme is the Managing Editor, Research and Reports for Melcrum – the international research and training company focused on internal communication. I requested the interview go get a better understanding of Melcrum’s research and their current publication: The Practitioner’s Guide, Essential Techniques for Employee Engagement.

The Practitioner’s Guide really delves into these techniques with practical processes, advice, tips, and checklists. What will the reader be able to do after reading about these techniques?

Readers will gain a thorough understanding of what the techniques are, why organizations need them and how to apply them. Each chapter is written by a leading engagement expert, who walks readers through the steps of the process, providing templates, meeting agendas, sample questions and other tools so the readers can get up and running straight away. There are also case studies to illustrate how the processes have been applied in major organizations, including McDonald’s, Rolls-Royce, Royal Mail, DRS Technologies and O2. The chapter authors are:

• Action teams – Linda Dulye, President and Founder, L.M. Dulye and Co.
• Appreciative Inquiry – Caryn Vanstone, Business Director, Ashridge Consulting
• Message Maps – David Grossman, President, dg&a
• Tony Quinlan – Principal, Narate

Are there any other statistics in your latest survey research of 1,625 professionals in HR and communications that stood out for you?

I’m certainly surprised by how many organizations aren’t measuring employee engagement. Around a quarter of organizations with engagement on the agenda use a dedicated survey and 44% use a standard opinion survey, but a quarter still aren’t measuring it at all. Those organizations with a formal program are much more likely to use a dedicated survey than those that have engagement as part of a general philosophy, but even 7% of those with a formal program don’t measure.

Also, a really important and interesting area is regional variation. We’ve recently published some very extensive research into communicating effectively with global workforces, and national culture is a very major factor when it comes to engagement. For example, if you look at those key engagement drivers mentioned earlier – senior leadership and direct supervisors – the perception of what ‘good’ leadership or management is may be very different from country to country. For example, employees in North America and Western European countries tend to like their leaders to involve them in decision-making, while those in Russia and Eastern countries expect their leaders and managers to be authoritative

Actually, it’s even more complex than this. Even sweeping terms for territories like “the West” are misleading – there can be quite major differences within any particular territory also. For example, in our employee engagement survey data, if you look at ‘large’ organizations (i.e. more than 10,000 employees), 17% of respondents from large organizations in North America (US and Canada) said their organization doesn’t have employee engagement on the agenda, compared with 3% from UK large organizations. And, when it comes to techniques being used by large organizations, employee action teams are significantly more prevalent in North American organizations compared with those in the UK, while storytelling is significantly more prevalent in UK organizations compared with those in the US.

So, global organizations have to be very careful when they’re looking at engaging employees in different countries and not just take a ‘one size fits all’ approach. They can’t just adopt engagement strategies or techniques and apply them in the same way across all their different offices.

Graeme, as we conclude, is there anything else you’d like to add?We’ve produced a summary of key findings from the employee engagement survey – please let your readers know they can download it free of charge at: http://www.melcrum.com/offer/etee/surveysummary.pdf This summary also includes further details about the Guide. Thank you for your time and input. I believe that Essential Techniques for Employee Engagement will be a very valuable contribution to any organization’s employee engagement efforts.Many thanks, David, great to talk with you.