Fishburn Hedges

31.03.2011

Paul Sweetman from Fishburn Hedges on Vimeo.

Momentous news this week: David Cameron has launched a new employee engagement Task Force to help improve business performance across the country. The Task Force, which comprises leading figures from both public and private sectors, will continue work started by David MacLeod and Nita Clarke, who published their report to government - Engaging for Success - in July 2009. Announcing the Taskforce, the Prime Minister said “it will work to bring together two of my government's top priorities - delivering sustainable growth across the UK, and coming up with new approaches to help people improve their wellbeing”. His support is a sign that, despite a change of administration, employee engagement continues to gain credence as a major tool for improving performance and productivity.

The story so far…

I have to declare an interest here. An FH team helped with a previous stage of work on this topic for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). That project (on which we worked closely with David MacLeod and Nita Clarke) helped raise awareness of employee engagement and its benefits among employers (particularly SMEs) and developed a range of practical guidance and case studies. The outputs from this work are currently housed on www.businesslink.gov.uk/employeeengagement. I am also going to be part of the pool of industry advisers that will support the new Task Force.

The opportunity ahead

I’m excited about what this next stage of work can achieve, both for individual employers and for the country as a whole. The Task Force will focus on lifting employee engagement ‘off the page’ by helping organisations learn from each other, share good practice and discuss how to address barriers to effective engagement. I know that there is a real thirst from employers to interact on the topic, so I hope the Task Force will establish a real ‘community’ of organisations, benefitting participants and improving performance and productivity across the country as a whole.

It’s too early to say what the work of the Task Force will entail – it will not formally meet until April – but ideas to date include mentoring programmes, site visits to exemplar organisations, webinars and digital interaction. These are all mechanisms through which organisations can share their ideas and insights with one another. The programme, whatever form it takes, should be supported by efforts to continue promoting the topic across the country; as David MacLeod frequently says, we should never assume that CEOs really “get” the topic, nor that they understand how to make engagement part of ‘business as usual’. There is a real opportunity to build upon recent progress to reach, inspire and challenge senior managers in organisations of all types and sizes. 

Looking to the future

The news this week is very promising, but I have one concern. I think the emphasis on interaction and the exchange of good practice is entirely right, but the Task Force does need to make sure there is a sustainable legacy from its work. Mechanisms that facilitate debate are very useful for those who participate, but this work needs to have a wider impact if we are to harness the full potential of employee engagement to improve business performance. The Task Force must therefore make sure it identifies and crystallises compelling content, insights and ideas from which others can benefit, and then shares these with businesses across the country (through multiple channels and platforms). If it does this, the Task Force will really help establish employee engagement as a core requirement of business success.

Posted by Paul Sweetman