In tough times, don’t forget your secret weapon
May, 18 – BY TAM SANDEMAN – I got a Facebook message last night from an old friend (actually my first London boss) who I was delighted to hear from. Firstly, for the obvious reason – it’s nice when people get in touch – but more so because she’d read my blog (someone other than my mother emailing me about my blog is a rarity).
She’d been living and working in Spain for years until recently. She said with the recession there, her observation was that some large companies have just stopped bothering with employee engagement. A side effect of filling the work force with short terms contractors (less overhead risk) meant management perceived their need for communication to be less and subsequently their desire to invest in engagement went down. They stopped engaging people in the bigger picture.
As someone who is about to return to the UK (impeccable timing) to continue working in this field, I have to say I was slightly disheartened. Mainly because I think it reveals the knowledge still lacking in many organisations – that continuing to engage employees through the tough times, as well as the good can actually drive greater shareholder return. This is not the fluffy stuff. Getting it right can mean the difference between an organisation emerging stronger from the recession or a casualty of tough economic times. Engagement drives productivity and discretionary effort. Fact. Surely this in itself is enough for leaders to consider the advantages of continuing to communicate effectively through a down turn.
My advice to the C suite (and I say this to those in Europe as well as Australia) is yes absolutely, look at spend and be prudent, however don’t ‘cut-back’ on internal communication. It should be front and centre of your organisation during tough times. Your most powerful communication tool lies within your business – your frontline managers. Galvanise this army; equip them with the right skills, accountability and a powerful story, and you’re half way there. Enable them to have powerful conversations. Remember this should not be one way, the best employee communication is top-down, bottom-up AND horizontal, with a focus on informal influencers. Know who those go-to people are and leverage them.
As for my friend… after many years working in large and small organisations, she’s now busy avoiding mountain goats on a pair of skis in the French Alps.
As for me? Watch out UK. I come armed with a big and persuasive mission to fly the employee communication flag wherever I land (sans skis)…
A brighter future for homeless men – The Michael Project, Mission Australia
May , 1 – BY SKYE LEWIS – The Michael Project is an inspiring new program designed by Mission Australia to provide support to homeless men, taking them out of the confines of isolation which are rife in the world of homelessness.
The final report for the project was launched on 17 April 2012, with attendees taken through the results of the research by Professor Paul Flatau, Chair in Social Investment and Impact and Director of the Centre for Social Impact at the University of Western Australia. They were also treated with special guest presenter Dr Dennis Culhane, Chair of Social Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Michael Project was created with homeless men in the centre, using a range of services to ensure their quality of life was improved across as many areas as possible over the course of the 12 month program. The key was building on existing services to extend the range of support.
Mission Australia was able to demonstrate that the program could effectively save Australian taxpayers as much as $3,061 per participant.
The following three points were the focus of the project, and the reasons for its success:
- Providing temporary accommodation – leading to more long-term housing
- Providing specialist support service access – this helped to increase many of the men’s ability to earn an income and be more involved at a social level
- Providing one-to-one support from a case worker, assigned at the beginning of the project
Ogilvy Impact partnered with Mission Australia to produce a short video, bringing to life a developed infographic, for the launch of the project and to visually summarise the 69-page report. The video has been embedded into the Mission Australia page and has resulted in over 500 views, an excellent result in terms of awareness of the project and the work that Mission Australia does.
http://www.missionaustralia.com.au/research-and-social-policy/3153-the-michael-project
The chicken or the egg – can you have employee engagement without work life balance?
April, 10 – BY KATE PIRRIE – Why organisations should care about work life balance.
Two weeks ago, at around 7pm on a Friday evening, some of my colleagues and I were left sitting at our desks, hurriedly trying to wrap up our work and get on with our weekends, when we found ourselves in the midst of a rather robust debate about work life balance. I have to be honest and admit that the irony of the situation was indeed lost on us all at the time. But it was not only the irony of the situation that was left unspoken, but the impact of the topic we were debating on our area of expertise, employee engagement.
We were debating whether organisations should care about employee’s work life balance. If an employee enjoys their job, is highly engaged and fairly rewarded, you can pretty safely assume they’ll go the extra 10% for you and be highly productive. So why should you care if they don’t have a work life balance?
Without going into how to achieve a work life balance (stay tuned for next entry), here’s some reasons why you should care about the work life balance of your employees:
- There is more pressure on the average employee today than ever before
- Most of us respond to increased pressure to perform by putting in longer hours, which eventually takes a toll on physical and mental wellbeing
- This then leads to a decrease in engagement and productivity, and organisations pay the price of having overworked employees through an increase in operating and productivity costs, the costs of absenteeism, lack of commitment, recruitment and retention costs and possibly even medical costs
- By having increased energy levels, it is possible to get more done in less time, consistently and sustainably as well as improving relationships with clients and customers
- Rather than trying to squeeze more out of employees, if organisations invest in providing their employees with measures to help them achieve work life balance, they will not only get the most out of employees both physically and mentally, but they will also be more motivated and loyal
- A study by Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy as reported in Harvard Business Review in 2007 found that employees participating in an energy renewal program outperformed a control group of employees by 13% in the first quarter of 2006 and continued to significantly outperform the control group for a full year after completing the program
- Last but not least, an article by Peter Martin published in the Sydney Morning Herald reported that statistics show that those who play sport the most work between 40 and 50 hours per week, and that 88% of Australians working 41 to 48 hours play sport in their spare time, compared to 79% of those working 16 to 24 hours, indicating those with a work life balance work harder
So, it seems the more organisations can invest in their employees and provide the infrastructure and encouragement for employees to find their balance, the more likely they are to sustain high levels of engagement and productivity.
Would you hire Goldman Sachs’ Greg Smith?
March, 16 – BY MEGAN CAULFIELD – Greg Smith’s ‘Why I’m leaving Goldman Sachs’ letter published in the New York Times has sparked debate about the company’s values and culture and thrown the organisation into serious damage control, not least around the way it will now deal with its internal communication.
Goldman has issued a memo to employees disputing the ex-executive’s claims of money taking precedence over clients, or “muppets” as Smith claims some MDs refer to them. They outline the workplace satisfaction levels with 89 per cent of employees believing the firm provides exceptional service to them. And Goldman recognises they face challenges but reinforce they have a culture which encourages openness and transparency.
It’s a well-crafted response as you’d expect. But in all of this hoo-ha, what struck me when reading Greg Smith’s words was his passion and conviction.
Smith’s version of events – his belief in a culture which had revolved previously around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, or his sense of pride in the service he delivered to clients – demonstrate the qualities which organisations strive to attain. Organisations want to drive employee engagement and desire employees who espouse company values, who care about the work they do and are willing to support and lead those around them.
Much of the commentary over the coming days will focus on a disgruntled Smith having an axe to grind. And for organisations, it will reinforce the importance of a good crisis management plan in an age where public and private boundaries have blurred.
But the question that I’m left with is who would employ Smith after this?
On the one hand he will be seen as someone who can’t be trusted. But he’s also demonstrated a vision for a different world where values and the clients sit at the heart of the organisation.
In the end, it all comes down to where your values lie.
Being on speed really can be the answer
March, 9 – BY TAM SANDEMAN – This week a trusty colleague and I, stopped building our ark to escape Sydney’s fine weather, in favour of attending the annual MNC HR Team Briefing – an annual gathering of HR professionals from multi-national organisations. The session was great for a number of reasons, not least for two specific reasons for me. Firstly, I heard some new thought-provoking stuff – always good on a rainy day, and secondly, I finally won one of those business card prize draws (which I’ve always thought were rigged – I take it all back).
We heard speakers telling tales of the importance of culture when it comes to getting business results from the card people (Hallmark) and the biscuit and snacks people (Campbell Arnotts). But it was the final speaker, Dr Adam Fraser, who ran a fantastic and insightful session about how high performing organisations can lift performance even higher by getting their people out of what he called ‘grind’ and into a state called ‘flow’ where we perform our best, similar to ‘being in the zone’ for an elite athlete (not unlike myself – ahem). Clearly an important topic for anyone who works in employee engagement, internal communication or HR.
Now, logic tells those of us of sound mind that ‘being in the zone’ obviously sounds like the right place to be to perform at work. But, the most interesting insight for me was around the pace we work at. I know I’m not the only one who has said my biggest challenge is time, and the speed at which I’m expected to deliver, which seems to get faster and faster. My instinct here is to try to reduce my workload. Dr Adam’s comments reinforced my thinking, stating that specialists say the solution is to ‘do less’.
However, his research has proven some of the best, happiest people are those who are living at pace. People who are working at speed. That speed is OK. It’s just about being in the right frame of mind while you’re going at that pace. It struck me that those of us looking at internal engagement initiatives in organisations must work to help people get into the state of ‘flow’, which, as he put, is where we are truly and authentically happy. I loved his idea of looking deeper than the sheer volume of tasks we have on our agenda, and then started to draw parallels from our good internal communication practice.
Some of his points when questioning ourselves were:
- Do we have clarity of purpose? – this is akin to having a vision – a common goal – something everyone can pull behind.
- How about our environment? Can we control this to minimise distractions? similar to decluttering communication in an organisation.
- Are we present? – This is about active listening – really focusing on what’s in hand. In the internal comms world, this is about two way communication – it’s got to be a conversation, not just one way
- Are you positive when you ‘show up’? – being positive has such a good ripple effect on everyone. Dr Adam said, positive emotion encourages different parts of the brain to wake up and so leads to more positivity, more creativity and a culture of innovation – all these can only be good for business
His final point was again something we all know – just how important this behaviour is for leaders. For people to perform at their best, it’s leaders who can make this happen. Our suggestion is that internal communicators / anyone working in employee engagement start looking at these areas as if we get people in this state – this will make the true difference between being good, being great or being a company who is talked about.
