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18/07/11 Engaging for Success

The Management team from Workplace Healthcare were delighted to have the opportunity of attending the first meeting of the Employee Engagement Task Force in London last Friday.

The room was filled with a great deal of energy, Employee Engagement Managers from both Public and Private sector organisation who all had one clear goal in mind, engaging the disengaged, promoting happy, healthy working and spreading best practice to enable interested companies to try some tried and tested techniques.

You may be familiar with the “Engaging for Success” report,  Nita Clarke – David Macleod, 2009,  if not read a  copy here. The reports objective was to try and gain a comprehensive understanding of a) what is ’employee engagement’  b) how to engage employees c) what could be the real benefits of high employee engagement d) how could we bring this all together to make a difference.

Post the publication of the report, the Prime Minister gave his backing in March this year to the creation of a new independent Employee Engagement Task Force, Friday being the first meeting of the group.

The Task Force work is based around the 4 Enablers for Engagement identified in the Macleod Review.

1> Strong, visible, empowering leadership provides strong strategic narrative about the organisation, where it comes from and where it’s going.

2> Engaging managers who

  • Focus their people an give them scope
  • Coach and stretch their people
  • Treat their people as individuals

3> There is employee voice throughout the organisation, for reinforcing and challenging views; between functions & externally; employees are seen as part of the solution – not the problem.

4> There is organisational integrity – the values on the wall are reflected in day to day behaviour.

Naturally it’s early days, we seemed to share similar feelings with everyone in the room, that employee engagement makes sense. Its the detail that is going to take the work. Any topic that is hard to box up or sum up in a paragraph let alone a sentence is always a topic that is a tough communique.

Working on where organisations can learn about engagement, where they can get started, how they can benefit, demonstrating the successes of engagement, engaging through economic adversity, dealing with the changing nature and approach to work, plus working on what we as individuals hope to gain and provide to the task force.

We hope to keep you updated, there are plans for an information source and the website: http://engagingforsuccess.org will hopefully flourish into a useful resource centre for engaging the disengaged and building a healthy and happy workforce.