What is engagement? Strategic HR
Wiltshire Council’s EPIC engagement strategy
employee suggestion scheme. Other
activity includes introducing the
requirement that all managers complete
an engagement module as part of their
training, and HR, #EPIC and comms
forming an internal comms taskforce.
The results are evidenced in Wiltshire
Council’s engagement index score rising
from 58 in November 2016 to 83 in
February 2018. “Then we can look at
other things too; so for example we can
see month-on-month use of EPIC
impressions badges is growing. So that
indicates staff are engaging with it,” Kent
says. “That’s been going on for 2.5 years
and there’s been more than 12,000
impressions so it’s really caught on.”
He adds: “With a large disparate
workforce someone could be engaged
with the service but not with the
organisation as a whole. Which is why
putting the employer brand at the
centre of engagement work is important
to us.”
other way around you lose people
very quickly,” she says.
Indeed Matthew Taylor, chief
executive of the Royal Society for
the Encouragement of Arts,
Manufactures and Commerce
(RSA), called for a renewed focus
on engagement in his review into
modern working practices. “Part
of it is that having a tight labour
market has allowed us to think
more concertedly about the
quality of work,” he explains.
“Part of it is there’s this
productivity issue… and finally
there’s a disjunction between what
we say about citizens in civil
society – that they should be
listened to and have control – but
somehow that idea of
empowerment, respect and voice
isn’t carried into the workplace.”
So reaching an agreed
definition, or at least HR
practitioners being sure of what
‘engagement’ means to them and
their organisations, is only getting
potentially more important. The
problem is that final indisputable
was setting up a volunteer group
dedicated to employee engagement
called Team #EPIC, whose role is to
deliver engagement initiatives. “This
group is by staff for staff so they feel
empowered by it,” says Kent.
Team #EPIC then divided into smaller
teams to work on specifi c initiatives. Kent
points to the peer-to-peer employee
recognition scheme EPIC impressions as
one of the biggest successes – an idea
born out of employee feedback and
which allows staff to send bespoke
digital ‘badges’ to each other.
“Not only does the person receive a
badge and know they’ve done good
work but their manager fi nds out as well,
when managers otherwise may not
have known,” he says. The badges stay
permanently on the employee’s HR
record, meaning they can be used
in appraisals too.
Another concept to come out of the
engagement group is EPIC ideas, an
getting more demanding… the
younger generation having
growing expectations… we’ve
got to do something outstanding
now.”
“Budgets continue to be
squeezed all the time and in
uncertain times people are
realising engagement can be the
glue holding it all together,” agrees
Helen Mitchell, head of internal
communications and engagement
at Alzheimer’s Society.
HRD of Kerry Foods Emma
Rose says she has seen
engagement mean the difference
between a company’s survival or
demise, citing her time as HRD of
commercial at Cadbury during
the UK firm’s takeover by US
conglomerate Kraft.
“Like in the integration of
Cadbury and Kraft where
people’s confidence and trust in
the total organisation is affected,
if their experience of coming to
work day to day is good you can
retain people long enough to
rebuild their trust – if it’s the
“Working in the public sector we’ve
faced fi nancial challenges that all local
government has gone through. And
because we don’t want to compromise
on our service to the community, we
have to go through many redesigns that
can make engagement diffi cult as well,”
explains James Kent, strategic delivery
offi cer at Wiltshire Council.
Which is why, after feedback
from a staff survey in 2016, the HR
and OD team decided to focus on
employee engagement.
Kent admits spending “a long time
working out at the beginning” what
exactly engagement meant to the
council. It settled on creating a strategy
around the four enablers defi ned by
Engage for Success, and set up
channels for employees to share their
ideas for improvements in those areas.
The fi rst step was to focus on
employee voice. As well as redesigning
the staff engagement forums, key to this
“If you take job satisfaction as a
close proxy – which I think it is
for many practitioners – the
evidence linking job satisfaction
and performance shows at best
quite weak links,” he says. “If you
work in HR and are concerned
with performance, imagine a list
of things that might affect
performance and I’d put
satisfaction and engagement very
low on that list.”
Of critical importance
For many, however, the concept is
only getting more critical in
today’s working climate. Engage
for Success’ MacLeod points
to corporate governance
scandals, sexual harassment
and, crucially, Brexit.
“When things go wrong people
look at culture not just processes
and so on – we’re now about to
leave the world’s biggest market
so we’re going to need engaged
employees. The level of speed
and change in the market and
new competition, customers
In uncertain
times people
are realising
engagement
can be the
glue holding it
all together
hrmagazine.co.uk June 2019 HR 23
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