When HR speaks of engagement
experience – there’ll be a point where it goes up and
to the business, “a lot of managers
think ‘oh god, another HR fad’,”
she says. “So when I speak to
managers about employee
engagement I cut out the word
‘engagement’ and change it to
communication and involvement.
“I like to cut out all the smoke
and mirrors and drill down into
what it really is… That’s how
I personally sell it to the
business and often see a lot of
nods when I say those words –
people understand what I’m
talking about.”
The term can have ‘us and
them’ connotations for employees
themselves, feels Armstrong. “The
words ‘employee engagement’ are
unhelpful as they suggest a
separation between leaders or HR
and the rest of the organisation…
Even if we took ‘employee’ out of
it and just talked about collective
engagement it would be better.”
And constantly using the
phrase with employees can be one
dangerous factor in creating overengagement.
More HR
professionals need to be mindful
of how over-engagement is just as
damaging as under-engagement,
warns Cable. “It can be dangerous
to bring your heart to work and
align your identity with the firm if
they’re going to then fire you,”
he says.
He points to the need for a
post-modern humanistic
approach: “Instead of putting the
corporation first it should start
with the human. Where
engagement is seen as the best
course it’s because it’s through a
corporate management lens. But
is it fair for people to put their
whole selves into a firm that
doesn’t think about them first?”
An evolving thing
HR practitioners and thinkers
could also do with fixating a bit
less on the word ‘engagement’
among themselves, according to
some. Too much attention on
getting one collectively-approved
engagement fad: What next?
“And I predict this is happening with employee
employee engagement goes down.”
Jo Moffatt, strategy director at Engage for Success
and MD of Woodreed, agrees that employee
experience could be the new kid on the block. “There’s
a real risk of what we’re going to call it next when really
there’s nothing new under the Sun,” she says. “We’re
simply trying to come up with the next term to put
appropriate tags on articles so they rise up the Google
search.”
Which, in Briner’s eyes, takes us back to the same
problem engagement faces: “Employee experience is a
new fad cycle; people want something new and they’ve
tried the engagement thing and haven’t found it useful.”
So the answer to ‘what next for employee
engagement?’ Employee experience. But this will
need to be treated with equal care and caution.
realised this. “The leader said ‘if
you have to measure engagement
then you probably don’t have it’. I
think he was joking but my
response was ‘that’s more honest
than you know as when you
measure something sometimes
you kill it’,” he says.
Another language
And it’s not just the engagement
survey that runs the risk of HR
alienating employees, managers
and leaders alike from the concept
– or even disengaging them. HR’s
whole approach to the discipline
has had this effect in some
quarters over the years.
“Sometimes there’s an
overemphasis on the word
engagement and that’s when
people start to get a bit exhausted
by it,” feels Mitchell. “We don’t
want employees to get fatigued
by constant messages and
questions so there should be a
timetable for engagement
activity,” adds Steel.
Language is important. While
HR’s understanding and use of
the concept may well be sound,
the term ‘employee engagement’
might not be the most userfriendly
externally with the rest of
the business, points out Steel.
What is engagement? Strategic HR
and universally-applicable
definition right is unhelpful, feels
Moffatt. “In my view we spend too
much time debating the
terminology. If we put as much
effort into doing the right things
in organisations as we do debating
it to the nth degree and ending up
in arguments on LinkedIn about
whether it’s experience or
engagement, we’d be further
forward,” she says.
After all the ways and means of
successfully engaging employees
will vary dramatically across
organisations, points out
Robinson. “It’s a tricky one as
there’s lots of different things
organisations can do that might
increase or decrease engagement
levels and there isn’t one magic
bullet. So if you’ve ever got
companies saying ‘this is the
answer’ you need to be very
suspicious,” she says. “There’s a lot
of noise in the system.”
“There’s no right or wrong
answer as what works for one
industry and business might not
work for another,” adds Bell.
The same is true of the
engagement survey, feels Moffatt.
“As long as you choose a
framework that works for your
business then you can measure
and monitor and benchmark,” she
says, citing crime clear-up as a key
metric for the Metropolitan Police
and the NHS’ Friends and Family
Test (the feedback tool for people
using NHS services) as examples.
Most important, says Rose, is to
stay mindful of all the various
ways of defining and measuring
engagement. And to realise this
will be ever-changing for any
organisation – and as such require
tireless attention and hard work.
“Engagement is really fragile,”
she says. “You can never get it
totally right so you have to work
on it all the time.”
Steel agrees: “The job is never
finished – I don’t think with
employee engagement you get
to an engaged state. It’s an
evolving thing.” HR
When HR
speaks of
engagement
to the
business, a lot
of managers
think ‘oh
god, another
HR fad’
hrmagazine.co.uk June 2019 HR 25
/hrmagazine.co.uk