It’s a tough proposition for company’s to engage with their employees. Non HR experts might argue otherwise… I can just hear them now: “If you want to engage with staff, why not offer them flexible working, or ooh wait, subsidized gym memberships? Or the coup de grâce … performance bonuses…a no brainer really!”
HR professionals, however, will quickly tell you that the soft fluffy stuff, although it looks and sounds great, is not likely to keep employees engaged for very long. Think tassels at the end of a very long tablecloth. A quirky initiative is no silver bullet and all that.
Speaking at the Employee Engagement Summit in the City earlier this week, Jane Sullivan, senior consultant at the Work Foundation warned HR delegates against taking a quick fix approach to employee engagement. “There is no quick fix, its more a holistic and fundamental approach,” she said, adding that there is no one size fits all model, but rather a model that works for each individual.
Mike Conder, UK HR director at financial services firm, KPMG, bigged up the value of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a tool to engage with employees. "Its an added opportunity to communicate with employees, and to demonstrate your care attitude.
"CSR is something most employees really care about: 'It impacts me personally, my family, and its something I can get my head around'".
Conder said that if used in the right way, CSR can change the perception of an organisation, while good management will also change employee perception giving them the opportunity to participate in something meaningful. "Logically it makes sense, and statistically, it's absolutely true," said Conder.
I am forever encouraged by the enthusiasm, passion and knowledge within the HR community, and I am not trying to build up my contacts list. (Today is my last day in the office, as I move back to a warmer climate - whoever said you can have too much sun is living in denial)
Sometimes I think that those outside the industry must think that HR is all pay and fluff, with no metrics and not worthy of a budget. In that case, I can see why HR professionals leave the office everyday with red and swollen hands from all the drum beating. If HR was a television series, I would guess an apt title might be Recognition Recognition Recogniton.
Anyway, I hope to get out of the office early, before they realise how often I have engaged with my favourite sports websites during working time, not quite on the same level as my council employee friend in Japan who used his work PC to access porn websites more than 780,000 in nine months...Google it.
