Wins possible in tough times

Fiona Smith and Narelle Hooper

Organisations around the world are reporting a decline in employee engagement.

We’ve known for years what it takes to build a great workplace that also delivers financially. So how come what seems so simple is also so difficult?

It’s the very human, very predictable gap between knowing and doing.

Well-treated people who have meaningful work are more likely to be engaged in what they do.

And that engagement is the difference between going through the motions at work – just doing what you are told – and putting in the kind of discretionary effort that generates great ideas.

You would think that the promise of greater productivity and profit would drive employers to find inventive ways to increase employee engagement, but things are getting worse, not better.

For the first time in 10 years more organisations around the world reported a decline, rather than an increase, in engagement, according to human resources consultancy Aon Hewitt.

While this may be expected during the privations of the global financial crisis, some stellar companies are bucking the trend.

Aon Hewitt has analysed the 200 organisations across all sectors in its data base (totalling 200,000 employees) and discovered that 31 per cent in Australia and New Zealand have improved engagement during this time.

The payoff is through the correlation with profitability. Organisations judged by Aon Hewitt as best employers (with an engagement score of 65 per cent or more) on average have a profit growth almost four times that of other organisations.

The consultancy then took a look at those employers to find out what they were doing to keep ahead of the rest.

There are three basic elements in Aon Hewitt’s report, Your Pathway to Improving Employee Engagement, released exclusively to The Australian Financial Review.

Link – they embed engagement into their business practices, such as tying it to remuneration.

Spread responsibility – they give equal responsibility and accountability for change to senior leaders, managers and human resources departments. Eight out of 10 of the top performers reported their senior executive team was committed to improving engagement, compared with 66 per cent of other organisations.

Focus on the basics – there is no substitute for frequent, quality conversations between a team member and their manager. They avoid an over reliance on HR systems, processes and frameworks as the sole method for improving engagement.

Engagement practice lead for Aon Hewitt, Stephen Hickey, says it is not inevitable that engagement levels will fall during a recession.

Getting people to talk to each other is one step (focusing on the basics), but people often default from tricky face-to-face conversations to relying on performance management process, the rewards system or the career development framework.

“With engagement you are dealing with human beings, with the human mind set,” Hickey says.

Fewer than half (47 per cent) of employees say their manager helps them achieve their best.

Under Aon Hewitt’s measure, 55 per cent of Australian workers are engaged in their work and 23 per cent are “nearly” engaged. But 17 per cent are not engaged and about 4 per cent are disengaged – and employers would be better off paying them to not come to work.

The Australian Financial Review