Four in ten employers have no engagement strategy

Michelle Stevens - People Management

21st February 2012

But engaging staff critical to any business, says Sky's people director.

Two-fifths of employers have not devised a formal strategy to engage and motivate their staff, new research has revealed.

A quarter of employees (26 per cent) also rated the majority of their peers as 'not engaged', according to a study by recruiter Adecco, which was unveiled at the Unlocking Britain's Potential conference this morning.

But those organisations are missing out, because engaging staff is "critical to any business", said Sky's people director Deborah Baker, who was speaking on an employer panel at the event.

She explained that it was "no different" for organisations in the private and public sector, as fostering high levels of engagement was "just pure common sense".

"Surely to have an engaged employee means that they are interested in what they are doing, and engaged in both their job and in the objectives of the company," she said. "It just stands to reason that you are going to end up with a better company and a great place to work."

Baker was joined on the platform by Rupert McNeil, Aviva UK's HR director, who told delegates that engagement strategies need not necessarily be expensive, and described role modelling by executives as a one such "secret weapon".

"Getting senior leaders out meeting small groups of employees and gaining visibility... other managers start to replicate those behaviours," he said, adding that firms with highly engaged staff were much more likely to be successful and weather tough economic times.

Adecco's research also discovered that 44 per cent of workers were more attracted to companies that had a diverse workforce.

"If organisations don't talk diversity, then they risk not getting engagement in the workplace," warned fellow panellist, Professor Binna Kandola.

He added that it was possible for the "notion of fairness" to be underestimated when it came to staff engagement.

Stephanie Bird, the CIPD's director of HR capability, agreed that the fairness concept was important when it came to a possible link between executive pay and engagement.

She told the audience that employee perceptions could be influenced by whether high performance was visible enough to justify reward, and highlighted the John Lewis model as an example of where bonuses were awarded as an equal percentage of salary to all staff, and not "top ended".