Category Archives: General

Employee Engagement and the value of HR

Posted on by Mark Allison

Using employee engagement surveys to raise the HR profile

Back in May of last year one of my blogs referred to an influential report which suggested that “…the fate of HR departments in the year ahead may hinge more on proving their value than maximising their contribution.”

Nearly twelve months down the line Neil Roden of PwC, one of the profession’s most senior figures, has resurrected the issue claiming that “…The quality of HR senior leadership is declining” and the profession is losing influence.  The reason, he says, is that “Not a lot of HR people do much on metrics and analytics, despite the fact that we all know that’s how most chief executives and chief finance officers think”.

And nowhere is that truer than in my area of expertise – employee engagement surveys. All too often the HR mindset seems to preclude a systematic approach to linking employee attitudes and behaviours with people performance metrics and key business outcomes; in some instances it seems to recoil at the very prospect. But when it does happen the results can be truly transformational: the survey becomes a vital business tool and HR quickly assumes a new and compelling relevance at the heart of the business.

Of course many companies have long understood the importance of metrics and analytics. Neil Roden quotes General Electric and in recent blogs I’ve referred to Marks and Spencer and Mitchells and Butler. Not surprisingly they all tend to be leaders in their fields.

This blog draws particularly from the following article in our Resource Centre:
“Quality of HR senior leadership is declining”, says Neil Roden – Rob MacLachlan, People Management

Employee Engagement and retention

Posted on by Mark Allison

Can Employee Engagement Survey Data be Used to Manage Staff Turnover?

We can’t be sure when but we can be sure that at some point in the not too distant future the British economy will start to emerge from its long hibernation. When it does it will be interesting to see what impact growth and renewed confidence have on the employment market.

It has been said many times that companies that have handled re-organisation and redundancies with sensitivity and focused on engaging their people are likely to retain  their key players. Those that have used the spectre of redundancy to justify ever increasing demands while giving less in return are likely to haemorrhage talent.

This raises the perennial question: how can companies, regardless of their people policies, best understand and manage staff turnover. In most cases the answer is either the exit interview or the leavers’ survey. Both have their value but both have limitations. It’s often said that some employees will be less than truthful in an exit interview, and to a lesser degree that’s also an issue with leavers’ surveys. On top of that, while both approaches might help us to understand why people leave they seldom tell us anything about the journey that led to that decision.

However, recent research suggests that there is an alternative to exit interviews and leavers’ surveys; one which does enable us to track that journey, profile leavers and predict staff turnover. At its heart is a detailed analysis of employee engagement survey data which enables us to a) identify the point at which the attitudes and behaviours of leavers begin to diverge from those of their colleagues and b) develop profiles for specific categories of leaver.

These insights do not necessarily help companies to deal with the immediate triggers behind the decision to leave but they do help them pinpoint the policies, practices and behaviours which lead to disaffection over time.

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For further reading download our latest research paper:
“Using Survey Data to Predict Staff Turnover”

Using Survey Data to predict Staff Turnover

 

Sourcing an Employee Engagement survey provider

Posted on by Mark Allison

Why Invitations To Tender don’t make sense for engagement surveys

There’s been something wrong with me for a few months now. It’s not serious at the moment but it’s not improving and I thought I’d better see a doctor. So I got a list of twenty practices in my area and emailed them a few questions asking how big their practice was, how long they’d been qualified, what kind of medicines they prescribed what therapies they could offer, and what public liability cover they had. Based on that information I figured I’d know exactly who to go to.

A ludicrous idea you might think, and as you’ve probably guessed it never really happened. But it’s exactly what some HR Directors do when they’re thinking of conducting an employee engagement survey and sourcing a supplier. Rather than inviting a consultant to meet the patient, discuss symptoms, examine case history and then discuss possible solutions they send out an invitation to tender, set up a beauty parade and compare the medicines and therapies on offer.

They’re missing a hugely important trick. The questions a good consultant asks, their ability to get to the heart of the client’s challenges, and their ability to relate those challenges to broad business issues will tell them far more about the consultant’s expertise, experience and potential fit than any beauty parade.

Why do they miss this trick? No doubt they’d point to a number of reasons for the invitation to tender: compliance, transparency, competition, due process, due diligence etc. But I’d suggest the real reason is they haven’t fully grasped the idea of engagement and how it drives business performance. If they had their first step would surely be to share their key business challenges with the consultant and explore how their approach to engagement could help overcome them. Much more sensible I’d say that viewing their vital statistics at the beauty parade.

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