Employee engagement
The success of any business is determined, mainly, by how its workforce performs. Therefore, an employee engagement strategy, that positively encourages the workforce to perform at its best, needs to be a prime consideration for every leader and manager. It has been proven that employee engagement is an exciting and dynamic business tool that can realize huge commercial benefits for any organisation.
With the full understanding that people drive business, and levels of engagement matter because evidence show that employee engagement correlates with improving performance, 2007 saw Berni, alongside Veronica Butler, founding The Olive Awards – an Employee Satisfaction Survey for the wellness industry. The data gleaned from The Olive Awards allows organisations to address their identified issues.
Employee engagement
The Government aims to use employee engagement strategies to positively impact upon UK competitiveness and performance, in order to meet head on the current challenge of increased global competition. Extensive research was carried out for the recent Government White Paper: Engaging for Success, which informs much of this update. The Prime Minister has given his full backing to the Employee Engagement Task Force, which was launched in March 2011, with the aim of sharing and promoting good employee engagement practices across both the public and the private sectors. The taskforce will be collaborating with leading academics, think tanks and practitioners. It will report back next year on the strategies it recommends organisations should adopt to promote best practice and learning. The Olive Awards will be tracking the progress of the Employee Engagement Task Force, and bringing to you any new concepts and recommendations that are presented.
Employee engagement remains a dynamic and increasingly business critical aspect of any organisation that wants to be competitive in today’s market. What may once have been regarded as a nice to have extra is now an indisputable business enabler. It is relevant to all sectors of industry because employees are the resource that makes the difference in an increasingly competitive global workplace. The way people are led and managed and their resulting level of engagement has a real impact on business performance.
There are two key questions that employers need to ask themselves about employee engagement, if they wish to remain competitive:
- Am I valuing my employees?
- Can I afford for my business to be disengaged, on any level, particularly in the current economic climate?
The Government White Paper: Engaging for Success, reinforced that a business that values its employees will have employees that value the business. It confirmed that when employees are fully engaged and understand the business mission and objectives they would be in a position to provide true organisational and customer advocacy. Engaged employees are the ultimate ambassadors for their employers when interacting with both suppliers and customers.
Effective leadership remains the critical element of employee engagement. There is a definitive difference between leading and managing, and employees need both, but often lack true leadership. Many employers concentrate their efforts on management issues rather than the important tenants of leadership. Management issues are often urgent, needing prompt attention, and involve the day-to-day aspects of how any organisation functions. Leaders in organisations need to be focused on strategic goals, planning and communicating clear direction and purpose.
The bottom line remains the same: Government commissioned research proves that maintaining high levels of engagement matters because employee engagement directly correlates with performance. Even more significantly, increased levels of engagement directly correlate with increased levels of business performance. Furthermore, Gallup has also shown that higher levels of engagement are strongly related to increased levels of business innovation and commercial performance. How engaged an employee feels will directly impact on their motivation, effort and ability to be innovative.
No two-department heads will be the same and will face different challenges and therefore HR professionals identified a need in the modern business world for:
- Bespoke consultancy for Employee Engagement
- More bespoke styles of training are required for organizations to become employers of choice
- A requirement for tailor made training for potential future business leaders to their individual needs
- The need for a more practical approach to training and development ensuring development was embedded directly in the business.
- Flexible and modular training
- E learning and on line training
The team at Hawkins Muiderman provides bespoke solutions through consultancy and training for employee engagement. The following topics are available:
Attraction strategies
- Recruiting, selecting and inducting new staff in the workplace
- Managing the employment relationship
Contracts and people policies
- Employee handbooks
- Equality and diversity
- Psychological contract / motivation
- Achieving objectives through time management
- Motivating to perform in the workplace
- Developing yourself and others
- Interpersonal style and integrity
- Managing conflict in the workplace
- Managing stress in the workplace
- Understanding organisations in their context
- Understanding culture and ethics in organisations
Management and leadership
- Obtaining information for effective management
- Managing
- Giving briefings and making presentations in the workplace
- Introduction to leadership
- Building the team
- Organising and delegating
- Effective meetings for managers
- Leading a team effectively
Learning and development
- Coaching and training your work team
Change management
- Understanding and planning change in the workplace
- Change management
Case studies
Olive Awards
Ann Nevin joined The Olive Awards, an innovative scheme that recognises the best employers within the field of Wellness, Fitness and Spa, as a co-Director in 2010. She was sought out by the co-founders, Berni Hawkins and Veronica Butler, for her expertise in leadership, management and HR. She has specific responsibilities for employee engagement research, structuring the employee engagement management reports and providing a bespoke consultancy service. She has recently written and published the latest Olive Awards Employee Engagement Research Report and has redesigned the structure of the employee engagement survey in alignment with the latest research and theories. She is currently designing the new employee engagement management reports that entrants to The Olive Awards receive.
Pampered Chef - Direct Selling
Ann annually designs and delivers specialist training sessions to directors and consultants from The Pampered Chef UK – Limited, a premier direct seller of essential kitchen tools, which originates from the USA. She delivers training on building personal and team confidence, removing self-limiting beliefs and refining effective personal communication skills. Her dynamic and innovative approach has resulted in the teams finding her “transformational”, “inspirational” and “thought provoking”. Evaluation of her courses has shown that her passion for excellence, combined with her coaching style, has consistently resulted in delegates leaving with the confidence and knowledge to immediately apply their newly learned skills.
MOD Joint Equality and Diversity Training Centre, UK Defence Academy
Ann Nevin is regularly employed as an independent learning and development consultant by the MOD’s Joint Equality and Diversity Training Centre at the UK Defence Academy. She has recently worked with a team to redesign the MOD’s equality and diversity awareness course for senior leaders. The course entails an in depth background on equality and diversity legislation, the strategic implementation of MOD policies and processes around complaints, and is underpinned by the concepts and practical components of values based leadership.
Ann Nevin regularly delivers equality and diversity training to all levels within the MOD, including a week long qualifying course for tri-service equality and diversity advisers. This specialist awareness training is carried out with small teams and larger groups of up to 200 soldiers.
Northern Ireland Prison Service
Ann Nevin co-designed a City and Guilds accredited, Level 4 course, to qualify Harassment and Bullying Investigators. In 2010, she co-delivered the one-week specialist course to prison officers from the Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS). The course complemented the recently revised NIPS equality and diversity strategy, qualifying experienced prison officers to professionally investigate incidents of bullying and harassment within the Prison Service. The City and Guilds accreditation team were impressed with the depth and scope of the course material and practical based delivery method. Although the course is challenging and demanding the NIPS were very impressed with the content and results.
Lifehouse Destination Spa, Thorpe le Soken
In 2010, Ann Nevin wrote the employee handbook and all the accompanying people polices supporting the HR strategy for the opening of Lifehouse, a new contemporary health spa in Essex, employing 220 people. The employee handbook and the policies were designed to reflect the passion that the Lifehouse board have for employee engagement. The policies and procedures were designed to support and maximise the well being, performance and potential of all the staff. As part of the consultancy, Ann Nevin delivered some inaugural training sessions to the leadership team on the implementation of the HR strategy and the importance of building a values based organisational culture. Ann Nevin has since been invited back to Lifehouse to carry out some practical management training for team leaders.