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    The Engagement Manifesto: A Systemic Approach to Organisational Success
    The Engagement Manifesto: A Systemic Approach to Organisational Success
    The Engagement Manifesto: A Systemic Approach to Organisational Success
    Ebook138 pages1 hour

    The Engagement Manifesto: A Systemic Approach to Organisational Success

    By R Alan Crozier

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    About this ebook

    "Alan Crozier has written an outstanding book on employee engagement in his 'manifesto.' What makes it so good is his mix of leadership theory and personal practice distilled from years of client experience. "The Engagement Manifesto" is the best book I've seen on this vital subject. Buy it and apply its wisdom.

    Roger DAprix, Managing Director, DAprix & Co LLC, Author of The Credible Company


    This is a very authoritative book. Anyone particularly CEOs, HR professionals, brand marketing specialists, communications experts serious about living the assertion that people are the definitive source of business success will find this book an invaluable source.
    Alan cuts through the hype, buzzwords and common misconceptions surrounding engagement. In doing so, he challenges the reader to make an honest re-assessment of their own understanding. He offers clear, practical advice about the what and the how if engagement is to have meaningful and lasting impact, and not go the way of so many other well intentioned business initiatives.

    Jim Kennedy, Global VP Human Resources, Coopervision


    This book is 24 carat gold. It is the one-minute-manager of engagement.
    I read it three times and learned something new each time.

    Andrew Cooksey, Chief Executive, Jaggard Mackenzie


    Well structured, joined-up thinking for business leaders highlighting the importance of the many facets of employee engagement - an ongoing journey not a destination.

    David Cheyne, Chairman, Criticaleye.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse UK
    Release dateAug 1, 2011
    ISBN9781456785758
    The Engagement Manifesto: A Systemic Approach to Organisational Success
    Author

    R Alan Crozier

    Alan Crozier is a founding director of The Ghost Partnership and has been managing director of Q4 consulting limited since 2002. He has worked in consulting for over 20 years, and spent 13 of those years in senior positions at Mercer and Watson Wyatt. Alan has served on the Steering Board of the Corporate Identity Group, the Professional Advisory Board of the MSc in Corporate Communication Management at Salford University, and on the accreditation council for the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). He is currently working with the UK Government's Task Force on Employee Engagement. Alan is a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and an Accredited Business Communicator (the professional accreditation of IABC). Alan has written for professional journals and talked at conferences in Europe and North America. His seminal paper on Employer Branding, “Total Employment Relationship Management” was published by Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1998. He is a contributing author to The IABC Handbook of Organisational Communication, published by Jossey Bass, 2006, and Integrating HR and Marketing Strategies, published by ICFAI University, July 2006.

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      Book preview

      The Engagement Manifesto - R Alan Crozier

      © 2011 by R Alan Crozier. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      First published by AuthorHouse 07/25/2011

      ISBN: 978-1-4567-8573-4 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4567-8574-1 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4567-8575-8 (ebk)

      Printed in the United States of America

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Contents

      INTRODUCTION

      1. SEARCHING FOR THE

      SILVER BULLET

      2. DECONSTRUCTING ENGAGEMENT

      3. INTRODUCING THE THREE TENETS

      4. IT’S HOW THINGS ARE

      AROUND HERE

      5. DANCING WITH AN ELEPHANT

      6. DON’T MENTION THE C-WORD

      7. THE JOURNEY STARTS WITH

      A SINGLE STEP

      8. REFRAMING ENGAGEMENT

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      REFERENCES

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      For Rod, Jamie and Grant.

      You knew I would leave you something…

      INTRODUCTION

      There are men with bold ideas, but highly critical of their own ideas; they try to find whether they are not perhaps wrong. They work with bold conjectures and severe attempts at refuting their own conjectures.—Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994)

      In 1996 I had an idea for a book. This isn’t it, but much of the philosophical underpinning is the same. The difference is in the focus, and hopefully because of the time lapse (partly due to the sentiment expressed above), as well as 14 years of hypothesising, testing, and practice, the product is the better for it.

      While the title and much of the focus of this book is about employee engagement, trying to understand it and creating the environment to nurture it, that is not the overarching purpose. The real objective is better and sustainable organisational performance. That is the destination; employee engagement is the route map.

      This book should be read by any senior manager, but it will have particular significance for CEOs, human resource practitioners and those responsible for organisational communication. It will hopefully also be of use to students or those starting out in their careers. The aim is to catalyse a re-examination of what you are doing in the name of engagement.

      For longer than I care to remember, annual reports have stated that employees are the organisation’s greatest asset, but more often than not, the behaviours exhibited by these organisations do not reflect that sentiment. There has been a significant change; people are now further up the corporate agenda—and for good reason. This gave rise to people-focused initiatives and an increase in organisational specialisms: total rewards, learning and development, communication management, and more recently, employee engagement.

      As soon as a concept is given a label, it is in danger of being misinterpreted and executed badly. It is then in danger of being dismissed as the latest fad. I worry about that for engagement. I have seen companies doing surveys that measure satisfaction and calling them engagement surveys. I have seen three published surveys in the past two years that were called engagement surveys but that only measured communication effectiveness. We will see how satisfaction and engagement are different in their antecedents and outcomes, and that communication, while vital and omnipresent, is not omniscient in this process.

      What follows is a pragmatic view of employee engagement and its contribution to organisational performance. It is based on developing and testing a hypothesis, practicing the principles with organisations, and testing employee and employer opinion on what works for them. It is hopefully a practical process that can be started at any given point and followed through to drive real benefits for an organisation. This is a mixture of theory, practice, research and experience; it is not intended to be an academic treatise. If the academics own the classical version, this is the blues/rock version, which provides the overarching chord structure for you to add the melody.

      Engagement deserves more status and greater respect than it currently enjoys. It has to occupy the right space in the organisational psyche. We will look at the context in which we have to consider employee engagement: core purpose, values, and culture; try to get some clarity on what it means; and how you can influence it, measure it, and most important, drive performance through your people. Consider it your new manifesto.

      Alan Crozier, Glasgow, May 2011

      1. SEARCHING FOR THE

      SILVER BULLET

      There was a time when, if you kept your nose clean, you could have a job for life. If you were loyal, worked hard, and did as you were told, your employer would provide a job, award regular pay increases, and provide a degree of financial security—even in retirement. Problems arose when the pace of change accelerated. New players from emerging economies entered the market, competition became much stiffer, the rules of the game changed and traditional companies struggled with the speed of this process.

      What followed was a period of re-engineering in which businesses were restructured, refocused, down-sized (or right-sized), and people were expected to work smarter not harder. Those who were not laid off were expected to stay, follow orders and do at least part of someone else’s job as well as their own. In return, their employer would provide employment (while they could) and pay them the same as before but make gestures that they cared about them as employees. Perhaps not surprisingly with hindsight, people did not always stay with their employers simply because they at least had a job. They started to look for ways to take charge of their careers and sought out better opportunities and better employers. Companies that did not come to terms with this new reality haemorrhaged talent.

      The employer-employee relationship has now evolved from the parent-child state described in the first paragraph to an adult-adult state in which the new employment deal is more of a strategic partnership. Companies expect their people to develop the skills that they need and apply them in ways that help the business, meanwhile displaying behavioural competencies consistent with those of the company.

      In return, they will provide challenging work, support professional development, reward individual contribution and treat people like adults.

      In most advanced economies, regardless of the unemployment statistics, there is a skills shortage of some sort. Recognising that people generally, but key talent particularly, are core drivers of value, organisations have to develop the ability to attract, fully engage and retain that talent.

      Around the time competition for talent was on the rise, the phrase employer of choice emerged. This struck a chord with many companies, and it became a popular strap line (or tag line) in recruitment materials as companies sought to differentiate themselves in the market. While the meaning of the phrase is immediately understood, what it means in practice is less clear. To many companies, it means simply being flexible with total reward or being creative with professional development opportunities. What is clear was that the currency and effectiveness of the strap line decreases in inverse proportion to its popularity. It is not effective enough to say, We are an employer of choice; companies have to be an employer of choice without stating it. This requires a more robust and holistic approach.

      Companies have always sought to find and exploit an advantage over the competition. Price, quality, speed, effectiveness, and fitness for purpose are the traditional battlegrounds in the war to attract and retain business. As organisations pursue their holy grail, however that is expressed, they are often tempted by what some would call management fads. There is an overwhelming desire to find the silver bullet that will make all the difference. Initiatives become fashionable and in the process highly visible. Total Quality Management; Just in Time procurement; Six Sigma; 100 Best Companies to work for; the Learning Organisation; Balanced Scorecard; and many more.

      These initiatives are laudable, practical and effective in their own way, but as more organisations adopt them; and as the timescale from innovation to

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