People engagement from an industry perspective

Good to talk to post graduate students at the Glasgow School for Business and Society….

To illustrate the role engagement plays I will briefly describe a scenario. When I started running the North Division of a bank with 300 branches and 2000 people we were known as the worst bank in the U.K, our customer service was appalling, staff turnover was over 30%, absenteeism around 7% and morale was poor (of course)!  Some years later we had the best customer service, engagement was very high, we had market leading and innovative products, staff turnover and absenteeism better than market. Along the way we had installed a new IT platform that tested everyone’s resilience, integrated two newly acquired banks, launched an aggressive current account strategy and successfully executed major cultural and operational change. Life was never dull.

So how important do you think it was to have engaged teams during these periods. Well the short answer is very important. But how do you create engagement and keep it??
I have always had a simple approach to Business and although I graduated with a degree in Business studies I have not been a big user of business models or theories – you do what you think is the right thing to do. A few things however always stuck in the mind…

1. The complex business equation HAPPY EMPLOYEES + HAPPY CUSTOMERS = HAPPY SHAREHOLDERS!!! this has been in my head all my working life

2. The notion that ‘most people come to work to do a good job but that can change when they get there!!’ I have always liked this as it’s what happens!

3. Why? A very short question that always reminded me that people want to understand and have some basic explanation.

4. Value me. A basic requirement for us all to feel valued in the workplace and always reminded me that all the people who work hard everyday need to know they are important to you and the organisation.

5. The ‘third, third, third rule’. I am not sure it is a rule or even where I got it from but it’s the notion that you can divide legacy teams of people into three groups. I found it a useful way of thinking about things.

– the super engaged
– engaged needing support
– disengaged.

Of course it makes a lot of business sense to keep trying increase the volume of the first group and decrease the volume of the third group. For example the highest engagement score we achieved was 85% which saw great success in reducing the disengaged group. I will describe some characteristics and challenges in these groups later.

The newer brands such as Apple, Google and Virgin I think manage to achieve a greater share of highly engaged at the outset. I have read of other companies who have much higher disengagement.

6. And finally was one I pinched from Sir Clive Woodward of World Cup rugby fame. I found his model helped us to think about our managers and teams of people in a way that was, shall we say, a little more interesting than a performance rating score. He had four classifications of the character of his squaddies

– champion
– warrior
– student
– talented

Champions were game changers with great attitude. Johnny Wilkinson was a good example. Warriors were highly dependable players who regularly worked hard and performed. Students were self explanatory and the talented players were those who were arguably working to retain their place in the team. He also argued that there had to be a mix of the above for teams to be at their best. I found these points were also true in business.

The Woodward model also helped engage the senior team around a different way of thinking.  Team is key to driving your engagement strategy and to minimise the number of disengaged managers – they were talented enough to get to that job but may have fallen out of love with it!

Let’s go back to ‘third, third, third’ and consider the characteristics and strategies.

It’s great to have super engaged people. They jump out of bed in the morning and tend to wear their best attitude for the day. They buy in to change often and like developments that help them do a better job. In the two major brands in my career I noted how these people were very Brand loyal. So how do you keep them super engaged and expand their number? The answer involves a mix of ingredients! A touch of recognition, sprinkle of empowerment, dash of personal development stirred together with their own sense of a valued contribution. What these people offer is an attitude that overcomes obstacles and barriers.

Being disengaged in work is not comfortable for anyone. In the minority of cases people are in the wrong job and enjoy the release of moving on. I found many examples in my time of management failings. Sometimes in business we forget that managers are there to get the best out of their people.

There is certainly a challenge in getting a management team on the same page as regards engagement. Taking the time to stand back and observe what is happening with all team members is key and asking yourself how can we improve things here. Many managers tend to manage the result rather than the behaviours that led to the result. If you like the inputs rather than the outputs.

A successful strategy is to allocate a ‘champion’ mentor to your ‘student’ and ‘talented’ managers.

This is also a great way to improve your customer service – the happier your teams are then the happier they will make your customers.

You might observe there is quite a lot of work in all of this and it’s a conscious choice whether to do these things or not.

Let’s finish on leadership styles – how is it best to lead large teams. Communicate, listen, be a role model, be consistent, follow through…..

My own conclusion is there is no particular best way – we are all different and as individuals need to be sufficiently self aware to understand what is required. . It depends on you. One thing I would say is to always keep your goals in mind.