Author: Nailia Tasseel

Tucked into the Tate Modern’s fifth floor collections is a video installation by Gary Hill (1951) called Remarks on Color (1994). The piece depicts Hill’s young daughter Anastasia reading from the 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s book of the same name.

Hill asked Anastasia to read the text aloud without stopping, regardless of whether she understood the concepts or was familiar with the words. Often her pronunciation and inflection render the difficult work absurd. The piece is both surprisingly hypnotic and spookily reminiscent of what goes on inside organisations when supervisors and employees try to convey words provided to them by senior management or the corporate communication function. Quick, grab the Crayolas and let’s try again.

I went to see a company the other day where the head of employee engagement completely baffled me.

It became clear after five minutes of talking to him that he saw employee engagement as an activity. Meaning internal comms – newsletters, intranet, briefings, e-mails, conference planning etc etc. Well, he was head of employee engagement so employee engagement was what he did as a job. It was his function. Engaging employees.

Employee engagement is NOT just an activity within one department, I argued. Employee engagement must be seen as an OUTCOME which comes as a result of many different factors in an organisation. Pay, reward, communication, management style, leadership, training and development, the brand – the list goes on and on. And of course culture plays a major part – nurturing a culture of involvement, contribution, making things simple, empowering people, dialogue, encouraging feedback, knowledge-sharing and so on is critical.

And yet more and more organisations are creating titles and departments which carry the responsibility of employee engagement, as if it’s down to a small group of people to make sure it happens. And those people are becoming more and more confused by the plethora of contractors ranging from events companies to artists, branding companies and PR agencies who are all jumping on the employee engagement bandwagon. I seem to remember the same thing happening with the phrase Brand Experience, but that’s another story for another day….

The real responsibility for the engagement of employees of course lies with the Chief Executive. That’s where the buck stops. And below him or her every leader and manager has a responsibility to their teams to ensure that employees are getting the most out of the company – because then they’ll give it back in spades. The remit for ensuring that the right disciplines and interventions are in place usually falls to HR / Communications (oops, sorry, and maybe the Employee Engagement Department) which is fine, but it’s a collective responsibility which needs to be recognised and embedded firmly throughout every pocket of the organisation.

Interesting that this chap I was talking to came from one of the biggest management consultancy firms in the world.

Great to see that JetBlue’s new advertising campaign is one of storytelling….

Much of our work focuses on the need to improve customer service as a key driver for increased revenue and greater profitability. In a recent customer service poll of six European countries, we Brits came second. Amongst the least helpful and most surly are the French. Germans top the poll for efficiency, knowledge and customer service. And queuing.

Having said that, Britain came bottom at customer service in fast food outlets which suffered from ‘clutter, untidiness and unhelpful staff’, but top in financial services. Nowadays customers are much more savvy and discerning, and often go to retailers knowing more about the product they want to buy than the shop staff themselves. It’s a no-brainer, then, that better customer service / attitude and product awareness can make a massive difference to the bottom line. Just think for a minute about the level of customer service you get in the US and compare it to Europe.

And how do you get there? For a start, getting employees to focus on such aspects as service, innovation, change, value and efficiency and help them to think about what they are currently doing and how they could be doing it better. Turn this into a language that everyone can understand, and tell a few memorable stories that inspire people, and it’ll happen. Maybe not overnight, but you can see some pretty spectacular results in a very short space of time. We’ve got the answer, you see. You have my number.

This article on engaging a virtual workforce is interesting. We read an impressive – and increasing – amount of material from India on the subject of employee engagement. With the rapid growth that countries such as India and China are experiencing, it’s not surprising that the subject of employee engagement is taken seriously. We might take a leaf out of their book…..

Steve Adubato has some good things to say about storytelling in business.

It has recently been brought to my attention that despite our best efforts to prove this approach really does break down barriers commonly found in corporate and internal communications (just call us for the proof), there are still some sceptics out there – people who believe storytelling to be a pink and fluffy HR thing. I don’t know – perhaps there really are people out there who go back to their families at the end of a hard day at work and tell them all about it with the help of a flip-chart (!). I’m always available to argue the case. No, seriously, have a read – it all makes sense to me….

‘Telling people what to do doesn’t work any more because they don’t do it – and nor should they.’

Good words from ex BBC boss Greg Dyke – what he has to say in People Management this month ticks lots of boxes for us….

According to a new report, only a third of employees in the USA ‘walk the talk’. Interesting reading this, and good to see that storytelling is mentioned of a way to help that engagement process.

Interesting news in the media this morning about what makes people happy. Less TV, less focus on money, more socialising with friends and participating in community activities where people feel involved and that they are contributing. A particular canton in Switzerland is the happiest, apparently, where a lot of this goes on!

We talk a lot about how employees who feel valued and listened to – that they are personally contributing to the journey their business is on – are those who put the most in. They are the ones who will be more productive and happier at work. It’s not the money that makes them tick, and neither is doing their job in a vacuum.

I’m not sure I concur with the notion that governments are trying to make people richer. Well, not according to my accountant. But anyway, we pretty much go along with what the media is saying about life in general, because we have seen how the same principles applied to the workplace actually work.