Employee Engagement

With the Credit Crunch in full swing and with more bad news being revealed each week, engaging your employees has to be a top priority for all organisations.

When things are tough people need to hear clear messages from the management team and understand what they need to do to get through it.

B&Q is a largely UK based DIY store that has recently won the Gallup Great Workplace award for employee engagement. Actually this is the 3rd time B&Q have won this award which is quite an achievement.

James K Harter, Gallup’s chief scientist of workplace management and well-being, said: “In good times, employee engagement is the difference between being good and being great and, in bad times, it’s the difference between surviving and not.

“In good times and bad, low engagement reduces performance and profit. And under the present circumstances, many companies can’t afford to let those drop.

It was interesting to note some of the 'tools' that B&Q used to increase employee engagement:

• They created a forum for meeting and sharing ideas with the CEO
• They created a consistent communication pack for managers to use with their employees
• They launched an internal TV station
• The CEO launched a blog

As you can see this really isn't rocket science but it does require focus, effort....and tenacity.

In earlier posts I have discussed a concept called the Commitment Curve. This is about how to move people to adopt change through a variety of interventions. Communication is certainly a key change lever and B&Q are a great example of this - well done to them.

Training as a Change Lever Part 3......moving to adoption

In my previous post on using training as a change lever we looked at how you start to move people up the commitment curve. This is all about raising people's awareness about a change and then starting to develop an understanding. As people start to become more aware then this is a critical time - it is an opportunity for people to become worried "now I understand how this is going to impact me......and I don't like it"

So how can learning and development interventions help people understand why the change is good for them (even if it may be painful) and then how can it move people into adopting the change themselves.......?

Whereas awareness and understanding are about providing a consistent and general view, the next step is about building on this but being more specific about your role.

Whilst it is of course important that people at all levels in the organisation are aware of and understand the change, it is the more senior managers that will initially have significant influence. Once people start thinking about the impact on them and their role they will need to be reassured and given the opportunity to discuss.

If your senior managers aren't equipped with adequate coaching and change management skills then this can really cause more problems and even create further resistence to the change.

What kind of change skills are useful to focus on developing - here are a couple?

• Give them an understanding of why people resist change. A bit of theory can be useful and help managers spot certain types of behaviour. Point them towards books and papers by John Kotter and you won't go far wrong. My favourite is Leading Change....gold dust.


• Teach people how to identify and manage stakeholders. Not only is this a great skill to have it is vital to manage change.


• Help them understand how to move people to take action. Whilst worthy of it's own post (book...library) it is at the heart of any change. If your manager can do this......keep hold of him!

As well as equiping your managers for the change it is important to provide more role specific training for people. This will really help to equip them with the skills for their specific role. A great technique to help people consider new ways of working and thinking is the use of dilemmas.

A dilemma is a scenario that people are given to consider, discuss and debate. Typically it will be related to the change and will stimulate lots of discussion. For example if you are trying to introduce a culture of ethical behaviour in an organisation you might create real life scenarios that highlight a number of ethical dilemmas eg. dealing with a conflict of interest, dealing with dishonesty etc. If used well these can be a very powerful development tool and can really help people deal with change. Action Learning Groups, role plays and case studies are all training methods that fit very well with the use of dilemmas. Consider delivering some elearning first and then following up with classroom based discussion and exploration in more detail.

A final item to consider and one that will help you sustain the change, moving you right up the commitment curve. Look at the existing competencies that exist in the organisation. Do they reflect the required behaviour needed to drive through and sustain the change......it's unlikely of course. Undertaking an exercise that really examines what is needed and how these need to be layered into the competency model is critical to embed change. Again this is worthy of it's own post......so maybe that's one for the future.

Making Change Stick in an organisation is tough and it is something that I covered on this blog in other posts. So if you want to know more then check out these:

Making Learning Stick - Part One

Making Learning Stick - the role of the Line Manager

Ride the Credit Crunch with Action Learning

7 Principles for Leadership Development

The Role of the Line Manager....how to motivate people

Line Manager Tips - GROW, a model for coaching

In the modern corporate world and particularly in the current climate it is important for training professional to really be able to show their worth. Having a set of skills and tecnhiques that can help your organisation deal with change will guarantee you a seat at the top table...good luck!

Using Training as a Change Lever......awareness and understanding

This is the second part in my 'Using Training as a Change Lever' series.

Getting people in an organisation to change can be a tough nut to crack. There are many change levers that you can pull and training is certainly one of

them. Of course in practice the trick is to pull a set of levers adjusting each one all of the time as you steer your course through the change maze.

So how can you use training to get people moving along the commitment curve ?

Let's think about an example - imagine you are a large financial institution and you realise that you need to change certain aspects of your culture, perhaps implementing more formal controls into your environment. Most people in the organisation will just not be interested in changing unless they understand what is behind the change and how this could impact them.

Specific training interventions can have some real impact here. For example rolling out a short piece of eLearning to every employee that details what the company is doing (and why) and

what kind of changes need to take place. What does this do?

• it makes sure that every person is aware of the change
• it provides a consistent level of messaging to everyone in the organisation
• it provides each employee with a base level of understanding about the change.

Of course this now means that people are starting to think about the "what's in it for me" (WIIFM) question and will generate all sorts of queries and debates. Therefore making sure the managers and leaders in the organisation are equipped with the right information is vital.

As with all training it is important to think carefully and agree the outcomes that you want as a result of people receiving it. Thinking about the commitment curve then you need to think about the following:

• What are the differences in skills, knowledge and attitude that we want from people as they move from 'awareness' to 'understanding' for example.
• How will you know that people have moved up the curve - what will it look ad feel like (both as an observer but also as an individual going through the change)
• How will you be able to measure and therefore demonstrate that people have 'moved'?

If you go through this process then the learning interventions you design will be focused on achieving the right outcomes giving you a good chance of success.

So for example there may be a whole series of learnlets that you develop to achieve your outcomes and make the learning stick. Here are a couple of examples of 'learnlets' that are useful at the early stages of the commitment curve:

• regular talking heads from a variety of people across the organisation. Demonstrating how the change will impact them, what it means to them and how they are dealing with it.
• regular briefings from senior management updating people on what is happening. There are a huge variety of ways to do this. Think about blogs, Twitter, video blogs, wikis and any number of social networking tools.
• short bites of eLearning that focus on a particular aspect of the change. Regular 10 minute chunks that people get used to receiving. It means minimal impact on their job but a regular 'drum beat' of information.

As you can see many of these items are about communicating information - it's about raising awareness and starting to develop an understanding.

As a learning professional you need to be creative, work closely with the Communications function......and be tenacious. People don't like change - you will meet resistence at every stage.

In my next post I'll take a look at how we start moving people towards adoption - another set of challenges! If you are up for that then check back soon..