This month I have been explaining the benefits of proactively managing your employees engagement as the recession begins to lift.
You can read the whole article here in the HR Networking Magazine.
Kim
Posts Tagged ‘organisational culture’
Proactively managing employee engagement
Monday, July 26th, 2010Ready, Steady, Recruit
Friday, June 18th, 2010I have read a couple of articles recently that have suggested that as businesses are now putting the recession behind them and there is an increased optimism that they should start to recruit. This has read to me as a test of confidence. There is no question that the recruitment industry is a good barometer of the economic climate and clearly demonstrates that recruitment increases as businesses become more successful. That said, recruitment is a huge investment decision and not one that should be taken lightly.
The thing that really surprises me in these articles is the portrayal that businesses have no option other than to just batten down the hatches during tough times. This is true for some businesses but often it is not a reactive but a strategic decision to do so. Successful businesses constantly practice environmental scanning to understand the opportunities and threats in their environment, sector and marketplace. It is this understanding that allows business leaders to adapt and change to changes in circumstances and potentially grasp opportunities that may otherwise go unnoticed.
In a Harvard Business Review article; Why Is It So Hard to Tackle the Obvious? C.K. Prahalad describes some of the reasons for the reluctance to change and some thought provoking questions that business leaders may wish to consider. See link, click here Harvard.
What do you think of employee engagement surveys?
Friday, April 23rd, 2010I have quite a simplistic view of how to drive high performance and business results; that is to create optimal alignment and engagement.
By alignment, I mean building confidence in the strategic plans, direction of the business and the capability of the leaders to deliver it. Engagement means, to me, how much a part people feel they have, that is, can they see that what they do contributes and is a valuable part of the business success.
I regularly recommend conducting employee engagement surveys to understand the base line and to assess the impact of investment in focus areas. I have recently come up against a lot of negativity about the merits of these surveys. I’d really like your views and also any thoughts on what could be used as an alternative to measure employee engagement.
Are you missing an opportunity to improve performance?
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009Most of us have two roles at work; our functional responsibilities for example, Accountant and our role as part of a team. I find it fascinating that when we recruit or assess performance, even for the most senior roles, the focus on our team role is very often secondary and is assessed very subjectively based upon gut feel about how the individual fits with everyone else and how they fit in with the culture. As you can imagine the real risk here is that everyone in the team is very similar in outlook, background or experience. This misses the point that difference and diversity can bring great value.
A colleague and I have developed a suite of diagnostics called Team Dynamix to assess team ’shape’ and identify their strengths and limitation in delivering their business objectives. The tool has both qualitative and quantitave elements and we are getting great feedback on the value of the report and recommendations. One client, a research organisation gave us the following feedback -
We now truly understand that the the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We have promoted and valued team working for a number of years but it is only now that we can see it delivering results.
I firmly believe that people want to work as part of a team but that they can’t do their best work unless they understand the team dynamic, the strength and contribution of each individual and how ang gaps will be managed. We are trying to build some case studies and good examples of high performing teams and how this has been achieved. Please do tell me about your own experiences.
Thanks
Kim
Organisational Culture – it could be affecting the success of your business?
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009Welcome to my new blog where I aim to stimulate some interesting discussion and debate around leadership development, management development and business coaching in general. I’m going to kick off with Organisational Culture as this is something we’ve been heavily involved with over the last few weeks.
First things first, why would a business want to assess its organisational culture? Well, typically the businesses that come to us have recently undergone a period of change and are now trying to refocus on the behaviours and culture that will drive success into their new structure: there is a massive amount of research indicating that successful businesses consciously manage their desired culture.
Although this is not a new concept in the business arena it does seem that many businesses leave their culture to chance. We firmly believe that there are many tangible benefits in terms of increasing employee engagement and alignment. There are some businesses that have demonstrated a close link between their culture and their business success. Feel free to read an overview of our approach to Organisational Culture on our website. In the coming months, as we progress our assignments we will be adding case studies of the work that we do and also feedback from our clients.
In the meantime, I am looking for case studies of businesses and leaders who actively manage their corporate culture if you can help please post a comment with a link to your research or contact me directly through the website .I hope to be able to analyse these (alongside our own experiences) and write a summary report. I will happily send anyone who contributes a copy of our report. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks
Kim,
