Hear me now

by Mike Emmott

New CIPD research highlights the importance of staff engagement – but it also shows that poor management leaves many employees feeling distinctly disengaged

Date: 23 November 2006

Employee engagement has become a new management mantra – and it’s not difficult to see why. Engaged employees – those who feel positive about their jobs – perform better for their employers and can promote their organisation as an “employer of choice”.

But how can managers set about engaging their employees? According to the CIPD’s latest survey of employee attitudes, the three main drivers of engagement are having opportunities to feed your views upwards, feeling well-informed about what is happening in the organisation and thinking that your manager is committed to your organisation.

The ability to give upward feedback is sometimes called the employee “voice”. But this should not be confused with mechanisms for consulting or communicating with employees, such as employee forums or works councils. If managers want an engaged workforce, they need to communicate directly with them. The real issue is how far managers are listening to what employees say, and what, if anything, they are doing about it.

We know that managerial fairness is an important element in creating a positive psychological contract. It doesn’t appear, from the recent research, to feed directly into engagement. However, when staff are also treated with respect, fairness has a positive impact on both performance and employees’ intention to stay with their organisation.

So, looking at this year’s employee attitude survey, which for the first time used engagement as the framework for analysing the results, how are managers doing at the job of managing their people? Basically, not too well. The research, which was carried out by Ipsos Mori and Kingston University, and was based on an electronic survey of 2,000 employees from across the UK, found that only 35 per cent of employees were actively engaged with their work. A significant minority had a very low opinion of their senior managers, with only one in three seeing them as trustworthy. And a quarter of respondents did not think senior managers had a clear vision of where their organisation was going.

Many of the messages from the survey were disappointingly familiar. For example, between one in three and one in four employees said their line manager rarely or never discussed their training and development needs with them, gave them feedback on how they were performing, or made them feel that their work counted.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, given these findings, nearly half of respondents were either looking for another job or were in the process of leaving their current one. A typical comment came from a 43-year-old customer service representative: “My direct managers? Yes, I have confidence in them, but people higher up: you never trust them anyway.”

The conclusion has to be that while senior managers can make a real difference to people’s working lives and performance, many have issues around visibility, communication and employee involvement. Addressing these issues has to be a priority of their organisations’ employee relations agenda.

There is no “off the peg” method of increasing employee engagement. The research report emphasises that despite the existence of some common drivers, different groups of employees are influenced by different factors. So managers need to find out what matters to their own staff.

Of course, not everybody has the same experience of work. This year’s survey examined for the first time the experience of different groups of employees. Interestingly, it found that women were more engaged with their work than men, felt more positively about senior management, were more likely to act as organisational advocates, were happier with their work-life balance and reported higher performance appraisal ratings. Given what we know about the amount of time women often spend on domestic activities, it is notable that they are nevertheless happier with their work-life balance than men.

Other findings highlighted the importance of demographics. For example, older workers were more engaged than younger workers, and managers felt more positively about their jobs than non-managers. Workers on flexible contracts were more emotionally engaged, more satisfied with their work and more likely to speak positively about their organisation than those with more conventional working arrangements. As a 24-year-old marketing assistant said: “We have flexitime and it really does help – it fits in with my lifestyle.”

However, two groups had a more negative experience of work. Public-sector workers reported more bullying and harassment than those in the private sector, and were less satisfied with the opportunities they had to use their abilities. They also felt more stressed and pressured and were more critical of their organisation. This reinforces the findings of earlier studies and underlines the scale of the challenge facing public-sector managers in particular. Employees with disabilities also suffer in a number of ways (see panel, above).

Overall, the research confirms that a positive working environment and sound management practice are crucial to fostering high levels of engagement and performance for everyone. Given the clear association between engagement, job satisfaction, advocacy and performance, there is every incentive for managers to seek to drive up levels of engagement among the workforce. But different groups of employees are influenced by different combinations of factors, and the single most important message is that managers need to consider carefully what matters to their own staff - and then do something about it. Mike Emmott is CIPD adviser, employee relations

Disabled people’s experiences of work
The 2006 CIPD survey of employee attitudes shows that employees with disabilities:
- are more likely to say that they are not listened to, are less satisfied with their work, and are more stressed and pressured;
- tend to work a shorter week but are less happy with their work-life balance than other employees;
- experience more bullying and harassment and feel less supported if they have a problem;
- feel they have less control over their work and report being more anxious;
- are more critical of their organisation;
- are less likely to have been rated “good” or “excellent” in their performance appraisal, and less likely than employees without a disability to remain in their job;
- rate their own performance lower than those without a disability;
- report higher instances of long periods of sick leave.

Further information
The report on this research, Working Life: Employee Attitudes and Engagement 2006, was launched at the CIPD's Managing Change at Work Conference on 5 December 2006 in London www.cipd.co.uk/change T 020 8612 6248

An executive summary, How Engaged Are British Employees?, will be available to download from the CIPD's website www.cipd.co.uk

The New Rules of Engagement, by Mike Johnson, is available from CIPD Publishing, priced £26.99 plus P&P. Call the CIPD’s bookstore to order T 0870 800 3366

This article was previously published by People Management (www.peoplemanagement.co.uk)

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