Remember – People Power Performance

There are many factors that can have an impact on just how connected and committed a workforce is feeling.  And in the present economic climate there are some very tricky elements in the mix that could be actively fuelling DIS-engagement in your company.

Things like rumours and hearsay. Redundancies. Things like business restructure and changes of direction.

If you’ve been through unsettling change what you need right now is to get your people back on track and fully behind your new business plans.  You need their dedication, hard work, energy and talents focussed on making sure your business thrives and grows.

However, this comes just at a time when they might be feeling vulnerable and demoralised.  Some may even be actively looking around for another job…. and unfortunately, these are most likely to be your brightest stars.

So, what can you do to

• help focus their efforts,
• boost their engagement and
• GET YOUR COMPANY MOTIVATED???

Quite simply, the answer is communication.  Talk to them.  Open a dialogue.  But how?

 We at Driven think that we have developed the answer…..  

Our solution is a very light touch and quick-to-implement business tool that will bring with it real and lasting business benefit without causing disruption to your organisation’s day to day operations.

And the best thing about it is that we do all of the work, leaving you to get on with what you do best.

Interested? Find out all about Driven’s Engagement Methodology.

Employee Engagement. Engagement is at the root of the performance you are getting from your people.

And the other side of that coin is Disengagement.  A disengaged staff member will not be a good ambassador for your company.  A disengaged worker will not be firing on all cylinders. They may even be adversly affecting the morale of others.

During periods of uncertainty – when the fear or the realities of the economic downturn and even redundancy are present - your workforce may start to withdraw into themselves and concentrate on their concerns and feelings of insecurity rather than the job in hand.  And this is just the time you need them to put in the extra effort.  At times like this, it is even more important to rally your troops and focus on the positives.

If your workforce are engaged they are working harder and smarter to make your company thrive. They care. They have a pride in what they do. They want to be part of a success story. Your success story.

By recognising and adjusting the balance towards greater engagement you will get a better return on your biggest investment – your people. Further to this, your workforce will feel empowered at being asked to contribute their opinions and feedback.  In turn, this leads to greater trust and loyalty.

The bottom line is that Business Culture drives Engagement. And Engagement is the engine that powers People Performance.

But how do you do it?  How do you harness the power of your workforce to be fully engaged in your business objectives?

Well, you have to measure engagement before you can begin to try and improve it.

Have a  look at our Employee Engagement Census Overview to find out more.

Now is the time to come on board

The past 15 years has seen some huge technology projects happen. Many have cost people and organisations dearly. Some have been successes, though there have also been some expensive failures. Think of the dot com boom – organisations sunk like never before.

Now after strong years of development of the web we are now at the point where if you fail to join you risk losing out or being left behind. There has been a significant shift though – the cost of adoption is now seriously affordable for all sizes of organisations.

Firsts steps in change

Adoption of technology is essential.  Just look into recent history:

• Phones – were a novelty for a while, but then became essential
• Computers – once expensive and labour intensive, now they are low cost and easy to use
• Mobile phones – remember the big phones people use to haul around by early adopters? Now everyone has one – they are more popular than computers, more so in the third world.

If you look at the examples of landline and mobile phones they have some important things in common:

• Early adopters paid dearly for the privilege
• Infrastructure took years to implement (probably still in progress for mobile phones)
• Their business model is subscription based which is the equivalent to ondemand

Subscription based model

OnDemand, Software as a Service (SaaS) and subscriptions are all part of the same business model. Pay a relatively small monthly and/or yearly fee and get access to lots of value and support.

With phones you might have to pay a small set up cost, but you certainly don’t pay for any expensive wiring under the ground, nor for the maintenance to keeping the system up and running. You pay to use and get access to the system and in return you expect a level of service. The same applies to mobile phone tariffs, broadband packages, etc.

And of course the same applies to ondemand solutions that are increasingly being adopted.

Clear advantages

What are the benefits of onDemand?

• relatively small setup cost
• rapid implementation
• access to different levels of support all the way
• ideal opportunity to trial a solution
• ability to upgrade or downgrade at anytime
• as flexible as your business changes demand.

Last Friday the Elearning Network hosted an event on Building Learning
Communities. It was a good chance to hear stories from people who have
or are building (learning) communities.

The interesting parts that kept popping up during the event was the use of low or no cost tools. Particularly, Drupal and Ning. Even where the companies behind the learning communities were large, the creation of small and focused communities were relatively informal and experimental compared to other enterprise systems that were already in place.

It’s not that Drupal or Ning are better than the larger and more robust systems, they’re just really easy to set up. With Ning it literally takes a few minutes to get a site up and running – with no money involved. It doesn’t mean the community will work or people will come and participate, it’s just a low risk.

I was (pleasantly) surprised to see some of the larger companies using these tools and felt quite encouraged by it all. I don’t think it means that enterprise tools don’t have a future – perhaps quite the opposite. People and organisations can experiment with these tools – they couldn’t do that a couple of years ago, not at such a low risk anyways. Through this experimentation people will learn about building communities, what is involved, what works and what doesn’t work. All this learning in action will only help people create better and larger communities in the future across organisations.

I count myself lucky that the environment that I work in adopts technologies rapidly, not because they are new technologies, but because they are better ways at communicating and getting things done.

Why is it that on a personal level people use technology to do great things, yet when they turn up to work they are usually stuck working in an old an inefficient way.

It just kind of seems wrong to me, doesn’t it?

Watch the following slide…enough said?

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Through humour and stories he argues that the world of human resources are facing a crisis and that things need to change. I will say no more. The London Business Forum have been kind enough to provide the audio from the talk.

Listen to it. It’s inspirational, thought provoking and funny.

I’ve observed various articles and blog posts trying to debate whether ‘HR’ should be renamed to Talent (Management). Lots of ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaaahhhhs’ and ‘buts’ flew around, probably a bit of cursing behind the scenes as well.

It’s great to see Seth put his own view across on. It might make some people wiggle uncomfortably in their seat, but it’s worth a read.

I think there is valid point in saying that changing the name to ‘Talent’ would be spin if nothing were to change. Those that are ahead of the game will recognise the drastic need for change, those that change to address the need to attract and retain talent would be worthy of the name, those that are ahead of the game would not want to be part of the HR or Personnel department as it would offend their talented ego.

• The availability of key skills (61%)
• A downturn in major economies (57%)
• Over–regulation (55%)

The interesting point from a Get Driven perspective are CEOs concerns about lack of key skills.

What key skills need improving upon?

The points highlighted in the survey include:

• there is a high premium for individuals who have the courage to challenge
• improving customer service, attracting and retaining talent are key for competitive advantage
• shortages in technical AND business skills
• shortages in the ability to lead others
• difficulty in finding people who are creative and innovative
• crucial changes need to be made in recruiting, motivating and developing their people
• flexible working would play an important role in their business
• investing in training and development was also be considered key
• 43% of CEOs have mergers or acquisitions on the cards, yet poor management of HR is considered one of the top obstacles/concerns.

Not surprising…

There are some interesting points here, though not all that surprising. We recently attended a talk by Sir Ken Robinson called ‘The War on Talent’. Many of the points mentioned above were highlighted by Sir Ken Robinson, where he believes serious lack of creativity and innovation will become a ‘crisis’ in its own right.

There doesn’t have to be a skills shortage. We don’t need more people in the world. We need to nurture what we have in a better way. Encourage people to learn, to discover themselves, to experiment, to create new ideas…better ideas.

There is a better way.

(To be continued…)

At the end of the talk there were some questions where Pixar University was highlighted as a great example of what some companies are doing to bring out the best in their people.

Some highlights of Pixar University include:

• every employee (from a cleaner right through to the CEO) is allowed 4 hours per week to attend any course or class they like.
• they are allowed to not to work and reject meeting requests that collide with their class.
• people got to meet and talk to people they would not normally meet
• people got to learn stuff they would not normally get the chance to learn
• people discovered new talents and passions
• people would get an understanding of the company as a whole (not just what their ‘job’ requires)
• it is not unusual for people to change jobs within the company after finding out they are really good at something else.

Pixar produce some great films, they plant a seed and allow people to grow, learn, be creative and discover their talents.

Do you think your company would change if they adopted something similar?

A short animation by Pixar.