We are proud to be part of the employee engagement guru group.
At the end of March this year, a new government backed employee engagement task force was launched to get to the heart of what employers can do to engage their employees. The task force consists of various top level business and HR Directors from both private and public sectors. Their task is to get together with leading authorities, practitioners of employee engagement, academics, and ‘think tanks’ otherwise known as a ‘guru’ group, in order to generate debate and discuss best practice in this area. They will then report back with strategies that organisations can adopt to promote engagement within their own workplaces.
The task force was launched to investigate further into some of the findings from David MacLeod and Nita Clarks report to government in 2009. The report, entitled ‘Engage for Success – enhancing performance through employee engagement’ (an interesting read in itself) was originally commissioned by Lord Mandelson (who was Secretary of State for business at the time). The report took an in-depth look at employee engagement and reported on its potential benefits for companies, organisations and individual employees in order to, as Mandelson put it, “set out what government can do to help promote an understanding of just how much greater employee engagement can help improve innovation, performance and productivity across the economy.”
The report identified some key issues, such as the barriers to wider adoption of engagement, how to harness engagement for innovation, and how to maintain morale through difficult challenges such as downsizing. David and Nita argue that if employee engagement and the principles that lie behind it were more widely understood, if good practice was more widely shared, if the potential that resides in the country’s workforce was more fully unleashed, we could see a step change in workplace performance and in employee well-being, for the considerable benefit of the UK.
MacLeod explains:
“What we’d like to do on this task force, is together, in creating this movement, harness people’s experiences with fleshing out practical ideas (for successful engagement) – not develop a paint by numbers plan, but rather to connect people and have groups of practitioners who want to share and learn together in a free and open space; to have ‘gurus’ harness their insights and have the task force leading and developing this – picking areas that we want to focus on. Nita Clarke and I will write up the key themes that emerge from all this in a year and a half or so.”
The Communications Lab are delighted to be asked to be part of the guru group, and we are really looking forward to getting involved. We are hopeful that we will be able to build on our collective experience to help create what a really exciting future for Britains workforce.
By Rachael Stanleick
The Communications Lab
19th May 2011
