A Sure Fire Way to Improve Engagement

The negative impact of a passive and disengaged workforce on performance and productivity is substantial, so isn’t it time that Leadership gave ‘engagement’ the commercial attention it deserves?

In 2009 The McLeod Review outlined four key enablers to employee engagement which heralded a new way forward for organisations; yet almost a decade later, engagement levels remain a critical issue for employers across the globe.  More worryingly, employee engagement appears to be retracting with around 1 in 4 employees being unable to report that they are moderately engaged, let alone highly engaged.

The difficulty for organisations, however, is finding strategies that can create authentic and sustainable changes to the way they engage with employees.

The McLeod Review outlined some pretty sensible ideas about mechanisms that give employees a stronger voice in the workplace, such as open forums, graffiti walls, committees, and so forth.  But, if organisations jump into these solutions without changing how they regard people in their organisations and helping Managers to change their ‘ingrained’ behaviours, they are unlikely to achieve the results they hope for.