Employee engagement will make the difference
According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development’s recent Employee Outlook report, employee engagement is at an all-time low, in spite of the economy looking as though it may finally be emerging from recession.
Even though the UK’s Office for National Statistics has estimated 1.1% growth in GDP for the second quarter, employee engagement was always going to be a lagging indicator, and so the CIPD’s conclusion is understandable. Having been bombarded during the past 18 months with downbeat media messaging on credit crunch, bankers’ bonuses, redundancies, the national debt, the Eurozone crisis and the upcoming restructuring of our public services, one quarter’s relatively good news on GDP was never likely to see an employee feel-good index rebound to pre-recession levels.
There is still a long way to go, with set-backs guaranteed and much bad news still to be swallowed en route. However, the positive signs are there at every level in the economy, from micro businesses to major PLCs. If you have a finger on the pulse, you can feel it. Having, in relative terms, ‘hunkered down’ for the past 18 months, businesses are sensing the re-emergence of market opportunity. Deals are being done, restructuring is happening, efficiencies are being driven through, focus is being tightened and services are evolving to meet the needs of a new economic reality. At the macro-economic level, life goes on.
Yet, for individual businesses, there is a problem of perception. The longer a business allows a gap to persist between the re-emergence of general economic prosperity and the re-bounding of employee positivism and certainty, the greater the likelihood that the individual business is naturally portrayed as negative in a positively rising marketplace. In a post-recession, cut-throat competitive environment where genuine commercial differentiation is difficult to achieve or sustain, the attitude of your organisation and its people can make the difference between winning and losing the next tender.
It is therefore time for leaders to lead, by looking afresh at how the business and its people are portrayed in the marketplace. Then, positive employee engagement will surely follow.
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