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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
The current way of treating people at work has failed. Globally, only 30% of employees are engaged in their jobs, and in this fast-paced world that's just not enough. The world's best companies understand this, and have been quietly treating people differently for nearly two decades.
Now you can learn their secrets and discover The Engagement Bridge™ model, proven to build bottom line value for companies through sustainable employee engagement.
Companies with the best cultures generate stock market returns of twice the general market and enjoy half the employee turnover of their peers. Their staff innovate more, deliver better customer service and, hands-down, beat the competition. These companies outperform and disrupt their markets. They break the rules of traditional HR, they rebel against the status quo.
Build it has found these rebels and the rulebreakers. From small startups to global powerhouses, this book shows that courage, commitment, and a people-centric mindset, rather than money and resources, are what you need to turn an average business into a category leader.
The book follows the clear and proven Engagement Bridge™ model, developed from working with thousands of leading companies worldwide on their own employee engagement journeys. The practical model highlights the areas that leaders need to examine in order to build a highly engaged company culture and provides a framework for success.
Build it is packed with tips, tools and real-life examples from employers including NASDAQ, Unilever, IBM, KPMG, 3M, and McDonald's to help you start doing this not tomorrow, but today. Readers will learn:
- How employee engagement helps companies perform
- The key factors that drive engagement, and how they work together
- What the world's most rebellious companies have done to break the rules of traditional HR and improve engagement
- How to implement The Engagement BridgeTM model to boost productivity, innovation, and better decision-making
Unique in this category, Build it is written from two sharply different perspectives. Glenn Elliott is a multi-award winning Entrepreneur of the Year, CEO and growth investor. He talks candidly about the mistakes and missteps he has made whilst building Reward Gateway into a $300m category leader in employee engagement technology.
Debra Corey brings 30 years experience in senior level HR roles at global companies such as Gap, Quintiles, Honeywell and Merlin Entertainments. She shares the practical tools and case studies that can kickstart your employee engagement plan, bringing her own pragmatic and engaging style to each situation.
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Seitenzahl: 324
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Alphabetical List of Plays
1 Understanding Employee Engagement
Introduction
Understanding Employee Engagement
The Case for Action
Ultimately, Engagement is a Choice
Getting Started
Notes
2 Introducing the Engagement Bridge™
Introduction
Unpacking the Bridge™
Company Culture is the Output of the Bridge™
3 Open & Honest Communication
Introduction
The Trust Issue
Communicating Means Listening as Well as Speaking
In Practice
THE PLAYS
Transparent Approach to Communicating Salaries:
Buffer
Showing and Telling to Keep Communication Open:
Wistia
Revolutionize Teamwork With a “Get to Know Me” Guide for Every Member of Staff:
BetterCloud
Communicating and Leading a Business Through Challenging Times:
GM Holden Ltd
Bringing all the Ingredients Together to Create Engagement:
Krispy Kreme Australia
Giving Your Employees a Seat at the Table:
HSBC
Notes
4 Purpose, Mission & Values
Introduction
The Case for Company Values
In Practice
THE PLAYS
Designing Values to Fuel a New Phase of Growth:
Causeway Technologies
Creating a Common Language Through Values:
Vocus Communications
Leading a Business Based on Your Values:
G Adventures
Re‐energizing a Program with a Purpose:
Changing Your Values as Your Company Becomes a “Teenager”:
CarTrawler
A Purpose‐Driven Approach to Volunteering:
Discovery Communications
Creating a Multi‐layered Approach to Designing Values:
Southwest Airlines
Changing Your Values to Help Drive Your Mission:
Interface Carpets
Notes
5 Leadership
Introduction
The High‐Engagement CEO
In Practice
THE PLAYS
Leading Millennials to find their Path:
VaynerMedia
A “Real” Consultative Approach:
St John Ambulance
Creating a Leadership Model that Drives Results:
Halfords
Notes
6 Management
Introduction
Managers Have Real Power
In Practice
THE PLAYS
Paying Staff to Leave … Really:
Zappos
Ditching Performance Ratings and Annual Reviews:
Gap Inc.
Creating a SMARTA Goal‐Setting Process:
Xero
Recruiting to Build Long‐Term Relationships:
Vitsoe
Putting Your People First:
Talon Outdoor
“Always On” Approach to Employee Feedback:
Dunelm
Notes
7 Job Design
Introduction
Designing High‐Engagement Jobs
In Practice
THE PLAYS
Building Innovation Into Jobs and Working Practices:
Atlassian
Making Transformational Change Through Job Design:
Crawford & Company
Welcome to Flatland:
Valve Corporation
Creating Autonomy and Accountability through Job Design:
Drift
Notes
8 Learning
Introduction
The Learning Culture
Shift the Power
In Practice
THE PLAYS
Learning Based on Einstein's Theories:
Stonegate Pub Company
Deliver On‐demand Learning to Gig Workers:
Zeel
Creating Development Plans to Help a Young Workforce:
KFC Australia
Using Learning Academies to Drive Results:
MVF
Put Gaming into Your Learning Program:
GAME
A High‐Touch Approach to Learning:
The Estée Lauder Companies
Notes
9 Recognition
Introduction
Ditch the Clocks and Watches
Recognition and Visibility Go Together
In Practice
THE PLAYS
Giving the Boot to Traditional Recognition Awards:
Venables Bell & Partners
Recognizing an Offline Workforce:
ICC Sydney
A Recognition Program that Will Make You Smile:
Hershey Company
Adding a ThankMe to Your Recognition Program:
Coleman Group
Recognition that “Crushes It”:
SnackNation
Building Your Recognition Pyramid:
Homeserve
Making Your Employees Feel Like Stars:
Virgin Group
Notes
10 Pay & Benefits
Introduction
Pay
Benefits are Here to Benefit your Company and Your Employees
In Practice
THE PLAYS
Benefits That Truly Meet the Needs of your Workforce:
Goodman Masson
Sometimes All It Takes is an Ice Cream Van:
PhlexGlobal
Creating a Fair and Transparent Approach to Pay:
Basecamp
A Participative Approach to Pay:
Semler
Using Sporting Events to Reward Employees:
McDonald's
Benefits for the Dogs:
BrewDog
Creating a Compelling Benefits Communication Campaign:
Citation
Creating a Meaningful Employee Ownership Plan:
Illuminate Education
Turning Tradition on its Head with a Fun Benefits Expo:
3M Australia
Improving Collaboration by Removing Sales Commissions:
Bamboo HR
Notes
11 Workspace
Introduction
Understanding the Agile Workspace
In Practice
THE PLAYS
Creating a Workspace to Drive Agile Working:
GE
A Workspace Where You Want to Bring Your Mom:
Pentland Brands
Designing a Workspace Using All of Your Senses:
Adobe
A Workspace Fit for Kings and Queens:
money.co.uk
Notes
12 Wellbeing
Introduction
Our Stress and Burnout Crisis
In Practice
THE PLAYS
Creating Flexibility to Support Diversity:
Boston Consulting Group
A Holistic Approach to Financial Wellbeing:
Travis Perkins PLC
Using Leaders to Champion Wellbeing:
American Express
A Way to “PerkUp” Your Wellbeing Benefit:
Taking Small But Meaningful Steps to Wellbeing:
GreatCall
A Benefit to Help Fight Employee Burnout:
Weebly
Notes
13 Building it
In Summary
Getting Started
Acknowledgments
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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E1
Build it
The Rebel Playbook for World-Class Employee Engagement
Glenn Elliott and Debra Corey
This edition first published 2018
© 2018 Glenn Elliott and Debra Corey.
Registered office
John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom
For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print‐on‐demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e‐books or in print‐on‐demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data is Available:
ISBN 9781119390053 (Hardcover)
ISBN 9781119390084 (ePDF)
ISBN 9781119390077 (ePub)
Cover design: Sevi Rahimova & Leonie Williamson
To the rebels, the misfits, the troublemakers.
Let's make the world a better place to work.
Alphabetical List of Plays
3M
Adobe
American Express
Atlassian
Bamboo HR
Basecamp
BetterCloud
Boston Consulting Group
BrewDog
Buffer
CarTrawler
Causeway Technologies
Citation
Coleman Group
Crawford & Company
Discovery Communications
Drift
Dunelm
G Adventures
GAME
Gap Inc.
GE
GM Holden Ltd.
Goodman Masson
GreatCall
Halfords
Hershey Company
Homeserve
HSBC
ICC Sydney
Illuminate Education
Interface Carpets
KFC
Krispy Kreme
McDonald's
money.co.uk
MVF
Pentland Brands
PhlexGlobal
Semler
SnackNation
Southwest Airlines
St. John Ambulance
Stonegate Pub Company
Talon Outdoor
The Estée Lauder Companies
Travis Perkins PLC
Valve Corporation
VaynerMedia
Venables Bell & Partners
Virgin Group
Vitsoe
Vocus Communications
Weebly
Wistia
Xero
Zappos
Zeel
1Understanding Employee Engagement
Chapter Objectives
In this chapter, we will:
Establish the proven link between employee engagement and competitive advantage.
Define employee engagement and understand how engaged employees add value.
Discuss the changes that technology is bringing to our economy that make action urgent and critical.
Key Points
This is a practical book based on real company experiences for anyone who wants to improve their business, regardless of their role or job level.
You will have to rebel against
standard practice
—the status quo has failed and rebelling is the only way to make a difference.
Don't confuse employee engagement with employee happiness; they are fundamentally different.
Don't get hung up on jargon—engagement, experience, organizational health; it's not important. Just get started on the journey.
Introduction
A group of companies has twice the stock market performance of their peers. They innovate more, deliver better customer service and have half the employee turnover. They rebel against the status quo by treating people differently, and they've been rewarded with productivity and bottom‐line results that leave other companies behind. They are the companies with the most engaged workforces—measured and tracked by numerous surveys and indexes, with the data proving the connection to real business results.
These companies have found a way to build an engaging culture—a culture where hard‐working people thrive in jobs with challenge and excitement. A culture where people regularly put their companies and their customers ahead of their own needs. These companies have been outperforming their peers for nearly 20 years.
Of all the things we do in modern business, the link between employee engagement and business results is one of the most clearly proven. Gallup, Great Place to Work, Best Companies and Glassdoor all analyze employee engagement and correlate it to stock market performance. Whichever data you look at, the results are the same— companies with engaged employees beat their competition.
The Gallup index alone has 30 million data points going back nearly two decades: They interview 500 American adults every day, collecting data on employee engagement 350 days of the year.1 The truth is, we proved the link between employee engagement and business performance years ago. Now it's time to act!
Big Companies Can Correlate Performance Directly to Engagement
With 85,000 staff across nearly 1,000 stores, UK retailer Marks & Spencer has plenty of data to crunch.2
Stores in the top quartile for employee engagement are twice as likely to achieve the highest service rating and have 25% less staff absence compared to stores in the bottom quartile.
It turns out that engaged employees deliver better customer service and take less time off sick. Surprised? You shouldn't be.
Yet, despite this robust evidence, the vast majority of companies are either doing nothing, or not enough, to engage their staff. The lack of progress causes consultants to invent new ways of saying the same thing: “Engagement is dead, long live employee experience,” “Forget engagement think about organizational health”—but actually it's all broadly the same thing.
The problem with employee engagement isn't what we're calling it. The problem is we're failing to make the necessary fundamental changes to our disengaging workplace practices.
The majority of our organizations are nothing without the collective output, ingenuity, choices and decisions of our staff. Company culture is simply the term that describes how you treat people and how you set the conditions in which they do their work. To fix company culture and allow people to choose engagement, we don't need fancy initiatives around the edges; we need to fundamentally change how we treat the people who work for us.
When the Harvard Business Review surveyed business leaders in 2014, 71% of them said employee engagement was critical to the success of their organizations, but only 24% of these same leaders said their workforces were highly engaged. This difference is what we call the engagement gap.
No matter how you gather, track or slice the data, the big picture is that almost three‐quarters of our employees simply don't care much about our companies, they don't care much about our customers, and they're not really working as well or as hard as they could be. We've written this book to help you change that. We've written this book to help you make the world a better place to work.
The Business Case for Employee Engagement Has Been Made
Engagement is proven to deliver business results. Many leaders seem to know that, but companies still struggle to take meaningful and effective actions to make things better.
Understanding Employee Engagement
Just about every vendor in HR describes themselves as an employee engagement platform or product these days—even the payroll companies! You could easily be forgiven for thinking this is a new trend that's just started; an invention of new technology.
But the truth is that we've known for over 100 years that treating people better gets better business results. It's important to focus on those words, so let's repeat them: “Treating people better gets better business results.” We have disengaged employees because we lie to them; treat them as adversaries; and give them crappy jobs without autonomy, excitement or accountability. The Engagement Bridge™ model will help you understand the things that cause disengagement, and show you the tools and strategies to address them.
If you're reading this thinking that you've already done work on engagement and it didn't work, ask yourself: Did you really change how your organization treats people? Because if you only focused around the edges—installing a new intranet, a tool that helps staff know whose birthday it is, or something to count how many steps they walked—then nice as that is, it won't have been enough.
For our purposes, we've always believed in a results‐focused definition of engagement. We define someone as engaged when they:
Understand and believe in the direction the organization is going
—its purpose, mission and objectives—so they feel part of something bigger than themselves.
Understand how their role affects and contributes
to the organization's purpose, mission and objectives.
Genuinely want the organization to succeed
and feel shared success with the organization. They will often put the organization's needs ahead of their own.
You'll find that engaged employees build better, stronger and more resilient organizations. They do this in three ways:
Engaged employees make better decisions
because they understand more about the organization, their customers and the context they are operating in.
Engaged employees are more productive
because they like or love what they are doing—they waste less time and get less distracted by things that don't further the organization's mission or goals.
Engaged employees innovate more
because they deeply want the organization to succeed.
It's easy to get happiness and engagement confused, and it's also common to think that a good employer creates an easy place to work. Neither is true.
You do not need employee engagement to have happy employees. I've found companies that have quite happy employees based on a combination of good working conditions, low ambition and low accountability for results. This tends to result in the best people leaving and an average group of people staying and finding meaning and self‐actualization outside of work. It's pretty dreadful for organizational performance, and you can guarantee those companies won't have the durable and resilient cultures needed to navigate the tough years ahead.
Engagement is something deeper, more meaningful for the employee and more valuable to the organization. With the pace of business accelerating by the day, we need engaged employees more than ever.
The Case for Action
Technology is making the world move faster, and when the world goes faster, competition gets harder. Companies are innovating and changing at a rate previously unimagined. Product lifecycles are shorter, links between manufacturing and the customer are closer, and the demands for process improvement and process change have never been greater. We've never needed our staff on our side more than we do now.
Just look at the time taken for new products to reach 50 million users. Radio was invented at the start of the 20th century and it took 38 years to reach 50 million listeners, but 100 years later, it took just four years for the iPod to reach the same size audience. It took just three years for the internet, a year for Facebook and a month for Angry Birds!
This speed generally makes better outcomes for the customer, but it also brings huge instability. With technology, new players with small, highly engaged teams can outmaneuver and outperform their larger, slower competitors—look what happened to Nokia, Polaroid, Blockbuster and Borders. Each of these companies failed because when the winds changed, they couldn't move fast enough, reorganize themselves quickly enough or stay connected to the customer closely enough. You could say they all failed because of a failure of their corporate cultures.
Great cultures are full of openness, honesty, courage, connection to the customer, and vast swathes of passionate, engaged employees—these are the cultures that enable companies to react and respond to fast‐changing markets and fast‐changing environments.
How Can We Get Customers to Love Us If Our Employees Don't Even Like Us?
In the new, supercharged, super‐fast, super‐competitive economy, we need customers to love our brands, love our products and advocate for our companies.
Surely customer love must start with employee love?
Ultimately, Engagement is a Choice
Employee engagement isn't something just for rich tech companies, and it isn't something just for companies that employ lots of young people, either. Everyone, regardless of age, deserves to have a job they love that makes them feel fulfilled, and every company needs its people on side more than ever.
When I worked for a major public company in the 1990s, despite the fact we were all shareholders (so you'd think we'd automatically be engaged), I never felt more distant from the ability or desire to make an impact.
But when I met Lei, who works at the El Cortez Hotel and Casino in downtown Las Vegas, I heard a very different story. He had been running the roulette table for 25 years and told me that El Cortez was a good employer, a good company that treated him well. He was engaged, so he knew how to make the company successful.
“If I treat the customers well and smile and wish them luck, then they come back. I want that. There's a lot of other casinos on Fremont Street where customers can spend their money, and I want them to come here. This is a good job. I want to keep it, I want the casino to still be here.”
I've also seen that employee engagement can be developed in the harshest of conditions. In 2013, GM Holden, an Australian car company, announced that the entire manufacturing plant would close, marking the end of domestic car production in the country. But the exceptional efforts on engagement made by local leaders ensured that every key production and engagement metric improved, with every employee dedicated to ensuring that the last car that rolled off the production line would be their very best ever.
This shows that there is no industry you must be in, no sector you must be from, and no age or stage your company must be at—you can make employee engagement work for you and make a real difference.
Employee Engagement is a Journey, Not a Destination
Don't worry for a second about where you are—only care that you are actually moving, making small changes and moving in the right direction.
Employee engagement is never done or perfect, but you'll be surprised at the results you get with even a little bit of effort.
And remember, the bar for success is remarkably low—most companies are pretty average, as the engagement stats show. If you can get even 20% better at two or three elements in the Engagement Bridge™, you'll really be able to see competitive advantage through your people.
Getting Started
Don't read too much into the order of chapters in this book. The truth is you need to understand the elements in the Bridge™ and then decide what is urgent and pressing for you.
To make things easier and provide inspiration, half of the book is dedicated to the case studies, or plays—this is a playbook,after all. Debra led on the plays and interviewed hundreds of companies in her research over the last two years. As well as the plays in this book, you can find dozens more on the book's website, rebelplaybook.com.
We've chosen plays from companies big and small, young and mature, with big budgets and with small budgets, and often no budgets. We found you don't have to be a VC‐fueled startup or a well‐funded corporation to get amazing results from your people. We've also chosen plays from all types of rebels—some taking small steps and others taking bigger steps into their “rebelution”—to make the point that there are lots of different ways to be a rebel.
Some of the things in this book may sound outlandish and you might think you could never do them at your company. It's important to remember that this is a Rebel Playbook. The status quo of how we treat people at work has failed and we need to get out of our comfort zones to make an impact. If some parts make you feel a little uncomfortable, that's OK—use it to power your own rebelution at work.
Don't despair if the overall task looks big and, for heaven's sake, don't give up. Employee engagement isn't binary: You're never done or not done. Instead, think of it as moving forward or moving backward. It's a journey that you never complete, but the most important thing to do is to get moving.
Notes
1
http://www.gallup.com/201194/gallup‐daily‐work.aspx
2
https://www.etsplc.com/ms‐employee‐survey‐case‐study/
2Introducing the Engagement Bridge™
Chapter Objectives
In this chapter, we will:
Unpack the Engagement Bridge™ and look at each of the 10 elements.
Show how the elements relate to each other and explain the difference between the connecting elements and the underpinning elements.
Discuss where to start on your employee engagement journey.
Key Points
The Engagement Bridge™ is a 10‐part model to help you identify and improve the levers of employee engagement in your company.
The model gives you the areas to look at, ideas and tools. Ultimately you should focus your work where you can make an impact.
Start where you can act fastest—don't squander time. What's important is direction of travel and velocity, not order. The model requires a “bias for action.”
Engagement is not binary and you never reach perfection. But that's OK—the more effort you put in, the more you get out.
Introduction
The Engagement Bridge™ is a model to help you think about the ways your organization influences the people who work for you. The goal is to help you create the conditions that will allow your people to engage with their jobs and your organization. We spent 10 years developing the model through our work with more than 2,000 companies worldwide, and you can use it to develop an employee engagement plan that works for you.
There are 10 Elements in the Engagement Bridge™
Seven of them connect your organization with your people and three are special—they underpin and support the bridge. These underpinnings elements are Pay & Benefits, Workspace, and Wellbeing—without them, your bridge is on shaky ground.
The distinction is key—the underpinning elements don't cross the divide—and you cannot engage your workforce with these elements alone. They are critically important and the absence of them can destroy completely any chances of engagement. If we're looking for what to blame for the lack of engagement improvement in the last 10 years, then top of my list would be the myth that a fancy office and some perks are all you need. They are useful, but only a step in your journey.
Imagine a bridge crossing over a running stream. You need to get your people over the water, and the elements on the bridge are like beams of wood to help you do this. You can bridge the stream with any one beam, but with only one, you can't get many people across at once and it's wobbly and unsafe. Add a second and things get better; add a third or a fourth and you're really getting somewhere.
But the banks of your stream are muddy and slippery, and you need a decent base or your beams can slide in and be washed away. That's where the underpinning elements come in—by acting as rocks. These rocks give you a stable base to build on. Without them, it's hard to even get started.
If you try to build a bridge with rocks alone, you'll fail. And if you build a bridge with too few beams of wood, it won't last, either. All of the pieces are valuable, and together they create a strong and enduring structure. How important or urgent each element is depends on your organization, your context, your situation.
Connecting Elements—Beams
Underpinning Elements—Rocks
Open & Honest CommunicationPurpose, Mission & ValuesLeadershipManagementJob DesignLearningRecognition
Pay & BenefitsWellbeingWorkspace
Like bridging a stream, the whole Engagement Bridge™ doesn't have to be beautiful, complete and perfect before you can start to get people across it. Some organizations get great engagement with just a few—charities stand out as excelling on Mission and Purpose; people often go to work for them because they deeply believe in the cause—curing cancer or saving pandas. This can create great engagement just from Mission and Purpose alone, but if they work on some of the rest of the Bridge, they'll get an even more successful, effective and durable culture.
Engagement is Never Complete
You don't have to get everything right before you start seeing positive changes in engagement. Nothing here will ever be perfect; making progress is what is important.
While we've thought carefully about the order and placement of elements in the Bridge™, it's important not to take the placings too literally. Although recognition appears at the top, it is not intended to be the “cherry on top.” For many companies, it is essential and, because it's also quite straightforward, many companies might actually start with it. Leadership and Management, which appear as smaller elements of the Bridge™, are not half as important as Purpose, Mission & Values—we show them on one line to indicate how interconnected they are.
Finally, you don't start at the top and work down or on the left and work across—you set your own direction and order. Our guidance is to start where you can make a quick impact—the enemy of progress is inertia.
Unpacking the Bridge™
While the Bridge™ has 10 elements, we think of them in five parts.
Open & Honest Communication
Creating a culture of open and honest communication is so important that we call it the foundation of the Engagement Bridge™. In fact, in all of the 2,000 companies we've worked with, we haven't found one that has had success in engagement and hasn't made a significant effort in this area.
The reason that open and honest communication is so important is that it is so closely linked to employee trust. Without trust, it's very hard to imagine an engaged culture where people voluntarily put the company, and its mission and purpose, first.
Purpose, Mission & Values
With a baseline of honesty and transparency established, having a clear direction and purpose plus a consistent way of behaving drives employee engagement. There is something deeply human about the need to feel part of something bigger than yourself—something that feels worthwhile, something that feels purposeful and worth the sacrifice of your time. Getting paid and creating money for shareholders simply isn't enough for the vast majority of people to feel this connection. They need more.
Ford wants to “go further to make our cars better, our employees happier and our planet a better place to be.” Atlassian wants “to unleash the potential in every team and help advance humanity through the power of software.” For Google, it's “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” They're all different, but they all provide a sense of meaning and purpose for employees to get behind.
Leadership and Management
These are separate elements of the Bridge™, but we show them together on a single line to emphasize the link between them. To some extent, Leadership is what the company says it will do, while Management is what the company actually does. The CEO has to make sure that management keeps the promises that the leader makes.
If you have leaders who espouse great customer service, dedication to innovation and treating people fairly, but local management who don't feel connected, empowered or driven to deliver that, then you'll have an inauthentic culture. The same goes for process and procedures: If the wall says “Delight your customer,” but the process manual or computer is always saying “no,” then again, your culture is inauthentic and your staff will spot this in a second. That's why we present these elements together: because they are so closely intertwined.
Job Design, Learning and Recognition
These three elements are hyper‐connected because we know that the best‐designed jobs, the most successful and engaging roles, have recognition (and visibility) and learning (and development) built into them right from the start. A boring job where you have no meaningful output, no sense of achievement, and no one seeming to notice if you do it or not is not made better by sticking a recognition program and a subscription to an e‐learning platform on the side of it.
Fundamentally, to be able to be engaged, someone has to be in a job that has some degree of autonomy and accountability, and produces meaningful results that are seen and recognized. And any job will become disengaging if it does not develop and progress over time.
Pay & Benefits, Workspace, and Wellbeing
These final three elements are different because they are your underpinning elements—underpinning your engagement strategy. They are not the same as the connecting elements that run across, since you cannot engage your workforce with these elements alone.
They remain hugely important. If these elements in your strategy are lacking, then your bridge will be built on unstable ground; the complete absence of them will prevent progress on engagement completely. Pay, in particular, can be an enormous disengager of your people, especially if they perceive it as dealt with unfairly. With pressures on pay in many industries, getting this right can be a minefield.
Many organizations at the start of their employee engagement journeys choose to start with a simple new employee perk or benefit to act as an olive branch with the workforce. The key to success is to make sure you use this as a starting point and not an end in itself.
Company Culture is the Output of the Bridge™
We're often asked how the Bridge™ links to culture or why company culture isn't an element of the Bridge™ itself. Company culture is the output of your collective actions (or inactions). The Bridge™ shows your inputs. You can change culture, but you only change it by making changes to the inputs—and they are the elements of the Bridge™.
Everything on the Bridge™ is something that you can control. You can choose to invest time and resources in any of the elements of the Bridge™, and that investment, if directed well, will improve the connection you have between your organization and your employees.
It's important to think about the culture you have and the culture you want as you start building your bridge and developing your organization. Directing a company's culture is about so much more than writing down company values.
Actions Make Company Culture, Not Words
How your company behaves, recruits, makes decisions, operates, makes choices, through the actions of your leaders and managers: That's what forms your culture.
There is no better place to start than here, and no better time to start than now. In the chapters that follow, we'll walk you through the 10 elements of the Engagement Bridge™ model, give you practical tips on how to get started and share the inspirational stories or “plays” of the rebel companies in this playbook. As you read, think about who will help you in your organization, who your fellow rebels will be and who can join you in your “rebelution.” Get them to read this book with you, get them to join you and help you.
And remember, the way we treat people at work has failed. It has resulted in a world where only 30% of people are engaged at work and half of us are looking for a new job.
If this book seems judgmental about the way we work at the moment, it's because we are failing and we have to change—we have to rebel against the status quo.
Let's get to it!
3Open & Honest Communication
Chapter Objectives
In this chapter, we will:
Discuss the link between open and honest communication and trust.
Be honest about the role that HR has had in creating mistrust through under‐communicating.
Understand that a key goal should be a culture where staff trust leadership enough to speak up.
Key Points
Open and honest communication is the foundation of employee engagement because of its link with trust.
This will take work and commitment at all levels of management.
To build a high‐trust culture, you have to make room for dissent, disagreement and diversity of opinion.
The best companies develop cultures of lateral transparency across the company between peers and departments.
Introduction
The foundation of the Engagement Bridge™ is Open & Honest Communication. You can make good progress in engagement without being a master of every element, but we haven't seen any companies do well at employee engagement that did not have real momentum and focus on their open and honest communication strategy.
No One Trusts Us When We Lie
A lack of trust is the issue at the heart of employee disengagement, and it's caused by the fact that we persistently lie to each other at work. We've been doing this for so long and it's so entrenched that most of the time, we barely notice we're doing it.
We start the practice of telling lies about work in our schools and colleges when we train young students in interview skills. “Interview skills” is educational code for lying—lying by presenting a version of yourself that is not true, not really you and not really your whole self. Companies also lie at interviews, from the recruitment ads to the promises of perfect roles we know aren't real. With both sides working so hard to cover up the truth, is it any wonder that so many jobs end after 18 months?
We continue lying under the guise of professionalism:
