A landmark event for organisations representing millions of people across the UK took place 26 November, to tackle the UK’s employee engagement deficit. Practitioners from private, public and third sector organisations met at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre in London to hear the latest evidence on what the UK’s employee engagement deficit is costing the economy, which is estimated to be £26bn* in lost GDP every year.
The event featured a key note speech from ITV Chairman Archie Norman who shared his personal reflections on his experiences at Asda and ITV plc.
Jo Swinson MP, Minister for Employment Relations and Consumer Affairs, also told the audience about employee engagement and the benefits for employee wellbeing, organisational productivity and for economic growth in the UK.
Tanith Dodge, Director of HR at Marks & Spencer took the audience through the evidence paper. The slides used as part of the presentation are available here.
“It’s impossible to overstate the importance of engaging with your employees. It’s been proven time and time again that employees that are engaged with your business plan and values are more motivated and deliver better results. It’s something we put a lot of focus on at M&S and great to be involved today in helping to shape the future agenda in this field.”
David MacLeod and Nita Clarke, co-chairs of the task force said: Today has been about mobilising the maximum support to take the engagement message out to organisations and people at work. That is the challenge the Engage for Success movement has set – and today’s excellent event is an important milestone.”
“We have all now seens the evidence: engaging employees is good for personal well-being, central for organisational success and vital for growth of UK plc as we all meet the challenges of recession and global competition. It is now important to take this out into work places across the country and really make a difference.”
The event was ‘social media’ friendly and the messages on Twitter were ongoing throughout the conference.
To see the event in pictures, click here.
*Figure from Kenexa (2011)
