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Response to the FT’s Lucy Kellaway on Whether Worker Bees Should Be Left to Bumble 

Last week Lucy Kellaway, the FT’s management columnist wrote a piece that was less than complimentary about the topic of employee engagement, with the tagline “All this stuff about employee engagement is nonsense”.

David MacLeod & Nita Clarke have penned a response as follows (which was sent to the FT as well as being posted here):

Letter to the Editor, Financial Times

Dear Sir,

It is a pity that Lucy Kellaway has used one report from one US consultancy to dismiss employee engagement as nonsense, when a wide range of evidence from across the economy points to the opposite conclusion. In an engaged organisation, staff know what their job is and how it relates to the purpose of the organisation, they are treated as human beings not as a human resource, and they know their voice counts; in these workplaces there is no gap between the values on the wall and how people behave. Organisations where this kind of culture flourishes are more productive and profitable, safer and more innovative, and meet customers and consumer needs better than their non-engaged rivals.

At a time when the Francis report into Mid staffs Hospital and the Salz Report into Barclays Bank lay bare the dangers of not engaging your staff, for an alternative view to Lucy’s perhaps your readers might go to the website www.engageforsuccess.org, a free to use resource provided by the national employee engagement task force which is sponsored by more than 40 chief executives from across the economy, look at the benefits of an authentic engagement approach, and make up their own minds.

David MacLeod & Nita Clarke

What does everyone else think? Your comments below would be much appreciated.

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