This weekend Archie Norman wrote an excellent article in the Telegraph about employee engagement, heading it “Engagement is a buzzword we should all promote“. Engage for Success gets a mention in the article as “vigorously spreading the gospel”, which is accolade indeed from one of the most inspiring leaders in our business world today who was our keynote speaker at the ‘go live’ event in November, for obvious reasons!
Employee Engagement at Asda
In the article he talks about his time at Asda and how they turned the business round by focusing on creating a business and strategy that enabled their colleagues to believe in, and be a part of, it. It’s interesting to know that it was a strategy “born out of poverty” and that it was seen as “soft stuff” at the time, and yet it worked.
And now we are happy to say that employee engagement being essential to improving business performance is becoming more and more well known but as Archie (protocol might imply we should refer to him as Norman or Mr Norman, but that feels far too formal for a friend of the movement) says in the article it’s still not happening everywhere and not happening fast enough.
Employee Engagement Going From Transactional to Transformational
He asks what is limiting progress and talks about commitment to engagement often being skin deep, something that David MacLeod and Nita Clarke refer to as ‘transactional’ – a series of events strung together to make the company believe that it is engaging its staff – rather than ‘transformational’, which Archie describes as being rooted in the culture of the business and the attitude of the management.
He also refers to the the term ‘transactional’ in relation to employment culture as a symptom of pay being seen as the only incentive for workers and then goes on to explain how people want meaning in their work too. And that “hierarchy is dead”; people expect equal respect in the modern workplace.
Share Employee Engagement Content Within Your Organisation
It’s an excellent article, which we’d thoroughly recommend you reading and sharing with leaders and colleagues in your workplace. Let’s get this out there! Here is the link again.
