June 16, 2008
I recently did some work for City & Guilds, the awarding body associated with vocational learning, who have just released the results of a national survey focusing on ‘happiness’. They found that ‘pay’ ranked only 4th in their Happiness Index behind the following aspects of working life:
• A stimulating and interesting job
• Financial security
• Good work-life balance
With all the strike action going on in the UK at the moment - Shell’s haulage workers went on strike this week - you’d be forgiven for thinking that pay is still as important as everyone thinks it is for employees. But these results offer an alternative view and reflect what I hear when I talk to both workers and managers – that, yes, fair pay is a factor, but without stimulating, challenging work and a good work-life balance it’s not enough.
Having good relationships with work colleagues was also seen as important by respondents. This should be no surprise as we all have examples of our working lives being damaged by poor relationships with our boss and/or colleagues. Conversely, if you have good relationships work-based friends can be a critical source of support when times are tough or when the pressure is on.
All of the above factors are fundamental to employee well-being and happiness, as well as a firm’s ability to retain their employees and deliver sustainable success. Of course, given the current negative economic climate and the associated media hype, it is harder for employers to maintain levels of well-being / happiness. Staff are focusing on the security of their jobs and may not give much credence to their employers’ overtures about the benefits of well-being at work. But if well-being levels were good before the economic downturn resilience levels are likely to be higher now, staff more receptive to change and the task of managing them in the current context easier all round.
There are lessons for all of us here in terms of how we motivate, retain and develop our people. This survey, together with the Learning and Skills Council’s ‘Train for Gain’ programme, is encouraging all employers to stimulate people, give them more autonomy, provide a reasonable level of security and invest in creating a high morale work environment - and that’s no bad thing.
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Engagement, Management, Personal Resilience, Productivity, Well-being | Tagged: autonomy, happiness, motivate, pressure, resilience, Well-being, work-life balance | 
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Posted by Cary Cooper
May 21, 2008
I’ve been struck recently by how widespread the application of Lean Management principles has become in the UK economy – both in the private and public sectors. Traditionally reserved for the manufacturing and retail sectors, Lean is a model for managing organisations in a way that focuses only on delivering exactly what the customer wants, when they want it. In other words, there is no slack or waste in the system and this allows businesses to keep costs to an absolute minimum. The current trend for using these principles pre-dates the credit crunch, but the shortage of cash in the economy makes them more relevant than ever.
However, these are not new ideas. In fact, the American Edwards Deming pioneered many of the techniques associated with the Lean approach when he exported this way of thinking (which became Total Quality Management and Just-In-Time manufacturing) to the Japanese car industry in the ‘50s - a time when US car manufacturers were on top of the world - rich, comfortable….. and complacent. This complacency came back to bite them over the next forty years as leaner foreign manufacturers gradually eroded their market share. And the effects of this abide to this day, as I’m reminded by the proliferation of Japanese cars I see every time I return to the States!!
The claims made for the efficiency gains that Lean processes can deliver sound impressive – with 50% improvements in performance and quality being perfectly achievable in relatively short timescales. But are we to believe that there are no negative consequences to such major change? Think about it for a minute - even if the costs vs. outputs balance better on paper after the changes are made, removing cost generally means removing people (often in significant numbers) as well as other resources. How can removing hundreds of people from an organisation not affect morale, motivation and employee engagement?
As a result of such changes, the workload of some people grows exponentially which, in turn, puts pressure on work relationships, communications and employees’ ability to maintain quality under pressure. For some this will change what work feels like forever in terms of the nature of the relationship they have with both their job and their employer. These people may feel that their employer has broken the psychological contract and the risk of the best people leaving is increased. All of this is against a new background of relative job insecurity that has accompanied new economic times and this is a particularly unusual feeling for public sector workers who in the past have been immune to such concerns. But these days, given the current climate, we can all justifiably ask ourselves the question “Will I be next?”
It’s here that the spotlight falls upon leadership and internal communication. Because I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with the Lean model, just that this kind of ‘all or nothing’ cost-based approach requires extremely high levels of leadership skill and ability if it is to be a success. Apart from managing the aftermath of the change process itself, this is fundamentally about culture change and the trick is not to lose all of the good aspects of the old culture while bringing in the new ways of thinking and acting. For example, I have talked before about discretionary effort - something which has been given willingly in many organisations where in the past there has been space and time to go beyond the current task. But one of the likely side-effects of the Lean approach is a new employee mindset that sees spending time thinking about the bigger issues as a waste of time in a world where it’s only important to focus on the essentials of the next deliverable. Of course, organisations can manage impressions to the outside world so that it looks like they are becoming leaner and fitter for purpose, but inside these things can quickly take on a life of their own and before you know it you have a completely new culture! This is fine if you want a completely new culture and weren’t fussy about what you lost from the old one, but most organisations have positive differentiators that are worth holding onto – cherishing even.
Radical change always has consequences. Lean is a very efficient way of finding the dead wood, but it can be a brutally blunt instrument so the changes it suggests should be thoroughly evaluated for sustainability and implemented wisely. Above all, it should only be considered if a leadership group is confident and talented enough to pull it off.
1 Comment | Engagement, Leadership, Management, Productivity, Talent | Tagged: culture change, employee engagement, Leadership, Lean, morale, Motivation, performance | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
May 8, 2008
With the teacher’s strike, the Grangemouth oil refinery worker’s strike in Scotland and other groups considering industrial action, we have to ask the question: Are we going back to the bad old days of industrial relations we saw in the 1970s - the ‘them and us’ mentality that caused so much damage all those years ago?
It is certainly the case that in difficult financial times, with jobs insecure, pension funds under pressure and financial markets in turmoil relations between management and employees often get strained. On the other hand, if employers engage with their staff, treat them with respect and communicate with them accurately and honestly about what’s happening the consequences can be managed more easily.
Senior management must be proactive about trying to empathise with the perspectives of their employees - who at times, like these, feel less secure about their jobs and more worried about their own personal financial situation. They therefore rely on the skills of their manager and other organisational leaders to provide accurate information about the viability of the organisation and future plans so they can make good decisions to safeguard themselves and their families. Where possible, employers should be making every effort to involve staff in decision making on these important issues – this effort will be repaid tenfold when things settle down and the workforce appreciate that they were dealt with fairly. Ultimately, engaging staff in any process of change helps to ensure survival now and growth in the future.
Taking a step back, I think there are signs that the current unrest is not so much to do with salary issues, but more an underlying concern about the openness of management and their lack of engagement with and trust of their employees. There are also signs that the shear amount of work that certain professions are being asked to do is taking its toll and is not in line with the rewards offered – and that’s rewards in all their forms, not just pay. For example, earlier this month figures from The National Association of Head Teachers showed that more than a thousand Head Teachers and Deputies are leaving the profession early every year because of work pressures.
General Secretary Mick Brookes blamed a long-hours culture which saw nearly 44% of his members working 60-hour weeks. This is reflective of a general sea change in public attitudes which indicates that people have started to think that ‘enough is enough’, and that society will have to change. Undoubtedly, it’s going to take some strong leadership and a reappraisal of our values to get us out of an ever frenetic life style, so I’ll leave you with a question even bigger than the one I started with:
Where is the drive for that change going to come from?
1 Comment | Engagement, Leadership, Management, Personal Resilience | Tagged: Engagement, leaders, Leadership, engage staff, work pressure | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
May 1, 2008
Reading my last post, I realised that it painted a pretty grim picture of childhood in Britain today and I want to balance that off with some more hopeful news. At the end of 2007, the Education Secretary, Ed Balls, announced that lessons in happiness, well-being and good manners are to be introduced in all state secondary schools. I remember thinking that this was a major step forward for education in the UK – one that begins to align the Education sector with some of the latest thinking from the world of business.
By introducing this initiative, the Government is acknowledging that well-being, self-awareness and a sense of purpose are just as important as the tasks that pupils are required to complete in order to achieve their academic objectives.
Pilots of the ‘Seal’ programme (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) – an idea which originated in the States - have already been successfully implemented in primary schools here and have been found to boost both academic performance and discipline by helping children to better understand their emotions. So, the Government concluded that it’s important for children to develop an emotionally intelligent way of approaching their work, as well as producing good results – Hallelujah! Exactly the same is true for adults in the workplace.
The hope is that the benefits of teaching children how to express their feelings, manage their anger and empathise with other people will create calmer, more productive school environments, as well as boosting the concentration, engagement and motivation levels of students. It is no coincidence that these are the exact same benefits that employers can expect when they commit to creating workplaces characterised by high levels of well-being and engagement.
And this emerging alignment between the worlds of education and work bodes well for the future of the UK economy – because tomorrow’s employees are likely to enter the workplace with a much more mature and productive approach to work. They will bring with them a holistic attitude which will include an understanding of the importance of balancing work and life to deliver sustainable levels of high performance, more sophisticated people skills and higher levels of personal resilience. So, although our children are reporting that they are more unhappy than ever, change is afoot and I’m delighted that these classes are set to be a standard part of the national curriculum. Because, as I explained in a recent post, you can learn to be positive!
Click here for the full article in from The Times.
No Comments » | Engagement, Personal Resilience, Productivity, Well-being | Tagged: Engagement, holistic, Motivation, people skills, Personal Resilience, productive, Sense of purpose, Well-being | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
April 18, 2008
The tide seems to be turning for Gordon Brown - Labour are way down in the polls and every other headline seems to voice or imply some negative view of him and/or his leadership. But I wonder how this makes him feel?
We all need to feel valued and appreciated in our roles - when we’re not it starts to affect our motivation, engagement and feelings of self-worth. Whatever you think of Gordon Brown you can’t fault him for effort - he probably works in excess of 90 hours a week and (in his own way) has the best interests of the country at heart. But however focused and determined he is it can be demoralising to work this hard and still constantly receive negative feedback.
We don’t know what those close to him are saying to bolster his confidence or exactly how he feels right now, but the Prime Minister wouldn’t be human if he didn’t feel in some way depleted after the events of the last two weeks.
My university spin-off company Robertson Cooper hosts a Business Well-Being Network which brings members together to communicate about well-being issues in the workplace. A theme that comes up time and time again is that organisations have to try to find ways to ensure that their employees feel valued, appreciated and involved. First, the business and its leaders have to create the right environment for this to happen. Then, Line Managers have to play their role by providing clear direction and feedback to employees (both positive and negative) on a day-to-day basis.
Of course, Mr Brown is unfortunate because his ‘organisation’ doesn’t work that way. He doesn’t have a boss - unless you count the Queen, and I doubt she is providing too much in the way of structured feedback on his behaviour! It can be lonely at the top and the people there need to be courageous when times are tough and Mr Brown will certainly need bucket loads of courage and support in the coming months.
No Comments » | Engagement, Leadership, Personal Resilience, Well-being | Tagged: Well-being, Engagement, motivated, Leadership | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
March 20, 2008
Recently it was announced that doctors would be encouraged to issue ‘well notes’ instead of ‘sick notes’, to get people back to work even if they are only doing part or some aspect of their normal job.
The underlying principle is that the longer people are disengaged from work while on a sick note, the more difficult it is to re-integrate them back into the workplace. This might be a reasonable strategy for muscular skeletal disorders, where the doctor might have the expertise to determine what the patient is or is not ‘able to do’ in the workplace. However it is more problematic for stress-related or mental ill health sources of absence.
In terms of incapacity benefit the single biggest source (representing something like 40% of the total) is for mental ill health or stress at work. In this context, many doctors are incapable of determining what activities their patients are able or unable to perform. Also, most GPs will not know the work environment of their patients, or what their problems at work might be (i.e. an autocratic boss, a long hour’s culture, a mismatch between the needs of the individual and those of the specific job, etc).
For example, what if someone at work has been bullied over a period of time by their boss, and then goes off ill? The GP might feel this person could go back to work and is capable of doing X and Y, but being confronted by this bullying again might mean that they get worse and may end up off for a longer period of time after the initial re-entry period. The important point is that GPs have certain expertise but they may not necessarily understand the particular working environment of their patients and what the stimulus for the patients problem might be in the first place.
By the way, this may even apply to patients with backache problems as well, since some muscular skeletal problems are sometimes a presenting symptom for relationship or career-related problems at work, particularly when the doctor cannot find an organic cause.
No Comments » | Absenteeism, Engagement, Stress | Tagged: absence, mental illness, sick note, Stress, well note | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
March 10, 2008
Just a short post today…but with a big download. After I posted my last blog entry, I mentioned it to my colleague Professor Ivan Robertson. He told me that in his capacity as Managing Director at Robertson Cooper Limited he wrote a paper at the end of 2007 on a similar subject - namely, how to impact the bottom-line by improving staff engagement and well-being.
So, the purpose of this post is to share the paper with you. The paper is called ‘Improving organisational outcomes by making people feel good’ and you can download it here. white-paper-final.doc
For more information about Ivan’s work at Robertson Cooper go to www.robertsoncooper.com
1 Comment | Absenteeism, Engagement, Leadership, Management, Personal Resilience, Productivity, Stress, Well-being | Tagged: improving well-being, Productivity, recognition, reward, Stress, Well-being, workforce sustainability | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
March 9, 2008
In my last post I talked about the blend of reward and recognition that really works for employees. Shortly afterwards I came across some survey results reported by Personnel Today which indicated the areas that HR Directors will be prioritising in the coming year. The study of 2,033 employers, by recruitment firm Manpower, found that increasing workforce productivity was the top HR priority for 2008, moving it up the agenda from fourth place in 2007.
I guess this isn’t that surprising given the uncertain nature of the economy and also the current climate where getting more results for less money has become a mantra - a way of working life even. But it worries me because it raises the question of how sustainable this approach is ever likely to be. Last week I was talking about the importance of making workplaces motivating and energising in relation to attracting and retaining the best staff. Another way of looking at this is that you can design sustainable success and competitive advantage into your business. But if you keep increasing the pressure in an effort to squeeze every last drop of productivity out of the workforce it won’t be long before the wheels come off.
Sometimes you have to take a step back to look for the right source of competitive advantage. By getting the balance of challenge and support right and creating a culture of well-being you can, in fact, still improve productivity. This might sound woolly or unrealistic or just a crazy way to come at the problem, but the research backs it up. Work by Harter, Schmidt and Hayes has shown that well-being and engagement are very definitely associated with improving productivity.
Data from nearly 8,000 separate business units in 36 companies were analysed and the results clearly showed that engagement/well-being was linked to business unit performance - predicting not just productivity but also customer satisfaction, profitability, employee turnover and sickness absence levels. Using a sample of business units this large offers conclusive evidence that if you provide a sense of well-being and engagement to staff the positive outcomes will follow.
Another survey reported by Personnel Today in the same article informs us that 75% of the136 HR directors recently surveyed by Northgate HR also reported that employee productivity was the top HR concern. But workforce morale and reward & recognition strategies were not very far behind. Based on the Harter et al research evidence it seems that employers could make significant progress on all of these fronts just by getting well-being right - but I wonder what proportion the HR Directors responding to these surveys have actually invested in business-wide well-being improvement programmes?
For anyone who wants to seek out the research, the reference is below:
Harter, Schmidt and Hayes, (2002). Business unit level outcomes between employee satisfaction, employee engagement and business outcomes: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 268-279.
1 Comment | Engagement, Productivity, Well-being, reward and recognition | Tagged: improving well-being, Productivity, recognition, reward, Stress, Well-being, workforce sustainability | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
February 2, 2008
The Education sector has caught my eye this week as the National Union of Teachers threatened strike action over pay and the government announced a new advertising campaign to persuade people to join the profession. I also heard a radio phone-in on the subject which included an interview with the so-called ‘Frank Chalk’, an ex-teacher who has written a book called “It’s your time you’re wasting: A teacher’s tales of classroom hell”. Frank painted a vivid picture of life in the classroom that bore no relation to the inspirational scenes portrayed in the new adverts (which you can see online at the link below). While some classrooms in some schools may be like those featured in the adverts, there are also many that are filled with the kind of anti-social behaviour we hear about on the news and which Frank Chalk describes. It left me wondering where this aspect of school life is in the adverts.
This got me thinking about the advertising strategy being employed here. Yes, there is marketing capital in the inspirational aspects of teaching children, but you can’t expect to bury the less attractive parts of the role and hope that nobody, including existing teachers, notices. In one important respect, recruiting for teachers is no different to recruiting staff in any field – there has to be congruence between the promises made during the hiring process and the reality that is experienced when the person starts work. In the recruitment trade they call this a ‘realistic job preview’. For example, you wouldn’t show an aspiring accountant the CEO’s office at interview and then set them to work in a store cupboard in the basement!!
In the same way, it’s no good promising teachers a zen-like learning environment full of engaged and ambitious students and then sending them into a battlefield of verbal and physical abuse played out to a soundtrack of mobile phone ringtones.
So maybe it’s time for the government’s advertisers to show a more realistic picture of what life is like for teachers – good and bad. With 24 hour media and personal publishing on the Internet, stories from disenfranchised teachers will always be out there. That’s why everyone now knows that there are many more administrative moments for teachers these days than there are inspirational ones.
Ensuring that people feel good about their jobs and have a sense of purpose every day is the secret to retaining employees and attracting talented new ones. I think a more productive strategy would be to invest in improving the reality that teachers have to experience and then report that in the advertising campaigns. If well-being and engagement levels were raised significantly for staff the good news stories would soon start to flow.
See the ads here: http://www.tdanewadvertising.com/uyh_tvads.htm
Read more about the story and a phone-in on the subject here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/fivelivebreakfast/2008/01/our_schools_need_you.html
No Comments » | Engagement, Public Sector, Stress, Well-being | Tagged: advertising for teachers, frank chalk, recruiting teachers, recruitment, teacher retention, teachers, teachers advertising campaign | Permalink
Posted by Cary Cooper
