The importance of staff engagement during a downturn

By Philippa Youngman

As New Zealand heads out of recession mode, the job market is seeing signs of change. But have employers paid enough attention to their staff during the downturn?

Pivot spoke with a senior HR professional in an organisational development role  at a leading Christchurch employer, who believes leaders should use this time to focus on staff engagement before the job market starts to pick up throughout the year.

“Now is a perfect opportunity for leaders to ensure all staff are engaged and committed to helping achieve company goals. As the year progresses I think we’re going to start seeing signs of change and leaders need to ensure they haven’t left it too late.”

Referring to recent New Zealand studies that rated individual job satisfaction, Kate* says results showed that people are not as happy as their employers assume.

“Depending on what study you look at, a third to half of people actually want to move jobs. They might be sitting tight at the moment but as we start coming out of the recession, they’ll be fleeing. They’re bored and are not seeing any initiatives to keep them motivated, engaged and loyal to the organisation.”

There are two implications of those results, she says.

“If those statistics are correct, that’s a huge chunk of your workforce that is unhappy – imagine what they’re doing in terms of performance and productivity, and the potential damage they could be doing to customers and colleagues. The other issue is that when they leave, there’s a huge gap in your workforce; your good staff have left because leaders have sat back and relaxed, when the opposite should have happened”.

“Disengaged staff are there in your workforce because people are not putting any energy into them”.

But don’t just focus on your top talent, Kate cautions. According to her, too many employers concentrate on the high-flying best performers and not the bulk of the workforce who form the backbone of many organisations.

Whilst admitting her views are slightly against the grain, she says she finds it disheartening that the emphasis seems to be focused on a small percentage of the workforce, rather than all employees.

“I think there’s a problem at the moment that leaders are resting on their laurels and not doing enough to engage their current staff. If they are, most are focusing on just a small group – the top performers, and they’re forgetting about the rest of the workforce”.

“From my perspective, whilst retention of talent is important, it’s about looking at ways to retain all effective staff. If you focus all your energy on that top talent I think you’re missing out on the good, effective workers that keep the business going.”

This, she believes is indicative of the fact that too often organisational practices and processes don’t reflect the overall goals of what the company is trying to achieve.

“Consistency is key – organisations can’t say one thing and then do something completely different.  There’s no point in putting things in place piecemeal that don’t support each other; it all needs to be connected and it’s important for employees to see how they relate to the overall goals of the organisation.”

Kate also says that clarity and consistency is also crucial when it comes to remuneration process. In this time of economic downturn, leaders need to be especially careful when communicating remuneration announcements to staff.

“Leaders have to be really careful with the communication of remuneration decisions, especially if there’s a history of doing one thing but it’s had to change because of economic times and the reality is that you don’t have the money to give increases. It has to come from leaders themselves and not some HR department in another building”.

“It’s all about transparent processes and being very clear about what’s going to happen. You have to be honest and give people an understanding of what the remuneration rules are. Problems occur when staff don’t understand the rules”.

As a believer of investing in technology to manage key HR processes, she says “I think it’s crucial in medium to large organisations – it makes things easier and improves consistency. Without it, everyone gets bogged down by transactional activity and it’s a real waste of human resource.”

Overall she says the fundamentals for successful HR processes are good communication and good leadership – “it’s about trying to get everyone aligned and engaged, but that isn’t always easy to achieve”.

* Names have been changed to protect anonymity.