1. Employee Engagement: Inspiration or Perspiration?

2. A light bulb moment “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine
percent perspiration.”
Thomas Edison
Everyone loves this quote because it means they can become a genius

3. Thomas Edison also said…
“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
Thomas Edison
So this presentation is about how we help our clients not to give up.
The focus is on creating an engaged workforce, and whilst I agree with edison that hard work and perseverance are critical, I think he under estimated the importance of inspiration in good management. So lets see how I evaluate this in relation to engagement.

4. The rule of David Tong “Achieving an engaged workforce is:
20 percent inspiration
30 percent collaboration
50 percent perspiration”
Whilst not disagreeing with Edison – I think in some areas he got the ratios wrong
Lets look at these in reverse order

5. A closer look at engagement and how we measure it

6. The virtuous cycle of engagement
A closer look at engagement and how we measure it
Engagement is:
‘The extent to which employees are motivated to contribute to organisational success and are willing to apply discretionary effort to accomplish tasks important to the achievement of organizational goals’.
Great managers and supportive work environment
Engaged employees
- Satisfied
- Committed
- Proud
- Willing to
advocate
Better individual performance – giving discretionary effort
Improved company performance

7. Engagement is measured with Employee Surveys
What do surveys measure?
What do we use the information for?
The level of engagement in the workforce
To understand employee sentiment
How engagement varies across departments, countries, job levels, demographic groups etc.
To identify best practices and ‘hot spots’
What issues underpin engagement
To set priorities to guide decisions and organisational change
Views and opinions on management practices and other issues
To open a dialogue with employees to create engagement and focus on areas of most concern

8. 50% Perspiration:
A case study

9. Maersk Group overview
Operate mainly in the transport and energy industries
Approx. 89,000 employees
2014 revenue: USD 47 billion
Companies of particular
strategic importance:
Strategic investments:
Maersk is a global conglomerate that operate mainly in the shipping and energy industries.
We employ about 89,000 people, and our revenue in 2014 totalled 47 billion US dollars.
At the centre of our operations are 5 core business units of particular strategic importance:
Maersk Line, which is the world’s largest container shipping company
APM Terminals, a major global terminal operator
Maersk Oil, one of the world’s leading independent oil and gas firms, and
Maersk Drilling, which provides offshore drilling services in key markets
APM Shipping Services consists of Maersk Supply Service, Maersk Tankers, Svitzer and Damco
Other businesses include Maersk Container Industry and Höegh Autoliners.
Transport
Maersk Line
APM Terminals
APM Shipping Services
Energy
Maersk Oil
Maersk Drilling
Maersk Container Industry
Höegh Autoliners

10. Time honoured values Constant Care Humbleness Uprightness
More than a century of business success has shown us that we can meet the challenges we face by remaining firmly anchored in our values – Constant care, Humbleness, Uprightness, Our employees and Our name.
“Constant Care” and “Humbleness” are about preparing for the future and looking to our customers and competitors as we seek out ideas for how to continuously improve our practices.
“Uprightness” is about transparency and accountability in everything we do.
“Our Employees” and “Our Name” entail striving to make our company an inspiring and challenging place to work, and a valuable and credible business partner.
Our Employees
Our Name

11. Employee engagement trend
A 10 year journey of progress
Maersk Group has now reached the top quartile benchmark for engagement for the first time since 2012
The increase in engagement is mainly caused by an increase among blue-collar, seafarer and offshore employees
Describe slides
…but how was this achieved?

12. Strengths and concerns
Employees’ perception of how Maersk Group upholds it’s values has improved by 4 points in 2015 and is a significant contributor to the higher engagement level
Other strengths are survey follow-up and clarity of strategy
Only two questions have less positive results compared to 2014 and both are below the external benchmark
Strengths
Diff to 2014
Diff to External Top 25%
Company upholds the Maersk values 4% --
Confident that action will be taken as a result of survey 2% 8%
Clear understanding of my company’s strategy 0% 3%
Concerns
My job allows me a healthy work-life balance
-3%
-2%
My job makes good use of my abilities
-1%
Paid attention to values question
Context for decreases – universal issues about pressure and agility

13. A program to build long-term capability
Invest in building capability - programmatic
Recorded training modules
Available for HR Business partners and line managers
Open Q&A ‘surgeries’ to take questions and discuss solutions
HR Business partners are challenged to ‘Know your Managers’
- providing the support where it is needed most

14. ‘Manage the tail’ – support for managers
Focused activity
Encouragement to change and take action
Low
High
Engagement Level

15. 8 ways HR can help managers start to take action
Know your manager
Prioritise to focus effort
Communicate results first
Begin with quick wins
8 ways HR can help managers start to take action
Help them get in front of their team
Deep-dive on complexity
With change getting started is the hardest step
Be creative – use Sample Action Steps on IBM’s portal
How do you make it personal – by keeping it alive, not just a one-off and by making it relevant
Delegate to share the load
Be creative – make it personal

16. Not just a program – get engagement into the culture
1:1 talks
Check-in with individuals
Are you clear what is expected from you?
How are things going since the last time we met?
Team meetings
EES update
Refer to key results in decisions
Ask how people are feeling?
Keep engagement on agenda
Role model
Required behaviours/values
Do you check in on yourself from time-to-time?
Do you ‘live the values’?
PDP
Goals and Targets
Use survey results to set personal goals
Engagement is not just a program it needs to become part of the way managers manage

17. Lessons from the Maersk Group
Stick at it – engagement is a long-term game
Strong leadership – upholding values and clarifying strategy and direction
Build capability – invest in your long-term programme through HRBPs and Line Managers
Manage the tail – focus support where it will deliver
HR - know your managers
Managers – make engagement personal for your team

18. 30% Collaboration

19. Four collaborative steps to turn data into action1 2 3 4
Understand your results
Conduct
feedback
meetings
Develop
action plans
Follow up
and
manage
Discuss with trusted colleagues
Transparent sharing of results
Discuss implications
Delegated teamwork
Using collaborative technology
Deep-dive on complex issues
Communicate progress
You cannot do engagement by yourself
Following a survey there are 4 main phases of activity – all involve collaboration
Results have to be shared – a curtesy but also to create meaning – how do you react and how do others react?
Where will solutions in your action plans come from?

20. What happens when you do not follow these steps?
% Favourable Engagement
follow-up
Engagement falls if people think you will do nothing
Confidence in survey follow-up is closely related to levels of Engagement.
Basically what this slides shows is from the right hand side that employees, that feedback, that they are very confident that action will be taken as a result of the survey are more engaged than the employees to the left hand-side of the graph that are not comfortable action will be taken as a consequence of this survey.
So an example is if an employee is uncertain if follow up activities will take place their mean engagement score is 47%. On the other hand if an employee is very confident that follow up activities will take place their mean engagement score is 87%.
There is in other words a significant correlation between engagement levels and follow up activities.

21. Collaboration through Connections is Changing the Way we Work
Engagement
Community
Do you have all the information you need?
Acknowledge generational differences

22. 20% Inspiration

23. Back to Thomas Edison
“Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results.”
Thomas Edison
Where does inspiration come from?
Edison says …. From negative results – from trial and error – experiment with doing things differently
In terms of our process the lesson is:
First - pay attention to what the data is telling you
Then consult with the team for their ideas

24. FMCG company attends to subtle messages
Situation:
Global FMCG company with a long-standing emphasis on creativity and entrepreneurship was moving away from private ownership via share offering
New performance-based psychological contract – more centralised, market-disciplined, measured
Survey showed confidence in leadership, but a 2% decline in perceptions of innovation – this was treated as a red flag
Response:
They did not ignore this signal
Deep-dive on innovation – where are concerns concentrated?
Consultation on obstacles to innovation
Crowdsourcing initiative launched - in specific categories
Communication of innovation as key response to survey – a commitment to traditional company value of entrepreneurship
Did not accept the 2% fall – would have been easy to say it could have been worse, given the context of corporatisation
Concentrated at management levels and in Marketing
All this showed a relentless pursuit of inspiration

25. Inspiration from social listening
Five products presented in a Social Listening dashboard that provides more in-depth and regular insights about your organisation
IBM’s Employee Listening platform
Daily pulse
JAMS
Social pulse
Do you have all the information you need?
Acknowledge generational differences
Social analytics
Mini pulse

26. Case Study: Leo Burnett Worldwide
Cultural messages need:
Reinforcement
Reinforcement is supported by measurement
But why bother? Maybe some managers did not agree with this philosopy
Questions about HumanKind added to the Leo Burnett Worldwide employee survey:
These questions reinforced the importance of the initiative, and
Generated measures of impact, giving managers a data point to move forward from

27. Leo Burnett – Inspiring by ‘Making a Difference’
Perceptions of HumanKind emerged as the best predictor of Best Agency score – judged on financial and creative metrics
Offices fostering an innovative and challenging environment are 2.2 x more likely to meet margin goals
Turnover rates 8.2% lower in offices with highest engagement levels $

28. Lessons – helping you build better engagement

29. The lessons for your engagement program
Stick at it – engagement is a long game
Gain leadership buy-in
To engage your teams – first engage your managers
To engage your managers – make them accountable and give them the tools and support to do the job
Understand the issues – find out what is driving engagement
Focus your efforts – on priority issues and priority populations
Bring an engaging style into your daily work
Get inspiration from collaboration with colleagues
Pay attention to the details – do not ignore subtle messages in the data
Inspire others by making an impact
Perspiration
Last point: Nothing succeeds like success
Collaboration
and Inspiration