Tag Archive for: Staff Engagement

Embrace HR Aylesbury Manager and employee engagement

Managers need to understand how they can support employee engagement and well-being. And why…

Employee engagement and well-being is vital if you want to keep your people happy and productive – and retain valued members of your team. But this kind of culture must be supported from the top down – so to ensure it works properly, managers must be on board.

What the research says

And yet in recent CIPD research [CIPD Community: New tools to help you develop managers to support employee well-being and engagement, 22 Mar 2017], it appeared that less than half of the surveyed HR professionals believed that their company’s line managers had indeed bought into the importance of their staff’s well-being.

On the back of this research, the CIPD has teamed up with Affinity Health at Work and a number of research partners to come up with a selection of tools aimed at giving managers the tools and skills they need to ensure the well-being of their teams – called the Maturity Model [CIPD: Developing managers for engagement and well-being, 21 Feb 2017]

Being the best

Working on employee engagement and well-being is key to becoming a great company to work for. Every year, the Sunday Times Best Companies lists reveal which companies and not-for-profit-organisations are the best to work for.

And it’s not just for the blue chips and global giants – this accolade is something that all companies can work towards, whatever their size. It’s an aim that will reap its own rewards in terms of employee productivity and retention. There are eight specific segments to be considered – including leadership, how employees relate to their managers, and the level of engagement they have with their company. How staff feel about pressure at work and their life/work balance, their satisfaction with pay and benefits and how their growth within their job/career is managed are other vital criteria.

Here at Embrace HR we work with a number of SME’s to help them address these eight important areas as part of the ‘Best Companies’ programme. Take a look here to find out more: www.b.co.uk/factors/ [Best Companies: The 8 factors of workplace engagement]

Taking it from the top

These things need to start at the top though, so the maturity model, mentioned earlier, which can help those involved in people management identify where an organisation is at in terms of management development, is really useful in helping to bring you up to speed.

Once you have assessed where your company currently sits within the maturity model – at the lower end for instance (little or no competence) – you can work on the required processes to achieve the next level, and ultimately aim for the lofty heights of level 3 – competence.

So to use the maturity model, you would evaluate your company’s approach and current leadership development offering to work out what level you were starting at.

For instance, at level 2, your managers receive some support to develop their management skills, and the company culture and policies support effective management development.

You can start assessing your team and making plans to bring your managers to the next level in order to increase employee engagement and well-being by downloading the report and maturity model here [CIPD: Developing managers for engagement and well-being, 21 Feb 2017].

If you would like to discuss this subject further and learn how Embrace HR can help your business, please contact Cecily Lalloo at Embrace HR Limited.

T: 07767 308717 or contact us here.

Based in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Embrace HR Limited supports business owners who do not have their own HR department or those that do but need help from time to time. We also work across the Home Counties of Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, and also SMEs based in London.

Embrace HR Aylesbury People working

Do you value your staff above all else…?

Is your organisation a People Company? Does it put the success and well-being of its staff at the top of its dream board? And would your staff say this is true?

If so, congratulations, you truly have a People Company!

So what exactly is a People Company?

As we have already stated, it’s an organisation where the staff are highly valued, and where the management know that they need to help their people to develop in order to grow the company. Not only do the company’s leaders believe that, but their staff will know that they are important and valuable to the organisation. In return, these staff will value their place in the company and work to the best of their ability to help the organisation succeed.

One of the most vital factors is that employees actually believe that you, as an organisation, are people-oriented – which means the company’s actions must support this point of view.

The importance of the HR department

To keep and retain the best people, you must take on a proactive role, ensuring that staff are engaged, which in turn will increase levels of productivity. You need to be ahead of the game to succeed, to recruit the right people, to develop their skills, and to keep them on board.

To do this, HR must ensure that it is focusing on the people who work in the organisation. It means automating the processes it can, in order to let its HR team focus on what they are skilled at – getting the best out of the staff.

The importance of automating routine processes

Making it easy to do many HR tasks automatically and online makes sense. For instance, if your staff can book their own holidays using an online system, that’s a routine job that a member of the HR team doesn’t need to handle. If managers can book appraisals and other people-managing tasks online, yet again, it’s a job an HR person doesn’t have to be involved in.

And a new job title has emerged as this trend continues – Chief People Officers. They are likely to appear in the kind of forward-thinking organisations that always spring to mind, such as Google – but even the Cabinet Office has one in the shape of Rupert McNeil [GOV.UK Rupert McNeil] – providing “professional leadership on a range of people issues, including talent, capability, inclusion, capacity, pay and employee deal, performance, employee relations, culture and behaviours.”

It’s all about the experience

However, there’s more to being a People Company though – you need to ensure that your staff are being offered engaging working experiences throughout their time with you. It starts with the recruitment process – companies now must market their own brand to would-be employees, to ensure they attract the best possible candidates.

Finding out about your new staff during the recruitment process is vital – understand them and you’ll get to understand what drives them and what will make them want to stay within your company and succeed.

If you would like to discuss this subject further and how it may affect your business, please contact Cecily Lalloo at Embrace HR Limited.

T: 07767 308717 or send an email.

Based in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Embrace HR Limited supports business owners who do not have their own HR department or those that do but need help from time to time. We also work across the Home Counties of Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, and also SMEs based in London.

Embrace HR Aylesbury Employee Experience

How your staff engage at work is vital for productivity, as well as staff recruitment and retention.

Customer experience is now all-important for those in the retail, entertainment and hospitality arenas, especially as the landscape has changed, allowing customers to review their experiences – good or bad – almost instantly on social media.

The level of care that is given to these customers is something that HR professionals now need to focus on, as employees expect the same kind of consumer-style experience at work – and will be passing on the same kind of reviews when they leave.

When we watch Netflix, for example, it looks at our choices and offers up more films and TV programmes than it thinks we will like. HR needs to do the same thing in the workplace – offering a personalised experience, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach.

Companies are using the Cloud, artificial intelligence and mobile computing to develop their businesses in every aspect – and that includes HR. HR departments in big players such as General Electric and IBM are making the whole employee experience human-centered – ironically by using the latest technology.

At General Electric, they now have a Head of Employee Experience, who looks at everything that can help staff be happier and therefore more productive – their environment, the tools they use and the technology they have access to.

And a study by The Future Workplace and Beyond.com – The Active Job Seeker Dilemma – showed that more investment was now going into training, improving work spaces and offering more rewards. Offering a better employee experience will help you to attract and retain the best talent in your industry.

The working environment

Most offices these days are open plan – interestingly, it has been mooted that these spaces are designed for extroverts, who need plenty of stimulation from colleagues, but for the introverts, who can be just as creative and talented, the space does not work so well.

A study by Steelcase across 17 countries found that staff who had control over where and how they worked, and who had the freedom to choose a work space to suit the job in hand – were 88% more engaged at work.

Take a look at how your work spaces work for various kinds of people – and different kinds of work. Apply your own feelings on where you like to work, where you like to go to get a job sorted, areas where you avoid working or meeting. Are there spaces for sitting quietly and concentrating, breakout areas for informal creative discussions and so on?

The employee experience should be as important as the customer experience. Your company probably considers every interaction that the potential customer will make with the organisation, from their first visit to the website, to their purchase, aftercare and beyond. This is how you need to look at the potential employee – consider their experience from that first recruitment ad to their first day at work, the last day, and everything in between and beyond – how you can support them, and guide them on their journey through your organisation.

If you would like to discuss this further, please contact Cecily Lalloo at Embrace HR.

T: 07767 308717 or send a message.

Based in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Embrace HR supports business owners who do not have their own HR department or those that do but need help from time to time. We also work across the Home Counties of Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, and also SMEs based in London.