Thought leader - The evolution of engagement
The concept of engagement has evolved significantly over the last decade. During the 1990s it was mostly used in conjunction with internal marketing. The late 1990s witnessed a peak in ‘brand engagement’ activity, following the adoption by many leading service companies of brand-led culture change programmes. Such interventions typically involve a top-down process of internal brand communication, with ‘emotional’ engagement delivered through a combination of dramatisation (large-scale, off-site events, incorporating theatre and video), experiential involvement (interactive participation and team exercises) and localised action planning. This type of engagement aims to win commitment to a brand-led corporate ethos, often referred to as “living the brand”. But the inherent weakness in this approach is the tendency for organisations to focus on launch activities, without properly embedding the purported brand ethos in ‘business as usual’ management behaviours and processes.
In recent years, the concept of employee engagement has changed and is now characterised by a measurement-led, bottom-up focus. In a research context, the term engagement has retained many of its emotive connotations, but tends to be more rigorously defined. The most popular definition of engagement as an aggregate measurement of desirable employee attitudes and behaviours is: ‘Say’ (advocacy), ‘Stay’ (loyalty) and ‘Strive’ (discretionary effort).
The analysis of engagement has also become more sophisticated, with regression analysis helping companies prioritise where they need to take action to improve employee engagement in relation to their current performance. This shift in emphasis has coincided with the growing popularity of ‘Great Place to Work’ league tables, and the growing body of evidence supporting the ‘service profit chain’, linking engaged employees with satisfied customers and enhanced profit margins.
While more in-tune with the needs and aspirations of employees, the weakness of this relatively generic approach is that it often fails to connect with the brand agenda, which is more concerned with differentiation. It also fails to recognise that successful organisational engagement is not just a question of responding to what employees want from their employer but a proactive process of promoting what an employer requires from its employees (the ‘give and the get’ of the employment deal).
The emerging practice of employer brand management seeks to address this issue by defining and then managing the ‘give and the get’ of the employer brand relationship with the same clarity and consistency devoted to managing the customer brand relationship.
By refocusing the attention of HR and line management on all the ongoing ‘touch-point’ processes that shape employee experience, employer brand management promises to deliver a robust mechanism for making engagement ‘business as usual’. For all of those involved in engagement, these are truly interesting times.
Richard Mosley is managing director of People in Business. He can be contacted on richard@pib.co.uk
