Employee Engagement

Many companies struggle and fail with their efforts to implement effective ways to improve their corporate culture and their employee relations. While employee engagement continues to be a hot topic with endless reports, statistics and trinkets of information on how organizations can improve and get more from their staff, how does an organization go about implementing meaningful corporate culture and employee engagement?

We conducted a Q&A interview with Jardena London, Transformation Leader and Blogtoon Publisher at Rosetta Technology Group, around work-life balance, how employees embrace change and leadership.

Could you introduce yourself and what you do?
I like to say that I help work not suck, or said more politically correctly; I help organizations become healthy, productive and fun. Most of my work is in the space of Business Agility, but I also publish a daily blogtoon and I’m doing some work on increasing the Gender Quotient in the workplace.

We conducted a Q&A interview with Shea Heaver, Founder at OptimaWork, around employee engagement and business transformation.

Could you introduce yourself and what you do?

Although most organizations and management understand the need for Employee Engagement, most still struggle to create it.

Why is that?

Well in most cases it is simply down to the fact that it is still viewed as a Management and/or Human Resources function....or burden depending on where you stand.  

The old (and very time-consuming) method of seeking staff feedback via a lengthy opinion survey and then digging through all the data looking for a golden nugget is still widely used and seen as the only option in many circles.

I'm not the first to say it and know it’s a strange thing to say, particularly for someone who spends their time supporting organisations to improve their performance by developing engagement levels.

But for me the phrase ‘employee engagement’ has always been a problem, I’ve never liked it, it’s never sat well with me, but it took me a while to really understand why.

Recently I was asked to speak at a leadership event for representatives from all over NHS Scotland, to share some examples of what we had experienced as the critical success factors for delivering improvements in organisations, to ensure lasting results.

Upon reflection, it certainly felt that the 10 factors to deliver sustainable improvements, had a lot of resonance with the challenges and the opportunities the NHS faces at 70.

How is Brexit currently mirroring most corporate change?

Theresa May and her trusted team (the Board) are currently spending a lot of time behind closed doors, with little outcome.  The people (your people), know that change is on the horizon, they know it needs to happen by a certain date, but nothing is happening.  People want to know how it might impact them, their work and their families, but nothing.

But just how good are we at adapting to change, modifying our habits, or expanding our minds, especially as we get older?  The answer is that we’re pretty good at it if we choose to be.

Not long ago the prevailing scientific powers believed that we are born with a brain that undergoes great change in infancy and early childhood, but then prunes down to the executive organ we have throughout our lives.