Here at People Perform we understand that developing a clear people strategy for any business comes with its own unique complexity.
Understanding business requirements, gaining buy-in from the board and senior leaders whilst delivering clear results through rigorous project management; all of this whilst balancing short-term delivery and results to keep the business owners and shareholders happy!
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.
In today’s complex, interconnected and rapidly changing environment, it is more important than ever that organisations can respond quickly whilst still achieving efficiencies of scale. A key enabler of this is having the right organisational design, and recognising that the design of yesterday (designed for efficiency and assuming predictable patterns) will no longer work in the digital age, where agility and speed of response is key.
Matrix working – please click to enlarge the image
While I was attending a Leadership Retreat (CTI) last week, we were asked to identify what we need to let go of, in order to become a better leader. For me, it was “letting go of the idea that people are idiots”. Of course, I don’t mean you, dear reader, it’s everyone else.
In a Utopian workplace environment, every employee would arrive with a smile on their face, diligently work on projects about which they are passionate, interact with and assist their colleagues, have a great relationship with their boss, and when the going gets tough they would roll up their sleeves and pitch in without a second thought.
Making sense of people data is a struggle for many HR professionals. People analytics is only effective when data collection is focused on achieving a particular management objective - such as improving talent management processes, such as recruitment or retention, or to demonstrate HR's contribution to the value/ROI of these processes. Despite this core concept of people analytics, many companies simply analyse the data nearest to hand – with the results being anything but insightful.
CEOs will often stand up and say that people are the most important asset in their business. And they’re right. But do they act like it? Very rarely.
If you’ve ever had the opportunity to work at a summer camp you’ll know it’s one of the best “jobs” you’ll ever have. I use the word job in inverted commas intentionally because more often than not it doesn’t feel like work at all. There are deep and meaningful conversations with people who start to feel more like your family than your colleagues. There is the cold embrace of a dip in the lake after a late afternoon game of capture the flag that always gets a little too intense. There’s the jaw-ache you get after laughing too hard for too long at some silly in-joke.
The two biggest issues faced by organisations today are the changing business context and the changing people context.
The changing business context
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.