The Mckinsey Quarterly survey of barriers to agility and speed related to behavior and attitude ranked “employees lacking a sense of purpose commitment, motivation” as the number 1 factor inhibiting business speed and agility. ((Miranda, Thiel, 2007. “Improving Organizational Speed and Agility.” McKinsey Quarterly 2007 Number 1. Page 14)) With over 1500 business executives surveyed, 33% stated that employees lacking what I’ll paraphrase as “engagement” is a pretty large number.
We spend a lot of time talking about talent and our workforce needs. Rightly so, and CEO’s have been expressing the need to get a handle on talent for a couple years now – it’s the right shift to have made. However, notice that the barrier to organizational agility doesn’t have to do with having the right talent or acquiring it. Instead, engaging employees is up there. In fact, learning and development opportunities came in almost last with only 7% showing.
As far as I’m concerned, this comes pretty close to a mandate that I’ve ever seen for an HR topic that most people don’t talk about regularly. At systematicHR we’ve tied employee engagement to enhanced business productivity and even innovations, but we haven’t talked much about agility. The McKinsey defined agility as the ability to change tactics or direction quickly.
As I’ve talked about talent, I’m going to keep drilling my vision. Talent needs to be engaged, nimble and integrated with business and product innovation. Not only do we need to understand what our talent is and who has the right competencies, but we need to be able to move the right talent into the right projects quickly and seamlessly. To do this, our talent networks (which need to be created) need to be integrated with innovation networks and social networks. Basically, understanding who has talent isn’t enough. However, putting talent together with influence and driving innovation through those combined channels is the work of our future.
If you take that vision and engage the senior workforce, you have my version of a business model for HR that supports innovation, productivity and HR’s heightened contribution to strategy.
11 responses to “Employee Engagement Improves Organizational Agility”
Employee Engagement Improves Organizational Agility As far as I’m concerned, this comes pretty close to a mandate that I’ve ever seen for an HR topic that most people don’t talk about regularly. At systematicHR we’ve tied employee engagement to enhanced business productivity and even … [
9. Leaders seeking for their “freakout” point for personal development… http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2007-04-26-freakout-points-usat_N.htm 10. Workers’ engagement can have positive impact upon organizations’ agility…. https://systematichr.com/?p=693 11. Seattle companies rethink 9 to 5… http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2003682023_flexwork29.html?syndication=rss 12. Understanding Gen Y’s Personal Triangle™…
Enabling an engaged workforce is a function of alignment, communication, rewards and recognition. Here is more evidence that engaging your employees will drive business results. From friends at systematicHR – Employee Engagement Improves Organizational Effectiveness. And one for the road… Tom Peters Wants You to Appreciate Your Talent (found on date 4/30/07) This entry on the Tom Peter’s blog cites the fact that 24% of companies in an informal poll don’t recognize excellence in their organization.
Enabling an engaged workforce is a function of alignment, communication, rewards and recognition. Here is more evidence that engaging your employees will drive business results. From friends at systematicHR -Employee Engagement Improves Organizational Effectiveness. And one for the road… Tom Peters Wants You to Appreciate Your Talent (found on date 4/30/07) This entry on the Tom Peter’s blog cites the fact that 24% of companies in an informal poll don’t recognize excellence in their organization.
[…] systematicHR: Employee Engagement Improves Organizational Agility “The Mckinsey Quarterly survey of barriers to agility and speed related to behavior and attitude ranked “employees lacking a sense of purpose commitment, motivation” as the number 1 factor inhibiting business speed and agility.” […]
Agility is not the norm where accounting practices push for bottom line decisions.
Behind agility are competencies that include understanding social network analysis, core group theory, systems thinking and leadership conversations based on strategy + business where business think + leadership think.
Physicist, David Boehm once equated trust as something a leader builds in the company of other people where balance is sought in the practices related to human dynamics, technology and the expert science you base your work on.
I like this post – it has the feeling of a manifesto! I particularly like this quote:
“As I’ve talked about talent, I’m going to keep drilling my vision. Talent needs to be engaged, nimble and integrated with business and product innovation. Not only do we need to understand what our talent is and who has the right competencies, but we need to be able to move the right talent into the right projects quickly and seamlessly.”
One thing that is interesting here – as we have moved into an era of *celebrity* CEO’s, what impact has this had on employee engagement. I am all for free markets – but how do I feel as an employee if the (non-founder) CEO is taking home a 9 figure pay package? How does that impact organizational attitudes?
Tom O’B
TO’B HR Blog
[…] systematicHR – Human Resources Strategy and Technology » Employee Engagement Improves Organizationa… Thoughts on optimising the deployment of talent management… (tags: communication engagement retention talent-management) Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
[…] We have been posting about this in the blogsphere for a few weeks now including Donald H. Taylor’s definition of Talent Management: making organizational capability match organizational commitment. Another one on employee engagement (possible result of TM done well) here from SystematicHR. […]
Thiel you have touched upon a very large problem that, even though some CEO’s say they’re trying to fix, but ultimately are not. Here at SyberWorks, Inc. we specialize in e-Learning software and Learning Management Systems. Our results with our customers have been phenominal. Check out our Online Media Center, which brings together past success stories, free e-Learning tools such as our “e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series” and so much more. We must remember that productivity of businesses come from driven employees who are excited about learning.
[…] I’ve harped on this – and will continue until the message is heard. Enabling an engaged workforce is a function of alignment, communication, rewards and recognition. Here is more evidence that engaging your employees will drive business results. From friends at systematicHR – Employee Engagement Improves Organizational Effectiveness. […]