Building employee engagement

Your people processes are the expression of your mission, vision and values

In a world in which everything is available on line and for free, it might be tempting to download all your people processes from the internet.

but your people processes are the expression of your mission, vision and values. They shape the practice of managers and challenge their competency - the way employees experience an organisation's people processes is mediated through their line managers.

At the same time they foster culture and climate because they hold the answers to some key employee questions:

What does the organisation expect of me?
How will it recognise me for what I do?
How will I grow and what scope is there for career progression?
How will it reward my contribution

Cumulatively the answers to these question become your employee value proposition.

Three core processes

Recruitment

Bake your culture and values into your recruitment.

Make then part of your job descriptions

Include them in your job advertisements

Ask people to tell you what matters to them in their application

In your interviews ask people for examples of times when they have done things that demonstrate your values:

“Describe a time when you volunteered your help to a colleague. What was the situation? What did you do and what was the result?”

Talk to me about a values based approach to recruitment and selection

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Appraisal

Performance appraisal has a deservedly poor reputation.

It's often done as a deficit based process.

Do you remember your last performance appraisal meeting? Do you remember being asked a question that sounded like this:

“Please think back to a time in the last few months when you really felt at your best and most energised and motivated. What was happening and what were you and others doing that enabled you to be at your best?"

Talk to me about an appreciative approach to appraisal.

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Reward

Duncan Brown (Strategic Reward) makes the point that:

“The foundation of strategic reward management is an understanding of the needs of the organisation and its employees and how they can best be satisfied. It is also about developing the values of the organisation on how people should be rewarded and formulating the principles that will govern how those values are enacted.”

Among other things the specific aims of strategic reward are:

To create total reward processes that are based on beliefs about what the organisation values and wants to achieve;
Reward people for the value that they create;
Support the development of a performance culture.

Talk to me about the design of your reward system.

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