I'm just back from the meetings of the CIPD -- the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development -- the UK's largest HR conference. People Management, a leading HR publication, summarized events with a daily edition, and the one I picked up yesterday, Sept 20, had some interesting reading.
One article was titled “Engaged staff vital for performance.” In it, Jane Hanson, HR director at First Direct, a hugely successful internet bank, was quoted as saying she "believed that staff engagement was the key factor in the recent success of the bank, which has seen profits grow by 30 percent in five years.” Ms. Hanson noted, however, that the factors which were most important for engagement were sometimes surprising: “Research showed that what mattered most to our people was such things as having fun at work, making good friendships, our brand identity, and the way we support families.”
Ah, those three dreaded words: “Research shows that…” Invoking these words conveys credibility – after all, we did some research and you didn’t, so we must know what we're talking about. But unless we’re talking about good research – well designed, with solid data, and appropriate inferences drawn from the data – we may be kidding ourselves.
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