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.
Reading on, we see that First Direct, in an effort to keep employees engaged and satisfied, offers such things as concierge services, an onsite child care facility, and flexible working options – “but most importantly lots of opportunity to have fun.” “We find every reason to we can to celebrate, from weddings and births to customer compliments,” said Ms. Hanson.
And why not offer all these things if, as claimed, engaged staff leads to high performance? No doubt there is a correlation between engagement and performance, but do we know which one leads to which? Is an engaged staff a driver of performance? To some extent it probably is. Or is high performance likely to lead to employee engagement? That’s probably true, too, and other studies, longitudinal in design, suggest that force may be stronger. But it's probably not what HR directors want to believe.
Ask yourself – if making friends is important, is that more likely to happen in a company that is growing and profitable, where employees feel they’re on a winning team and have confidence in the company’s prospects, or in a failing company? Where do we have more fun, in a company with a superior business model that beats the competition, or in a laggard? Celebration is all well and good, but what would you rather celebrate – a record performance with bonuses all around, or the birth of a colleague’s child? Engagement is surely important, but by itself is likely to be of little value, and surely cannot be more important in company performance than a smart strategy, well executed. Good research – longitudinal design with valid data and appropriate inferences – suggests that there is no substitute to making the tough choices that lead to high performance in a competitive market place.
As for First Direct, its model of customer friendly on-line banking has been hugely successful, and leads to a perception of excellence, which no doubt has salutary effects on morale and engagement. If child care can be offered too, brilliant. But let’s not focus on celebrations and creating a fun work environment at the expense of the tough decisions that make companies successful. Fun is hard to find on a losing team, and wedding celebrations ring hollow when times are tough. Does research show that engaged staff is vital for performance? Good research suggests that the story is more complex, and we don’t help ourselves by mustering the findings of bad research.
Researches and surveys might be sometimes not more than nice collection of Halos effect.
Posted by: yosi zituni | November 22, 2007 at 08:48 AM