The Value of Engagement in Midst of Crisis

A thought often overlooked as a key resource for companies in crisis is their employees.  Companies with a track record of positive employee engagement can draw on that investment to help navigate turbulence when it surfaces.  Every company will face the storm clouds of crisis at some point in time.  Be it workplace violence, natural disaster, loss of a large client, or more commonly, a blow to leadership confidence and competence.  Widely publicized integrity issues within several large corporations recently are not isolated incidences.  These types of crises happen all the time.  How leadership handles these situations determines how much or little damage is done and how long it takes to recover.  Engaging the workforce should be a key component in every turn-around strategy and if well executed, often actually accelerates recovery.

The natural tendency for management teams in crisis is to be insular.  This is precisely the wrong tactic.  While highly sensitive or confidential information should be wisely protected, complete silence indirectly raises employee and public suspicion.  Depending on the severity of the crisis, companies frequently find themselves dealing with an exodus of talent.  In turn, those leaving the company are the very people the company can ill-afford to lose.  When things turn sour, the best talent moves on because they can, leaving a company holding the bag.  Transparency and honesty go a long way to assuring people that there is a recovery path and give employees a reason to stay.  The ideal alternative is to empower your employees to be part of the solution.

Companies with an established employee engagement culture are far better equipped to handle any crisis.  These companies have proven to their workforce that their voice matters, management takes action, and employees are valued, visible, and vital.  Companies without an established engagement framework can still benefit from getting employees engaged in crisis response and recovery if properly guided and equipped. 

A crucial first step in the response phase is communication.  Employees need necessary facts unfiltered by politics or spin.  Of important note and what most managers do not realize until too late is that in the absence of facts, employees create them.  Frequently, the facts employees create are often far worse than reality.  You want your employees to be part of the solution, therefore by all means trust them enough with the right information.  For example, if a company needs to make a potentially damaging disclosure to the SEC or investors, proactively inform your employees on the issues at hand and don’t let them read about it on the Web or in the paper or worse yet, from a family member!  At a minimum, inform the workforce in parallel and be honest.  If the company is about to report a substantial problem, make sure employees hear it from management and at the same time ask for their assistance in the recovery.  This principle holds true regardless of the type or source of the crisis.

The second step is engaging employees to gain insight and ideas in how to respond appropriately and then more important, how to move into and through recovery – as fast as possible.  Small tiger teams, focus groups, brainstorming, and other forms of engagement get the conversation moving.  Employees involved in the conversation will feel a greater sense of ownership tied to the outcome and are less likely to feel de-valued or forgotten in the midst of the storm.  Implement an approach or process to triage ideas and move them through the communications stream as quickly as possible.  As employees see management leaning into the storm and actively interacting with the workforce, more ideas will surface.  Don’t be surprised in the beginning if the ideas that come forward seem somewhat pedestrian especially if your organization hasn’t established an engagement culture as its norm.  However, the longer and more consistent management is in drawing forth and critically evaluating input, the better the ideas will become.

Lastly, provide regular feedback throughout the process and recognize employee contributions including those you choose not to use.  As employees realize that every idea and initiative to move through the crisis is valued and carefully considered, they will be more inclined to stay in the fight with management. 

Additional insight into key attributes of employee engagement are available in a previously published article titled: “V” is for Employee Engagement at http://connect2action.blogspot.com/2012/10/v-is-for-employee-engagement.html

Duane Grove is founder of Connect2Action, a strategy execution specialist at the intersection of employee engagement and executive leadership, igniting innovation as a lever to accelerate your growth.  Follow Duane on Twitter @connect2action and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.  Learn more by visiting www.connect2action.com.

Keep Playing to Win

For companies facing into a highly uncertain budget environment, there may be a tendency to hunker down and protect what they have.  This approach is certainly understandable particularly for companies with large franchise programs and client accounts to ‘keep sold’.  However, going defensive sets into a motion a downward spiral that erodes competitiveness making it more difficult to win in the future.  In situations like this companies start playing ‘not to lose’ instead of playing to win.

Trying to build a fortress around your portfolio is playing defense.  In medieval days, a well-constructed castle could sustain months of siege but sooner or later a determined adversary would break through.  Building walls may keep threats at bay for a while, but it also pens you in and limits your freedom of maneuver.  Bobby Knight said “Most people have the will to win, few have the will to prepare to win.”  This should be a call for companies to lean forward and draw on the creativity of their employees to find new ways to win.  Like a great sports team, practice and preparation is key to maintaining a competitive edge.  Companies that hunker down are sure to lose their competitive muscle making it more difficult to win in the future.  The old adage “if you don’t use it, you lose it” is certainly true when it comes to competition and winning.  It’s just as easy to get on a losing streak, as it is a winning one.

There is no doubt that budgets are declining, opportunities decreasing, and both companies and consumers remain hesitant about investing and spending.  That doesn’t mean that growth isn’t achievable.  In every economic contraction companies emerge that run counter to the trends and find ways of growing, sometimes very fast.  These companies choose to ignore ‘conventional wisdom’ instead believing they can grow and they make it happen.  A teashop near my home has had a small sign in the door that states clearly that while others have reported a recession, they have chosen not to participate.  While I don’t know how they are doing financially, they certainly seem to have customers whenever I visit.  Growth is as much attitude as it is product, business model, or any other factor. 

This is also a great time to review what you’ve been doing and make adjustments.  Changing things when all appears to be going well is difficult.  Employees don’t see the need, investors/shareholders aren’t interested in unnecessary risk, and managers are comfortable keeping the wheels running on the current track.  When things get tough, there is often more appetite for change, even radical change.  People expect you to take action before a crisis emerges, to get ahead of the curve.  Taking advantage of the environment to make changes that need to be made is a good way to move the organization in a new direction.  As Rahm Emanuel said “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.  And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” 

Finally, you want to stay in the game to win because it attracts talent.  Most people are competitive and everyone wants to be on a winning team.  When you start playing ‘not to lose’ you begin to zap the spirit out of your workforce.  People become accustomed to doing enough to get by, but not much more.  The unintended consequence of affordability initiatives can be an attitude of ‘cutting corners’ and doing more with less.  If management doesn’t keep the context clear and concise, what was intended as a means of getting more competitive can be interpreted as playing defense.  Here, communication is critical and employee involvement key to staying focused on winning.

This certainly doesn’t mean that a simple attitude shift will make the economic conditions improve.  However, it is certainly easier to take on competitors who are ‘down in the mouth’ and suffering.  Staying focused on customers, finding new ways to address their needs, and seeking out new markets is often easier when things are tough.  It sounds counter-intuitive, but there are plenty of success stories that should encourage companies to maintain the winning edge.  So if you’re an organization that has been victim to the economic conditions, go back into the competition gym and get back into shape.  If you’ve been playing ‘not to lose’, start playing to win again.  And if you’ve been winning, put your foot on the accelerator and take advantage of what’s working for you.

Duane Grove is founder of Connect2Action, a strategy execution specialist at the intersection of employee engagement and executive leadership, igniting innovation as a lever to accelerate your growth.  Follow Duane on Twitter @connect2action and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.  Learn more by visiting www.connect2action.com.

Make Engagement a Strategic Imperative

The great news is that employee engagement (EE) has become one of the most widely acknowledged topics in business today.  Companies recognize what many statistics show, namely that the majority of employees experience low levels of engagement.  Like many business topics, EE has become an industry to itself with survey providers, consultants, authors, and active discussion boards across social media.  It’s heartening to see the interest, but the danger for many organizations is that EE becomes yet another “initiative” for busy executives to attend to.  While some take the topic with great sincerity, others are simply looking for shortcuts or quick fixes to get the EE monkey off their back.

The preponderance of material and thought leaders in EE comes from either human resources (HR) or communications.  However, the soul of engagement in my opinion is strategy.  Without a strategic foundation, EE is wholly ineffective.  What’s the sense of getting employees excited without a compelling focus; that focus should be the organization’s strategy.  Sustaining high levels of engagement can only be possible when the majority of employees understand both the “what” and “why” they should be energized.  Getting people all ‘pumped up’ without that foundation becomes wasted energy and employees grow cynical as they perceive they are being manipulated rather then authentically engaged.

A colleague who leads EE for a large organization recently asked me where it belongs in the company.  The dialog inside of his organization is not unlike what I’ve consistently observed and heard across a wide range of industries.  There are many lobbying for EE to be an HR responsibility and others are pushing for Communications.  There is yet a third voice from the Organizational Development (OD) group.  All three options miss the mark from my experience.  I suggested to him that it become an integral component of the Strategy team.  The recommendation caught him off-guard, so I explained the logic.

In most organizations today, talent acquisition and retention has become a strategic imperative.  HR departments are generally focused on process – namely getting people recruited, placed, and then managing performance management and compensation systems.  The legal obligations of HR often make them conflicted when it comes to engagement and innovation.  Communication on the other hand is skilled at just that, communicating.  Most communications departments are focused externally on getting the company’s message out and are less equipped for the hands-on demands of an effective EE effort.  One could argue that OD may be a good place, but many organizations don’t have a strong OD group.  Also in my experience, OD behaves more like an outside consultancy spending time diagnosing problems rather than as an integral part of the team.

Strategy is focused on the future and with that emphasis, they can project where and how an organization needs to be oriented in order to achieve objectives.  By focusing engagement efforts on areas of strategic leverage, acceleration can be achieved and employees have a better sense of direction and logic for the effort they expend on behalf of the company.  Companies could be well served by spending less effort diagnosing problems and more on bringing the company’s future into reality.  Many organizational issues dissipate when people get focused on a common set of objectives.  It’s also much easier to identify employees unwilling to share the journey and address them more directly.  When EE becomes an integral component of the company’s strategy, it gets more executive attention and individual actions can be evaluated in context.  Employees can ask themselves the question: how are my actions advancing the objectives of the team? 

The final missing component is translating company level strategy into focus areas tailored to the roles and responsibilities of individuals.  This isn’t easy and executives often fail to connect those dots.  Simply briefing the company’s strategy to employees is wholly insufficient.  People need to relate the work they do with the accomplishment and advancement of the whole.  Therefore, engaging employees in the process of associating their work with the strategy is vital and usually takes substantial effort.  When done well however, momentum comes more readily and easily.

Engagement therefore is a strategic imperative and shouldn’t be treated as simply another employee morale initiative.  You’re probably better off not trying to implement an EE initiative if you’re not going to commit to doing it well.  Failed efforts accelerate cynicism and undermine company performance.  If you’re serious about EE then, make it a cornerstone of your strategy.

Duane Grove is founder of Connect2Action, a strategy execution specialist at the intersection of employee engagement and executive leadership, igniting innovation as a lever to accelerate your growth.  Follow Duane on Twitter @connect2action and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.  Learn more by visiting www.connect2action.com.