Ian Dodds Consulting’s (IDC) Monthly Best Practice: Dec 2012

The Engage for Success Movement is launched to contribute to the UK’s future economic success

Over the last several months I have been highly involved, as a member of the Engage for Success Guru Steering Group, in preparing for the launch of the Engage for Success (EFS) Movement. The background to this is that the UK has an employee engagement deficit.  Survey after survey indicates that only around one third of UK workers say they are engaged – a figure which leaves the UK ranked ninth for engagement levels amongst the world’s twelve largest economies as ranked by GDP (Kenexa 2009).

The UK also has a productivity deficit. The most recent Office of National Statistics (ONS) survey found that output per hour in the UK was 15% below the average for the rest of the G7 industrialised nations in 2011. On an output per worker basis, UK productivity was 20% lower than the rest of the G7 in 2011. This represents the widest productivity gap since 1995.

The EFS Guru Steering Group believes these two factors are related in that there is a firm correlation between employee engagement and high organisational productivity and performance, across all sectors of the economy. Therefore, employee disengagement is clearly contributing to the UK’s disappointing productivity figures. Analysis indicates that were the UK to move its engagement levels to the middle of the top quartile such as that for the Netherlands this would be associated with a £25.8bn increase in GDP.

The successful first stage of the EFS go live events was a meeting with 20 CEOs from the Engage for Success Sponsor group employing over a million people, who attended a breakfast summit at the UK Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) on Monday, 12 Nov. On the same day 43 leaders from across the economy signed a letter to the Times emphasising the importance of employee engagement for organisational success. The summit also received positive coverage in the FT, Independent, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph and Times. For the Government, Employment Minister Jo Swinson has re-iterated her support for the movement. At the same time, the EFS website www.engageforsuccess.org, has gone live, featuring the video film 'come on, get engaged' and the evidence and tools and guidance for engaging for success.
 
The wider go live event took place on Mon, 26 Nov, in the QE2 Conference Centre. This was the next vital stage in taking the message out into the wider economy. I was at this event discussing with attendees the Special Interest Group (SIG) I lead which is looking into inclusive engagement. The evidence for this work is that, because of unconscious bias, people from groups underrepresented in senior management in organisations tend to be less engaged. See the July 2012 Monthly Best Practice, www.iandoddsconsulting.com, for more information on this topic. Hence, this is a critical topic to understand in order to engage for success
 
Dr Ian Dodds,

28 Nov 2012,

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