Naaah...so where's your engagement now?

There was a nice piece in the Financial Times a couple days ago entitled Engaging a worried workforce, in which journalist Stephan Stern ponders the "lose-lose situation" faced by employers who must try to keep their workforces motivated at the same time as they are cutting bodies by the thousands. "Contracts – both physical and psychological – are being torn up. The engagement is off. Is there anything managers can do to reinstate it?"

Stern makes fun of employee engagement consultants, who he says tend to overengineer and mystify "what is at heart a pretty basic human response: the desire (or lack of it) to do a job well. The answer, he concludes, is to "try telling the unvarnished truth."

Last week, I met Archie Norman, the British businessman who famously led the hugely successful turnround of the Asda supermarket chain. How did he manage to get the buy-in of an anxious workforce? “We stated it as it was,” he told me. “You have to get people to face up to the reality. People will follow you...what they can’t stand is unrealistic, deluded leadership. When we said that the situation was very bad, that we were in survival mode, we got three cheers from the front line,” Mr Norman explained. “They said: ‘At last, somebody’s arrived who realises what it’s really like out there.’”

While I appreciate the sentiment and agree with the principle, in big organizations it's more complicated than that. I think times are so bad that most employers don't really have a choice these days but to level with their people. So what else can you do? Watson Wyatt issued a news release yesterday with some good advice, backed by compelling statistics, on what employers can do to increase engagement and productivity even in these tough times:

• Look for "engageable moments," which means taking advantage of things like orientation sessions for new employees, performance reviews and benefits enrollment to make meaningful connections that help keep people motivated.
• Demonstrate strong leadership and clear direction. "Employees want to know about their organization's specific plans and progress."
• Manage organizational change with effective communication, with an emphasis on customer satisfaction to avoid becoming too inwardly focused.
• Institute and communicate a system of equitable rewards.  If tough times mean "the deal" changes, make sure everyone understands why, and that the changes are fair and reasonable.
• Invest in the core. This is Watson Wyatt's version of the 80-20 rule but in this case it's 60-40. About 60 per cent of a typical workforce are what WW calls "core contributors," and focusing increasing their engagement will get the highest return.

No shortage of opportunities these days for communicators to do some meaningful work.