Transforming British Industry with Employee Engagement

Despite proof of its importance from Harvard, Gallup and Deloitte, employee engagement has been slow to gain favour in the industrial community, while a £4-to-£1 is known to be the standard return on investment and the UK loses around £300billion a year to disengaged workforces. Last year a major manufacturing exhibition nevertheless refused outright to cover the subject on its speaker platforms. 

This week I'll be talking about the effects of engagement on skills retention, productivity and continuous improvement at MACH, a world-renowned exhibition bringing industrial advancements to the fore. MACH’s organiser and umbrella group for many affiliates, the Manufacturing Technologies Association has a vested interest in promoting upgrades that promise positive impact on the sector they serve, and it's the first time employee engagement has ever been showcased at an industrial exhibition in the UK.

In June, I'll be hosting a panel discussion at SUBCON, too.

Hampered by History

"Left unchecked and unpruned, every company drifts into complexity over time, and the longer an organization has been around, the harder it becomes to locate the good, clear, coherent strategy that once existed inside the riot of organic growth, abandoned ideas, and dead branches.

Over time, the strategy becomes an orchard with a hodgepodge of okay trees instead of a single beautiful specimen heavy with fruit.

Ironically, complexity can be hard to let go of because it seems more honest than simplicity. Have you ever heard about a company with a straightforward, easy-to-understand strategy and found yourself skeptical? Have you ever thought, “Surely it can’t be that simple”?..." Austin Church

I've never been a fan of the 'low-hanging fruit' analogy - it reduces humans to vegetative status and implies that effort can be harvested, like apples dropped into a bushel. In my opinion, a person's light should not be hiding under there as a matter of principle, let alone be boxed up for counting like so much collateral in a cider press. Light, an under-rated facet of electro-magnetism, is within everyone and it wants to shine, at all times.

But Austin has a point, in that familiarity breeds not only contempt, but an unquantified collection of unkempt trees from which the wood itself may drift entirely out of focus. Nettles and brambles ready and waiting to hurt the unwary can tear at free spirits who seek to modernise approaches, while clusters of tangled, outdated agendas can prevent access to innovation even by the brightest sparks available within the confines of an organisation. Burgeoning canopies of old growth (that once was classed as cutting-edge) stifle the sunlight of new ideas, fresh strategies and the energy that comes with invigoration.

Industry has suffered from old-growth syndrome for a long time now, never really finding its feet after sprinting through the Industrial Revolution. While machinery and technology charge ahead on the marathon stretch into modernisation, management systems passed down through generations have clamped themselves to ankles like the veritable ball and chain worn by the slaves who (only just) pre-dated the age of mass-production facilities. Yes, it's that simple - modernisation is overdue!

Where Industry Lost Out on Employee Engagement

Made in Britain was once the best you could get - unrivalled across so many sectors the applications were hard to count! From pens to porcelain, cars to cameras, the UK was producing the best in the world and nobody thought, in those days, it would ever be any different.

But other countries had other ideas. Germany sprung its technic into life and China rolled out copies of everything it could lay its hands on. America set its sights on space and Russia - well, Russia did what it does best, coldly going where no-one had dared before. Whatever they did, they made transformations from opportunities and more transformers came along of their own accord. 

Meanwhile, populations of humans have yearned for opportunities to evolve. Revolutionising their ways of thinking, parents swiftly met with a forest of labels to pin on their children. People have lost faith in successive deceptive governments and sought cultural solutions in their places of work. Recognising this tide, some (mainly in white-collar sectors) have stepped up to the plate and transformed to accommodate workers looking for more than the wage packet in choosing where to invest their precious time. 

Unwilling to take risks in front of equally constricted peers, however, industrial leaders have let aeons pass without addressing people-centric issues with any serious intent. Fearful of ridicule and failure, wary even of empowering subordinates, directorships have held fast to phrases such as "If you don't like it, you know where the door is," while the corridors around them echo quietly with, "nothing's going to change around here."

Of course, everything changes all the time whether we like it or not; whether we prune the roses or turn our backs on them, they will grow new formations each summer. Capacity for change is a natural inheritance. While society has awoken to new levels of self-actualisation, irreverently guided by the dubious forces of social media, however, leadership teams have not helped it on its way to best-practice and sustainable ideology. Instead, CEOs have left guidance to screen-scrollers keen to share what's supposed to happen in ideal relationships and what to do when confronted with a toxic workplace. But there's a wealth of info out there, and you could be turning the focus towards transforming British industry with employee engagement.

At the turn of the Millennium, buzzwords like 'blue-sky' and 'dolphinism' described the trend in forward thinking, but without any centralisation of known strategies that worked, enthusiasm for employee engagement vanished before it even managed to break the surface. Rather than step up to record-breaking excellence by energising its people, manufacturing stepped down into data-mining and computational dependence. With process-led information being easier to quantify, 6-Sigma and Lean got ahead of the curve, leaving 'soft skills', EQ and empathic leadership to go to the dogs - which it did - and now we're calling back the lost puppies so that people can come home to psychological safety.

STEM and Steering Solutions

We can regain so much ground if we begin to appreciate and nurture what we have. There are thousands of skilled people in operational facilities, and many more recently retired who would love something to do given the choice. Educational facilities are actively seeking collaborations with industry leaders to give STEM students something great to aim for. 

There are solutions, always - we just have to be brave enough to find them and committed enough to learn to use them well. There are people, too. willing to blaze trails into new, uncharted territory in the surety that good things come to those who go seeking them.

This is no time to be hanging around waiting for hand-outs. The sector must stand on its own two feet, regain its pride, believe in itself and start fuelling its employee base with desirable commodities. An Engagement Steering Group meets quarterly to discuss actions and strategies to practicably implement - our venue for April is the WMG in Coventry. If you've read this far, come and join us. You're clearly interested in the future fortune of British industry and would rather it rose to the challenge than buckled under the weight of its own history. As a forward thinker, we need you here - to be clear about this, we Need YOU NOW!

Transformation - in Everyone's Favour

Industrial companies on this tiny island managed to carve a reputation for themselves as being the best in the world. Some eminent voices have enough passion for their sector to champion change and make it work in everyone's favour - that's why the Steering Group exists, and major expos like MACH are giving talk-time to employee engagement.

Turning a tide takes gravity. Transformation takes genuine belief. That's where you come in - as a leader who wants to see change moving in the right direction to make British industry a flourishing, prominent player on the world stage once more. I know it can happen - and so do you. Without waiting for someone else to take the helm in these troubled waters, let's start with our own worlds and give those hard-won merits back to the people who earned them - the workforce that made Britain Great.

Leave a comment, for voices like yours need to be heard.

To pollinate positive changes in your own workplace, book a Seminar on offer this Spring for next-to-nowt - check availability here.