Kathy Ratcliffe

I once met an Operations Manager who seemed on the phone to be heartily in favour of workplace engagement. During discussion, an idea surfaced that major players in the sector such as JLR and JCB could be encouraged to sponsor projects; improvements in the culture of small firms has an automatic knock-on effect of better productivity, reliability and customer focus. I was interested to see where our dialogue would go. Outcome After a long one-way conversation about his background and the...

Remember blue-sky thinking and dolphinism? Executives found themselves in the Dinosaur camp if they didn’t host brainstorms and give way to innovation, but soon innovation gave way to inertia; before too much time had passed, along came the Low-hanging Fruit; pour foodie Fridays into the mix with a newsletter and a summer fete and when that didn’t elevate performance maybe toolbox meetings would? But no, they're relegated to once a month now and if anyone doesn’t air grievances there,...

The UK is close to the bottom of the pile on workplace welfare and employee engagement according to the latest Gallup poll, ranking 34th of 40 countries. As this summary attests, the outcomes are expensive. Staff churn is minimal where the culture is engaged - where the culture is toxic, people will leave soon after joining. In this day and age, it's not productive to view people as 'low-hanging fruit' or disposable collateral. Leaders might have got away with that 100 years ago in the wake...