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Measuring Engagement What alumni are saying to us is 'tell me something I didn't know I needed to know. Challenge me. Astonish me. Caroline Buller 1. Engagement is now seen as an essential link in the employee-customer-profit chain. 2. The theory of engagement, as stated by Sears Roebuck and practiced by organizations like Nationwide and the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, is that if you keep your employees satisfied, they will ensure that your customers remain satisfied, and your customers in turn will ensure and improve your profits. 3. Generation Y workers in particular think faster and make decisions quicker, as well as responding to scenario-based, learner-centred and interactive training and development. 4. New surveying methods are needed to assess levels of mental engagement. 5. These require a combination of evaluation feedback designed to assess the level of 'take-up' of new tools or concepts and the use of 'champions' or 'transformation facilitators' to ensure that they are properly embedded in day-to-day working. Recent research by Cranfield School of Management explored what young MBA alumni wanted from their school over and above their initial education. Most of the 1,200 former students interviewed were less interested in short term 'fill a hole' training designed to meet the needs of their current job and more interested in interactions with the School's best minds that reproduce the cutting edge they experienced studying for their post-graduate or post-experience degree. "What alumni are saying to us is 'tell me something that I didn't know I needed to know. Challenge me. Astonish me'", said 1997 allumni manager Caroline Buller. "If the session is led by a well-known professor, they do not want well-polished theories. They want him to explore dangerous territory and ideas on the cutting edge, where they can make their own contribution to emerging concepts and be present while they emerge." 1 Managing Millennial-era workers is about mental engagement. Don Pascott, author of Growing Up Digital, claims Generation X and Y workers think faster and make decisions quicker.2 These generations' recreation Ð video, Internet and mobile phone games Ð includes learning. Line managers need to be good coaches and mentors. Learning needs to be on the job. Constant reviews, teasing out what can be personally gained from every experience, brings an immediate return. Teaching by action learning, scenario speculation, role play and game play Ð anything that adds a bit of life and fun Ð always goes down well. If you are a subscriber, click here to read the full briefing. Click here to find out how to subscribe. |
