Tag Archives: HSBC

Three Very Different Organisations, Five Common Words. IdeasUK Employee Engagement Network Meeting.

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Last week I had the great joy of attending an IdeasUK Employee Engagement network meeting in Cardiff, hosted by the Wales Audit Office. The three organisations presenting workshops were incredibly different yet, I picked up on five common themes: Longevity, Trust, Evidence, Belief and Passion.

Question: Are these the key elements of success for any employee engagement approach?

To set the scene, the organisations involved couldn’t be more different in relation to what they do, the numbers and type of people they employ and where they operate:

  • HSBC, financial services and banking (global);
  • Ministry of Defence (GEMS Scheme), defence (domestic and global); and
  • Ricoh Manufacturing UK (Telford), photocopier manufacturing (European wide).

The success of each of these organisations and what they have achieved in employee engagement through their staff ideas schemes was obvious to see through the day. What struck me were common phrases/words/ideas/approaches/beliefs and values that kept popping up, despite them being very different organisations. Here is my take on what I think linked these three very different organisations, and what seems to support successful employee engagement.

Longevity: Each one of these organisations has been pursuing a path of employee engagement for a long time. The MoD started Gems in the mid 1990s and it’s even longer for Ricoh (1986). I think this long-term view is critical in developing a culture where employee engagement is taken seriously and people live the values through their everyday behaviours. Things like the ‘Thank You’ culture in HSBC don’t happen overnight.

Trust: This is mentioned so often that it’s almost a cliché; however the difference between saying it and actually trusting people is huge. It was impressive to see how HSBC trust their staff to interact with an internal social media type platform to share ideas. In the highly regulated world of financial services it would be so easy just to say no, ‘manage the risk’ and shut everything down. I heard the phrase ‘why wouldn’t you trust your staff, they know the job they do better than anyone’ several times during the day.

Evidence: Every single organisation had rock solid evidence of the benefits their suggestion schemes had delivered. These ranged from a 14:1 return on investment through to hundreds of millions of pounds saved. My key learning point was the necessity of having solid evidence when someone questions the effectiveness of employee engagement and suggestion schemes. It’s surprising how many people ‘just don’t get it ‘(see the David MacLeod & Nita Clarke report) so you will need solid evidence.

Belief: You’ve got to believe, because if you don’t, how will you convince anyone else? Everyone I met totally believed in the power of employee engagement; nothing else to say.

Passion: This absolutely stands out for me as the defining characteristic of what makes great employee engagement. Passion is what I saw in all three organisations across the day but if you want one example of what passion inspires here goes…….

Walking out of one of the workshops with Ricoh an individual who works in the NHS turned around and said out loud, to everyone…… “I found that inspiring, I would like to come and work for Ricoh”. Not a bad impact after sitting there for an hour.

It was an incredibly useful session and I would like to say thanks very much to:

  • Stuart Laws – Ministry of Defence
  • Rob Bland & Chris Nicholls – Ricoh UK Products
  • Zufi Yousaf & Michael Davies – HSBC
  • Anthony Denatale – IdeasUK

I know that IdeasUK are planning to keep the momentum going by publishing a series of blogs about the day. This is part of the pledge I made during the day to help keep things alive through my own blog posts.

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. Longevity is a key feature of successful employee engagement which other organisations would benefit from thinking about.
  2. Evidence of success (and cash savings) is highly necessary if you want to convince the ‘just don’t get it’ crowd.
  3. Passion above all will inspire people to do great things.

Links:

http://blog.ideasuk.com/2012/07/06/i-pledge/

http://whatsthepont.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/employee-engagement-kaizen-passion-in-the-west-midlands-ricoh-telford-to-be-exact/

http://whatsthepont.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/ricoh-gemba-mat-the-best-of-ohno-circles-gemba-walks-and-employee-engagement/

http://whatsthepont.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/gemba-walks-kaizen-the-elvis-way-walk-a-mile-in-my-shoes/

http://whatsthepont.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/social-media-staff-ideas-better-engagement-a-bank-that-says-yes/

http://www.goodpracticewales.com/Resources/Employee-Engagement

Just to emphasise the point about longevity……

Social Media + Staff Ideas = Better Engagement? …. (a bank that says YES)

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This is all about HSBC, not to be confused with the 1980′s advertising campaign about another bank that liked to say yes…… I’ll stop now…..

Recently I was at an IdeasUK networking event  about the use of social media in staff ideas schemes. A big part of the day was about what HSBC are doing.

HSBC have developed a platform for the capture and management of staff ideas which builds upon social media ideas. If you’ve seen how things like Dell IdeaStorm works you’ll get it straight away. Like lots of social media, the HSBC platform is very open and easy to use system which encourages people to participate. People in the community can see what others have posted recently and the top / most popular ideas. You can also search though past ideas to check out if what you are thinking has been done before, or just look for inspiration. People can express an opinion by voting on suggestions and collaborate through the process of commenting. For very good reasons to do with security and financial services regulation the access to the platform is restricted to staff use only.

Have a look at the presentation by James Shewry on the IdeasUK blog for a good explanation of how it works.

A couple of things made me think about how this approach helps with staff engagement. These are to do with trust and giving people confidence to participate.

The fact that staff are able to vote on suggestions and freely comment, for me, is a huge expression of trust. Staff are trusted to have an opinion, and express it in a sensible and useful way. If you feel you are trusted to freely express your views, that’s got to be good for engagement. Unfortunately not all organisations would take this approach, and others would introduce moderation processes and ‘checks and balances’ to ensure nothing ‘unsavory’ (criticism of management) appeared.

Giving people the confidence to participate is a tricky one. I recently heard the expression ‘micro participation’ to describe the like / promote / demote button approach. Letting people take these ‘micro’ steps is a good way of building confidence and introducing people to the ‘two-way conversation’ world of social media.  Again, there are unfortunately a few organisations about that would be horrified at the thought of this type of ‘push button democracy’ in the hands of staff.

Here is a slide from the HSBC presentation to illustrate what I’m saying:

There were 183 ideas submitted in March 2011 which received almost 2400 votes and 495. That seems like a pretty good number of staff being engaged in ideas to improve the organisation. Anyone who’s ever written a blog will know that comments are like gold dust, they give so much added value.

So what’s the PONT?

  1. Trusting staff and improving engagement go hand in hand.
  2. Using social media approaches to handle staff ideas gives an opportunity to build trust amoungst staff.
  3. It’s a win, win, win. Engaging this many staff in business improvement has got to be good for customers, good for staff and good for the bottom line.

Linked post: Crowdsourcing, could this be the groovy new name for staff ideas schemes?