A Little More Conversation

BBC and Bad Behaviour

2007-09-20T13:43:00.000+01:00

Right, own up. Who actually cares that Blue Peter has called their new cat 'Socks' instead of what the public suggested? The papers claim the top name was something 'inappropriate', like 'Bloody Scratching Bastard' (which is the nickname for my own cat). If the public pick something unsuitable for a kids' show, then of course they have to name it something different. Isn't that common sense?

Why does anyone care? It's a cat's name! It's not like the Beeb was embezzling money from license-fee payers. Are there thousands of kids out there, turning away from Blue Peter because their chosen name of 'Beezlebub' or 'Nuclear Kitty of Death' wasn't at the top? (Really, six-year-olds boys have the weirdest names for things).

Or is my morality skewed because I don't care what they call the cat as long as they feed it and take care of it?

ETA: The ex-editor, Richard Marson, has been sacked for this and three other accounts of deception admitted by the Beeb today. One might say it's the cat that broke the camel's back. And other puntastic quips.

Also, the cat was to be called 'Cookie'. What's inappropriate about that? Is it because of the obesity epidemic? I so utterly fail to understand this country at times. So they are now going to introduce another kitten called Cookie to make up for this terrible assault on British trust. Now, for our own poll: who's going to win the battle for British hearts, Socks or Cookie?

People just aren't going to get to heaven by PowerPoint

2007-09-06T16:08:00.000+01:00

Who hasn’t heard the expression death by PowerPoint? Well clearly not The Reverend Tom Ambrose who upset his congregation by conducting his sermons through a channel that is more at home in the Boardroom than the pulpit.

Now I’m all for Christianity coming up to speed with the 21st century. The religious world has much to learn from the secular, as all the religious communities on Second Life know. I also happen to think that PowerPoint done well is a wonderful channel of communication; the reason it is so loathed is that it rarely is. Rather, it is used as a crutch to lean on when presenters haven’t had enough time to think about or rehearse what they are going to say. Presentations that are text-heavy, monotonous 60 slide-long chimeras rather than clear, concise highly visual maps through which to guide the audience just make people glaze over.

Whether you are messenger of God or a messenger for head office it is important to think about what channel of communication you use and make sure it works with the message. In the commercial world we advise that the more important the message, the more you want people to understand, accept and commit to it, the more face-to-face, dialogue-based and interactive communication needs to be. But you wouldn’t gather everyone together for an open forum meeting to tell them the lift has broken down.

Using PowerPoint to preach the word of God… I guess it comes down to personal taste. It seems to have become a popular channel through which to preach across the pond; there are several websites dedicated to helping pastors do this effectively. But for me, the thought of using such a corporate medium in any kind of sacred place is worrying.

Sadly, it seems Dr Ambrose, was guilty of committing far worse crimes than death by PowerPoint including spitting at parishioners. If that isn’t enough to put off other vicars following in his PowerPoint footsteps think of the poor members of your congregation that have been subjected to PowerPoint several times in the week already when they’re not glued to their own computer screens fighting email overload. Although according to corporate comedian Don McMillan there is life after death by PowerPoint:

Happiness at work?

2007-08-13T14:21:00.000+01:00

So yet again, hairdressers are said to be the happiest employees in Britain.

This research finding, by City and Guilds, always surprises me. Firstly because the research hardly ever changes and you’ve got to hand it to them, they still manage to get media coverage every year. But the main reason why it surprises me is because I can’t imagine that standing on my feet all day and continually asking people if they’ve been anywhere nice for their hols is a route to happiness. To me, hairdressing seems to be extremely hard work and very long hours.

Maybe it’s the personal interaction with customers, maybe it’s the sense of pride in their work that makes them happy (although show me a woman who is happy with her haircut and I’ll show you… well, I’m not sure what I’ll show you. But I’d be fairly surprised).

One finding I do agree with is that financial remuneration isn’t necessarily the key to happiness at work. This is echoed by two research projects conducted bya couple of our own clients. Chiumento, an HR consultancy, explored what made people happy in the workplace. They discovered that it is good relationships with colleagues that leads to happiness at work. And global recruitment and retention specialist Kenexa’s research shows that engaged staff are those who feel fulfilled. OK, engagement isn’t the same as happiness – someone could be happy at work because they get away with dossing and doing no work, but they certainly won’t be engaged.

And this is probably the problem with the City & Guilds research. It’s too simplistic to claim that hairdressers are the happiest workers. Happiness is only one component, so are they just going through the motions when they say “Ah, yes, Marbella’s lovely this time of year”?

Headlines and deadlines

2007-08-10T10:53:00.000+01:00

Ah, sub-editors. Where would the media be without them? These are the people who make sure commas happen, who spell names right or wrong, or sometimes cut spokespeople out altogether. They are also the ones to make up the headlines.

Now these can be great works or art. Of course, some, centering around health or education, say the exact opposite of what the bulk of the article states. We've had a quick debate about our favourites:

"Super Cally Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious": after a Scottish Premier League Cup final.

"Branston's Pickle": recent story on the Virgin troubles.

"How Do You Solve a Problem Like Korea": an article on the US political dealings with Korea, which then spawned a song.

"Panda mating fails - veterinarian takes over": ok, I must admit, I include this one because I adore pandas and have pics of them plastered over my desk, but really, the poor things forget how to mate. Also, I do not think this headline means what you think it means.

"Blind woman gets new kidney from dad she hasn’t seen in years": I'm sorry, I'm laughing too much to make sense.

"Tiger Woods Plays With Own Balls, Nike Says": why is Nike saying things like this? Weren't they media trained?

"Passengers Hit By Cancelled Trains": sometimes the space is too short to use a word like 'affected', but really, they should have made space.

Any others that you find funny? Or just hideously wrong? We find that the shortness of the headline can often lead to bad grammar, which just makes things worse.

And of course, silly season means we get more bizarre headlines and stories every day, from the Great White that was a Great Hoax, to a new sighting of an even rarer animal: Lord Lucan. What is it with Lord Lucan sightings? Why do we care? I have never understood this.

Anyway, that's all from me, as I have to finish some work before we pop some champagne to celebrate a new client win!

Blogging about blogging

2007-08-07T16:20:00.000+01:00

Well it was only a matter of time.

But I'm ignoring the feeling that this piece might expose (some of) the thinking behind this very blog and will use it to point out some of the benefits anyway.

So who are the big bad business bloggers?

A quick assessment this morning while putting together some work for a client left me in no doubt that some industries use blogs much more than others. The steadily rising number of PR blogs ('progs'?) show that the PR crowd are more than happy to waffle into the ether, but those from UK HR scene don't seem to have found a use for blogs yet.

It begs the question what are blogs for, anyway?

Well there is a bit of trend for showing off, it has to be said. Some blogs seem to spend their time posturing and pontificating about their opinions; but it takes more effort than that. Part of the reason this blog has the title it does is because we believe it has to be a two-way process. There is no point in shouting into the blogosphere unless someone shouts something back. Maybe HR professionals haven't found a medium for sharing collective resources and thinking yet. Maybe they are just too busy to write 'HRogs', but finding the time doesn't appear to be a problem for other employees.

Charities and not-for-profit organisations are also quickly jumping on new media forms to help put the very people they help at the centre of the story, bringing their experiences directly to their target audiences. Podcasts and new forms of e-marketing let them deliver images, personal accounts and real life events straight to the people who can make a difference by donating time or money.

Blogging is a great way to share ideas and keep in touch with interested people in your trade, stakeholders and the general public as well as involving your own team in your work. But only if you put the thought and effort in. You can't expect people to come across it by chance. Blogs need to be properly marketed, well thought out and regularly updated, but all this will be fairly easy if there is a genuine interest in them.

Maybe your organisation would be better served by a regular newsletter or e-bulletin, even if those things sound a little less trendy.

Am I creating a rod for my own back?!

So given this blog is in part experimental - don't let us down! Here's hoping that next time you drop by you see something interesting enough to leave a comment for. Go on. We'd love it if you did and we promise to visit yours if you visit ours.

Tense nervous headache at work?

2007-08-03T16:28:00.000+01:00

Stress. It’s a big, unpleasant and costly headache.

While the average office worker doesn’t face anywhere near the kind of day-to-day psychological pressure as frontline troops in a conflict zone, the workplace can still feel like a bit of a battlefield sometimes.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s the people at the very top who are often under the highest pressure. Imagine being on the receiving end of everyone’s bad news and complaints in an organisation made up of 8,000 people? No wonder fewer of us want to reach the lofty heights of being a CEO. When the company share price rests on your leadership, it must be very hard to put your hand up and say 'I have a problem'.

Oh dear. Was I being overly sympathetic to the people with the biggest salaries? Tsk tsk!

So what’s the answer? Our old friend work-life balance springs to mind. But perhaps this is just a code word for office workers being able to leave on time. We rarely hear about forest managers complaining they get called out of bed by a jingling CrackBerry at 4am. Perhaps work-life balance isn't so important if your day job is rewarding in the first place.

If the real goal then is to find a job you love, it's no wonder Generation Y have a reputation for being so demanding.

Of course, that isn't much help for those of us currently stuck behind desks. Maybe it's time to badger your boss to set up an employee volunteering scheme, to get stressed-out employees out into the fresh air, doing something useful in the community and putting the latest deadline into perspective.

Although it turns out that stress is not the only thing lurking among the photocopiers and stationery cupboards that we should be worried about.

Besides, It’s August. The sun has finally decided to make an appearance. Run for the nearest beach! Don’t be tempted to use the so-called quieter month to catch up on that mounting pile of filing...

Straight Talking

2007-07-20T13:25:00.000+01:00

John Naish points out in today's T2 that adults don't say no to each other, much like they (apparently) don't say no to their children. He goes so far as to say this behaviour is why we are all addicted to Crackberries: we just don't want to say no to someone, even if that inconveniences us. Which brings us to the question of honesty, which I suppose is the theme of the three things I wanted to talk about in this post. When is it best to fudge the truth and when is it best to be honest?

Naish mentions performance reviews and how 'Instead of saying, "You are a lazy disgrace", they feel compelled by relentless positivism to say: "Your work has been creative, inspiring, original - could we have more of it, please?"' While this may be less confrontational, it isn't doing the employer or the employee any good - it is a fact that managers sometimes have to be harder to get the best work out of staff - and I think employees appreciate this honesty. In our many research reports, we found that honesty and being kept in the loop often comes up at the top of things employees want from their bosses. So why is this not going on? I personally respond well to someone asking me to do a task and then giving me a deadline - unless it seems random, I don't need a long explanation for why I am doing it, because hopefully that is apparent. Maybe it all goes back to constantly communicating how job roles feed the overall corporate vision - we like to know what we do matters in the big scheme of things, and as long as that is made obvious, a little honesty never hurt anyone's feelings.

Note how I said 'little honesty'. Because does anyone actually care that because Comic Relief's telephones went down, they had a fake caller 'winning' a section? No. It's a charity. They weren't saying people were donating when they weren't. They weren't faking a competition to get out of giving the prize away. They run a tight ship at Comic Relief, with plenty of small deadline throughout the night, and to move along to the next skit or film, sometimes they have to bend a little. I don't really begrudge them that.

And my final honesty point is all about the MP's drug-craze that appears to be sweeping the media. My favourite part of this is the photo of Jacqui Smith making moose antlers, or bunny ears, or whatever it is she's doing. I think journalists picked it up to illustrate her wild and silly life at university. However, she is playing a game, where, if you make that gesture, you don't have to down a shot. Hardly wild, is it? Basically, they have a picture of someone trying not to get drunk. I for one much prefer my politicians to know what they are talking about when it comes to drink and drugs. After all, a potential US Presidential candidate, Barack Obama, has admitted a previous cocaine addiction. Why on earth should we ever care if a Home Secretary has had a toke or two?

News and shenanigans

2007-07-17T14:56:00.000+01:00

There seems to be lots of shenanigans in the news at the moment, between George Galloway getting suspended and Boris Johnson throwing his hat into the race for Mayor of London. It does make you wonder if MPs actually ever get to do any MP-ing.

The other newsworthy things to note is that, no matter how big a business you are, if you don't pay your bill, you won't get any Harry Potter and then it's straight to bed without any dinner. Bloomsbury's retaliation comes the day after Asda accused them of hiking up the retail price for the last book, so it all seems a little tit for tat, even if the non-payment of bills should be a big no-no in any industry.

The World's Leading... also throws something into sharp relief - the frequency of blog posts. Now I know that we can't really talk, having not updated for a while, but it does seem to be industry wide and seasonal. Perhaps it is because it is entering silly season, where there is less news and less to blog about. In our case, it is because, for some reason, summer appears to bring us potential new client leads and we start focusing on what we can do to help new clients with amazing campaigns. This happened last year as well. Something to do with a new financial year and more budget? Or does the winter depress people too much to contemplate PR? Ah well. I suppose it keeps us busy in this bizarre and miserable weather.

Friday work musings

2007-06-29T11:30:00.000+01:00

Is there anything more worrying than being able to see the screen of the person looking at your most recent draft of something and then slowly seeing all the red boxes of 'track changes' start crowding around your work? Methinks not.

This week has been quite a quiet one in the office, although still busy. It's holiday season, which of course means that when journalists want things by noon the next day, you have to call them back, grovel and then hopefully ask 'July?' as that's when your spokesperson is back from Fiji. Of course our lot have also been off here and there - two came back from Glastonbury looking surprisingly awake and not at all mud-covered and we've had a dotted afternoon or two off to go to Wimbledon. I spent yesterday in our office with only three other people, writing a proposal and checking for updates on both the Cabinet reshuffle and the Tim Henman match. I felt let down and disgruntled by both, so tried to finish the day on a high note by reading Mark Steel's column from Wednesday that I had missed - nothing makes me laugh quite as hard, except perhaps Charlie Brooker for entirely different reasons. Charlie Brooker mentions new rave in that piece - it reminded me of when myself and a colleague went to a gig and her friend looked at the well-behaved if hyper 14-year-olds with glow sticks and remarked that 'it looks like a rave does on Inspector Morse'.

The Worlds Leading... has a great post about the client/PR relationship, which I think is for the most part quite accurate. We recently promoted an account exec to senior account exec and one of her clients sent her a bottle of champagne - as they have done to all their team who have been promoted. Another client, on an account exec's last day, sent her flowers and chocolates. It's the small touches that make us feel appreciated and let us know that we, the team, are doing a good job and it makes us smile as we sit down at our desks.

At the moment we are all cooing over a colleague who has been invited to the HR magazine awards at the Dorchester, and it being Friday and we are an office of mostly women, talk has of course turned to what to wear.

The way we work now (or take a stand?)

2007-06-27T08:52:00.000+01:00

Not necessarily communications-related, but certainly work-related; this blog post about one of the people at Innocent Drinks has made me think quite fundamentally about the way I work.

It strikes me how difficult it can be to come into a work environment and do something a bit different; it's much easier to just accept they 'normal' way of doing things. Habit is a powerful thing - but not the best way to inspire creativity. Maybe we should all take a good hard look about the way we work. Recent press coverage has flagged up new places to hold meetings to help get the little grey cells working more productively, but the furthest thought I have ever given my most immediate working environment is the usual health and safety guidance. Odd, given how much of my day I spend here.

So I'm taking a stand (although not literally) and having a good long think about what would make it easier and nicer for me to work at my desk. I'm starting with the addition of a a fresh cup of tea. Has anyone got any other ideas? I'll post up some pictures of the best changes I make.

Perhaps in ten years time all the very best office workers will be standing up while checking their emails.

Do we feel sorry for Blair?

2007-06-13T10:15:00.000+01:00

Rather like an employee at an exit interview, Tony Blair is using the last days of his premiership to have a bit of a moan about all the things that have bugged him through the years. His latest rant is at ‘feral’ journalists, hunting in packs for ways to demolish the reputations of the great and the good.

Journalists can be cynical and difficult. Politicians and poorly advised captains of industry do dissimulate and spin. So there is blame on both sides. But it all had to start somewhere and it seems pretty obvious in this case that it started with the invention of the spinning machine. Alastair Campbell and Max Clifford have a lot to answer for and I for one yearn for a return to honesty and clarity. My mantra is:

1 Tell the truth: PR is the art of informing clearly, not spinning

2 Use plain English: tortuous prose, combining fantastic sentence structure with very long words, suggests you have something to hide or nothing to say

3 Admit your mistakes: we know you made them

The trouble with technology

2007-06-07T12:22:00.000+01:00

Technology is broadly a wonderful thing. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking I would rather use a nice shiny 21st century computer than a rusty old typewriter. So on that basis, any modern system to help us communicate with each other easily and quickly has to be a good thing.

Or is it?

Research out this week underlines some of the difficulties that today’s communication methods can cause, particularly office emails.

Ridiculous? When was the last time you sent an email to someone sitting only a few feet away from you? Or received an email full of inconsequential or irrelevant information that went straight in the deleted items folder? It’s easy to see why we’ve become addicted to checking our emails – to the point where conference coffee breaks have been nicknamed 'BlackBerry breaks'.

Is being in touch all of the time the best way to run a business?

Our very own Tania has recently commented on this issue, highlighting the importance of face-to-face communication. Simply broadcasting information the whole time leads to information overload. Employees need to know where to find the relevant information to help them pick and choose what is relevant to them. The key is giving people the right information in the right way at the right time.

A few years ago I attended a time management workshop. One of the key messages I can still remember was that emails should never take control of your time. The natural reaction is to deal with something the second it appears, especially when it pops up right in front of your eyes. Because sending an email is instantaneous, people can often expect a response immediately. But it's a much better use of your time to minimise your email browser and set aside specific time to deal with new emails, say once an hour. That way you can concentrate on whatever else you're doing.

I haven’t received an old-fashioned, hand-written letter in the post for ages. I’m sure I’d read it much more thoroughly than one of the scores of emails I receive each day.

I have to go now. I need to check my inbox.

Facebook at work

2007-06-01T10:57:00.000+01:00

We are a gregarious lot. We like to talk to people, to form new friendships, re-instate old ones. We are in PR, after all. And the wonderfully catchy Web 2.0 has helped us in this endeavour, with many of us ending up on MySpace or Facebook, although not, as yet, YouTube, unlike the guys at Golin Harris.

This love of networking online as well as in RL (Real Life) has the potential to lead to problems, however. As the law firm Allen & Overy found out, banning people from accessing their networks leads to staff revolts, showing that people like keeping in touch with others at work, no matter how much the employer may frown upon it.

But what happens when these two worlds collide? We've just had a few of our number friended by a journalist on Facebook. Do we friend back? It's polite, we like the journalist, we've worked with him, we like making new friends. For most the answer is yes, of course. For others, the suggestion is met with almost horror at the thought that someone we might potentially pitch to may have seen what is written on our 'wall' (the area where friends can write messages to you). A bit like the sudden rush of articles around employers not hiring those with embarrassing photos/content on their MySpace and other internet sites, what you have on these sites suddenly becomes quite personal in the face of public scrutiny.

So do the vast majority of us internet users in work, or who want to be in work (I'm looking at students here) have to censor ourselves? Sadly, this is looking more and more probable. I know that my MySpace page is full of things I do not mind my employers or future employers knowing, and in fact, I do have a journalist friend on there as well. But I also have a nice, anonymous blog where I can wax lyrical about my political inclinations and post those pictures of the pirate party that otherwise never shall see the light of day. It seems to be a sad fact that you cannot truly be yourself without fear of repercussion. While Web 2.0 seems to have opened up an open, honest dialogue with like-minded people, it seems that employers might be becoming more closed-minded than ever, forcing people to hide their personalities. I mean, really, do you honestly care that Dave, who you are thinking of hiring, got very drunk and had a bad kebab last Friday? No, you were probably too busy doing the same. Ah, maybe that's it - it's not the act itself, but the temerity to talk about it to strangers that is the problem. Because I think few employers actually understand or agree with the ideals behind Web 2.0; it will always be a small case of fear of the unknown and us against them.

US vs. UK blogs

2007-05-30T14:28:00.000+01:00

There's an interesting piece over at The World's Leading... that talks about the differences between American and British PR, mainly stating how much harder it is over here. But the thing that really caught my eye is the opinion that they don't know how to be authentic when using social media.

Which is interesting in terms of this blog, since the authors here obviously work for a PR agency, but this blog isn't about our services. Mainly, we noticed that no one was blogging about careers and employee engagement in the UK and decided that it could be an interesting forum. Conversely, in the US, there are many more blogs and networks around these topics, so much so that our career links are nearly all US-based blogs - in fact, there isn't really a career blog over here at all (if I'm wrong, please let me know so I can link to it!).

So why on earth is the US so prolific yet insubstantial and we in the UK are the opposite? (I generalise, of course) Is it down to inflated budgets in the US? Perhaps UK companies are more interested in value for money. Which means that 'prudence' isn't only Gordon Brown's favourite value, it may actually be a nationwide epidemic.

Communicating clearly (not slowly and loudly)

2007-05-25T11:31:00.000+01:00

Nick Cator highlights the importance of clear and simple communication in this week’s edition of Third Sector.

Looking at the publication’s own survey of the not-for-profit field, he notes that 92 per cent of charity workers believe the public does not understand charities. He suggests this may have a lot to do with the rise of ‘jargonistic’ management speak in the sector, devoid of real meaning.

Charity workers were asked to describe their ideal charity. They chose emotive but non-specific words such as ‘passionate’, ‘inspiring’ and ‘visionary’. In contrast the general public preferred much more simple terms like ‘honest’, ‘trustworthy’ and ‘effective’.

This is not a problem just for the voluntary sector. We found that half of employees reported their leader’s communication as ‘not good’. In terms of regularity, consistency and relevance employees were extremely critical of the communication from their leaders. Only two in 10 employees feel their leader actually listens, rather than just barking out instructions.

How can an organisation go forward if it cannot communicate its purpose, or if its different teams cannot talk to each other?

McPerception breakdown

2007-05-24T13:47:00.000+01:00

As specialists in the HR PR arena, we’ve been watching the ‘McJob’ debate with particular interest. It apparently first cropped up a few months ago, with initial calls from McDonalds to the Oxford English Dictionary to remove the definition of ‘McJob’ as "An unstimulating low-paid job with few prospects, especially one created by the expansion of the service sector".

In actual fact, this entire campaign is a re-hash of one its press office did before in 2003, but then targeting the Merriam Webster Dictionary. It didn’t seem to gather much ground then. It seems that in 2003, there were enough detractors of the company to render the campaign ineffectual. Now, McDonalds is in the Times Top 100 Graduate Employers and has won the platinum award from Caterer and Hotelkeeper magazine.

This time round, the campaign has got teeth and McDonalds has judged the shift in mood correctly. They have senior backers, such as
Sir Digby Jones and Clive Betts, MP for Sheffield Attercliffe, to lend pressure on the OED. But the OED isn’t budging, stressing that it publishes definitions as the public use them.

This is where the breakdown in the campaign lies: the definition might be untrue, as McDonalds has great career progression (no, they are not one of our clients, we just recognise that its training programmes are very good) but the public, Joe Bloggs on the street, is never going to stop connecting the term with that definition. What McDonalds needs to do is keep trying to change the perception of careers in McDonalds, keep showing the progression, training, and variety of jobs available in the company until the public starts viewing ‘McJobs’ as something to aim for in their own career development through career features, instead of headline grabbing campaigns that might confront the issue but don't get to the root of the matter.

ETA: The Guardian's Comment is Free has also blogged on this subject with, at the last count, 50 comments from the public.

Who owns employee engagement?

2007-05-18T16:03:00.000+01:00

Everyone, just everyone, is talking about engagement these days. How to achieve it, why organisations need it, how to convince the board it is necessary. Which means a lot of talks between HR and communications, which is an excellent first step. But when it comes down to day-to-day employee engagement, who actually is responsible for it?

There are those, such as Jonathan Austen from Best Companies, who says that employee engagement comes from the top, via the leader's vision of the company - essentially that content, rather than method, engages workers.

He says that the most highly correlated question in the best companies survey, which indicates how engaged employees are - is Leaders do a lot of telling and not much listening. Leadership is the most important factor to engagement and becoming a ‘best company’ in terms of the survey.

But while leadership of an organisation is important as it directs the company, you can argue that it is really down to the communicators of this vision to engage the staff – which is where managers come into their own. It is a commonly held belief that employees leave their managers, not their companies, when resigning, so clearly managers play a huge part in whether an employee feels engaged by the organisation or not.

Theresa Welbourne, CEO of eePulse has some interesting views on the how to make employee engagement ‘sticky’, rather than a fad:

“When we don’t give managers something specific to do about engagement that is within their own control, then the owners of the engagement process are corporate HR. If corporate HR owns employee engagement, it will be a fad. If you tie engagement to day-to-day management work, then managers and employees themselves own engagement. Only when managers own engagement will it not be a fad.”

Of course, some go further to suggest that employees are responsible for their own engagement, and that there are no factors except a willingness to be engaged and enthused by an organisation. Clementine Leroy from Philips argued at the Kenexa Innovation in Employee Engagement seminar on 21 March this year that it was less about employees saying ‘Help! Engage me!” and more about them asking themselves “What can I do to feel more engaged?”

In reality, it is a mixture of all of these factors that can make employee engagement an epidemic within a company. Leadership provides the vision, the starting point. HR provides the information for engagement, understanding the vision of the company and the initiatives that can motivate employees. It is often the communications department that knows the most engaged employees internally, and so can seek them out and help them to ‘sell’ engagement to others, helping people become enthused by what they themselves are already enthused by. At the root, employees need to have the confidence to ask: what motivates me in my life, and how do I get that from my job? to be able to engage themselves.

In conclusion, then, everyone is in some way responsible for employee engagement. Now it's just a matter of communicating that to everyone, from CEO to tea lady...