From ‘Me’ to ‘We’
Is ‘purpose’ the new engagement?
Engagement as the driver of employee performance has been a constant theme in recent years – not least because of the stream of research published showing that when we feel motivated at work we do a better job.
But despite government task forces and mountains of effort by organisations themselves to become ‘a top employer’, engagement levels in the workplace across the UK and many parts of the world are not that high. The 2014 Aon Hewitt research reported a global average engagement rating of 62%, dragged down by a European average of 57%.
The challenge appears to be even greater when you consider that we now have generations in the workplace for whom satisfaction does not necessarily mean you commit to your employer. You can be really happy in your job but still considering moving on – loyalty has fundamentally changed.
Twenty years ago Reichheld, in his much-admired book The Loyalty Effect, painted a picture of the future workforce: ‘No one will have a career path within one company. Flexibility will matter more than loyalty. Employees will jump from one assignment to the next independent of corporate bonds.’
Well the future is here and the words ‘corporate bonds’ are seriously outmoded.
So I’ve found myself debating – with clients as well as myself – whether it’s time to redefine expectations from engagement and to turn our attention to something that actually might have a lot more power – purpose.
A hard-wired purpose
At a recent Prophet event, we invited two organisational leaders to examine the interplay between purpose, people and brand in the form of a panel debate.
Donna Miller, the European HR Director of Enterprise Holdings, and Richard Morton, the Group Head of Internal and Change Communications for UBS, shared their perspectives and stories, many of which served as a useful reminder of what really counts in organisational life.
Enterprise, which is the largest car rental service provider in the world and employs more than 93,000 people, has founded its success on a complete and utter dedication to customer service. They would say their purpose lives through their eight values – one of which is that customer service is their way of life.
These values are non-negotiable and hard-wired into the daily routines of all employees. Donna gave a really simple yet powerful example: the Enterprise Services Quality Index (SQi). Every branch is assigned its own SQi score that represents the percentage of customers completely satisfied with their rental experience.
If your branch’s SQi score falls below the corporate average, and you are in line for a higher management position, you will not move up until your number improves. It’s that simple.
For UBS, the question of purpose has been very different. They have fought, along with the rest of the sector, to rebuild after the financial crises of 2007 and 2008, exacerbated in UBS’s case by its own particular challenges, such as a $2.3 billion rogue trader scandal.
Richard was candid about the single-minded approach that comes with the need for survival. It’s not about any sense of higher purpose – it’s about the reality of what counts on a daily basis. Like Enterprise, customer loyalty is a priority. That’s what they had to hold onto and build, with everyone understanding the role they needed to play.
The culmination of this effort was the re-launch last autumn of the UBS brand, with a major investment in internal sharing and education before anything went external. They measured participation: every employee engaged with the programme.
The power of the collective
These examples illustrate something that purpose managed effectively brings – and that is shared focus.
It’s also something that takes the individual beyond simply ‘me’, and reinforces the power of ‘we’.
It is no longer enough to simply satisfy employees’ own individual needs and wants. (Although that’s still critical.) We also need to show how the organisation contributes to society.
And that’s not about one-off social responsibility initiatives, but connecting employees so that they are enabled to play their part in a bigger ideal.
It’s so much easier for some organisations than others – Enterprise is a privately owned organisation that can make longer term decisions in line with its values. It’s definitely tougher in banking.
But that isn’t to say that purpose does not have its place; it has undoubtedly driven the recovery of UBS.
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