Thursday 18th May saw the CIPD NI Awards return to the Titanic Building to celebrate the contribution of HR and People Management within business. The CIPD NI Awards are the most prestigious and highly regarded awards for the HR profession in Northern Ireland. We are honoured to have another guest blog this month from Claire McCay, HR Manager at The Macklin Group, winners of the ‘Best Employee Engagement Strategy’ at the 2017 CIPD NI awards.
Employee Engagement – two words that mean a whole lot!
Claire McCay – HR Manager at The Macklin Group
Engaging staff can seem like a big task especially if the organisation isn’t in its infancy and cultures have already formed, but approaching it in a positive and proactive way can have fantastic outcomes for both employees and the business as a whole.
As a dynamic family business, employing approximately 500 people across the hospitality and care sectors in six different sites, we embarked on a project to overhaul our employee engagement. Recognising we have great people within our organisation, we wanted to create the right environment for them to grow and flourish in, perform to the highest standards and realise their own potential, while also attracting the best future employees for our business.
Our objectives were:
Create a culture of honest and open communication.
Instil Core Values in all staff.
Increase engagement with staff and community.
Promote a culture of learning and development to help staff reach their potential and for succession planning.
Achieve high performance and excellence of care.
Increase staff morale and job satisfaction.
Attract and retain the best talent.
The project consisted of a three-stage approach; planning, implementation and living the values.
Planning: Effective communication with all staff about the priorities and future of the business, HR led initiatives, updates on activity within the community and providing development opportunities for staff.
Implementation: Alignment of all processes with the mission, vision and values; development of a wellbeing programme; strong links established with the community, including a charity of the year.
Living the Values: Creation of meaningful work through staff being given more autonomy leading to staff being advocates for their place of work; internal incentives and initiatives tying in with the brand.
Our outcomes were more than we could have wished for, with an amazing transformation seen across the workforce in how people behave and perform in work, higher levels of trust and communication between all levels and improved attendance at staff meetings. We have also noted employee satisfaction has increased along with staff referrals and retention, while absenteeism has reduced.
Key learning’s from our project has been to engage staff at the early stages and to be as open and transparent as possible – trust is a massive element of any process! Internal branding and was also vital in creating awareness and embedding the mission, vision and values.
Employee engagement is one of the most worthwhile and productive processes an organisation can go through – we have found it leads to a happier and high performing workforce where people actively promote and recommend you as an employer of choice.
