Is the Queen truly engaged?

This year the Diamond Jubilee will mark 60 years of service from Queen Elizabeth II and with no retirement in sight we can assume that Her Majesty would score pretty highly on at least one of the three key measures of engagement - retention. Getfeedback Consultant Alana Inness looks at the reign of HRH alongside new studies in engagement theory to understand how engagement promotes higher levels of individual and organisational performance.

This year the Diamond Jubilee will mark 60 years of service from Queen Elizabeth II and with no retirement in sight we can assume that Her Majesty would score pretty highly on at least one of the three key measures of engagement - retention. After emerging from a difficult decade of scandal and sadness, the last couple of years of celebrating royal marriages, the birth of her first great-grandchild, a “game changing” visit to the Republic of Ireland and a visit to Australia that left her with “fond memories” must have been a big relief and one might even suggest that she would now rate job satisfaction well and be prepared to recommend her Firm to others.

While Ma’am may be doing well on traditional engagement measures recent research from Cass Business School, Cranfield School of Management and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) suggests that these three key elements of what they describe at ‘state engagement’ are important but organisations should also be looking for ‘behavioural engagement’ in order to promote higher levels of individual and organisational performance. Behavioural engagement is demonstrated through the employees’ willingness to take personal responsibility for improving the job they do by learning new things and achieving high standards (job behavioural engagement) and also willingness to raise difficult issues and make suggestions to improve the organisation (organisation behavioural engagement).

Returning to our royal example we can examine the way the Queen engages with the general public and the UK Government in order to assess her behavioural engagement. During her reign the Queen has needed to evolve the monarchy as a whole in order to reconnect with the public and provide value for money. She has tackled problems with public perception of royal spending by making budgetary cuts across the royal family and is in the process of changing the laws with regard to female heirs to fall in line with modern times. She meets at least twice a month with the Prime Minister to provide advice, which in the past has been acted upon, even through the difficulties of dealing with governments that are not in keeping with her own Conservative views. It would seem Her Majesty is showing behavioural as well as state engagement.

At Getfeedback our own engagement surveys are designed to measure both state and behavioural engagement, asking a wide range of questions to unearth true feelings and the key drivers of performance within organisations. Our new off-the-shelf survey is no exception and is ideal for the smaller organisation that needs to get maximum value with a more limited budget. For organisations with less than 500 employees we are now able to offer an engagement package that includes the online survey, an overall report with key drivers and a set of benchmarks, a summary presentation from one of our consultants to highlight key issues and recommendations. Given the average employee attrition rate in the UK of around 10%, that the cost of hire can range between 0.5 and 5 times an employees’ salary and the average UK salary is just over £25k the cost of not understanding what is keeping and motivating your employees could be costing an organisation with 500 employees a minimum of £625k a year just in hidden recruitment and on-boarding costs not to mention lost revenue. Looking at it like this can you really afford not to check the pulse of your people?

If you need to sell an engagement initiative to your senior management check out our tips on the website or get in touch and we can help you to help them understand the value of engagement.