Just as she tended to divide opinion sharply in life, the passing of Baroness Thatcher has attracted both searingly negative as well as hugely warm sentiment. While you wouldn’t necessarily accuse her biographer, John Campbell, of understatement, ‘She was the most admired, most hated, most idolised and most vilified public figure of the second half of the 20thcentury’, he wasn’t far off the mark. Regardless of her methods and her public persona, Thatcher did much to promote self determination and the choice of the individual. She reduced the impact and (and at that point) oppression of the unions, she promoted individual share ownership, inspired an enterprise economy, the privatisation of great British institutions such as Jaguar Land Rover, BT and British Gas and encouraged council house occupants to buy their properties.
Quite what she would have made of employee engagement is another thing but I like to think she would have looked fondly upon it. Despite her efforts to liberalise the UK economy, domestic productivity, during the 1980s trailed behind key competitors such as Japan and Germany. Even today, the Office for National Statistics suggests that UK output per hour is a sizeable 15% less than the G7 average. And if you’re looking for substance behind the thoughts of organisations such as the Corporate Leadership Council – ‘Increasing an employee’s level of engagement can improve performance by 20% & reduce that employee’s probability of departure by 87%” – the UK ranks a lowly ninth among the world’s key economies for engagement levels. This is a subject touched on by Archie Norman, ex ASDA CEO and current chairman of ITV, in a fascinating article around the subject of engagement earlier this month, ‘People expect to have meaning beyond boosting earnings per share. For many, work is voluntary and the pace of work is voluntary’.
Individuals choose to either make or reject discretionary effort, individuals are either engaged or not.
Whether organisations are succeeding in coaxing out such effort and engagement from their people has rarely been as important as it is in early April 2013. Without a fanfare, the economy seems to be quietly moving in the right direction. The service sector last week reported a modest but tangible growth via the PMI index from 51.8 to 52.4 and today saw the unveiling of the most recent manufacturing output figures, rising 0.8% in February. Perhaps more relevant was BDO’s Employment Index which indicated an increase in private sector hiring intentions over the next two quarters.
But just as Baroness Thatcher sought to create personal financial empowerment, so the jobs market seems to be evolving towards a recruitment self determination model. A fascinating piece of research this week from author, Lou Adler, points to the hidden jobs market. Surveying 1,500 US candidates, Adler established that 58% of active and a staggering 81% of passive candidates found their jobs via non-public, or hidden, channels. The key hidden hiring channels cited were internal moves and networking, where candidates side step recruitment third parties and even corporate ATS systems in order to engage directly with hiring managers. It’s a route based on self determination and personal initiative. And this absolutely endorses more anecdotal focus group feedback from TMP. Several external candidate groups with whom we have engaged over the last month have pointed to the de-personalising affect of many organisations and their application processes, feeling that they have little or no opportunity to stand out personally or to express themselves as individuals. Because of readily available metrics, they know how many hundreds of other candidates applied and fear the worst as to what level of personal hearing their application will receive.
If organisations seek to create relationships with talented, enthusiastic and committed new joiners, as the BDO findings tend to indicate, and to achieve effective levels of engagement with these people, this sense of engagement has to be on a personal level. Their employer brand has to speak to individuals – these individuals need to feel they are being communicated with during the attraction, selection, hiring and on-boarding phases of the recruitment process. The hidden jobs market is thriving not only because prospective job changers want to engage with individuals for validation and reassurance, but because the current or public jobs market is delivering a wholly different, de-personalised experience.
The lady sure wasn’t for turning, but perhaps those organisations concerned about how their employer brand and engagement levels are performing might want to consider adjusting their recruitment process and the levels of self determination they currently deliver candidates.
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 