These three areas are the themes that provided the original focus for our Shaping the Future research. Full results are available in the interim report.
Employee engagement
Engaged individuals will work more effectively, connect better with customers and go the extra mile which will translate into organisational performance. Past CIPD work has found that to be engaged, employees need to have the right environment, an HR model which aligns individual discretionary effort with the organisation’s strategic goals and effective managers.
Leadership
There are a set of behaviours exhibited by effective leaders which will motivate and engage employees. These behaviours also support the translation of employees’ discretionary effort into business performance.
Organisational Development
Organisations need to have a planned and systematic approach to enabling sustained organisation performance through the involvement of its people. Organisations should engage in continuous reviews of their internal context and external pressures. Those that do are more likely to develop the flexibility and responsiveness to adapt to fast changing market pressures. The process will be enhanced by effective HR which constantly seeks to enhance the people resource of organisations.
Although these three themes appear to be the main drivers of sustainable organisation performance, we expect other insights to emerge as the work progresses. So there will also be a fourth area of ‘emergent insights’.
What does the research involve?
1. We are working with seven case-study organisations in this longitudinal research. Each organisation is on a change journey of its own initiation and design. We’re just completing our first round of investigation and will be working with the same organisations to follow their change journey over the coming year as they strive to create and maintain sustainable performance and continuous improvement.
We are working with a mix of organisations from the public and private sectors:
- Standard Chartered Bank
- Birmingham City Council
- Big Lottery Fund
- Pfizer Grange Castle
- Xerox
- NHS Dumfries and Galloway
2. We have set up a number of action learning sets with practitioners. These groups will act as a test pad for new ideas and they’ll be linked with the core research with case-study organisations, choosing themes that apply most to the group context. They will be fed insights from the round tables we have held with HR and business leaders over the past six months, as well as other relevant CIPD content.
Themes emerging from practitioner groups and HR leader roundtables
We’re still making sense of the findings from our case-study research, however we do have some themes emerging from our other activities:
a) Context
Context appears to be an important factor affecting whether organisations can achieve sustainable performance. There are building blocks but no blueprint. Successful organisations implement initiatives with both the internal and external context in mind. They consider the needs and function of the organisation, the work team and individuals, as well as monitoring the external environment, which is particularly important at the moment given the economic situation.
b) Communication
Communication is another factor which enables people to perform at their best. An employee receiving consistent messages from different sources in the organisation is important. These messages need to be aligned with the organisation’s strategy and core purpose and derive most value if they are tailored to their specific audience, be that the senior management team, employees or external stakeholders.
c) Energy source
Having an energy source within the organisation, whether it be a senior, middle or line manager, or an employee champion, can drive continuous improvement. An organisation’s initiatives or changes need to be both driven from above and supported by everyone in the organisation, if they are to be successful. People acting as energy sources will fuel motivation, enthusiasm and determination for the initiative or change and will enable it to become embedded.
d) Silo working
A potential barrier to sustainable organisation performance is departments operating as silos rather than working and communicating together. Unless internal teams understand how each other operates and how what they do affects other functions, it is difficult for the organisation to be united towards a common purpose or to provide an excellent service to the customer.
Interim research findings later in the year
We’ll be using the coming months to analyse and make sense of the data we are collecting from case-study organisations, practitioners and leaders. The interim findings will be flagged up through our newsletter.