To engage or disengage, that is the question…

Having sat through a thought provoking session on employee engagement last Friday at the IOD West Surrey People Forum, it was somewhat dispiriting to come across a survey in this morning’s paper that, in spite of the fact that their companies have lost on average almost a third of their value, executives at Britain’s top companies earned 10% more than in the previous year. This compares to the overall 3.1% increase that ordinary workers “enjoyed”.

No doubt these executives will use the “L’Oreal” defence (“because I’m worth it”) to justify their largesse, whilst exhorting their employees (those who are left after the most recent round of downsizing) to buckle down and take one for the company, but to use a phrase that has been much used already in respect of politicians and bankers “they still don’t get it do they?”.

Had they been at my people forum last week, they would have heard from Jonathan Scott of em(ic)* about engaged employees i.e. people who enjoy the work they do and “who unlock their discretionary effort to create a winning organisation”, and the potential of such employees to outperform on sales, growth and profit by 2:1, a compelling business case you might think. However the continuing divide between what bosses say and what they do, as evidenced by the pay statistics above, is much more likely to lead to employee disengagement, which one would think was not what is required in the current climate.

Yes top people will earn, and deserve to earn, more based on the skills and responsibilities that go with their jobs, and entrepreneurs in particular deserve to be recompensed for their risk taking. However too many senior executives, both in the private and public sectors, take no risk and little responsibility in their roles, and it is about time their pay packets recognised this. Chances are that their employees already have…..