Macaulay / Hindes / Hall From Cascade to Conversation

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9575724-2-3
Verlag: AB Publishing UK LLP
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 388 Seiten

It is time for organisations to end the corporate monologue with their employees and engage in meaningful, productive conversations. Content, knowledge and opinion are no longer fixed and finite. To those still broadcasting, we say do something radical: listen. What was once in the hands of the few is now in the hands of the many. Banish broadcast and turn your cascade into a conversation.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Macaulay, Katie

Hindes, Eloise

Hall, Ben

Leseproben

In the beginning
there was broadcast A LONG TIME COMING The notion that organisations should do more for their employees than simply issue instructions emerged in the 1890s with paternalistic employers like the Cadbury family. These devout Quakers were among the very first to consider their employees to be more than just a 'living tool'. Their concerns focused on welfare and moral wellbeing, as opposed to a commercial advantage. The debate shifted in the 1920s when a handful of farsighted academics and researchers realised that to optimise employees' output, something more than regular rest breaks, payment and fair working conditions was required. Employees, they claimed, had to feel in some way emotionally connected to their work and to those around them - their colleagues and managers. Although research was undertaken and papers were published, it would seem, for many decades, few organisations - if any - were listening. We can only speculate why. Perhaps two world wars, periods of extreme boom and bust, the demise of manufacturing, trade union activity, the rise of globalisation and several technological revolutions gave organisations other things to worry about. More likely, any commercial advantagebusinesses could secure from climbing into the minds of their employees did not seem worth the effort. It took 170 years after the birth of the industrial revolution - and another revolution in technology - for that economic advantage to be widely accepted as real and meaningful. There has been a frustratingly slow but nevertheless important shift in management theory towards a view of workers as sentient human beings whose output is influenced by their perception of themselves, the tasks they perform and their attitudes towards co-workers, managers and leaders. This realisation came first to employees themselves who felt compelled to form trade unions in order to protect and promote these human needs, the value of which were widely unappreciated by industry. Employee communications - a necessary activity within all organisations whether public, private, large or small, follows a similar trajectory. A few lone radicals dared to suggest it should be an involving and two-way dialogue - a genuinely open and honest exchange of views - but for much of the 20th century, employee communication was the opposite. It was about broadcasting information from the top of the organisational pyramid downwards. For too long employee communication was synonymous with outputs such as newsletters and newspapers, then magazines, intranets, microsites and e-zines.As David MacLeod's notion of employee engagement - "how we create the conditions in which employees offer more of their capability and potential"1 - has slowly taken hold, the scope of the communicator's work has broadened. We are beginning to become strategic advisers; helping to develop 'employee value propositions' and design engagement programmes. However, while we have raised the profile and value of employee communications among senior executives, much of what we are doing remains broadcasting under a differentname. Information is still flowing predominantly one way. We might encourage feedback, and measure attitudes, but all this surveying and 'pulse checking' is not conversation. A genuine and seismic shift in the theory and practice of employee communication has started to take place in recent years with the development of social media and the proliferation of personal devices connected to the web. Our desire and ability to communicate has changed. We have become active participants in countless daily exchanges with those we hold dear and those we have never met. We are not passive consumers of content. We subscribe, unsubscribe, follow, like, rate and comment. Information is not handed to us fully formed and fixed, we seek it out to digest, share and shape it. This has significant implications for employee communication, which must now genuinely leave its broadcasting legacy behind and facilitate open conversation. Employee engagement and communication have both reached a turning point. The stage is now set for a new era of mass collaboration, when organisations will rely far more on the initiative and ingenuity of their people to stay in business because almost everything else can be copied. Quickly, communication will be propelled into a new, more commercially significant role, more akin to research and development. It will become the means by which the world's most successful organisations find and keep their competitive edge. DIM THE LIGHTS, LADIES One of the first of that handful of farsighted academics to demonstrate a link between dialogue and increased productivity was Elton Mayo. In 1924, Mayo was involved in a series of experiments conducted at the Hawthorne Works, a Western Electric factory near Chicago. The plant primarily produced telephone and other electronic equipment, made by assembly lines of predominantly female workers. Initial studies were conducted at the plant by Clarence Stoll and George Pennock, who "were engineers, and treated the row of women like an engine in its test bed, tweaking the conditions to achieve maximum output" 2 Stoll and Pennock endeavoured to understand whether changing the level of lighting inside the factory would affect the output of the workforce. They were following a model of scientific management called 'Taylorism' that sought to maximise efficiency within industry. However, their findings failed to provide such a simple optimal condition. When the lighting was dimmed in the test room, the productivity of the female workers increased. But when the lights went up, productivity increased still further. Other incentives such as financial rewards and rest pauses were manipulated at regular intervals. Although output levels varied, whatever the change - even when it was reversed - the productivity trend was almost inexorably upwards. This flummoxed the researchers who called in academic consultants, including Mayo, to investigate. Searching for an answer, Mayo looked at the supervisor of the test group. He was relaxed and friendly; he got to know the operators well while conducting the experiments. He was not too worried about company policies and procedures. In turn, the women of the experiment enjoyed a novel sense of involvement. They became active participants in the project and consequently formed a social group. This was in stark contrast to how they had been managed previously - and how the other 200 employees in the factory were being treated. Mayo concluded it was this supervisory style that was driving up productivity. The women's output depended more on co-operation and a feeling of worth than on physical working conditions. According to Edwin Gale, the experimenters "had bridged a social abyss and discovered a new alchemy. Treat working people with respect,understand their thinking and group dynamics, reward them appropriately, and they will work better for you".3 Between 1928 and 1930, the research continued with an extensive interview programme involving 21,000 employees.According to Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, "the interview program suggested a great motivational value to directly soliciting the opinions and perceptions of workers”.4.Today, it is hard to believe that Mayo's conclusions were anything more than self-evident.Yet, in the context of the era, they were revolutionary. Increasing human output was not a science, dependent on the size of the shovel or the light in the room as previously thought; it was driven by social and psychological factors. In fact, Mayo's conclusions were so revolutionary that it took another 60 years for them to become part of mainstream management theory. IT'S OK TO BE NEEDY The Hawthorne project is a footnote in history compared to the work of American psychologist Abraham Maslow. His 'hierarchy of needs' can be almost guaranteed a mention in any management-training course, although for many years it appears that the mentioning was more thorough than the listening. One of the pioneers of modern leadership studies, Warren Bennis, believes few paid attention to Maslow at the time he was writing, because "a rather complacent industrial America, famously supreme since WWII, was not particularly interested in business books, especially by a psychologist who had no business expertise to speak of".5 Yet Bennis argues Maslow's theories were decades ahead of their time. In 1943, Maslow's article A Theory of Human Motivation', described the five sets of needs he argues we all have. As each need is satisfied, we feel a desire to fulfil the next. It starts with physiological needs, our primary needs to eat and drink, for example. Our next need is for safety, shelter and security. Then comes belonging - the need to feel part of a group and to be accepted. After that is self-esteem - our desire to feel good about ourselves and be recognised for our achievements. Our ultimate need is self-realisation or actualisation. When all other needs are met, we look for personal fulfilment, to grow and develop.There were no pyramids or triangles in the original paper but thanks to the management theorists who were later inspired by his work, a triangle or a staircase sliced into five parts has become synonymous with Maslow Maslow has his critics. What about the famished poet who would rather write than eat? What of the mountaineer who disregards safety in his determination to reach the summit? Since the 1940s, his hierarchy has been debated, relabelled, flipped on its head and turned sideways. But for all of that, Maslow put forward a theory that helped spark a more human, enlightened view of industrial relations. In his view, employees were not...