Employee Engagement in a Post-Redundancy Situation

1
Employee Engagement in a Post-Redundancy Situation

• Dealing with Survivor Syndrome
• Re-engaging employees post redundancy
• Case Examples of re-engagement post redundancy
• QA session with Panel

2
Survivor Syndrome

• Survivors of redundancy feel anger, mistrust and
  a sense of loss
• Morale, commitment and engagement goes down
• Brockner (1988) was the first to coin the term
  survivor syndrome.

3
Effect of Survivor Syndrome

• Employees are less likely
• to suggest improvements,
• take calculated risks
• make speedy decisions
• go the extra mile for a client
• work hard (I dont care anymore)
• to innovate
• (IES 2004)

4
Minimising Survivor Syndrome

• Even in profitable times, corporations may go
  through a re-structuring process that leads to
  redundancies.
• This has an even greater impact on survivors.
• To some extent, the current economic crises both
  nationally and internationally has provided
  another outlet for the anger that survivors feel.

5
Minimising Survivor Syndrome

• The behaviour of the layoff agent is very
  important for both the person made redundant and
  their surviving colleagues
• The perceived fairness of the redundancy
  programme
• The financial package given to those leaving
• Senior Middle Management maintaining the fine
  balance between being seen not to panic nor being
  heartless

6
Minimising Survivor Syndrome

• True Leadership Integrity shown by senior
  management, then middle management
• Communication formal and personal
• Maintaining progressive initiatives such as
• positive employee relations initiatives
• training
• new projects
• new IT that has clear benefits for users
• Innovative reward strategies
• But only low cost
  initiatives

7
From survivors to re-engaged

• Time passes
• Approx. 1-2 years

8
ENGAGEMENT DEFINED
Engagement takes place when people are caught up
in and interested in, even excited by their jobs
and are therefore prepared to exert discretionary
effort in getting them done.
9
What is engagement?
10
What is engagement?

• Perfectly Engaged Employees are all of the above!
• Normally, there would be a degree of engagement
  and this will vary up and down

11
Measuring Engagement

• Engagement can be measured
• Employee Surveys
• Team meetings
• Management by walking around
• Skip Level Meetings

12
Findings on Engagement

• A Mercer/CIPD study recently showed that 53 of
  respondents had experienced redundancies in their
  organisation in the last 2 years.
• However, only 55 of employees have experienced
  employee engagement being measured recently.
• How do you improve if you dont know where you
  currently are? Mercer/CIPD (2010)

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Findings on Engagement

• managers and professionals tend to have higher
  engagement levels than their colleagues
• engagement levels decline as length of service
  increases
• having an injury at work, or experiencing
  harassment (particularly from your manager) has a
  big negative impact on engagement

14
Findings on Engagement

• Redundancy not specifically explored in that
  survey, however the findings show that
  organisations need to work hard to prevent, and
  minimise the impact of, bad experiences.
• It can be deduced that the fear surrounding
  redundancy is a bad experience and will have
  similar impact on employee engagement

15
Findings on Engagement

• employees who have a personal development plan,
  and who have received a formal performance
  appraisal within the past year, have
  significantly higher engagement levels than those
  who have not. Robinson et al (2004)
• Unilver managed to increase employee engagement
  from 63 in 2007 to 80 in 2010 despite going
  through redundancies and re-structuring. Unilever
  (2010)

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The Secret to Engagement

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v8bthRxOHlP4
• Honesty openess
• Values
• Shared vision, strong leadership
• Communication
• Inolvement

17
The Secret to Engagement

• I think the secret to engagement is
• The Hawthorne Effect
• Pay attention to staff
• Increase engagement
• Increase productivity.

18
Bibliography

• Armstrong, Michael, Brown, Duncan (2006)
  Strategic Reward, London Kogan Page
• Armstrong, Michael, (2010) Armstrongs Handbook
  of Reward Management Practice 3rd Ed., London
  Kogan-Page
• Brockner, J. (1988). The effects of work layoffs
  on survivors Research theory, and practice. Pp.
  213-255 in B. Staw L.L. Cummings (Eds.),
  Research in organizational behavior, Vol. 10.
  Greenwich, CT JAI Press.
• Mercer/CIPD (2010) The Changing Face of Employee
  Engagement. Presented at CIPD Employee
  Engagement Conference Dublin November 2010
  Presentation available at http//www.cipd.co.uk/
  branch/ireland/resources/_Mercer-employee-engageme
  nt-survey-2010.htm?IsSrchRes1
• Nelson, Bob (2005) 1001 Ways to Reward Employees
  2nd Ed., New York Workman
• Robinson D, Perryman S, Hayday S (2004) The
  Drivers of Employee Engagement Report 408,
  Institute for Employment Studies available at
  http//www.employment-studies.co.uk/pubs/summary.p
  hp?id408
• Unilever (2010) CIPD Transforming our Business
  Presented at CIPD Employee Engagement Conference
  Dublin November 2010 Presentation available at
  http//www.cipd.co.uk/branch/ireland/_events/East
  ern-Conf-Nov-2010-Present-AW.htm
• Wolfe, Helen (2004) Employee Engagement in a
  Post-Redundancy Situation Brighton Institute
  for Employment Studies (IES)