Presentation used at the Investors in People Scotland 'Employee Engagement Through CEO Eyes' held on Tuesday 19th November, Edinburgh

1. #EngagingCEO

2. Chaired by:
Varry McMenemy
Managing Director
#EngagingCEO

3. Amy Armstrong
Research Fellow and
Member of Faculty
#EngagingCEO

4. Amy Armstrong
19 November 2013

5. Engage for Success
• Government-sponsored movement since 2011
• Tasked to grow awareness and improve levels of employee
engagement across the UK
• Organisations supporting the movement account for more than 2
million employees

6. Ashridge Business School
• Executive and organisational development
• Ranked in the top 20 business schools in the world
• 300 clients & 6,000 executives worldwide each year
• Strengths in leadership, strategy, coaching and change
• Six key areas of research: ACBAS; ACC; ACAR; ALC; ASMC;
CRED

7. Research context
• Poor engagement may cost the UK economy up to £26 billion
each year
• Only 1 in 3 employees in the UK feels ‘actively engaged’
• UK productivity is 20% less than G7 average in 2011 = biggest
productivity gap since 1995
• Securing high employee engagement cited as the top workforce
priority for UK business

8. Why CEO research?
• It is critical that we have effective and engaged leadership at the top
• As the organisation’s ‘climate engineers’, it is leaders who set the tone
and culture for engagement across the organisation
• There is a dearth of literature that gets to the heart of the CEO agenda
• It is important to get under the skin of CEOs and to understand
engagement through their eyes

9. Research questions
1. What is stopping CEOs from engaging with engagement?
2. What are the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that they feel
are getting in the way?
3. Why do CEOs think engagement isn’t happening more in
the UK?

10. Sample and limitations
• 16 depth interviews (10 telephone/6 face-to-face)
• 11 private sector / 2 public sector / 3 not-for-profit
• Healthcare, Training, Local Government, Financial
Services, Charities, Professional Services, Energy, Retail
• Included 5 FTSE 100 & 5 SMEs
• Limitations:
This research gives us depth not generalizability
The sample became self-selecting i.e. few sceptics,
more champions

11. How do you understand engagement?

12. CEO definitions
… dialogue / strategic narrative which creates
connection and purpose
…“an emotionally committing act”
• The act of defining engagement is constraining
• The words “employee engagement” are “power
words” and are in themselves disengaging

13. Our definition
“Engagement encompasses dialogue and a strategic narrative
within an organisation, which creates emotional connection and a
sense of purpose among employees. The outcome of engagement
is an organisational climate where people choose to give the very
best of themselves at work.”
Armstrong, A (2013)

14. What makes an engaging leader?

15. The CEO view
1. Ability to forge deep trusting relationships
2. Leading with emotion and authenticity
3. Genuine openness and honesty

16. What stops CEOs from engaging with
engagement?
• CEOs in this study talked about being hindered on three
levels:
• By shortcomings in their own leadership capability
• Because of something within the leader themselves
which blocks engagement
• Our culture, system and organisational hierarchies which
are seen as counter-engagement

17. CEO Barriers to Engagement

18. Shortcomings in leadership capability
• Giving and receiving feedback
“Most of us like to be popular and actually you can’t”
“God I wish I knew how everybody viewed me, but I don’t really want to
ask them in case it’s not good”
• Challenges of self-awareness
“I want to be able to see where you think I’m making a really positive
difference... And where I am not... and that... for a senior leader in a big
role, with a big title, that’s quite a thing to put yourself in”
“Turning the mirror on yourself is very difficult in a systematic way. As
human beings I think we are masters at getting ourselves off the hook”

19. The leader themselves
• Leader personality and values
“People are not focused beyond themselves, particularly
senior leaders”
• Lack of self-confidence
“Most people aren’t willing to put themselves at risk because
there’s a level of fragility in the deep-seated confidence in
most senior leaders”
• Not showing vulnerability
“Admitting… you’re not perfect, you’ve got fears, you’ve got
hopes. They’re not easy conversations to have, particularly
with people you don’t know that well”

20. Our culture & system
• Short-termism and the focus on results
“We’re very task-oriented as a culture… we value hard work and output
above almost all else”
“The culture you operate in is actually relatively short-term, rational,
numerically-driven and there’s an invisibility about the conditions required
to achieve that”
• Hierarchy
“There’s a dependence of the senior team on the chief executive for their
rations so by definition they’re constrained”
“I’ve just come out of a strategy review and they 300 PowerPoint slides. I
didn’t ask them to do that, but I think there was a feeling that they needed
to do a show and tell”
“It’s not the person, it’s the title that’s the problem, and the role. It’s the
hierarchy itself that’s the issue”

21. What next?
For leaders & the leadership development
community
Explore / develop new ways of leading that are selfaware, emotionally-attuned and contextually
relevant
For HR professionals & executive search
Re-evaluative the kinds of leader attributes we
recruit for, develop, value and promote
For policy-makers and government
Appreciate the hidden processes of engagement not
just the visible outcomes of it

22. What next in research?
• Test the model among a global population of CEOs
• Outcome: To help inform leader development both in
the current and future generation of leaders
Please get involved!
I’d love to talk to any CEOs who are interested in being
interviewed for the next stage of research…

23. References
• Armstrong, A (2013) Engagement through CEO Eyes, Ashridge Research
Report: www.ashridge.org.uk/engagement
• Engage for Success: www.engageforsuccess.org
• MacLeod, D., & Clarke, N (2009) Engaging for Success: Enhancing
Performance through Employee Engagement, Report for Government:
http://www.bis.gov.uk/files/file52215.pdf
• Rayton, B., Dodge, T., & D’Analeze, G (2012) The Evidence:
http://www.engageforsuccess.org/ideas-tools/employee-engagementthe-evidence/

24. Graeme Waddell
Chairman
#EngagingCEO

25. Karen Durnian
Customer Experience
& Development Leader
#EngagingCEO

26. Glasgow
Housing
Association
Learning Journey
19 November 2013
Karen Durnian
Customer Experience &
Development Leader
26

27. http://vimeo.com/holmesvideos/review/6907
6830/0018a9edb3
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28. Our operating context
70.4%
homes in most deprived
areas of Scotland
3,400
72%
customers with a
mental-health related illness
drug users in
social rent sector
1/3
of our customers are
aged over 60yrs
Nine times
more deaths due to Alcohol
related problems
than in least deprived areas
12%
of homeless applications
give alcohol as a reason
1/3
of households in
Glasgow have no one
in work
1000+
tenants have dementia
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30. We know that great staff
make great business!
30

34. 90%
Customer Satisfaction
85%
Staff Satisfaction
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35. Our culture of excellence
“We have never been into an organisation that
has transformed itself so fundamentally, so
quickly, so positively.”
“GHA is a credit to
Glasgow and Scotland.”
“We are very impressed with you as an
organisation”
“We saw strong leadership at every level, right
down to your front-line staff – and this is
something you don’t see very often”
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37. Questions for all
speakers
#EngagingCEO

38. Lunch & networking
Thank you
#EngagingCEO