Workflow: engagement woes

MANY organisations are ignoring the link between engagement and high productivity.

LeadershipHQ director Sonia McDonald

WORKPLACE engagement specialist and author Dan Pontefract believes many organisations are ignoring the relationship between engagement and high productivity.

US-based Pontefract, who has written books about engagement, told last week’s Skillsoft conference that many companies put profit before purpose, ignoring how education and engagement can fuel a workforce.

“If you can’t take care of remedial or even baseline issues such as proper pay or proper hours you’re not going to go in the right direction,” Pontefract says. “What do employees want? They want meaning and purpose.”

Pontefract claims HR professionals need a greater say at management and board tables because they can provide a progressive voice and are in touch with workers needs and interests. He says MBAs also need to be revamped to teach junior executives about changing styles of management, and to encourage better ways of engaging staff to increase productivity.

Numbers don’t tally

PERCEPTION and reality differ on gender diversity in the workplace, concludes NAB’s first Australian Business Diversity Index launched on August 28.

The annual index notes that companies scored themselves “high” on overall diversity for gender, age, race and ethnicity. But when asked to quantify the proportion of women on executive management teams, they made up only 23.8 per cent of the total and in the case of the ASX300, it was just 15 per cent.

The report concludes the contradiction may be attributable to firms being broadly gender diverse but not yet at senior levels, or there may be significant barriers preventing the advancement of women.

The survey of 900 firms, undertaken for the first time in tandem with NAB’s quarterly business report on economic conditions, shows the biggest driver of diversity is recruitment, advancement and talent retention. Less important was improved customer service and satisfaction.

NAB chief economist Alan Oster says profit and compliance are benefits in the appreciation of diversity, especially in ASX 300 companies.

“Working in a bank, what I hear all the time about the reason we want to do it is not because it’s about justice and fairness but because it’s to produce better outcomes,” Oster says.

Diversity Council of Australia chief executive Lisa Annese says NAB’s findings reflect the Council’s experience of there being a long way to go before equal representation is achieved.

The ‘real’ you

THE struggle for authenticity is something that everyone has faced and succumbed to, to some degree, subconscious or otherwise, according to LeadershipHQ.

Director Sonia McDonald says, for example, if you take someone asking your opinion on something — you may go to answer but instead of sharing your true feelings you change your mind worried about how your real opinion could be received.

McDonald says determining why people do this is more complicated than initially thought.

On the one hand, she suggests, everyone is an individual and wants to leave their mark on the world, but at the same time people are human and take other people’s thoughts into consideration when communicating with them.

“These two things are seemingly at odds with each other and between these two ‘hands’ you are struggling to find your own authenticity — to be seen as the real you,” she says.

Kits to close gaps

THE Workplace Gender Equality Agency will launch a series of toolkits and resources in September to help businesses tackle gender pay gaps.

Heidi Sundin from the WGEA has announced new strategies and actions human resources practitioners can take to address gender pay inequity, including a six-step process focusing on raising awareness, establishing a business strategy, analysing data and monitoring progress.

“There’s a lot to be gained for organisations in addressing pay equity and gender equality more broadly and these include increased employee engagement and morale, greater levels of diversity of thinking and innovation and improved and streamlined talent management practices all of which lead into high levels of productivity,” Sundin says.