Opportunity Knocks

If you missed an excellent CIPD Thames Valley conference on June 4 I will be posting over the next week some of the key themes raised.

Firstly the contribution from David Fairhurst: Chief People Office for McDonalds North Europe; Vice-Chair CIPD and HR Magazine's most influential HR Practitioner Award winner.

Fairhurst challenged organisations to seize the significant opportunities presented by the current economic uncertainty. In a confident address, he encouraged organisations to invest in activities that will engage their workforce as a first step to driving productivity and performance. An average of only 30% of people in UK organisations are engaged, resulting in lost productivity of well over £40bn. In McDonalds, those restaurants with high levels of engagement have a 66% higher guest count and 27% higher sales. So there is much for organisations to aim for to engage their people and increase productivity.

He offered some practical ideas to increase levels of engagement:

1- we need to know what each employee loves most and loves least about their job. McDonalds took the time to find this out and have been able to build a motivational deal around what employees are looking for, enhancing the positives and mitigating the negatives.
2 - he called for “discipline impurity” - a breaking down of organisational silos so that multi-disciplinary teams address current problems and develop prototype solutions rapidly.
3 - he stressed that we “must not fall prey to short-termism”. Organisations will be judged tomorrow on how the deal with people today.
4 - he emphasised the need for effective dialogue in organisations which he considers to be “the biggest generator of organisational value”.

Has he got it right? Let me know what you think.