Norm Baillie-David: Taking action key to effective employee engagement
When it comes to employee engagement, many municipalities suffer from what Norm Baillie-David describes as “deer in the headlights.” This is a situation where management instinctively knows it needs to do something, but doesn’t quite know what.
Baillie-David, senior vice-president, employee engagement at TalentMap, shared his thoughts on this challenge with delegates at the 2019 Ontario Municipal Administrators’ Association’s spring workshop, at Niagara-on-the-Lake. He also discussed that challenge, and other subjects, when he sat down with Municipal World CEO Susan Gardner.
Employee Engagement Requires Human Connection
“The number one pitfall isn’t doing the survey, it’s acting on the survey,” he said. “The data is only as good as what you do with it. You can collect data until the cows come home; if you don’t do anything with it, you’re actually doing yourself more harm than good.”
Ultimately, he explained, the employee engagement survey – in its various forms – remains one of the best ways to consult employees in as scientific a manner as possible to get the true nature of the opinions and not slanted in one direction or another.
However, in the case of local government, the challenge is heightened because a municipality is a conglomerate of very different service offerings – everything from public works to emergency management.
“Each and every one of these are stand-alone organizations in their own right, yet we’re asking them to feel a belonging or sense of engagement to the municipality. They don’t tend to talk to each other. And so, of course the understandable silos develop,” Baillie-David said. “Which actually acts counter to our instinctive nature as human beings, because neurologically we are hardwired to want to collaborate. That’s what engagement is all about, human connection.”
Fostering Teamwork Not about Kumbaya Stuff
Engagement, he adds, is not about “all the kumbaya stuff” around trying to get people together in the same room. The real issue is trying to foster that sense of team, of collaboration, in a professional setting.
Therefore, he added, starting the process before the survey is key. When that happens, when employees are engaged in the process, people will participate.
“It’s getting as many people involved in that solution building as you possibly can. It can be trivial stuff, let’s have a pizza lunch every Thursday, let’s get together. It’s all about connection,” Baillie-David said. “Little trivia stuff in the scheme of things, anything that connects, people see it as a plus. As they see this working, they won’t say, ‘Oh no, not another survey,’ they will say, ‘When is the next one?’” MW
✯ Municipal World Insider and Executive Members: You might also be interested in the article: Bridging the employee engagement gap. Note that you can now access the complete collection of past articles (and more) from your membership dashboard.
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