Welcome back readers to yet another edition of BIZTALK. This week I bring you an interview that I did with Mr Alieu Gibba, a prominent senior tutor and head of ABE (Association of Business Executive) at Jollof Tutors, who is among those who pave the way for radical change in management thinking at that institution.
In this article, he gives some tips on employee engagement, as it is the management’s missing link.
Proper management is a vital factor or the backbone of a prospective business organization; employers must liaise with their employees in order to carry out effective work. The Workforce needs to be engaged or involved in decision-making as well as implementation policies of a company.
Therefore, he said, the last 20 years or so have seen an explosion in management theory and practice. Total quality management has been offered as solution to modern business dilemmas. The whole industry has been built out of entrusting managers with the responsibility of how to embrace and implement new management theory and practice.
The question that needs to be asked, however, is whether this has resulted in a revolution in business practice or whether it has been merely cosmetic surgery on existing management methods - take, for example, “internal communication”.
Management might be applauded for testing employee satisfaction, but are employees anymore satisfied? No, they still have less control and less say. As in any other relationship where one side routinely controls the agenda, the other eventually gives up resistance and simply complies whilst putting in the minimum effort.
Employee engagement is a revolutionary change in business thinking and practice. It demands a whole change in the way a business functions top down and inside out.
Without a fundamental re-orientation of business thinking, employee engagement simply cannot be implemented.
Employee engagement is the process by which people are usefully included in the decision-making of the business both day-to-day and in major change, and crisis and transformation situation.
It is about how power in a company is shared and how that process is governed. It is about giving employees a say in their work and in how the business functions, operates and changes.
The result is that employees are invited to add true value to a business and are able to create an attractive and creative place to work. For an organization, this translates into a more harmonious workforce which is united in its goal to create a stimulating, dynamic and successful enterprise.
Employee engagement is therefore a process that benefits both employers and employees in a mutually supportive way. A company gains by having a highly motivated workforce who engages their creativity.
Employees benefit by working in a stimulating and dynamic workplace that places value on their day-to-day involvement. We are at the start of a major transformation in business culture; “them and us” is being rapidly placed by a culture of cooperation.
Employee engagement is the new social contract being demanded by employers and employees alike. It is being driven underlying social and cultural changes, not by spin-doctors in a company, it is PR department.
Quite simply, at a time of profound social change, employee engagement is the only way forward in any meaningful or sustainable way.
l Analysing and correcting failures swiftly and surely- but also celebrate successes.
BY: MARIAM SAINE
