1. Leading culture change
Employee engagement and public
service transformation
Ben Willmott
Head of Public Policy
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development

2. The research framework
Engaging for success: enhancing performance
through employee engagement
The four broad enablers of employee engagement:
• Shared purpose/creating a strategic narrative
• Integrity
• Voice
• Engaging managers

3. The service
transformation challenge
• “Services that are more local, more accountable
and more personal, where people are the drivers
not the passengers, which call on every part of
society – from churches to charities, businesses to
community organisations to come in and make a
difference” , David Cameron 2011.

4. The service
transformation challenge
• Achieving financial savings
• Responding to the localism agenda
• Growing demand for services

5. Creating a strategic
narrative
• Articulating the vision
• Involving staff
• Selling a positive vision
• Responding to the localism agenda
• Local politics

6. Customer-led service
delivery
• “It is almost like ripping up the council and starting
again”, Richard Crouch, Director of HR and OD at
Somerset County Council
• The council has moved away from the old vertical
directorate silos, centralised all business support,
communication and marketing and split service
commissioning from direct service delivery
• It has created the role of Customer and communities
director who informs strategy by providing customer
insight through feedback from employees on the
front-line and their customers

7. Integrity – changing the
culture
• Culture – “how people behave in organisations
when no one’s watching”, Bob Diamond, former
Barclay CEO, 2011.
• Public service transformation is about culture
change
• Organisational development
• The role of HR
• Employee engagement

8. Engaging managers
• Leadership starts at the top – leaders cast a long
shadow
• Values-based leadership a common theme
• Distributed leadership key
• We are all leaders now
• HR’s role in developing leadership capability is
crucial

9. Employee attitudes to leaders
(Employee outlook summer 2012)
• Vision – 49% (36%) of employees agree their senior
leaders have a clear vision; 23% (34%) disagree
• Respect – Agree: 44% (33%); Disagree 29% (41%)
• Confidence - Agree: 39% (26%) ;Disagree: 34% (49%)
• Trust – Agree 40% (25%):Disagree 33% (53%)
• Consult – Agree 28% (21%): Disagree 48% (57%)

10. Leadership matters
Correlation between positive attitudes towards senior
managers and:
• Lower frequency of exposure to excessive pressure
• Higher scores to ONS subjective wellbeing
questions
• Employee engagement

11. ‘Reality gap’ in the capability of UK
plc’s 8 million people managers
• Eight out of ten managers say they think their staff are satisfied
or very satisfied with them as a manager whereas just 58% of
employees report this is the case.
• This ‘reality gap’ matters as the survey finds a very clear link
between employees who say they are satisfied or very satisfied
with their manager and those that are engaged
• Six in ten (61%) of managers claim they meet each person
they manage at least twice a month to talk about their
workload, meeting objectives and other work-related issues.
• However, just 24% of employees say they meet their managers
with such frequency.

12. What does engaging leadership
look like?
CIPD research highlights the management behaviours that underpin employee
Engagement:
• reviewing and guiding – including providing one to one support, help in
prioritising tasks and working with staff to come up with new ideas
• providing appropriate levels of autonomy and empowerment – this includes
involving employees in problem-solving and decision making and acting as a
coach when needed
• taking an interest in the individual – this includes showing an interest in
employees life outside work and the amount of pressure they are under
• providing feedback, praise and recognition – this includes giving positive
and negative feedback which is constructive and specific
• having a personal manner – including having a positive approach to work,
showing enthusiasm and being approachable

13. Closing the knowing-doing
gap
• OD and leadership development activities must be
mutually reinforcing
• ‘The nature of ‘followership’ also has to change
• How managers are recruited, developed, promoted
and performance managed is critical
• Some people should never manage other people
• Management capability audit - data is key – from
manager appraisals, 360 degree feedback, staff
survey results
• What combination of learning interventions actually
embed behaviour change?

14. Leadership development
Evidence base is poor but suggests that three areas
are important:
• Leader identity
• Authenticity
• Learning orientation

15. Voice
• “People are not struggling with the broad concepts
set out by Delivering the Smarter council; it is the
how we are going to do it that we have got to
concentrate on…Engagement with staff will enable
us to continue the conversation organisationally
about ‘the how’ in order that we can then produce
the means of doing it.” Niall Bolger, CEO Sutton
Council

16. Voice
• Visibility and accessibility of senior leaders
• Building trust by listening and acting on the small
issues
• Wide range of arrangements for listening to and
considering the views of staff
• Relationships with the unions generally remain
positive

17. Conclusions
• Leadership is high on CEO’s agenda
• HR is at the heart of the transformation process
• The wider political context has significant influence
on the transformation process
• The gap between the political and executive
leadership of local authorities and police forces in
particular has narrowed in some instances
• Improving the communication process is regarded
as a priority
• There is a need to develop a new psychological
contract or employee value proposition