Employee engagement plan

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This article was published 17/09/2024 (444 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In 2016, John Wallis was stuck at an airport, trying to get home, unaware he was about to experience a powerful anecdote about hiring and retaining staff.

As he dealt with the airline’s agent booking a new flight out of Ronald Reagan Washington International Airport, a uniformed member of the U.S. Marine Corps. was waiting behind him.

“Did I hear you say you work for Emergent BioSolutions?” the hulking soldier asked.

“Yes,” said Wallis, then-director of human resources at the Winnipeg company, feeling a tad intimidated. “Is this going to hurt?”

“I just want to shake your hand,” the marine said, opening a wide smile.

The U.S. soldier said while on deployment in Afghanistan, he suffered a suspected chemical weapons attack, Wallis explained. Emergent’s RSDL, a skin-decontamination sponge, saved the soldier from whatever could otherwise have inflicted serious harm.

When Wallis got home, barely dodging the July 4th U.S. holiday travel mayhem, he used the story to impress on all the staff at Emergent the real impact of their work.

“You people who made that made a real difference in that marine’s life,” he recalled telling staff. “You might clean floors or wash dishes, but that enables this part to happen and that enables this and so on.”

It worked. Later, when he was giving a new CEO a tour, they happened upon a dishwasher and the CEO asked: “What is it you do here?”

“Well, I don’t play a big role, but we save lives,” was the response.

Wallis had to stifle the urge to do a fist-pump.

At a time when companies continue to cry out for labour, particularly those hiring at lower wage levels, the story represents a level of employee engagement that can not only help stave off turnover, it can help with hiring, as well, Wallis said.

Employees at all levels, whether it’s someone slinging coffee at a doughnut shop or a skilled machinist turning out widgets, want to feel as though they’re a part of something bigger, that they contribute in meaningful ways and have ownership over their roles.

It’s a concept echoed in advice from Free Press columnist and HR professional Tory McNally, vice-president, human resources consulting at Legacy Bowes. The advice she offers, as well as the advice of the other professionals, isn’t cheap, but it’s cheaper than constant turnover. (McNally’s advice, in her words, is presented in the accompanying sidebar.)

Wallis, now running HR consultancy Braithwaite Wallis & Associates, was one of several human resources experts approached for this story. His experience in HR ranges from startups to global concerns such as Emergent, and, perhaps just as importantly, his experience includes menial jobs, such as being a deckhand on the Paddlewheel Princess, a passenger ship that once cruised Manitoba rivers.

If there’s one thing the experts agree on, it’s there are no easy answers.

“I think sometimes, we’re looking for an easy answer, an easy solution that we can put into a sound bite and I don’t think that’s there,” Wallis said.

Adam King, assistant professor in the labour studies program at the University of Manitoba, said the COVID-19 pandemic has radically shifted how employers hire and how potential employees view jobs.

“Post-pandemic, for the first time, employers are having to compete for workers rather than the other way around,” he said.

“In many ways, employers got used to having the advantage,” King said. “So, yeah, it’s a problem if you’re treating labour like any other input, because the difference is it’s attached to a human being.”

Poor retention practices feed into hiring difficulties when, as some companies are finding out now, people aren’t as eager to jump into certain jobs as they may have been, King said.

Retention is critical, he said, as job-hoppers often jump ship just as they’re hitting peak productivity. “The longer they’re at a business, they increase their training and their productivity goes up. Employers are often shooting themselves in the foot because they’re not keeping those people over that time.”

Jumping from job to job is typically about landing a higher paycheque, so offering bonuses for meeting targets or laying out a plan that shows a progression up the pay ladder based on new skills acquired might help convince some staff to stick around, he said.

A hurdle many employers face when trying to hire is their own opposition to a flexible work schedule. While some jobs require fixed hours — customer service, maintenance, etc. — creative or project-based jobs can often be done, on time, at the employee’s discretion. As long as the job is done well and turned in by deadline, it shouldn’t matter when the work was completed.

“Sometimes, a labour shortage, an inability to find workers, is not just about wages but also about flexibility,” King said. “People are very much as interested in scheduling flexibility as they are wages.”

That has caused many low-wage workers to turn to the gig economy — driving Uber, delivering Door Dash or SkipTheDishes — as a way to gain flexibility while having the chance to earn more by working harder. Of course, such comes with the loss of a regular wage, no access to group benefit plans, no paid holidays and not being protected by minimum-wage laws in Manitoba.

Wallis said a contributory factor to poor retention is in how companies often promote staff into management positions, which itself is a good practice but is often not done in the best manner, which creates resentment among their staff.

“We promote people because they’re technically competent and then we’re astounded, repeatedly astounded, that they don’t know how to manage people,” he said. “We assume managers know how to manage when we give them the job, and they don’t.

“They don’t intellectually understand it, they don’t emotionally understand it and they don’t procedurally understand it because we haven’t given them the tools.”

Training for managers has to include lessons on motivating staff and for the majority of workers, giving them ownership over their work is a key motivator, Wallis said.

“Grownups don’t like being treated like eight-year-olds, so why do we do that?” he said. “We really need to do better at developing people.”

King said despite the issues facing businesses, this kind of pressure can actually be good for the economy.

“It encourages employers to invest in new ideas, in employment-enhancing equipment. Sometimes, a little pressure on employers is a good thing for a number of reasons.”

kelly.taylor@freepress.mb.ca