As the roll out of the 5-Year Strategic Plan for a World Class Civil Service continues, senior leaders, HR professionals and other engagement champions met on Tuesday, 13 March to learn more about the critical link between leadership and employee engagement.
They attended a half-day continuing professional development (CPD) event featuring a keynote presentation by one of the most prominent employee engagement and development champions, Nita Clarke, OBE.
The session follows on from the recent presentation of results and insights from the first comprehensive Civil Service Engagement Survey. It also comes at a time when several agencies, having looked at their results, have started work to develop action plans to further foster employee engagement.
Acting Deputy Governor Hon Gloria McField-Nixon explains the importance of the topic: “Increasingly, research shows that having highly engaged employees makes organisations more effective and creates more satisfied customers. It is for this reason that ‘employee engagement’ is one of two critical success factors for our Strategic Plan."
“Moreover,” she continues, “our Strategic Plan recognises that it takes exceptional leadership to engage employees and reach world-class. Therefore one of our goals is to ‘Develop Exceptional Leadership’. This event is part of our commitment to provide ongoing support and development for our leaders and managers so they can provide exceptional leadership to our people.”
Ms Clarke is the director of the Involvement and Participation Association, Britain's leading organisation delivering workplace support for good employment and industrial relations. She is also vice chair of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and co-chairs the UK's national Employee Engagement task force that was launched in 2011.
Based on her many years of experience and research in the field, Ms Clarke shared how leaders and managers can work together and take action in their local teams to create the conditions for improved employee engagement.
Acting Governor His Excellency Franz Manderson points out other critical benefits of employee engagement: “Our employees are the solution to delivering on our elected leaders' policy priorities and to effectively managing organisational change. Increasing engagement levels will have a positive impact on individual employees, on business teams, on departments, on the Civil Service, and, ultimately, on the people we serve.”