How managers can fix broken morale

Andy Holt at Definition explains why conventional post-crisis engagement efforts often backfire and how "reset" outperforms "refresh" by wide margins

 

Employee engagement isn’t in a great place, both globally and here in the UK. According to Gallup’s recent State of the Global Workforce report, engagement fell from 23% to 21%; it gets worse in Europe, with only 13% engaged, 73% not engaged, and 15% actively not engaged. True to form, in the league tables of disappointment, the UK leads the way with only 10% of the workforce engaged.

 

It all adds up to a hefty price tag, with the cost of poor engagement to the global economy totalling a whopping $438 billion.

 

Most worrying is the fall in manager engagement, which has fallen from 30% to 27%: the people asked to lift morale are themselves running on empty.

 

Too often, the response is a “refresh”…

 

The challenge is that a refresh is often cosmetic, and employees can be as cynical as consumers (they are both). They can spot window dressing, especially when they know the business is struggling. Merely ‘comms it up’ and hope for the best won’t work for your people. 

 

The alternative is a “reset”…

 

A reset means being open, honest and authentic about the challenge and the hard yards ahead. It takes inspirational, visible leadership and a compelling vision of change. Creating alignment with your values and culture is critical as you rally the team to transform the organisation’s fortunes and behaviours.

 

 

What you need for a genuine reset

Here are the steps that have worked for TransPennine Express (TPE).

 

TPE won’t mind us saying that they knew all about flagging morale – after years of service disruption and the resulting reputational hit. In early 2024, with new ownership, fresh inspirational leadership and improved operations, TPE chose a reset, not a refresh.

 

The first step was acknowledging the full scale of their problems and committing to measurable improvements across all operations, not just communications.

 

Next was getting their people on board. It might sound counter-intuitive, but you can’t transform customer experience without first transforming your internal culture. So they needed an employee engagement campaign to start that transformation.

 

This started with extensive research with different teams across the business, to gauge impressions of the strategy, vision and values. The research identified their preferred communication channels and key messages, as well as communication opportunities and barriers.

 

Once these had been captured, it was time to roll out, using the mantra of ’involve, cascade, embed’.  This started with the leaders and managers, who were then given the tools to share with their own teams.

 

These included interactive breakout sessions and hands-on gamification to explore key themes, supported by manager toolkits, local communications and frontline colleague engagement. Quarterly value-themed ’colleague takeovers’, webinars and site discussions were run, all reinforced with branded materials and activities. A vision and values storybook was also produced.

 

The proof that this works

TPE’s transformation speaks for itself: colleague engagement jumped from 39% to 77%, collaboration and stakeholder satisfaction soared from 5% to 94%, and customer trust rose from 71% to 77%. With 75% of colleagues now saying they’re motivated to do their best at work and a 9% increase in NPS score, TPE became the second-biggest improver out of 267 organisations measured.

 

And this was reflected in improvements across the whole organisation: an 80% reduction in cancellations, improved performance, faster services, improved timetabled service and an increase in customer numbers by 23%.

 

It’s clear that in times of crisis and change, a powerful vision, clear sense of direction with effective communication and authentic engagement helps build a powerful culture that can transform organisations, improve the bottom-line and benefit colleagues and customers alike.

 

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Andy Holt is Principal of Engagement and Experience at Definition

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and VioletaStoimenova