This article will appear in some form in the next edition of the PCS DWP group journal, Voice Employee engagement is the newest buzz phase in DWP, but as Voice editor, Tony Church, explains the concept is not new and poses challenges for PCS. Let’s be clear: employee engagement is not new. It is at least thirty years old and during the 1980’s had a manifestation as Human Resource Management. The principals of the concept nevertheless remain the same. If you can get your employees to believe that their ideas are exactly the same ideas as their employing organisation, you can create a wholly compliant workforce who without question will do whatever the organisation asks of them. Does this sound like brainwashing? You might possibly think that, I of course could not comment. But joking apart, the concept is potentially invidious and a threat to trade union collective activity. Overreaction A former PCS colleague recently told me that during a MbA course he was taught that what is now called employee engagement was developed at Harvard University in the United States with the aim of emasculating the trade unions. In 1981, President Reagan sacked 11,000 members of the PATC union and had their leader carted off in handcuffs. Like many on the current right of British politics, Reagan wanted to end the right to strike and many others in the US administration wanted to go further and end collective bargaining. All of this may sound an overreaction to the type of employee engagement that is being presently being followed in DWP. Surely, you might say all that is being asked is that managers engage more with their staff and colleagues are asked to engage more with their colleagues. There can even be a fun side to employee engagement with team nights out, social events at work and office quizzes. Now nearly everybody likes a bit of fun, it’s what makes life worth living. But why should the largest government department in these times of austerity all of a sudden want to almost appear to its people to be a palace of fun, when members know that day-to-day it is anything but that? Fertile It’s with austerity that we have to start to find the answer. DWP members together with other public sector workers are bearing the brunt of the government’s cuts. Our pay has reduced in real terms over a number of years, our pensions are more expensive but we are likely to receive less, we are experiencing huge job losses and we are told we need to expect more of the same, whatever the colour of the government elected next year. It is traditional fertile ground for trade union discontent and whilst some human resource practitioners believe unions can be positive ‘managers of discontent’, they have to be unions that have signed up to the Harvard style approach. A campaigning union like PCS does not fit the profile. So the argument of the employee engagement practitioner goes something along the line of employees have grounds for many grievances. How do we stop them effectively expressing these? How do we channel potentially negative behaviours (e.g. industrial action) into positive outcomes; of course in this context positive means to the direct benefit of the employer? Borg An employer facing the prospect of a virulent virus of industrial unrest needs an effect vaccine with which to inoculate itself. Many vaccines contain the antibodies of the virus they are intended to fight against and the same principal applies to what might be thought of as the vaccine of employee engagement. If it can be made to appear that potentially discontented people are being engaged by their employer and brought into the employers decision making processes, they will understand why their pay needs to be held down, they will appreciate why their pensions are not worth what they once were and support why their organisation has to contract. But this is only a start. Once you have engaged people who believe that the ideas of the employer are genuinely their own independent thoughts, you can get them to accept other outlooks, such as welfare reform is good for the poor , individual jobseekers need to be targeted for sanctions and genuinely sick people should be working. Many readers may think, but I’m not that gullible. Nevertheless, being ‘valued’ and ‘encouraged’ and given to believe that your ideas and contributions are setting the employers agenda is attractive and when that is supported by elements of ‘fun’, it is easy to be seduced; however faithful to your own outlook you believe you are being. To some extent, we should all be able to influence certain decisions. But, if you are an AO, EO, HEO or even below SCS, do you really believe you are influencing the ‘big’ decisions or given the human resource management concept this article exposes, is it more likely that there is an attempt to assimilate you into a predetermined employer culture? Interestingly, it was once reported in the 1990’s that one human resource management practitioner jokingly told a group of US university students that he had created the assimilating Borg in the TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Many a word said in jest, as the adage goes! Crazy Activists and the most enlightened PCS members will recognise employee engagement for what it is; the latest management fad in the battle to win the hearts and minds of workers understandably aggrieved by the effects of this and other governments polices towards the public sector. Nevertheless, we ignore such fads at our peril. Like the Harvard academics of the 1980’s, ministers and DWP senior managers see it as a means at best of disorientating our members and at worst derailing PCS campaigning activities. Their ultimate goal is to convince large sections of the workforce that they are better individually engaging with the employer rather than collectively involving themselves in a union. This is where the real battle of hearts and minds needs to be won. In a final analysis, PCS members come to work yes to do a good job and to be proud of what they do, but as workers our rationale for working is that we need the remuneration to pay our way in life. That remuneration is under attack and our employer cannot or will not do anything to stop this; indeed at least one senior DWP manager is on record as publicly stating that he supports the current government’s plans. The only defence that members have is a strong, well-organised union full of member-fuelled energy collectively campaigning to stop and reverse the rot. In such circumstances, we would be crazy to undermine PCS through employee engagement, which ultimately benefits the employer and politicians, would we not?
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 18:10:12 +0000
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