Monthly Focus on Employee Engagement and Employee Communications
At The Big Picture People we’re passionate about employee engagement and communication in the workplace, and keep an eager eye on news, current thinking, and future developments that affect the way we all work.
We’ve condensed the most provocative, insightful and interesting news and blogs that we’ve read from the past month into this article. You can find out:
- Why Amazon is encouraging its employees to play video games and how it hopes this will relive boredom at work and improve productivity.
- How a leading food company is promoting employee engagement to improve food hygiene and safety practices. It has required a shift in culture and a transfer of responsibility from management to the workforce and has led to a dramatic increase in standards.
- What a food safety culture looks like in five dimensions – vision and mission; people; consistency; adaptability; and hazards and risk awareness. How did Allied Bakeries create the cultural shift to engage their employees with food safety?
- How culture, wellbeing, leadership, and development are crucial elements to futureproof employee engagement in the changing world of work as we travel the curve of the fourth industrial revolution, and workers’ optimism for their careers continues to fall.
- Why the CBI are targeting employee engagement to improve productivity.
We hope they help to inform and inspire and perhaps provide discussion ideas for your next team huddle. If there’s anything we’ve missed or a topic you’d like us to tackle for you, please get in touch.
Amazon uses video games to engage warehouse employees
Amazon has taken a leaf out of Mary Poppins’ book and is turning work into a game. The idea is to relieve boredom and increase productivity. Actual work tasks translate into virtual in-game actions. For example, the faster an employee packs items into a box, the faster a car moves around a virtual track in a video game. (Read more)
Burton’s boss: staff engagement is the ‘golden ticket’
Food Manufacture has an exclusive interview with the boss of Burton’s Biscuit Co’s Edinburgh factory. The company have created a culture shift, ‘transferred ownership’ of the factory floor and zoned spaces to employees, and consequently seen a step-change in performance and standards. (Read more)
Culture, not technology, is the driver of food safety
According to the Food Safety Survey 2018 (conducted by the food and drink industry news website foodmanufacture.co.uk), even the most technically advanced food safety programmes are failing to achieve their potential because organisations lack a food safety culture. Why does food safety culture drive safety performance? (Read more)
Why are only a quarter of the UK workforce optimistic about their career prospects?
Despite record employment and record low unemployment, only one in four workers in the UK are optimistic about their futures. With the fourth industrial revolution upon us, it is becoming more evident that a good future is one in which workers are happy, healthy and given the skills needed to deal with the 4IR – without these factors, businesses may fail to futureproof employee engagement. (Read more)
Unlocking the power of people can help solve UK productivity puzzle: £110 billion uplift from firms improving practices
The CBI estimates that £110 billion could be injected into the UK economy by improving management practices to encourage improvements in productivity. This will need organisational leadership to put people on a par with commercial targets, make good people practice a shared business priority, and provide high-quality, on-the-job development and support among other employee engagement strategies. (Read more)
We hope you find these stories informative, and please feel free to share this article with your colleagues and wider network. Once again, if there’s anything we’ve missed or a topic you’d like us to include in future digests, please get in touch.
