That said I'm pleased they didn't, as selection of employee engagement as the focal point shows a good degree of foresight by HR directors who recognise employee engagement is vital to steer organisations through these turbulent times.
To add to the challenge, in particular, the public sector has been criticised for its leadership and managerial capability in the UK. Also, in 2009 the CIPD revealed the UK spends the least per head on leadership and management development of any country in the European Union.
Perhaps it's no wonder we struggle with leadership in the UK and as a corollary effective employee engagement. Strong leadership, as studied by Goleman and Boyatzis et al, is dependent on effective employee engagement.
With all these challenges in mind, there are some important messages for the public sector to contemplate. We should resist the temptation to slash the learning and development budget - which is often the first thing to be sacrificed - as it is essential if we are to rise to the challenge and develop the abilities within our managers to be effective leaders and employee engagers. We certainly can't afford to recruit a whole new swathe of leaders and have to grow our own. In fact it is this mentality that is part of the problem - the lack of grass roots development forces us to raid other talent pools.
Tony Travers, public sector economist at the London School of Economics, predicts the size of public-sector spending reduction may be as much as 30% to enable the Government to tackle the national debt (whoever is in power post 6 May 2010). And the task of effective employee engagement is not to be under-estimated - if Travers' prediction is correct, we could see something like one in five public sector employees at risk of job loss.
At the end of last year research was conducted into the state of public-sector morale when the National Employers for Local Government announced an intention to provide no pay increase for the coming year. This resulted in widespread concern that the morale of employees must be at an all-time low. If the research was measured on public-sector employees' views on personal pay rates or freezes, then it is understandable why feedback may appear to be negative. However, such results are not truly indicative of the issues of wider morale, or engagement, of public sector employees as it is only focusing on one issue.
Local government (my particular strand of the public sector) has some great examples of effective employee engagement - so I believe this demonstrates our ability to meet the test ahead. What we do need is to spread and share the learning across the sector. For example, Birmingham City Council's award winning best employee engagement programme shows a clear, strategic approach that links employees to the work of the council - and most important of all - the needs of the residents.
South Tyneside adopted a simple, but highly effective, employee engagement approach that clearly turned employee feedback into action - the key to successful engagement in my opinion. South Tyneside used an internal communications plan based on three simple statements - ‘We asked, you said, we did'. The ‘we did' element was crucial as it demonstrated the organisation's preparedness to act promptly on employee feedback.
Poised on the brink of the most significant period of public-sector retrenchment in decades, our ability to engage with - what in all reality will be - a reduced workforce is going to be under the spotlight. Provided we engage with employees and clearly show what direction the organisation is heading in meeting customer needs and clearly act on employees' opinion, I consider public-sector services can emerge for the better.
Dean Shoesmith is the new president of the Public Sector People Managers' Association and head of HR at the London Boroughs of Sutton and Merton
