Meet the undercover boss at this year's SCM Summit

What would your CEO learn about their business if he or she went undercover? One CEO who did just that on Channel 4's Undercover Boss series, discovered that "communication is key for a successful business".

Stephen Martin, Chief Executive of Clugston Group, will be telling delegates at Melcrum's Strategic Communication Management Summit in London why this experience was so valuable and why he feels leaders need to go "back to the floor" to really connect with their employees.

The Summit program also includes keynote presentations from Wayne Clarke from the Best Companies Partnership; Bob Keiller, CEO of Production Services Network; as well as senior practitioners from KBC Group, HSBC, Asda and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Also scheduled to speak is Charlie Nordblom, vice president of strategic internal communication at Volvo Group.

Nordblom will be explaining how his function coaches Volvo's managers to deliver tough news and help navigate the company through the current climate of uncertainty. And in order for this to be successful, there needs to be high engagement levels among managers.

In Melcrum's report How to develop effective internal communication partnerships, Nordblom explains how he researched the subject of engagement from an internal perspective and created the "diamond" model.

Keep reading to learn more about how the diamond model for employee engagement works at Volvo.

The Volvo Group has long recognized the importance of employee engagement, but more recently has wanted to clarify exactly what “engagement” means – and who should drive the various elements that make up employee engagement overall.

Starting with engagement research
All executive committee members have group-level responsibility. In January 2007, two executive committee members - one with responsibility for HR and the other for corporate communication - asked Charlie Nordblom, head of strategic internal communications at Volvo Group, to research the subject of engagement more fully.

They asked him to define the employee engagement building blocks and specify who should be accountable for what. As a result of his research, Nordblom realized there are many different perspectives on engagement based on corporate culture, type of business, legislation and so on.

He used his research to create a building blocks "diamond" model of employee engagement. Nordblom initially used the terminology of Volvo Group, but has since
developed a more generic model (see the diagram below).

The "diamond" model of employee engagement

A common definition
Volvo Group's internal communication council, which consists of the 16 most senior communicators - one from each business area and unit - had been discussing employee engagement over the last five or six years. They'd been trying to clarify the different areas of responsibility for communicators, leaders, and HR. "But I could see the issue of engagement was becoming a tug of war," he says.

Because the communication council wanted more clarity, it'd started to examine employee engagement from an internal communication perspective. "I was struck immediately by the extensive research, but that there was no consensus on what employee engagement actually is," Nordblom says.

Clarifying different partner responsibilities
1. Internal communication
Nordblom reviewed the responsibilities of communication functions in other companies to help clarify the role inside Volvo. He concludes from the diamond model that communication is a support function. "It isn't responsible for driving business mission, vision and strategy, driving customer focus or building trust and reputation - leaders are," he says.

Communication focus:

• Involve employees in strategic dialogue
• Create clarity about vision and mission
• Support communicative leadership
• Create opportunities for openness and active dialogue
• Build business and market understanding
• Strengthen value-based culture
• Contribute to change management
• Enhance corporate reputation
• Promote competitive brands

2. Leaders
Continuing in a similar vein, he listed the findings of several studies into what leaders need to do to engender employee engagement. From this list, he was able to clarify the different focal points for leaders and supervisors and found support for his proposals in Melcrum's Employee Engagement report. This showed that while leaders and supervisors need to focus on similar areas, they should also have a clear division of responsibilities.

For example, senior leadership should be leading on company trust and reputation, and represent business values and ethics.

"Senior leaders need to convey the business mission and strategy," Nordblom
says. "They should be customer focused in all their actions and care about work-life
balance. Strategically, they need to be driving the competence pipeline." In other areas of building employee engagement, immediate supervisors have the key role.

Leadership focus:

• Involve employees in decisions
• Promote empowerment and accountability
• Open and active dialogue, talk and listen
• Communicative leadership
• Recognition of individual employees
• Clarify vision for long-term success
• Clarify expectations and role contribution
• Learning and development opportunities
• Drive and embody change
• Active interest in health and wellbeing
• Build reputation and trust

3. HR
The diamond model lays out the responsibilities of internal communication and HR "It's interesting to see the overlap with communication isn’t there," Nordblom says. "Yet, inside many companies the two groups that have been struggling to talk with each other about employee engagement are HR and communication."

He believes this may be because these partners enter the discussion from two totally different perspectives. When Nordblom first presented his diamond model at an employee engagement conference in Barcelona, one HR manager from a major European high-tech company seemed puzzled. "I can't understand why internal communication says they're working with employee engagement when they don't have the processes or responsibility for performance management," he exclaimed.

Working together
One UK consultancy advised Nordblom to take a process approach to clarifying partner responsibilities. But he responded by saying, "No. For three or four years, HR has been process mapping. The way to break the deadlock is to work together."

He recognizes that stakeholder responsibility doesn't mean 100 percent ownership. He believes HR and communication are both support functions - ultimately the responsibility for driving employee engagement is with leaders. "They can't say, 'That isn't my responsibility because HR and internal communication do this for me.'"

"Engagement" vs. "commitment"
Nordblom points to Melcrum's CEO communication research, 21st Century Leadership Communication, which discusses CEOs' expectations of employee engagement. It highlights that while communicators talk about "employee engagement", executives talk about "commitment".

"The diamond model is useful because I can push back to leaders," Nordblom says. He tells his leadership partners, "We can deliver the commitment if you take certain actions, such as involving your people in discussions about the strategy.

If you don't promote empowerment and accountability, establish an open and active dialogue, both talk and listen or recognize individual employees, we won't be able to deliver commitment.”

Until next time,

P.S. Want to hear how Volvo, Asda and Shop Direct Group among other organizations are rebuilding trust, engagement and performance? As well as hearing from the undercover CEO? Book your place at Melcrum's UK Strategic Communication Management Summit today!

Latest News

Time to capitalize on confidence The Melcrum Blog, July 13, 2009 It seems that confidence (or rather the lack of it) has become a global obsession. Scan any of the business pages in the newspapers and you'll find constant references to consumer confidence, confidence in the housing market or confidence in our political leaders to deliver. Sadly, most of it is dipping, plunging or on its last legs, especially in politics. Read more...

How can I help marketing view IC as a strategic partner? Melcrum's Communicators' Network on Linked in, July 13, 2009 I'm helping to write a recommendation to build a communication function in a company that has no IC or corporate communication departments. The company does have a very successful marketing department. How can I help marketing view a communication function as a strategic partner who will only add to their success? Read more...

Five star messaging around the Thomson and First Choice merger Strategic Communication Management, June/July issue, 2009 Two years ago, the travel industry saw a complex merger of two UK household names: Thomson and First Choice. Philipa Deller describes the extensive communication strategy that was placed at the heart of the new business from day one. Read more...