Show #196: Employee Engagement in the Not-for-Profit Sector

Special Guest: Martyn Dicker, Director of People & Learning, The Prince's Trust

In addition to his current role as Director of People & Learning at The Prince’s Trust, Martyn is a member of the Engage for Success Taskforce, and the Chair of the Not-for-profit Thought & Action Group (TAG). He is a business graduate and a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD. Prior to The Prince’s Trust, Martyn has held HR Director posts at the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and Fairtrade Foundation. He also previously held senior HR roles at British Red Cross.

The Not-for-profit TAG that Martyn chairs has been exploring employee engagement in the sector for three years. They recognise that the sector is generally good at engaging staff with their mission but that doesn’t necessarily translate into engagement with the organisation.

Employee may arrive for work with high-levels of intrinsic motivation (as reflected in typically high engagement scores), but there is often a disparity between this and the reality.

Martyn shares key findings of research involving over 40 organisations exploring engagement beyond the mission of the organisation. Join us as we discuss the importance of communication and leadership to successful employee engagement, along with tips on ensuring that measures of engagement reflect genuine engagement and accurately represent the voice of employees.

Martyn also shares insights from some of the case studies featured in the Toolkit on the approach to engagement taken by some of these organisations presented through the lenses of the four enablers of engagement as first proposed by David Macleod and Nita Clarke.

Host: Jo Dodds