In our
last post we discussed the ISO 10018 and what it might mean to the entire
subject of employee engagement in the future.
In this post we’ll take a look at what the next generation of the award
industry might be, or at least what some of the folks in the industry would
like it to be.
If ISO
10018 sets high standards for employee engagement it will make it more
difficult for full service award companies to claim that they can drive
sustainable employee engagement unless they demonstrate the knowledge and
services required by ISO 10018. ISO will
provide the road map of the standards, with the assumption that companies will
have to become ISO certified in order to make the claims. Of course that doesn’t preclude anyone from
selling the many pieces of the engagement process like just the awards, the
research etc.
The
objective is for ISO 10018 to have the same clout within the award industry as the
highly respected ISO 9001 standards which started the total quality management
movement in the 1980's. Today over 1.3
million companies worldwide follow ISO 9001.
The philosophy of employee engagement has developed and grown over the
last couple of decades. But by all
measures customer and employee engagement have risen very little over that
time.
Some
believe that when ISO standards are launched in an organization that all
activities will align in a way that is rarely applied today. All or most companies are still separate with
regard to customers, employees, finance, sales and marketing, operations
vendors and human resources, et. al.
Unless and until employee engagement is proven to have dramatic effect
on the bottom line, pulling all of these disparate units together could be
insurmountable.
Employee
Engagement can be a far reaching strategy as we move forward. But until it
becomes that strategy that drives an organization, the vast majority of
engagement vendors will continue to sell pieces of it. Certainly ISO 10018 may help to change that,
and while there are handful of full service award companies that do have the
resources to sell a total EE package, our guess is that much will remain the
same.
There
will always be companies like us who claim, rightfully so, that our product can
be very effective in improving employee engagement.
For more information on
Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please
contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net
