You recently asked for candidates to attend the Moral focused 'People Management' focus group.

As I understand, you are holding these groups because of the abysmally poor response you have received from the 'engagement' surveys you love us to complete once or twice a year. In particular, the faith your employees have in their immediate management seems to be rock bottom. Apparently, even the Americans received an all time low score, but took solace in knowing what the UK engagement result was.

Being an employee that has been encouraged to give my opinion on such things, I volunteered for the focus group.

Unfortunately, I could not go to the meeting last Thursday as I was in Aberdeen. You will know that I was asked if I would go to Aberdeen based on my skill sets and had been recommended by managerA. Of course I said yes. 'customer, shareholders, employees'

The trip involved giving up two evenings of my time, travelling the breadth of the country and tackling an issue over a long day that the customer had been trying to fix for seven months. When I left, having solved their problem with a combination of experience and luck, they were extremely grateful and talking about upgrading, paying us more money! This may or may not come to be realised but it was a battle won for our company in an ever sapping war.

I used to manage. The people I worked for seemed to think I was pretty good at it. About 75% of the people that worked for me were dedicated and seldom failed me. The 25% your always going to get, I worked hard at working with them, not always successfully, often it was me, sometimes them.

If anyone in my team ever did anything above the call of duty, I would simply go over to them, thank them, good job well done. Employee engaged. Its not difficult.

I got back from Aberdeen, two days now. Not a word from my own manager; managerB. He sits about 25 foot across the way. No tap on the shoulder, cheers, good job well done. Engaged!

So I didn't go to the engagement 'people management' focus group, but I offer you this letter in my stead. It says about all I had to say.