Employee Engagement: Commitment, Measurement, Meaningful Action

In the past year, I’ve worked with numerous organizations on employee engagement. In some instances, our conversations were brief about what engagement looks like in the workplace and why it matters. In other cases, I was allowed to cultivate much more involved relationships with organizations that decided that employee engagement was a strategy they could not afford to not pursue. I even had the chance to work with and present to employers at a national human resource conference. I’ve sifted through and analyzed a lot of data, had some difficult conversations, celebrated with employers, and stayed up late at night researching. What have I found out? Here are a few things to consider:

In a previous blog post, I wrote about why employers need to look beyond employee satisfaction. When I conduct employee engagement surveys, I still measure employee satisfaction because it is a key factor in employee engagement, but primarily what I look for are where there are significant gaps between satisfaction and engagement levels. If the data shows that there is 80% satisfaction, but only 20% employee engagement, this indicates that employees are “retired on the job,” or worse. They may be undermining the work of others, even if unintentionally. Unfortunately, I’ve been seeing larger gaps between satisfaction and employee engagement. Certainly not good news when it comes to the bottom line. It is good news for the employers that now know because now they can take that data and translate it into meaningful action.

This brings up another concern. One of the keys to a successful employee engagement survey is committing to taking visible action based on the results. While it is fairly easy for employers to agree to this up front, sometimes that commitment falls wayside after the results come in. Typically, when the results are not what the organization was hoping for. Natural reactions: Become defensive and try to justify, blame employees (they’re wrong/ they don’t really know), jump to action solving the wrong problems, or doing nothing (or any combination). Nothing like being asked for your opinion and then getting ignored or having the wrong problem “solved.” Can you guess what happens to morale and productivity? Surely you know what the data will reveal in follow-up surveys? My advice: This isn’t sport. It’s not to just to see how much you can beat your “score.” Engagement has to be embraced by Executives who truly want the benefits of an engaged workforce. And yes, sometimes you will not get the results you hope for. Now you know. Next step: Take meaningful (not guess work) and visible action on an ongoing basis. Are you seeing a theme? (Commitment, Measurement, Meaningful Action)

Perhaps the most alarming results I’ve seen with more frequency than I expected is the declining levels of engagement at the management level. Generally, those at the management level have higher engagement than compared to the rest of the workplace population. To the point, if management is not engaged, they certainly will not be able to effectively lead and engage the rest of the workforce. That is very hard for an organization to see, but again, knowing provides a place to start. I’d certainly want to know if my leadership team was not fully engaged.

Now hopefully this doesn’t scare you into doing nothing because the organizations that truly make a commitment to employee engagement have many things to celebrate – lower turnover, better profitability, increased productivity and increased customer satisfaction, just to name a few. Where should you start? Assuming top leadership is fully committed, conduct an employee engagement survey as a benchmark then translate that data into meaningful action. How do you do that? Call me – I’m here to help you.