Showing posts with label employee engagement measurement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label employee engagement measurement. Show all posts
Friday, September 17, 2010
It's not enough to measure employee engagement, you have to act on the results Human Resources - News | HR News | HR Magazine | hrmagazine.co.uk
While many organisations are gathering information on employee engagement, only a few are actually linking feedback to action and managing to increase scores.
The Hewitt Associates study, The Future of Engagement, looks at the efforts to measure employee engagement at 150 companies across Europe.
Of these, 85% reported that they had collected employee feedback in the past 24 months, with 64% of those gathering feedback within the last year. However, only 16% of the organisations reported a significant increase in engagement levels.
The findings show that for leaders at many organisations, employee engagement data is all too often viewed as an administrative step or as simply another employee survey. They reported that while engagement surveys contain interesting facts, they lack linkages to the day-to-day decisions that management needs to take.
For more, go to:
It's not enough to measure employee engagement, you have to act on the results Human Resources - News | HR News | HR Magazine | hrmagazine.co.uk
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Management’s Dirty Little Secret
December 16, 2009: Wall Street Journal (Gary Hamel's Management 2.0)
by Gary Hamel
How would you feel about a physician who killed more patients than he helped? What about a police detective who committed more murders than he solved? Or a teacher whose students were more likely to get dumber than smarter as the school year progressed? And what if you discovered that these perverse outcomes were more the rule than the exception—that they were characteristic of most doctors, policemen and professors? You’d be more than perplexed. You’d be incensed, outraged. You’d demand that something must be done!
Given this, why are we complacent when confronted with data that suggest most managers are more likely to douse the flames of employee enthusiasm than fan them, and are more likely to frustrate extraordinary accomplishment than to foster it?
Consider the recent “Global Workforce Survey” conducted by Towers Perrin, an HR consultancy. In an attempt to measure the extent of employee engagement around the world, the company polled more than 90,000 workers in 18 countries. The survey covered many of the key factors that determine workplace engagement, including: the ability to participate in decision-making, the encouragement given for innovative thinking, the availability of skill-enhancing job assignments and the interest shown by senior executives in employee well-being.
Here’s what the researchers discovered: barely one-fifth (21%) of employees are truly engaged in their work, in the sense that they would “go the extra mile” for their employer. Nearly four out of ten (38%) are mostly or entirely disengaged, while the rest are in the tepid middle. There’s no way to sugarcoat it—this data represents a stinging indictment of the legacy management practices found in most companies.
So why aren’t we scandalized by this data? I talk to thousands of managers each year and for most of them, employee engagement isn’t Topic A, or B or even C. How do we account for this heedlessness? There are several possible hypotheses:
1. Ignorance: It may be that managers don’t actually realize that most of their employees are emotional zombies—at least while they’re at work. Maybe corporate leaders haven’t seen the many studies that mirror the results of the Towers Perrin survey. Or maybe their allotment of emotional intelligence is so meager that they are unable to distinguish between enthusiasm and ennui.
2. Indifference: Another explanation: managers know that a lot of employees are flatlining at work, but maybe they simply don’t care—either because a callous corporate culture has drained them of empathy, or because they view engagement as financially unimportant—a nice-to-have, but not a business imperative.
3. Impotence: It could be that managers do care, but can’t imagine how they could change things for the better. After all, a lot of jobs are just plain boring. Retail clerks, factory workers, call center staff, administrative assistants—of course these folks are disengaged. Given that, the data’s hardly surprising. After all, prison wardens aren’t surprised that their charges aren’t bubbling with joi d’vivre, and neither are managers.
Let’s evaluate these hypotheses. The first seems to me unlikely. Anybody who has ever read a Dilbert strip knows that cynicism and passivity are endemic in large organizations. Only an ostrich could have missed this.
The second hypothesis has more to recommend it. I believe there are many managers who have yet to grasp the essential connection between engagement and financial success. Companies that score highly on engagement have better earnings growth and fatter margins than those that do not—a fact borne out by another Towers Perrin study, as well as by the work of Professor Raj Sisodia of Bentley College. This correlation between enjoyment and profitability is likely to strengthen in the years ahead. Let me use the example of the Apple iPhone to explain why.
Think about it: how did Apple manage to jump into the mobile phone business so quickly, despite a complete lack of industry experience? The answer: by accessing a lot of commodity knowledge that was available in the form of standardized components from third party suppliers. While this helps to explain how Apple got into the business so speedily, it doesn’t explain why the iPhone has succeeded so spectacularly. Consider this: in the third quarter of 2009, Apple’s iPhone division delivered $1.6 billion in profits, while Nokia earned just $1.1 billion. What make’s these figures eye-popping is that Nokia’s global handset market share hovers around 35% while Apple’s is less than 3%, this according to TechCrunch.
The lesson here: you don’t have to be the biggest to be the most profitable—but you have to be the most highly differentiated. Apple made the iPhone a money machine by injecting it with a lot of non-commodity knowledge. When it debuted in June 2007, the iPhone offered users a unique portfolio of functions: a touch screen display, a built-in music player, a capable web browser, and a suite of useful applications that let users check the weather, track their stocks and watch YouTube videos.
The fact that Apple’s margins are so much better than Nokia’s reflects a simple reality: in making a mobile phone, Apple adds a lot more differentiation to the standard componentry than Nokia does, and Apple adds it in a highly efficient manner. Or to state it another way, among all the various players in the iPhone value chain, Apple has, by far, the highest ratio of differentiation-to-cost, and thus the fattest margins.
In a world of commoditized knowledge, the returns go to the companies who can produce non-standard knowledge. Success here is measured by profit per employee, adjusted for capital intensity. Apple’s profit per head is significantly higher than its major competitors, as is the company’s ratio of profits to net fixed assets.
It doesn’t matter much where your company sits in its industry ecosystem, nor how vertically or horizontally integrated it is—what matters is its relative “share of customer value” in the final product or solution, and its cost of producing that value. The greater the share of differentiation, the greater the bargaining power with business partners. Likewise, the lower the cost to produce that value, the bigger the profits.
Of course, Apple isn’t immune to the forces of commoditization. Within a few months of its launch, many of the iPhone’s original features had been duplicated by its competitors. So Apple had to innovate again. It invited third-party developers to write applications for the iPhone and thereby laid the groundwork for a revolution in portable computing (100,000 apps so far, and still counting). But once again, competitors like Blackberry and Google are in hot pursuit.
So what does all this have to do with engagement? Just this: in a world where customers wake up every morning asking, “what’s new, what’s different and what’s amazing?” success depends on a company’s ability to unleash the initiative, imagination and passion of employees at all levels—and this can only happen if all those folks are connected heart and soul with their work, their company and its mission.
Let me break it down:
– In every industry, there are huge swathes of critical knowledge that have been commoditized—and what hasn’t yet been commoditized soon will be.
– Given that, we have to wave goodbye to the “knowledge economy” and say hello to the “creative economy.”
– What matters today is how fast a company can generate new insights and build new knowledge—of the sort that enhances customer value.
– To escape the curse of commoditization, a company has to be a game-changer, and that requires employees who are proactive, inventive and zealous.
– Problem is, you can’t command people to be enthusiastic, creative and passionate.
– These critical ingredients for success in the creative economy are gifts that people will bring to work each day only if they’re truly engaged. (Eric Raymond made this point way back in 2001 when he argued that in the new economy, “enjoyment predicts productivity.”)
Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but it’s pretty much the whole game today.
What about the third hypothesis? Sure, (some of you are saying), engagement is important, but let’s not kid ourselves—it’s easy to see how Apple’s super-smart engineers and designers might get excited about creating mind-blowing products, but my company is way more prosaic and a lot of the work around here really is mind-numbing. It’s not that I don’t care about engagement, but I can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The reason so few of my people are truly engaged in their work is because so few their jobs are truly inspiring. Isn’t that what the data are telling us?
Uhmm, no. Surprisingly, 86% of the employees in the Towers Perrin study said they loved or liked their job. So what, then, are the culprits? Julie Gebauer, who heads up the Workforce Effectiveness Practice at Towers Perrin, points to three things that are critical to engagement: first, the scope employees have to learn and advance—are there opportunities for them to grow; second, the company’s reputation and its commitment to making a difference in the world—is this a company that deserves the best efforts of its people; and third, the behaviors and values of the organization’s leaders—are they people employees respect and want to follow?
These are all management issues. It is managers who empower individuals and create space for them to excel—or not. It is managers who help to articulate a compelling and socially relevant vision and then passionately pursue it—or not. It is managers who demonstrate praiseworthy values—or not. And more often than not, they don’t. Here, again, the survey data is disturbing.
Only 38% of employees believe that “senior management [is] sincerely interested in employee wellbeing.” Fewer than 4 in 10 agree that “senior management communicates openly and honestly.” A scant 40% of employees believe that “senior management communicates [the] reasons for business decisions,” while just 44% believe that “senior management tries to be visible and accessible.” Perhaps most damning of all, less than half of those polled believe that “senior management’s decisions [are] consistent with our values.”
My conclusion from all of this: first, engagement is essential to the competitiveness of every company and every economy—and we need to be doing a whole lot better than we are. We’ve got to get management’s dirty little secret out of the HR closet and into the boardroom. And second, if we’re going to improve engagement, we have to start by admitting that the real problem isn’t irksome, monotonous work, but stony-hearted, spirit-deflating managers.
If you’d like to DO something about this sorry state of affairs, may I recommend you start by picking up two mind-expanding books? The first, “Closing the Engagement Gap,” is co-authored by Julie Gebauer and contains a wealth of provocative insights and practical recommendations based in part on the findings of the Global Workforce Survey. The second, “Total Engagement,” by Byron Reeves and Leighton Reed, offers a radical prescription for taking the work out work, by making it more like play.
by Gary Hamel
How would you feel about a physician who killed more patients than he helped? What about a police detective who committed more murders than he solved? Or a teacher whose students were more likely to get dumber than smarter as the school year progressed? And what if you discovered that these perverse outcomes were more the rule than the exception—that they were characteristic of most doctors, policemen and professors? You’d be more than perplexed. You’d be incensed, outraged. You’d demand that something must be done!
Given this, why are we complacent when confronted with data that suggest most managers are more likely to douse the flames of employee enthusiasm than fan them, and are more likely to frustrate extraordinary accomplishment than to foster it?
Consider the recent “Global Workforce Survey” conducted by Towers Perrin, an HR consultancy. In an attempt to measure the extent of employee engagement around the world, the company polled more than 90,000 workers in 18 countries. The survey covered many of the key factors that determine workplace engagement, including: the ability to participate in decision-making, the encouragement given for innovative thinking, the availability of skill-enhancing job assignments and the interest shown by senior executives in employee well-being.
Here’s what the researchers discovered: barely one-fifth (21%) of employees are truly engaged in their work, in the sense that they would “go the extra mile” for their employer. Nearly four out of ten (38%) are mostly or entirely disengaged, while the rest are in the tepid middle. There’s no way to sugarcoat it—this data represents a stinging indictment of the legacy management practices found in most companies.
So why aren’t we scandalized by this data? I talk to thousands of managers each year and for most of them, employee engagement isn’t Topic A, or B or even C. How do we account for this heedlessness? There are several possible hypotheses:
1. Ignorance: It may be that managers don’t actually realize that most of their employees are emotional zombies—at least while they’re at work. Maybe corporate leaders haven’t seen the many studies that mirror the results of the Towers Perrin survey. Or maybe their allotment of emotional intelligence is so meager that they are unable to distinguish between enthusiasm and ennui.
2. Indifference: Another explanation: managers know that a lot of employees are flatlining at work, but maybe they simply don’t care—either because a callous corporate culture has drained them of empathy, or because they view engagement as financially unimportant—a nice-to-have, but not a business imperative.
3. Impotence: It could be that managers do care, but can’t imagine how they could change things for the better. After all, a lot of jobs are just plain boring. Retail clerks, factory workers, call center staff, administrative assistants—of course these folks are disengaged. Given that, the data’s hardly surprising. After all, prison wardens aren’t surprised that their charges aren’t bubbling with joi d’vivre, and neither are managers.
Let’s evaluate these hypotheses. The first seems to me unlikely. Anybody who has ever read a Dilbert strip knows that cynicism and passivity are endemic in large organizations. Only an ostrich could have missed this.
The second hypothesis has more to recommend it. I believe there are many managers who have yet to grasp the essential connection between engagement and financial success. Companies that score highly on engagement have better earnings growth and fatter margins than those that do not—a fact borne out by another Towers Perrin study, as well as by the work of Professor Raj Sisodia of Bentley College. This correlation between enjoyment and profitability is likely to strengthen in the years ahead. Let me use the example of the Apple iPhone to explain why.
Think about it: how did Apple manage to jump into the mobile phone business so quickly, despite a complete lack of industry experience? The answer: by accessing a lot of commodity knowledge that was available in the form of standardized components from third party suppliers. While this helps to explain how Apple got into the business so speedily, it doesn’t explain why the iPhone has succeeded so spectacularly. Consider this: in the third quarter of 2009, Apple’s iPhone division delivered $1.6 billion in profits, while Nokia earned just $1.1 billion. What make’s these figures eye-popping is that Nokia’s global handset market share hovers around 35% while Apple’s is less than 3%, this according to TechCrunch.
The lesson here: you don’t have to be the biggest to be the most profitable—but you have to be the most highly differentiated. Apple made the iPhone a money machine by injecting it with a lot of non-commodity knowledge. When it debuted in June 2007, the iPhone offered users a unique portfolio of functions: a touch screen display, a built-in music player, a capable web browser, and a suite of useful applications that let users check the weather, track their stocks and watch YouTube videos.
The fact that Apple’s margins are so much better than Nokia’s reflects a simple reality: in making a mobile phone, Apple adds a lot more differentiation to the standard componentry than Nokia does, and Apple adds it in a highly efficient manner. Or to state it another way, among all the various players in the iPhone value chain, Apple has, by far, the highest ratio of differentiation-to-cost, and thus the fattest margins.
In a world of commoditized knowledge, the returns go to the companies who can produce non-standard knowledge. Success here is measured by profit per employee, adjusted for capital intensity. Apple’s profit per head is significantly higher than its major competitors, as is the company’s ratio of profits to net fixed assets.
It doesn’t matter much where your company sits in its industry ecosystem, nor how vertically or horizontally integrated it is—what matters is its relative “share of customer value” in the final product or solution, and its cost of producing that value. The greater the share of differentiation, the greater the bargaining power with business partners. Likewise, the lower the cost to produce that value, the bigger the profits.
Of course, Apple isn’t immune to the forces of commoditization. Within a few months of its launch, many of the iPhone’s original features had been duplicated by its competitors. So Apple had to innovate again. It invited third-party developers to write applications for the iPhone and thereby laid the groundwork for a revolution in portable computing (100,000 apps so far, and still counting). But once again, competitors like Blackberry and Google are in hot pursuit.
So what does all this have to do with engagement? Just this: in a world where customers wake up every morning asking, “what’s new, what’s different and what’s amazing?” success depends on a company’s ability to unleash the initiative, imagination and passion of employees at all levels—and this can only happen if all those folks are connected heart and soul with their work, their company and its mission.
Let me break it down:
– In every industry, there are huge swathes of critical knowledge that have been commoditized—and what hasn’t yet been commoditized soon will be.
– Given that, we have to wave goodbye to the “knowledge economy” and say hello to the “creative economy.”
– What matters today is how fast a company can generate new insights and build new knowledge—of the sort that enhances customer value.
– To escape the curse of commoditization, a company has to be a game-changer, and that requires employees who are proactive, inventive and zealous.
– Problem is, you can’t command people to be enthusiastic, creative and passionate.
– These critical ingredients for success in the creative economy are gifts that people will bring to work each day only if they’re truly engaged. (Eric Raymond made this point way back in 2001 when he argued that in the new economy, “enjoyment predicts productivity.”)
Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but it’s pretty much the whole game today.
What about the third hypothesis? Sure, (some of you are saying), engagement is important, but let’s not kid ourselves—it’s easy to see how Apple’s super-smart engineers and designers might get excited about creating mind-blowing products, but my company is way more prosaic and a lot of the work around here really is mind-numbing. It’s not that I don’t care about engagement, but I can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The reason so few of my people are truly engaged in their work is because so few their jobs are truly inspiring. Isn’t that what the data are telling us?
Uhmm, no. Surprisingly, 86% of the employees in the Towers Perrin study said they loved or liked their job. So what, then, are the culprits? Julie Gebauer, who heads up the Workforce Effectiveness Practice at Towers Perrin, points to three things that are critical to engagement: first, the scope employees have to learn and advance—are there opportunities for them to grow; second, the company’s reputation and its commitment to making a difference in the world—is this a company that deserves the best efforts of its people; and third, the behaviors and values of the organization’s leaders—are they people employees respect and want to follow?
These are all management issues. It is managers who empower individuals and create space for them to excel—or not. It is managers who help to articulate a compelling and socially relevant vision and then passionately pursue it—or not. It is managers who demonstrate praiseworthy values—or not. And more often than not, they don’t. Here, again, the survey data is disturbing.
Only 38% of employees believe that “senior management [is] sincerely interested in employee wellbeing.” Fewer than 4 in 10 agree that “senior management communicates openly and honestly.” A scant 40% of employees believe that “senior management communicates [the] reasons for business decisions,” while just 44% believe that “senior management tries to be visible and accessible.” Perhaps most damning of all, less than half of those polled believe that “senior management’s decisions [are] consistent with our values.”
My conclusion from all of this: first, engagement is essential to the competitiveness of every company and every economy—and we need to be doing a whole lot better than we are. We’ve got to get management’s dirty little secret out of the HR closet and into the boardroom. And second, if we’re going to improve engagement, we have to start by admitting that the real problem isn’t irksome, monotonous work, but stony-hearted, spirit-deflating managers.
If you’d like to DO something about this sorry state of affairs, may I recommend you start by picking up two mind-expanding books? The first, “Closing the Engagement Gap,” is co-authored by Julie Gebauer and contains a wealth of provocative insights and practical recommendations based in part on the findings of the Global Workforce Survey. The second, “Total Engagement,” by Byron Reeves and Leighton Reed, offers a radical prescription for taking the work out work, by making it more like play.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Importance of People Priorities in Merger Success
Organizations are counting on value beyond short-term synergies
December 14, 2009:
by Towers Perrin: SOA World Magazine
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwire) -- 12/14/09 -- a track record of effectively managing people-related issues during an acquisition are far more likely to have a very successful deal. This is the conclusion of a recent study by the Canadian Financial Executives Research Foundation (CFERF, the research institute of FEI Canada, the professional membership association for senior financial leaders), and sponsored by Towers Perrin. The most successful dealmakers put more effort into getting the right mix of skills and competencies, communicating and managing change with employees and properly estimating people-related synergies.
While 64% of financial leaders surveyed report revenue growth to be their key measure of merger and acquisition (M&A) success and 53% report that they look to achieve specific synergies beyond cost reduction, some are still focused on profit margin growth (50%) and cost reduction (37%) as key measures of a merger's success.
"The numbers suggest that while Canada's dealmakers count on the traditional short-term synergies and operational efficiencies, they are truly looking at long-term value creation and growth, which now includes a focus on people priorities, when on the acquisition trail, said Ramona Dzinkowski, executive director, CFERF. "Companies with access to capital are taking advantage of opportunities to acquire distressed companies, and others are actively pursuing corporate growth, whether that's acquiring new products or services, or opening up new markets and this demands that people priorities and risks become an important component in the merger checklist."
Aligning diverse corporate cultures was reported to be the single biggest integration challenge to M&A success. Interestingly, very successful dealmakers considered their human resources (HR) function to be significantly more effective in this area than other respondents (69% versus 48%), suggesting that increasing HR function capabilities may be one path to improving merger outcomes.
Companies looking to improve their odds in achieving M&A success are focusing on improving internal knowledge about M&A within their corporate functions, with 51% identifying the need to improve the HR function's M&A knowledge and 44% improving the business acumen of corporate HR and 38% identifying the need to improve the ability of finance to quantify people risks.
Approximately one third of respondents are considering actions such as reviewing their internal M&A processes (32%), increasing the involvement of finance in post-closing people-related issues (32%), and involving HR earlier in the process (29%).
Learning from Experience - The Keys to M&A Success
Senior financial leaders revealed that there is a long list of people risk considerations identified in the early due diligence stage; these range from key talent retention to workforce reactions and employee engagement. Senior financial leaders look to factor in a broad range of risks when doing deals, whether formally, by quantifying the risks into the purchase price, or informally, by making every effort to ensure risks such as employee engagement or turnover of critical staff are addressed.
"Successful dealmakers have developed new skills and have evolved processes to manage M&A deals, beyond the due diligence phase and well into integration planning and implementation stages," said Eric D'Amours, National M&A Practice Leader, Towers Perrin. "Financial leaders are largely accountable for ensuring deal success, and at companies where very successful deals have been completed, people priorities and risks have taken centre stage whether it's considering the impact of people risks even at the pre-deal stage, to making sure the organization has capability to address workforce integration challenges down the line."
Moreover, while the study revealed that a majority of respondents acknowledge the various people risks in a transaction, only a small minority are able to quantify and address those risks in their financials, even those with significant financial consequences, such as pension and benefits volatility.
Survey Methodology
The CFERF study was conducted online in October 2009 with 108 Finance executives who had recently completed a merger or acquisition. In addition, CFERF hosted a half-day forum where 17 senior financial executives shared their people risk experiences within an M&A context. Of those participants, 51% of respondents were from publicly-accountable companies, 38% were from privately-held organizations and the balance represented other ownership structures, such as Crown Corporations. The majority of respondents hold the title of Chief Financial Officer (45%) with the balance holding other Finance positions such as VP Finance, Controller, Finance Director or Treasurer.
About the Canadian Financial Executives Research Foundation (CFERF)
CFERF is the research institute of Financial Executives International Canada (FEI Canada), the all-industry professional membership association for senior financial executives that provides professional development, thought leadership and advocacy services to its 2,000 members. CFERF's primary objective is to study emerging financial management issues in Canada with the aim of increasing the competitive capabilities of Canadian companies across the country. Further information can be found at www.feicanada.org.
About Towers Perrin
Towers Perrin is a global professional services firm that helps organizations improve performance through effective people, risk and financial management. The firm provides innovative solutions in the areas of human capital strategy, program design and management, and in the areas of risk and capital management, insurance and reinsurance intermediary services, and actuarial consulting. Towers Perrin has offices and alliance partners in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Latin America, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East. More information about Towers Perrin is available at www.towersperrin.com.
Monday, December 21, 2009
What Drives Employee Engagement?
December 3, 2009: Mumblr
by Abishek
by Abishek
I came across a blog post titled “Employee Engagement: What Exactly is it?” The post points to a study by The Conference Board which studied different research reports published by various consulting firms. Interesting thing is that they look at the top drivers of engagement and I have always maintained that there is a lot of value in attempting to identify the key drivers of engagement. The post concludes that these research studies generally agreed on the following drivers:
Trust and integrity – how well managers communicate and ‘walk the talk’.
Nature of the job –Is it mentally stimulating day-to-day?
Line of sight between employee performance and company performance – Does the employee understand how their work contributes to the company’s performance?
Career Growth opportunities –Are there future opportunities for growth?
Pride about the company – How much self-esteem does the employee feel by being associated with their company?
Coworkers/team members – significantly influence one’s level of engagement
Employee development – Is the company making an effort to develop the employee’s skills?
Relationship with one’s manager – Does the employee value his or her relationship with his or her manager?
The post acknowledges that there are lots of variances in the data, but concludes that across all variables “the relationship with one’s manager” is the strongest driver. I completely agree with the fact that the quality of direct supervisors plays a crucial role in shaping engagement. However, there are times when organizations need to focus differently. What happens when broad workplace systems / processes / policies are not in place? A manager can still soothe his people, but not for long. Discontent will brew fast with the organizational functioning. And, managers may be helpless.
Whether organizational functioning or workgroup experiences shape engagement really depends on the unique situation of the organization in question. I would rather not be so quick in putting all the onus on managers.
On another note, the Towers Perrin’s Global Workforce Study of over 90000 employees identified the following key drivers of talent attraction, retention and engagement. Interestingly, the drivers are different, indicating different solutions for different issues.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
The End of Employee Engagement
December 10, 2009: Leaders' Forum
by Theresa M. Welbourne
by Theresa M. Welbourne
It's been many years since we in the HR world started talking about employee engagement. And since that time the following has happened (or not happened):
1. We have no agreement on what engagement is.
2. Many people refer to their employee engagement survey questions when defining engagement.
3. It has become one of HR's most successful fads, with everyone and everybody using it to describe what they do (myself included, albeit I was dragged along unwillingly).
4. We are all very comfortable having no agreement with what it is.
5. No one has an answer to the "engaged in what" question. Think about it for a minute, your employees could be engaged in baking cookies all day; that is probably only good if you are in the business of baking cookies. What about the rest of us?
6. Did you know that there are examples of companies winning the most engaged company awards and then going into bankruptcy a few days later? Is that ok?
7. Did you know that there are conditions under which raising employee survey engagement scores actually leads to lower employee performance? Here's how that works. Manager X has a bonus tied to the engagement survey scores. Manager X gets a low score on a question that leads the manager to take all his/her employees out for fun; make sure they like each other; they like their jobs. Employees start having a great time at work. Employee engagement scores go up; performance goes down.
8. When you don't know what something is (employee engagement) and you spend lots of money on it, and you do not have a calculated return on the investment, some day some other executive will come after your budget. When times get tough, your budget goes away.
9. Employees jump for joy that the employee engagement initiative went away; now they can do their jobs.
10. Firm performance improves because HR is finally done pestering everyone about employee engagement.
Is there a better way? Yes.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Employee satisfaction vs. employee engagement -- and how to measure them
Once you've differentiated between employee satisfaction and employee engagement, another challenge remains: assessing them
Dear Bob ...
While I was reading your "Legless Dog Syndrome" article, it got me thinking about a friend's situation -- specifically, the managers' lack of leadership traits where she works.
[ Also on InfoWorld, Bob dismisses other bad methods of measurement in "A case for the separation of management and software" | Get sage advice on IT careers and management from Bob Lewis in InfoWorld's Advice Line newsletter. ]
The team she works on is scheduled for their periodic Employee Engagement Survey soon. From what she tells me, the engagement survey is not supposed to be an employee satisfaction survey, but the questions sure seem to be for an employee satisfaction survey.
An example question is, "How would you rate your manager's involvement in your day to day duties?" or one of my favorites, "How would you rate (on a scale of 1 to 10) your daily work mood?"
The management team puts on a PowerPoint presentation that specifically states "Engagement is not satisfaction." I kind of agree, but the questions are more related to satisfaction, in my opinion. The goal is to raise the scores every time. Thus far, the scores have been consistently low with no movement.
Anyway, is there a difference between an Employee Engagement Survey versus an Employee Satisfaction Survey, or is this some clever management speak? I know my opinion is the latter.
- Unengaged
Dear Unengaged ...
My opinion? The two surveys should be different, because engagement and satisfaction are different concepts.
Or maybe the two surveys should be the same, but different from what either looks like in typical companies. Here's how I think it works:
Fully engaged employees -- those who are emotionally invested in the success of the organization they work in -- should find their work environment satisfying, and satisfied employees are likely to be satisfied because they're in an environment that's thoroughly engaging.
Poor leaders who fail to understand what employee engagement entails are also unlikely to understand what makes for a satisfying work environment. So they'll ask the wrong, but very similar, questions about one, the other, or both -- such as whether employees like the furnishings, the parking arrangements, or what have you. As a consequence, they'll get very similar, bad surveys that fail to ask whether employees are fully engaged in the business, or why.
- Bob
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