Engagement Factors Vary by Country, Business, Function

Engagement Factors Vary by Country, Business, Function

1/23/2008
By Kathy Gurchiek

The factors that drive employees to be engaged in their work and motivate them to go beyond stated expectations vary not only from country to country but also by industry sector and within companies, according to recent research conducted among 22 countries.

It’s important for organizations expanding globally to understand what engages its workforce, according to Mercer, which has conducted the national “What’s Working” studies over the past several years.

Even among organizations with global locations that share workplace characteristics, such as English as a first language, differences in national culture, market conditions and the state of economic development influence employee engagement, according to Mercer.

Workers in the United States and the United Kingdom, for example, share only one engagement driver—a sense of personal accomplishment—rated first and second in importance, respectively.
However, the top drivers in the United Kingdom “paralleled six of the top drivers in Asia’s top market, China,” the report noted.

“Even if business leaders of multinational companies know how to engage staff in their home country offices, they might not succeed in delivering the most value for their HR investments if they simply transfer HR policies and practices to other countries,” the report says.
In looking to engage employees, Mercer reports, employers must:

1. View global HR decisions in the context of national culture.
2. Use valid research—not stereotypes—to align HR practices for a local population with actual employee attitudes and perceptions.
3. Remember that the norm for engagement varies widely from country to country, making it critical to have data on national norms to interpret employee surveys correctly.
4. Realize the elements that create engagement also create the employment brand.
5. Understand that how the organization conducts its work reflects its organizational culture. How employees are treated reflects how they treat customers or clients.

Employers want workers who are “truly engaged in their work and the success of the organization,” said Patrick Gilbert, a principal and employee research expert at Mercer, in a January 2008 press release.

An engaged employee has a vested interest in the employer’s success and whose performance level exceeds his or her job requirements. These are employees, says Gilbert, who help their organization establish a competitive advantage and drive business performance.

However, “the drivers of engagement vary from country to country and from company to company. Even within companies, the drivers will vary across different businesses and functional areas,” he said. “That’s why it’s important for employers to identify and manage the unique drivers of engagement within their own organizations. This way they can achieve maximum return on investment for their HR spending,” Patrick added.

There are four drivers of engagement that are consistent among employees around the world—

1. the work itself, including opportunities for development;
2. confidence and trust in leadership;
3. recognition and rewards; and
4. organizational communication that is delivered timely and in an orderly way.

The top factors by country, according to the findings:

• Australia: Quality of workplace relationships, including coaching.
• Brazil: Sense of personal accomplishment, confidence in senior management, training opportunities, fair pay based on performance, good reputation for customer service, comparable benefits to industry.
• Canada: Being treated respectfully, good work/life balance, feeling they can provide good service to the clients or customers.
• China: Sense of personal accomplishment, fair pay based on performance, good reputation for customer service, comparable benefits to industry, confidence in senior management, IT systems support business needs, training opportunities, regular performance feedback.
• France: Work/life balance, providing good customer service, being treated respectfully.
• India: Type of work, promotion opportunities.
• Japan: Base and incentive pay.
  Sweden: Respectful treatment, type of work they are involved with, sense of personal accomplishment.
• United Kingdom: Sense of personal accomplishment, confidence in senior management, training opportunities, fair pay based on performance, good reputation for customer service, comparable benefits to industry.
• United States: Confidence that career objectives can be met, sense of personal accomplishment, confident in organization’s success, quality is a high priority, opportunity for growth and development, information and assistance to manage career; flexibility to provide good customer service.

Companies typically can get a sense of what engages their employees by conducting employee surveys; ideally any issues that are identified are followed by some kind of action, Mercer notes.
Be wary of misinterpreting results, though. “When an organization looks at its own employee survey data, it needs to take these [cultural] differences into account,” Gilbert said. Not doing so could cause an organization’s leaders to assume that there are significant issues among its Japanese workforce and fewer issues with its Mexican workforce when, Gilbert said, “employee survey scores simply tend to be lower in Japan and higher in Mexico” when those workers rate employer performance.

It would be helpful for the employer to know if a broad cross-section of employers in that country also receives a low performance rating, Mercer points out in its paper.
Mercer’s most recent findings are based on 130 questions to working adults on a dozen topics: work processes; ethics and integrity; quality and customer focus; immediate manager; communication; performance management; work/life balance; compensation, benefits and recognition; job security and career growth; leadership and direction; teamwork and cooperation; and training and development.

Its latest findings are highlighted in the Mercer paper Engaging employees to drive global business success.

Kathy Gurchiek is associate editor for HR News.

Engagement, Productivity at Risk for Employees Averse to Workplace Changes

Engagement, Productivity at Risk for Employees Averse to Workplace Changes

4/3/2009
By SHRM Online staff

Nearly one-third of employees are not able to adapt to changes at work, according to recently released survey results by Right Management, a talent and career management consulting firm. The inability to adapt to workplace change can decrease employees’ level of engagement and effectiveness on the job as well as put organizational productivity at risk for many organizations.
In response to the question “Is your workforce able to adapt to change and increase their effectiveness on the job?” more than 100 senior human resource professionals from across North America said:

No, employee engagement and productivity are a major risk (31 percent).
Somewhat, our workforce gets the job done, but morale suffers (43 percent).
Yes, our workforce is very agile and responds to new challenges (26 percent).

“Addressing the challenges created by today’s tumultuous economy requires leaders to make a variety of difficult changes, from reductions in force to radical restructuring,” said Right Management President and Chief Operating Officer Douglas J. Matthews in a statement about the survey. “Our poll results demonstrate—with only one in four employees having the agility to adapt to change—most organizations don’t prepare their employees to handle changes at work. As a result, change management strategies tend to fail, undermining the organization’s ability to achieve the goals the change initiative was designed to produce.”

Matthews noted that the most common obstacles stem from a lack of planning, preparedness and skill in managing the change process.

“With careful planning and the support from top leaders, organizations can help their workforces adapt to change, maintain employee engagement and productivity, and accelerate performance to new heights.”

Failure to act can have severe consequences, said Matthews. “Productivity drops, service quality declines, unwanted turnover and absenteeism increases, customer loyalty wanes and often the organization’s brand reputation is tarnished. And all of that, of course, ultimately affects the bottom line.”

Matthews cautioned that most change management strategies tend to fail because of human nature.

“Most people have a hard time dealing with change. But, more than that, they lack the specific behavior traits needed to adapt easily to difficult changing circumstances. Assessment instruments can help to evaluate an individual’s propensity to deal with change. Coaching can help them to bridge to behaviors that reflect competence. Understanding and developing the behaviors that help individuals adapt and thrive during change will enable organizations to realize significant benefits and ensure the company’s continued success.”

Why Culture is Important

By S. Max Brown


Tom Long recently had a client that asked why culture is so important. Specifically, they wanted examples of organizations that were suffering because of their culture. Immediately, I thought of Home Depot and their former CEO Bob Nardelli. During his tenure – or his reign of terror – the stock went sideways and they lost market share to LOWES. He cut out recognition, railed on his employees, and slashed expenses in every direction. At the same time, they lost huge talent (100% of 100+ leaders left), and they started having trouble recruiting new talent.

In the end, Bob’s efforts to cut costs really wiped out morale, engagement, and retention. Their reputation got out in the market and qualified people stayed away.When he was fired, Newsweek magazine reported that employees were cheering in the stores. Since his departure, the new CEO has reinstituted many recognition efforts (including hand written thank you cards to store employees).

In the aftermath of this whole snafu, Inc magazine (April 2007) asked a panel of experts the following question: “Bob Nardelli’s departure left customers, shareholders, and employees of the Atlanta-based retail chain wondering whether it will ever recapture the entrepreneurial zeal that the co-founders Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank worked so hard to develop. How can the company go about refurbishing its good name?”

Tom Sternberg, the founder and former CEO of Staples and a partner at Highland Capital in Boston answered by saying:“First thing the company has to do is hang Bernie Marcus’s and Arthur Blank’s pictures in the lobby. They’re the two greatest entrepreneurs in American business history. They built the single best CULTURE of any business that I’m familiar with, and they built an extremely people-focused business in regard to both Home Depot’s customers and, even more important, its employees. Now you have Nardelli, this brash, abrasive egomaniac who destroyed the terrific culture in the name of efficiency, and that’s going to take decades to fix. I would try to hire back many of the phenomenal business leaders that Home Depot lost because of Nardelli. These are the folks who made Home Depot such a unique brand. I’d ask them to help put back in place the people-focused culture in order to get the company back to its prior standard of operating excellence.”

We all know that culture is important, and that is exactly why our business is so critical. Recognition drives cultures of excellence, and provides opportunities for people to appreciate one another. When you think of the havoc Bob created at Home Depot, it is easy to see how recognition is a crucial component in building a people-focused culture that really produces results. Are their costs associated with supporting a people-focused / recognition culture? Of course! Are their costs for destroying a culture? Ask Bob Nardelli or the hundreds of people he ran out of the company. Which strategy actually gets results? Is there any question?


http://smaxbrown.blogspot.com/2007/10/why-culture-is-important.html

Why culture is so important to employee engagement

By S. Max Brown

Tom Long recently had a client that asked why culture is so important. Specifically, they wanted examples of organizations that were suffering because of their culture. Immediately, I thought of Home Depot and their former CEO Bob Nardelli. During his tenure – or his reign of terror – the stock went sideways and they lost market share to LOWES. He cut out recognition, railed on his employees, and slashed expenses in every direction. At the same time, they lost huge talent (100% of 100+ leaders left), and they started having trouble recruiting new talent. In the end, Bob’s efforts to cut costs really wiped out morale, engagement, and retention. Their reputation got out in the market and qualified people stayed away.When he was fired, Newsweek magazine reported that employees were cheering in the stores. Since his departure, the new CEO has reinstituted many recognition efforts (including hand written thank you cards to store employees).

In the aftermath of this whole snafu, Inc magazine (April 2007) asked a panel of experts the following question: “Bob Nardelli’s departure left customers, shareholders, and employees of the Atlanta-based retail chain wondering whether it will ever recapture the entrepreneurial zeal that the co-founders Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank worked so hard to develop. How can the company go about refurbishing its good name?”

Tom Sternberg, the founder and former CEO of Staples and a partner at Highland Capital in Boston answered by saying:“First thing the company has to do is hang Bernie Marcus’s and Arthur Blank’s pictures in the lobby. They’re the two greatest entrepreneurs in American business history. They built the single best CULTURE of any business that I’m familiar with, and they built an extremely people-focused business in regard to both Home Depot’s customers and, even more important, its employees. Now you have Nardelli, this brash, abrasive egomaniac who destroyed the terrific culture in the name of efficiency, and that’s going to take decades to fix. I would try to hire back many of the phenomenal business leaders that Home Depot lost because of Nardelli. These are the folks who made Home Depot such a unique brand. I’d ask them to help put back in place the people-focused culture in order to get the company back to its prior standard of operating excellence.”

We all know that culture is important, and that is exactly why our business is so critical. Recognition drives cultures of excellence, and provides opportunities for people to appreciate one another. When you think of the havoc Bob created at Home Depot, it is easy to see how recognition is a crucial component in building a people-focused culture that really produces results. Are their costs associated with supporting a people-focused / recognition culture? Of course! Are their costs for destroying a culture? Ask Bob Nardelli or the hundreds of people he ran out of the company. Which strategy actually gets results? Is there any question?

http://smaxbrown.blogspot.com/2007/10/why-culture-is-important.html

Employee Engagement Trumped by Management

An interesting take on Employee Engagement by Scot Herrick of Cube Rules...

The latest buzzwords around productive employees used by management: employee engagement.

How companies can more effectively engage the employee, why employee engagement is necessary for a productive company, and how employee engagement works are all discussed in the blogosphere.

I’ve looked at about fifty of these types of articles on why employee engagement is necessary and how to go about it. They all fail the key component of an employee’s willingness to be engaged in the job: trust of management.

I don’t know about you, but I do my best work when I’m engaged in what I am doing. But management actions speak a lot louder than words when it comes to trusting an employee’s judgment. How willing are you to engage in the job you do when companies engage in the following practices:

Layoffs. For my two cents, the end result of management’s mismanagement is laying off people to get costs back in line. The threat of layoffs forces the smartest, most productive employees to continually evaluate their work against the probability of not having job when they come to work the next day.

Management by fear. How engaged would you be in your work if you walked into your manager’s office and were told — after five years of above average reviews under different management — that your work needed to fix what was broken “or I’ll find someone else who can?” I know that surely engages me in the right way to do my job.

Not listening to your business judgment. You are running a department and have done so successfully for years. Yet now your new management takes back all control of decisions for your area. The funnel of decision making now becomes blocked at one or two managers who now want to control everything. Makes me want to make decisions on my own.

Decline giving resources to do the work. Management comes in and won’t replace people who have left the business even though you are under budget and under headcount. Consequently, you or your people need to do more work to stay above the workload water line. I’m incented to work harder.

Management gives you no way to win. One day managers tell you one direction and the next turn 180 degrees the other direction turning all of your work in one direction to wasted time and effort. Dumps more workload on you. Something is broken and, even though it is not your area, you are required to work extra hours, nights, weekends, and holidays to get something done — with no measurable reason or results.

Note that the work prior was all considered successful. And now a new management team comes in and tells you all that you have considered successful is not. What you have done might not now be what is needed to run thebusiness.
But understanding of your work and teaching what now needs to be done is a skill that isn’t often used in these situations. Instead, it’s management by fiat. You will do what is told to you or you will be gone. In case you arewondering, that type of management makes me gone.

All of these things have happened to me in my long career. It’s not fun. It doesn’t make me want to engage in the work that I’m doing. That’s what’s missing from employee engagement articles — what a company does about engaging employees in their work speaks volumes more about engagement than the next five-point plan to engage employees in their work. Instead, these articles should be asking this: Where’s the trust?

Cube Rules is at http://cuberules.com/