5 Signs that Employees are in Survival Mode

Today’s workplace is a reflection of the times: uncertain and unstable. As employees navigate this short-term, fast-paced, tension-filled terrain, they develop an attitude that creates an uneasy environment:  survival mode.
The workplace used to be focused on the planning and execution of short, mid-range and long-term growth objectives. It was a place where careers were born and legacies were created. A place that encouraged teamwork, unity and advancement, fueled by collaboration, partnerships and client relationships. Today, long-term business goals have been eclipsed by short-term personal goals: survive the unknown long enough to stay in the game. For employees this means adapting to a role where time management is unmanageable and where everything is a priority.
As you think about the dynamics in your workplace, watch out for these five signs that your employees are in survival mode:
See the list here

What Big Researchers Found about Employee Engagement

●● A Watson Wyatt study of 115 companies suggested that a company with highly engaged employees achieves a financial performance four times greater than companies with poor engagement. They also reported in 2008/9 that the highly engaged are more than twice as likely to be top performers – almost 60 per cent of them exceed or far exceed expectations for performance. Moreover the highly engaged missed 43 per cent fewer days of work due to illness. ●● Gallup found that engagement levels can be predictors of sickness absence, with more highly engaged employees taking an average of 2.7 days per year, compared with disengaged employees taking an average of 6.2 days per year.
●● Hewitt reported that companies with a greater than 10 per cent profit growth had 39 per cent more engaged employees and 45 per cent fewer disengaged employees than those with less than 10 per cent growth.
●● Development Dimension International (DDI) reported that in a Fortune 100 manufacturing company, turnover in low engagement teams averaged 14.5 per cent, compared with 4.8 per cent in high engagement teams. Absenteeism in low engagement teams hovered around 8 per cent, but was down to 4.1 per cent in high engagement teams. Quality errors were significantly higher for poorly engaged teams.
●● Towers Perrin found that broadly three-quarters of the highly engaged believe they can impact costs, quality and customer service; and only 25 per cent of the disengaged believe they can.
●● PricewaterhouseCoopers, who use staff and customer engagement levels as one of their four Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) have found

"People don't leave their jobs, they leave their managers."

Although committed and loyal employees are the most influential factor to becoming an employer of choice, it's no surprise that companies and organizations face significant challenges in developing energized and engaged workforces. However, there is plenty of research to show that increased employee commitment and trust in leadership can positively impact the company's bottom line. In fact, the true potential of an organization can only be realized when the productivity level of all individuals and teams are fully aligned, committed and energized to successfully accomplish the goals of the organization.

As a result, the goal of every company should be to improve the desire of employees to stay in the relationship they have with the company. When companies understand and manage employee loyalty - rather than retention specifically - they can reap benefits on both sides of the balance sheet i.e., revenues and costs.

On the revenue side of the balance sheet, loyal and committed employees are more likely to go "above and beyond" to meet customer needs and are highly motivated to work to the best of their ability. Both of these traits are crucial for continued customer commitment and ongoing revenue and growth for the company.

On the cost side, loyal employees stay longer, resist competitive job offers, do not actively look for other employment and recommend the company to others as a good place to work. These four behaviors positively influence the cost side of the balance sheet because they are leading indicators of employee retention. The longer companies keep their employees, the longer they can avoid having to pay to replace them.

In other words, rather than focusing only on retention (that is, trying to retain employees who have already decided to leave), organizations should proactively recognize the benefits of understanding, managing and improving employee loyalty. The most successful organizations are those that can adapt their organizational behavior to the realities of the current work environment where success is dependent upon innovation, creativity and flexibility. Additionally, the dynamics of the work environment have to reflect a very diverse population comprised of individuals whose motivations, beliefs and value structures differ vastly from the past and from each another. Arguably, the most valuable, but also volatile, corporate asset is a stable workforce of competent, dedicated employees, since such an employee base gives companies a powerful advantage; depth of knowledge and organizational strength.

One of the key steps to understanding and improving employee loyalty is by acknowledging the importance of the following factors in building loyalty and satisfaction:

Broadly-defined responsibilities rather than narrowly-defined job functions
Effective and regular performance evaluations, both formally and informally
A corporate emphasis on employee learning, development and growth
Wide-ranging employee participation in the organization as a whole

Typically, a combination of factors influences employees' decisions to stay at their current job. Contributing factors include satisfying work, a sense of job security, clear opportunities for advancement, a compelling corporate mission combined with the ability to contribute to the organization's success, and a feeling that their skills are being effectively used and challenged. Specifically, employees who enjoy their work, identify themselves with their employer and perceive that the company is flexible regarding work and family issues also intend to stay with the organization.

Employee Engagement & Customer Satisfaction

While there is no magic pill or instant solution for employee engagement, Insightlink’s years of experience with organizations of different sizes and spanning various industries reveals clear connections between employee engagement and organizational strength. One of the strongest connections (what we call the “Insightlink” itself) is often customer satisfaction.

The Insightlink is the bridge – whether it has the strength of a chain or the precariousness of a thin thread – that correlates employee engagement to organizations strength, most typically financial strength.

Employee Engagement ----> Customer Satisfaction -----> Organizational Strength

Engaged employees function as the beginning of the link and, ideally, the other side or end is the organization’s strength as a whole, In between, customer satisfaction is crux of the “Insightlink.” The Insightlink takes the strength employee engagement and leverages it into revenue growth and profitability. Engaged employees performing in a manner leads customers to act more loyally, which in turn, generally leads to greater profits and future growth. Non-engaged employees (such as what Insightlink’s 4Cs framework calls “Dissatisfied Compromisers”) do just the opposite.

So how do we help organizations build and strengthen this link? When it comes to employee engagement, the process and practice for appropriate alignment of survey results with subsequent action planning optimally includes:

Leadership involvement from senior executives, particularly the top executive
Clarifying and establishing overall objectives; determining drivers of engagement
Communicating internally the objectives
Aligning to objectives, including appropriate accountability
Measurement of the work-life environment
Acting on the results

The underlying premise is that successful organizations need to retain people who care about their work, who care about how they perform it and who care about the overall success of the company. When engaged employees are what customers regularly encounter and they create value internally that is felt by customers externally, customers gain an intrinsic sense of value in doing business with the organization and will stay loyal, purchase more and/or more often and tell others about their experiences.

Action Planning after Employee Surveys

You’ve probably heard that effective goal setting is a key to gaining successful results from your employee surveys. Whether or not you choose Insightlink for your employee surveys, you owe it to yourself and your organization to set goals and show employees that their time taking the survey was not wasted. Setting (and meeting) those goals gives employees a sense of the organization’s commitment to continuous improvement. Helpful tips for accomplishing this are included in our Action Planning Guide.


Effective Action Plans cannot be established without knowing the end result you want to achieve. In deciding what goals to set for your organization and/or your own department, site or functional unit, ask yourself:

Which issues are in your control to change?
What resources do you and/or your organization have available in order to resolve the issue?
How long will it take to correct the issue?
How will implementation of the proposed solution provide value to your employees?

All goals established for Action Plans should be divided into three categories:

Short-term “quick fixes” that can be implemented immediately.
Medium-term objectives that can be achieved in 2-3 months.
Longer-term goals that are more ambitious and likely require 6 months to a year to achieve.

Also, you should record the goals that cannot realistically be handled at the site level or cannot be tackled at this time. You need to let your employees know what these goals are and why they cannot be addressed at this time.

Action Planning Task Force Tips

Your engagement survey is done. You have your results. What now? Since you alone cannot do all the action planning, who is going to help so that all the talk about employee engagement was not in vain?

In order to be effective across the organization, of course, no single person should be responsible for all aspects of the Action Planning process. Insightlink recommends recruiting individual Task Forces for each of your organization’s major opportunities for improvement.

Task Force members will work together as a team to:

Create an Action Plan, including specific action items designed to address the key opportunities (within their designated major area of opportunity)

Share the plan with all employees (at least those impacted). You can either share with the organization as a whole or at a department/site/functional unit level, but do share!

Work diligently to implement each of the action items in a timely way, including monitoring the progress on each item

Help to assess success for each action item at the end of the process

Although the anticipated time commitment from Task Force members is generally about 4-6 hours per month over a 3-6 month period, as an HR insider, you should assess this yourself and manage the expectations of those who are involved.

Ideally, when “recruiting,” look for Task Force team members who are:

Highly creative/articulate individuals who are more likely to come up with “out-of-the-box” solutions
People with high energy and enthusiasm, who tend to get things done and keep others excited
Good team players
Able to devote the necessary time to the process
Skilled in what it takes to develop solutions, especially those with special expertise in the areas of concern
Able and willing to implement the necessary corrective actions

Each Task Force should hold regular Action Planning meetings that focus on setting goals and deciding on viable action items. Some useful tools and tips for effective goal setting are:

Brainstorming: Encourage diverse ideas and don’t censor any suggestions. Record all the ideas given and potential solutions offered, since even the strangest suggestion may represent the “germ” of a worthwhile solution. “Good” ideas are the end product of a process of evolution that usually starts with ideas that are flawed … often seriously. (“Idea Generation”)

Strategizing: Take the opportunity to “grow” flawed ideas by identifying the positives, including 1 or 2 advantages that are not immediately obvious. At this stage, both wishes and concerns are powerful sources for raising the ceiling on ideas. (“Appraisal that Adds Value”)

Removing Barriers: Start to tailor and transform the idea to keep the positives while eliminating the flaws. (“Tailoring and Transforming”) Each Task Force should be responsible for producing a written Action Plan that outlines what specific action items to implement to address the goals agreed to by the Task Force.

Each action item needs to include the following to ensure accountability and progress:
Completion Target Date – Target dates are dependent upon your best estimate of when the action steps will be completed. They can range from almost immediate for the “quick hits” to very lengthy for more serious issues.

Responsibility – Every action plan should have an “owner” who is accountable for the outcomes and the final results.

It is also essential to regularly update your Action Plans, so that you, your stakeholders and your employees can see the progress being made. Recognize, though, that circumstances may require you to change your timeline because of new discoveries or unidentified barriers.

Remember this is a team effort. Don’t forget to share best practices! Learn from your colleagues on what has worked well (or not so well) with their Action Plans.

Employee Engagement Action Planning Workbook

Both extensive research and Insightlink's own experience with clients have demonstrated that, after an employee survey has been conducted, employees are much more interested in seeing action taken than they are in seeing the results of the employee survey. In fact, employee surveys have little or no value if nothing is done to make improvements at the organization. This is why successful action planning is a critical component of successful employee surveys. Insightlink is committed to providing our clients with the tools and help they need to create effective Action Plans that are designed for their organizations specifically.
Go to www.insightlink.com to find out more about the Insightlink 4Cs Survey Feedback and Action Planning Workbook.

Employee engagement 2.0 has arrived courtesy of Google

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum (May 20, 2009)

If you thought Google employees were the most engaged in today’s cutthroat and recession-riddled corporate world, think again. Despite receiving more than 700,000 applications a year to work for the planet’s most forward thinking Web 2.0 outfit, the company has seen hiring slow, been forced to cut back on some of its infamous perks such as afternoon tea and its annual ski trip and has even seen some of its most talented Googlers jump ship to competitors such as Twitter and Facebook.

So what has it gone and done? Well being the most advanced and innovative algorithmic genius in its class it’s gone and done what it’s best at doing - created an algorithm - but this time has taken employee engagement 2.0 to an entirely new and never-before-seen level. It has produced an algorithm so advanced and so ingrained in the employment and engagement process that it can supposedly crunch employee data such as appraisals, salaries and promotion history and decipher who among its staff is the most unhappy and who among the 20,000 engineers, developers and nerds it employs is the most willing to leave. Not only does it know every move we as web users make online, it can now pry into the work-life habits of its own and work out who should stay and who should go. It’s hard to fathom but Google’s boffins know the answers before their staff do.

Currently in a test phase, the system, if proved effective – and it would have to be faultless considering the information it gathers and the consequences it could have on people’s lives – could forever change the way businesses and their internal communications departments around the world vet and engage or even dismiss their employees.

The web giant has so far, however, discovered one key trend. Those of its employees that feel underused are more likely than others to leave. But the further it looks into the problem and examines employee reviews and pay histories the more I can imagine it will uncover more detail about how its workers think, behave, and react to certain emotions and situations. The key element will be to determine whether or not this research is effective in engaging more staff, unearthing those that are unhappiest and crucially, considering the economic times we are living in, what result this has on the bottom line. Could this be the ultimate tool, the Holy Grail, that we’ve all been looking for, to finally and accurately measure how we can effectively engage our employees and return a healthy profit in order to keep share and stakeholders happy? The possibilities, as with anything this company seems to do, are endless.

Google’s engagement algorithm – why now?

Crunches data from employee reviews, promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula to identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to leave.

Google officials are reluctant to share details of the formula that is still being tested.

Google says the algorithm has already identified employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving.

Current and former Googlers said the company is losing talent because some employees feel they can’t make the same impact as the company matures.

Google's algorithm has been described by one HR commentator as “helping the company get inside people's heads even before they know they might leave”.

In recent weeks several top executives has left the company including advertising sales boss Tim Armstrong and display-advertising chief David Rosenblatt, Doug Bowman, engineering director Steve Horowitz and search-quality chief Santosh Jayaram, both of which have switched sides to Facebook and Twitter.

Engagement in Business

From Wikipedia

Although rather popular in business and consultancy firms, academic research on work engagement is rather scarce. Major consultancy firms such as Development Dimensions International (DDI), Gallup, Hewitt Associates, Mercer, and Towers Perrin define work engagement in terms of -a combination of- well-known concepts like affective organizational commitment (i.e., the emotional attachment to the organization), continuance commitment (i.e., the desire to stay with the organization), extra-role behavior (i.e., discretionary behavior that promotes the effective functioning of the organization), or job satisfaction (i.e. a positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job).