Employee Engagement is currently a multi-billion dollar global concern affecting organizations across all sectors. Literally millions of articles have been written on the subject since the term was first coined in the early 90’s.* Much of the current literature focuses on various definitions and the overall magnitude of the problem and very few offer the practical advice leaders are searching for. This article is intended to give some practical and actionable advice to leaders who are serious about getting a handle on Employee Engagement. The following are a few of the more visible primary characteristics that lead to the numerous symptomatic costs associated with lowered Employee Engagement.
- lower productivity,
- lower morale,
- increased turnover of top talent,
- higher absenteeism,
- lower quality and
- increased safety incidences
Definition:
Despite the fact that leaders, consultants and academics alike can’t seem to agree on a universal definition, they can agree on what it is not. It’s not employee happiness, nor is it job satisfaction, since happy and satisfied employees may not necessarily be engaged. They also agree that Engaged Employees are characterized as those individuals that actually care about their work and their organization and whose personal work goals are aligned with those of their organization. For our purposes, a simplified yet useful definition can be;
An Engaged employee is emotionally committed to their work and their organization and will therefore not hesitate to use discretionary effort when they feel the need. In other words they go the extra mile of their own volition.
Gallups’ 2017 survey results for the U.S. showed that 34% of workers are engaged, while 53% are not engaged and 13% are actually actively disengaged. Despite how alarming these numbers may appear, they are actually an improvement over previous years! In Canada these numbers are 25%, 60% and 15% respectively. Also worth noting is the Actively Disengaged employees, albeit unintentionally, may actually be sabotaging your organizations efforts.
Practical advice for Individual Leaders:
The advice below focuses on helping managers to be better at engaging their people.
- Employee Engagement is a leadership responsibility
Leaders create the organizational culture in which employees work and thrive. They must walk-the-talk of the culture they are fostering. This is a vast area in and of itself but in short, the stronger a company’s culture, the better employees understand what is expected of them, how they fit and what it is they’re working toward. It is much easier for an employee to align their own goals, values and development plans with those of the organization when the latter’s are clearly communicated and understood.
As a leader you must also have the courage to look at yourself and gain insight about your own management style and how it may affect employee engagement. After all you are a large part of your employees’ environment. At times it will also be necessary to customize your leadership style to the employee. Great leaders are always looking to improve their abilities and gain insight into their own strengths and areas of potential growth. I have worked with numerous leaders utilizing both 360° and individual assessments to do just that with great success.
- Employee Engagement happens one employee at a time
Stay away from blanket generalizations like “them” when referring to your organizational workforce. Leaders must focus on the individual. This insight will only improve your ability to engage your employee.
As a leader take the time to get to know your direct reports and gain a better understanding of what drives them, their values, what’s important to them, their preferred communication style, preferred rewards etc. People are all different and respond in different ways. For example, some might like to be publically recognized for a job well done, some extra pay, others might by happy with a pat on the back while still others would be mortified at the thought of being publicly recognized.
When meeting individually with employees about engagement, set clear expectations so that there is no ambiguity in their role. It is also imperative that you meet regularly with your direct reports to give feedback, since giving feedback only once or twice a year generally has no impact on performance and is only evaluative in nature. Meeting face-to-face is also a window for you to demonstrate how you can support their individual development plans.
- Organizational messages must be clearly communicated to all employees
There must be alignment between that of the individual and the organization since the employee is an integral part of this greater system. Each employee must know how their value and belief system fits in and is aligned with that of the organization. This crucial point cannot be overstated. It’s incredibly important for the leader to ensure that all information sent through the multitude of communication conduits within the organization to individual employees including vision, mission, values, strategic initiatives and a whole host of other relevant messages are clear and consistent. This is the knowledge that individual employees need to internalize in order to better understand how their own developmental and performance goals align with the overall goals of the organization. In this way employees can feel assured that they are aligned and making positive contributions for mutual benefit while fulfilling their own needs.
Practical advice on an organizational perspective:
- Make employee engagement an organizational strategic priority – No half measures
This point is the one that should be given the most attention. Do not embark on any employee engagement initiative and not follow through! I cannot stress this point enough. If it is seen as just lip service it will cause you and your organization grief and in all likelihood lower your existing employee engagement numbers even more.
- Measure performance
Like any change initiative, measurement is critical and engagement is no exception. It is vitally important to get robust information and a reliable engagement assessment tool is a must have. Using engagement data allows clear targets to be set for both the organizational as a whole, and individual managers. This gives rise for the opportunity to celebrate organizational engagement successes as well as a vehicle to reward individual managers. A good engagement assessment survey will identify what drives engagement for a specific organization. Examples include, decision making involvement, amount of feedback received or job autonomy.
- Accountability
Once managers are trained on best practices of employee engagement and have identified organizational key drivers for their organization they can create and implement their own engagement action plan. The committed organization will create incentives for managers to achieve their numbers and ideally have a portion of the mangers’ performance review and compensation tied to them.
- Structure for success
Establish structures that allow mangers more time to actively engage with employees. Many times this will involve reassessing how a manager’s time is spent , which activities may not be as imperative, or it may simply be a matter of consolidating or eliminating other tasks.
Utilizing internal or external coaches to reinforce training in real time and to work with each manager will also pay dividends. Despite the fact that most organizations do not have the resources to coach every manager, some possible solutions include focusing on managers who have the greatest opportunity for improvement or implementing group coaching to make the process more efficient.
- Ongoing support
It is important to continue to track progress via the engagement scores not only to ensure ongoing improvements but also to make any midcourse corrections if necessary. It is also crucial that senior leadership continue to be strong and visible supporters of engagement and visibly demonstrate it through both actions and words. Demonstrable behavior is key here.
Final Thoughts
If you do decide that focusing on Employee Engagement is a worthy initiative then congratulate yourself on taking the first step to an improved organization. This can be an intimidating venture and one in which some assistance may be sought.
PGR Consulting Group can bring an 11-part methodology to your organization and leadership team that addresses the above-mentioned challenges of employee engagement. Best of all, our methodology doesn’t require invasive organizational development strategies or restructurings that are almost impossible to implement. Instead, it focuses on simple but powerful behaviors that have maximum impact on the leaders’ ability to engage.
To learn more, I invite you to take our free self-assessment by clicking here.
* 1990 Academy of Management Journal article by William A. Khan entitled Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work.
** 2015 Harvard Business Review article by Sean Graber entitled The two sides of Employees Engagement.
Paul Royce MBA, CEC – PGR Consulting Inc.