FROM ENTITLEMENT TO ENGAGEMENT
INTRODUCTION
There's a big difference between getting employees to come to work and getting them to do their best work.
According to the Harvard Business Review, companies spend over $720 million each year on employee engagement—which is projected to rise to over $1.5 billion per year—yet, employee engagement is at a record low. Just 30 percent of employees are currently considered engaged, according to the Gallup organization—roughly the same percentage as when Gallup first started measuring the topic some twenty years ago.
What's wrong with this picture? Why is increasing employee engagement so difficult?
There's no refuting Gallup's extensive longitudinal research that systematically identified the core variables that distinguish high-performing organizations from their competitive also-rans in the marketplace. But knowing what those organizational pressure points are and actually moving the needle on those variables is apparently more difficult than anyone could have predicted.
Or are we just focusing on the wrong things and perhaps missing the forest for the trees? Are companies spending extraordinary amounts of effort (and money) to chase higher engagement scores while overlooking the fundamentals of what to do to actually impact those scores and truly engage today's employees?
Perhaps it's time to focus on the behaviors that truly impact employee engagement, not just the scores that measure it.
That's what this book aims to do. To show you real-life examples, techniques, and best practices of what the primary variables that most drive employee engagement look like in practice from companies that are doing those things well.
First, I found the best research framework for identifying those core employee engagement variables. Although most major human resource consulting firms have their own engagement variables they track for their clients, often a compilation of various dimensions they have found to be important, the research framework that most resonated with me and my thirty years of experience in managing and motivating employees was a statistical analysis of engagement variables conducted by HR Solutions. They examined survey data they had gathered on the topic of employee engagement from three million employee surveys and conducted a regression analysis to see which variables had the greatest impact on the topic of employee engagement.
THE ENGAGED ORGANIZATION
Following are the top ten dimensions this statistical analysis uncovered, rank ordered by the degree of significance each dimension had on influencing employee engagement. These variables are all interrelated. You can make the greatest progress on moving the needle in increasing employee engagement in your organization by focusing your efforts on these primary drivers of employee engagement as reported by employees today.
Chapter 1: Recognition
Systematically acknowledging employees and making them feel special when they do good work.
If you can only focus on one element to increase employee engagement in your group or organization, it should be recognition: making employees feel special in a timely, sincere, and specific ways when they perform well. Often called the greatest management principle in the world, recognition represents the primarily driver of employee engagement. Employee recognition is fundamental to ongoing support and motivation of any individual employee or group. The key to driving an engagement culture is to systematically recognize employees based on their performance, not just for showing up to work. While money and other forms of compensation are important to employees, what tends to motivate them to perform at their highest levels are the thoughtful, timely, personal kinds of thanks and recognition that signify true appreciate for a job well done. This chapter shares a wide range of recognition examples, techniques, and strategies currently being used by successful companies.
Chapter 2: Career Development
Helping employees learn and grow and advance in their careers.
The second most important element driving employee engagement is career development. Everyone wants to feel that where they are spending the bulk of their waking hours is leading them on a path toward something bigger and better. Along the way they want the ability to learn and apply new skills and their manager's support in doing so. In one industry-wide study, more than half of the respondents stated a strong desire for managers to support their learning of new skills in their jobs. Every employee is ultimately responsible for his or her own growth and career path. When an employee has some ambition, support from his or her manager, and options for learning and growing, they can't help but be more engaged in his or her job. In this chapter, you'll find specific examples of what companies are doing to make career development a reality for their employees.
Chapter 3: One's Immediate Manager
The actions and behaviors used by an employee's immediate manager or supervisor.
Research has shown that an employee's relationship with his/her immediate manager is the most important relationship he/she can have at work. This only makes sense because one's manager is typically the source of all work direction, coaching and guidance, and performance evaluation. Around the world, then, if you have a good boss, you have a good job—and if you have a boss that truly cares about you and your success and shows that in his/her actions, you have a great job! Most of us can reflect on the best managers we've had in our career and quickly list attributes and actions that most distinguished those individuals. Typically, on that list would be items such as “good listener,” “took time to get to know me,” “clearly communicated goals,” “was approachable and supportive,” “asked thoughtful questions,” “made me feel important,” “supported me when I made a mistake,” and so forth. To be a great manager, do more of the items on this list and do them more frequently! In fact, most engagement variables are things a good manager can personally impact with their employees. In this chapter, we'll explore examples of the behaviors and actions that make for a great manager.
Chapter 4: Strategy and Mission
Linking each employee to the larger goals, vision, and mission of the organization.
Every employee wants to feel they are part of something bigger than themselves. At work this is most frequently accomplished by employees having a larger perspective about their role in the organization and their tie to the company's strategy and mission. The clearer this connection is made, the better the line of sight to the organization's vision and objectives, the more value employees will have and the more engaged they will be. Yet only 64 percent of employees feel that members of their organization understand the organization's strategy and mission. This chapter will contain examples and ideas from companies as to how they make their mission and strategies relevant to their employees on a daily basis.
Chapter 5: Job Content
The work itself: what needs to be done and how best to allow employees to do that.
Fundamental to any job is the work itself; providing clear goals, priorities, and expectations is the starting point for any job, and doing their jobs well can provide an important motivational foundation for employees. Allowing employees to have a fundamental say in how they do their work is also important, as is having challenging work. Allowing employees to fully apply themselves in getting their job done is the essence of employee engagement. This chapter will show examples of ways companies are allowing employees to do what they do best on a daily basis.
Chapter 6: Senior Management's Relationship with Employees
Having senior leadership be visible and known to employees.
Another critical dimension for employee engagement to flourish is the relationship senior management has with employees. I find the best leaders are not “above” or removed from their employees, but rather are very much involved with them, helping to lead and inspire them into the future. This chapter will show numerous examples of ways senior leaders can help drive employee engagement initiatives that are important to the organization's success that go beyond approving the budget. For example, having senior management be accessible and visible to employees is as important as playing an active role in doing things in their own jobs that consistently demonstrate their commitment to employees. This chapter will provide examples of how senior management connects with their employees in a variety of companies.
Chapter 7: Open and Effective Communication
Providing employees ready access to people and information.
All employees want to feel they are “in the know,” that is, an integral part of things where they work, whether it's getting a timely answer to a question they need to complete their work; learning more about the organization's customers, products, and services; or simply knowing what's going on in other parts of the company. Managers can tap into that communication stream by being both open and transparent in sharing information as well as asking employees for their input and ideas to improve decisions, streamline processes, enhance customer satisfaction, increase revenues, and/or reduce costs. In short, involving employees in an ongoing dialogue to systematically make positive changes in the organization for both the employees, the customer, and the organization. This chapter provides many examples of open and effective communication strategies from companies that do it well that you can apply in your organization.
Chapter 8: Coworker Satisfaction and Cooperation
The quality of one's work colleagues and ease in working together with them.
Who we work with in our job is another important element that impacts employee engagement. If we like our coworkers, it's easier to come to work, spend time with them as needed, help them out, and have them help us as needed in return. If your coworkers share the same level of commitment to quality and doing good work as yourself, it further impacts how engaged you'll feel in your job—and great coworkers could even raise your standard of excellence. This chapter will provide numerous examples and strategies to increase coworker satisfaction and cooperation in your team, department, or entire organization.
Chapter 9: Availability of Resources
Having the tools, budget, and support to do the work that's expected of employees.
Having the resources to do the job one was hired to do seems like an obvious no-brainer to get the job done, let alone maximize an employee's engagement, yet we've all experienced situations in which this was easier said than done. The budget is frozen, a decision is delayed, priorities get shifted, and similar obstacles can make even the simplest plan go astray and stall or sidetrack you from your work as your focus on just getting the resources you need becomes a challenge. In this chapter, you'll learn strategies and examples from companies that have found ways to make available resources and processes a priority to those employees that depend upon those resources to get their work done in a timely, efficient manner.
Chapter 10: Organizational Culture
The shared values of the organization that shape the expectations and actions of its workers.
A backdrop in any organization for how good or bad a place it is to work is its culture: the shared norms, policies, and practices the company has established for working together, often defined by a set of core values that are publicly prioritized for all to use as guiding principles in their actions and decisions. This chapter will show examples of how organizations bring their values alive in the workplace to create work environments that both attract and retain talent on an ongoing basis.
If you have information from employees in your own organization about the most pressing engagement needs from this top-ten list, you might consider focusing on those areas first. In fact, you might consider focusing on just the primary or top couple of engagement needs of your employees to have the greatest chance of making improvements. I've found that when organizations try to focus on a long litany of variables, often they don't make much of any noticeable difference in their results over time because their efforts are spread too thin to truly change how things are done. Much better to truly drive a key dimension, for example, to make this year the year that recognition becomes integrated into all the organization's policies and practices and every manager's focus and behaviors.
The remainder of this book delves more deeply into each of these ten categories with numerous examples, techniques, and best practices to help show you what specific actions and behaviors gain the greatest traction in impacting employee engagement. All companies referenced in this book are featured in an index at the end of the book with their location and industry.
TREAT YOUR EMPLOYEES AS TRUSTED PARTNERS
Jon Burroughs, president and CEO of the Burroughs Healthcare Consulting Network, sums it up nicely:
Many organizations discuss engagement and alignment, which means a sense of ownership and self-interest. If you treat an employee like a commodity, they will act like one. On the other hand, if you treat an employee like an owner with a real stake in the outcome, that employee will be transformed from a subordinate into a business partner who will help your organization succeed because it is in their self-interest to do so.
Increasingly, organizations are doing just that. High-performing organizations are creating bottom-up strategies to bring the voice of line workers to senior management and often share profits with their employees as well. Delta Air Lines, which is the most profitable US commercial airline (recently earning $5.5 billion in annual profit), gave its employees over $1.5 billion in profit sharing in a recent year—adding to six consecutive years of profits shared with its employees.
In another example, health-care organizations and systems increasingly are aligning with physicians, which means giving them a piece of the enterprise in exchange for accepting accountability for clinical and business outcomes. This strategy is proving to be very successful at many of the top-performing health-care organizations throughout the country in that physicians feel a sense of ownership over their work and the work of their colleagues. This focus drives improved quality outcomes for everyone. Pride of ownership is key!
Fundamentally, you get out of human beings what you put into them. Treat them as disposable objects, and you become a disposable employer with detached, low-performing individuals. Treat them as valued, trusted partners, and you get the best of what each individual has to offer, reaping the benefits both personally and financially.
FROM ENTITLEMENT TO ENGAGEMENT
Companies today cannot afford to be stifled by a culture of entitlement in which employees do as little as possible to get by. Employees must be committed and devoted to making a difference in their organizations and must be fully engaged to do their best to excel at work.
Companies can successfully create a culture of engagement by systematically getting all of their managers to focus on those behaviors that best drive employee engagement and engage employees in those practices. To get the best of what employees have to offer the organization, managers must tap into employees' talents, interests, and skills. Getting to know employees on a personal level and asking them for their input, help, and ideas is a great starting point for any manager. In most cases, giving employees the autonomy and authority to act in the best interests of the organization and offering words of encouragement and praise along the way works wonders. Encouraging employees to pursue their ideas and supporting them in that process are also important strategies for yielding positive results in the workplace.
Managers can tap into an energy that employees themselves didn't realize existed if they are sincere in their approach and truly do have the best interests of their employees at heart. Managers must make employees feel trusted, respected, and excited about their successes and the successes of others in the organization. In return, you will get employees who are more accountable for their actions and more committed to making a difference for the organization—and themselves.