Have you ever truly “lost” yourself in an activity? While performing some task, did you lose all track of time, forgetting to take a break, get a drink of water, or eat your lunch? Most of us have had these experiences every once in awhile—especially with a favorite hobby, a great book, or an engaging conversation. Have you ever had this experience on your job?
Unfortunately, being completely absorbed and lost in a work-related task occurs far too infrequently. It is very likely that, in your organization, most of the people who come to work every day have only a vague sense of what it might feel like to be so fully job-engaged.
Just imagine what outcomes your organization could create for its customers and shareholders if every employee at every organizational level brought his or her full focus, attention, energy, and commitment to every task that he or she undertook. Consider how a fully engaged employee might interact differently with a customer as compared to an employee who is just putting in his or her time.
Employee engagement, however, is far more than just people providing world-class customer service. Think about how the focused attention of job-engaged employees might translate into quality and productivity. When employees bring everything they have to their work, you are destined to see
• a passion to create the best possible performance outcomes
• people doing whatever it takes to achieve the desired performance outcomes
• full ownership and responsibility for getting the job done right
• an exploration of root causes when performance is less than optimal
• a willingness to take on new projects that enhance the work or critical outcomes
• a focus on learning when quality or productivity problems are uncovered.
Now ask yourself: Why can't every organization create a work environment in which these profoundly positive outcomes for customers, quality, and productivity are the norm rather than the exception? The answer is: Every organization can. While the journey toward full employee engagement is not easy, it is possible to move toward this ideal. The challenge for the leaders and employees of any organization is to discover what it actually takes to create a fully engaged workforce.
This Infoline offers you a roadmap for creating an engaged workforce in your company. You will first learn the definition of employee engagement and why it matters and then explore the various facets that make up an engaged workforce. Finally, you will learn helpful strategies for developing and strengthening employee engagement that will lead toward full engagement. Along the way, you will also learn about the business case for employee engagement, the difference between job satisfaction and employee engagement, and ways to assess the engagement levels in your organization.
DEFINING EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Before we explore the value and implications of engaged employees, it is important that we formulate a definition of employee engagement. A variety of researchers have explored engagement as a construct, and while each has approached engagement in slightly different ways, nearly all agree upon a few key elements: Employee engagement tends to exist when an employee feels physically, intellectually, and emotionally attached or connected to his or her work in such a way that the employee brings enthusiasm, energy, focus, and commitment to the task at hand.
REQUIREMENTS FOR FLOW: ACHIEVING OPTIMAL EXPERIENCE
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's research on flow suggests that it does not happen by accident. Achieving flow depends upon the following conditions and requirements:
• Clear and challenging goals—The individual's expectations and rules are discernible and goals are challenging yet attainable.
• Balance between ability and challenge—The individual s skill set and abilities are aligned with the challenging goals of the task.
• Concentration and focus—The individual has a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention and is able to focus exclusively on and delve deeply into the task.
• Loss of feeling self-consciousness—There is a convergence of both action and awareness within the individual.
• Distorted sense of time—The individual's subjective experience of time is altered.
• Direct and immediate feedback—The individual's successes and failures in the course of the activity are readily apparent, so that his or her behavior can be adjusted as needed.
• Sense of control—The individual engaged in the task has a sense of control over the situation or activity.
• Intrinsically rewarding activity—The task itself is rewarding to the individual so that there is effortlessness and gratification to the activity.
For more information about flow, read Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Harper Perennial, 1990.
The organizations that will truly excel will
be the ones that discover how to tap people's
commitment and capacity to learn at
all levels.
When people are engaged with their jobs, they view life and work positively; they feel energetic and committed to their tasks; and they behave in ways that demonstrate their engagement by performing at a higher level. In Learning's Role in Employee Engagement—ASTD's recent research study on engagement—ASTD's study team settled upon an engagement definition that suggested engaged employees are “mentally and emotionally invested in their work and in contributing to their employer's success.”
University of Chicago psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has spent more than 30 years researching the characteristics of “peak” experiences at work and in life. He coined the term “flow” to describe an optimal experience—a “holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement.”
When people are in “flow,” they shift into a mode of experience in which they become totally absorbed in the activity. Csikszentmihalyi suggests that this mode is characterized by narrowing the focus of awareness; filtering irrelevant perceptions and thoughts; losing oneself in the task; responding to clear goals; receiving unambiguous feedback from the task and the environment; and controlling the environment.
Flow, while perhaps not sustainable by most people in most organizations, does offer some insights into the factors that contribute to optimal experience and perhaps optimal performance as well. See the sidebar Requirements for Flow: Achieving Optimal Experience for more detail.
The key thread running through much of the research on engagement and flow is the importance of translating the employee's positive intentions and emotions into behaviors that go beyond simply putting in one's time. For this reason, it is important to note that engagement is significantly different from job satisfaction. While employees may be satisfied and perform adequately, when they are engaged with their work, they are not only satisfied, but also create better results for their employers.
Tying these various elements of engagement together, here is a working definition of engagement that will be the focus of this Infoline: Employee engagement is a characteristic or quality that exists when an employee approaches his or her work with enthusiasm, energy, focus, and commitment in such a way that the employee is able to bring his or her full potential to the work effort.
WHY ENGAGEMENT IS IMPORTANT
It may seem obvious, but the more engaged an employee is on the job
• the more proactive the employee is likely to be when approaching a task
• the more willing the employee is to go the extra mile when serving a customer
• the more creative the employee will be toward problem solving
• the more ownership the employee will take over his or her job
• the more likely the employee will be to explore root causes when things go wrong
• the more encouraged the employee will be to think strategically.
See the sidebar When Employees Are Actively Disengaged for a comparison of engaged employees to those who may be actively disengaged.
When you examine the significant differences between the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses of an engaged employee and someone who is actively disengaged, it is clear why organizations need to invest in efforts to understand the level of employee engagement and take steps to influence it positively. When such bottom-line issues as productivity, quality, innovation, creativity, and customer service are at stake, leaders cannot afford to ignore this important organizational dimension.
WHEN EMPLOYEES ARE ACTIVELY DISENGAGED
Use this chart to tell which employees are fully engaged and which are actively disengaged.
| FULLY ENGAGED EMPLOYEES… | ACTIVELY DISENGAGED EMPLOYEES… |
| Are proactive. | Are reactive. |
| Go the extra mile for customers. | Barely meet minimum customer service standards. |
| Show creativity when problem solving. | Walk away from difficult problems. |
| Explore root causes when things go wrong. | Blame others for things gone wrong. |
| Initiate and foster needed change. | Are reluctant to change. |
| Step forward to solve problems. | Wait for others to act first.. |
| Take pride in producing quality outcomes. | Have little job pride or interest in producing quality outcomes. |
| Speak well of the organization when talking to others. | Complain about the organization when talking to others. |
| Are ready to learn, try new things, and take on new responsibilities. | Are reluctant to learn or take on new tasks or responsibilities. |
Since the strength of any organization lies in
the sense of community of the people attached
to it, its success has much more to do with the
clarity of a shared vision, common principles, and
strength of belief, than with assets, expertise,
operating ability, or management competence.
How engaged is today's workforce? What percent of employees are actively disengaged? A recent article—“Many Employees Would Fire Their Boss”—in the The Gallup Management Journal (October, 2007) reported on a study that explored engagement levels in a poll of 1,000 employees.
The authors divided employees into three categories: engaged, not engaged, and actively disengaged. Engaged employees feel connected to their work and focus on driving change and innovation within their organization. Not engaged employees put in the time, but not necessarily the energy, into their work. Actively disengaged employees are unhappy workers, who tend to undermine the progress made by their more engaged counterparts.
The study found that
• 26 percent of workers in the United States are engaged
• 56 percent of employees are not engaged
• 18 percent are actively disengaged.
Consider the implications of this finding: With only 26 percent of workers engaged in their jobs and 74 percent not engaged or actively disengaged, there is a huge amount of untapped potential in today's workforce. It also suggests that the most employees are not bringing their best talents to the workplace and may, in reality, be undermining important organizational outcomes.
ASTD, as part of its continuing research into the factors that influence workplace learning, partnered with Dale Carnegie Training to conduct a comprehensive study of engagement. In publishing Learning's Role in Employee Engagement in 2008, ASTD found that organizations that participated in the study saw a clear connection between engagement and a variety of valued organizational outcomes. The most frequently cited reasons for seeking a more engaged workforce included the following:
• enhance customer service and help drive customer satisfaction (83 percent of respondents considered this to be a reason to a high or very high degree)
• improve organizational productivity (81 percent)
• improve the bottom line (75 percent)
• positively affect teamwork and morale (68 percent)
• reduce turnover (64 percent)
• align employees with strategy (64 percent)
• attract new employees (64 percent)
• build a succession pipeline (54 percent).
Beyond these perceived connections between engagement and valued outcomes, ASTD's research found a positive correlation between engagement and market performance. In organizations reporting high market performance, respondents to ASTD's study reported that 42 percent of their workforce was highly engaged, whereas in organizations reporting average performance, only one-third of the workforce was perceived as engaged.
A number of other studies support the connection between engagement and key organizational outcomes:
• Watson Wyatt, in a 2007 study, concluded that an S&P 500 company that significantly raises employee engagement levels is likely to see parallel increases in revenue.
• The Gallup Organization estimates that U.S. workers who are actively disengaged miss 118.3 million more workdays than engaged employees. Disengaged employees also have 33.3 million more sick days than engaged workers do and use seven times as much health care. In terms of lost productivity, Gallup estimates the bottom-line cost of actively disengaged employees at $300 billion for U.S. employers.
• The Corporate Executive Board surveyed 50,000 employees in 59 organizations worldwide exploring the relationship between engagement and organizational outcomes. It found that employees with lower engagement are four times more likely to leave their jobs than those who are highly engaged. Its research also found that moving from a low to a highly engaged workforce can result in a 21 percent increase in performance.
THE DIMENSIONS OF ENGAGEMENT
If leaders want to influence these engagement statistics in their own organizations, they need to understand the various dimensions of engagement and then, based upon knowledge of these dimensions, take a variety of actions to build a fully engaged workforce. So what are the factors that influence the level of someone's engagement in his or her job? What organizational dimensions should leaders focus on developing and maintaining to maximize employee engagement?
It is important to see engagement not as a single characteristic but as a multidimensional construct that results from a variety of factors that influence an individual's engagement levels. While research has found many variables affecting engagement levels, the dimensions that seem to surface repeatedly in engagement studies include the following:
JOB DESIGN/JOB ENRICHMENT
Job design and job enrichment have been organizational engagement strategies for many years. When jobs are designed well—especially to fit employees' talents—employees' capabilities are fully utilized, work is more meaningful, and employees take pride in their work and in their organization. Job design and enrichment involves building jobs around employees' requirements, assets, and abilities and then taking steps to ensure that employees see and feel the value or contribution of their work.
The concepts of job design/job enrichment have been around for generations, starting with the work of J. Richard Hackman and Gary Oldham investigating the affects of job design on workers' thoughts, feelings, and actions. Their job characteristics model, developed in 1976, highlighted the importance of three psychological states on an employee's workplace attitudes and behaviors: experienced meaningfulness of the work, experienced responsibility for work outcomes, and knowledge of the results of the work. Within their model, Hackman and Oldham identified five core job dimensions as most influential in these three psychological states:
• skill variety (the extent to which a job requires a variety of work activities and work skills/ talents)
• task identity (the extent to which a job involves completing a whole piece of work from start to finish)
• task significance (the degree of impact that a job is believed to have on others or the organization as a whole)
• autonomy (the extent to which an employee has the freedom and discretion to plan, schedule, and carry out the job as desired)
• feedback (the extent to which the job allows the employee to receive valid information on the effectiveness of the employee's performance).
Hackman and Oldham's research found that when these five dimensions were present, the three crucial psychological states were more likely to exist and, consequently, the employee tended to have higher internal motivation, greater job satisfaction, lower absenteeism and turnover, and higher quality work performance.
FAIR TREATMENT AND EQUITY
This dimension of engagement involves employees feeling that they are treated fairly in terms of recognition, rewards, and job and career advancement opportunities. In addition, fair treatment and equity involves creating an environment in which employees feel comfortable challenging the status quo, offering suggestions for improvement, and taking the initiative. In an environment that is perceived as fair and equitable, supervisors offer equal opportunities for recognition and rewards and do not play favorites.
The fair treatment and equity dimension is anchored to the research concerning equity theory—in which employees who feel that they are treated fairly by the organization tend to be more motivated to do good work for the organization. When people perceive inequity, however, their motivation suffers. They tend to engage in a variety of behaviors in an attempt to restore equity, such as reducing work efforts, asking for additional outcomes, increasing unsanctioned outcomes (e.g., taking office supplies for personal use), or leaving the organization in pursuit of more equitable treatment.
COMMUNITY
The concept of community involves a surrounding environment that employees find welcoming and supportive. Employees prefer a work environment in which they feel comfortably connected with others. When employees feel that others care about them as individuals, value and recognize their ideas and contributions, and support them when they are challenged or experience setbacks, they are more likely to feel part of a larger community. The feeling of community also is important because employees tend to be more invested in supporting and sustaining the community, which, in turn, provides reciprocal levels of support to its members.
STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT
Employee engagement is important for organizations largely because the resulting level of commitment employees feel toward the organization leads to positive outcomes that are highly valued by the organization. The strategic alignment component of engagement ensures that employee energy and effort are directed at performance results that directly affect the bottom line: high quality outcomes, lower costs, higher productivity, and higher customer satisfaction.
When employees know how their work fits into the larger picture; when the organization's goals and priorities reflect their own; and when they see a direct connection between their daily work and the organization's longer-term strategic goals, there tends to be greater strategic alignment. In addition, with greater strategic alignment, employees are more likely to do the right thing for their customers, for their team/department, and for the organization as a whole.
ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT
Employees tend to display higher levels of engagement in their jobs when they have the skills and knowledge that they need to do their jobs; are given an adequate transition time for learning new tasks; have adequate staffing levels in their work areas to achieve their performance goals; are encouraged to grow and develop professionally; and have access to the resources, tools, technology, and equipment that they need to do their jobs well.
Organizational support also is characterized by a work environment that enables employees to do quality work and achieve their goals while providing opportunities for learning, growth, and development on the job. Working in concert with the community dimension of engagement, the organizational support dimension helps ensure employee efficacy—in which employee efforts translate into valued outcomes.
PERSONAL STRENGTH AND RESILIENCE
Engagement is not just about what the organization can do for individual employees. Full engagement depends upon employee proactivity, job ownership, and resilience in the face of setbacks and failures. When employees feel confident in their own abilities to meet almost any performance challenge, when they feel comfortable with change, when their efforts are driven by a clear purpose or vision, and when they feel responsible for their own success, they are more likely to be engaged in their work.
Whereas the other engagement dimensions are a function of how well the organization has structured the work environment to facilitate full employee engagement, this dimension depends upon employees taking ownership and personal responsibility for their work and for their own success. This dimension is critical to engagement, in that true engagement results from a partnership between the organization meeting its responsibilities to support engagement and individual employees taking full responsibility for their success.
ASSESSING LEVELS OF ENGAGEMENT
After understanding why employee engagement is important and the various factors that influence employee engagement levels, the next stage is to use these insights about engagement and the forces that shape it to assess the relative level of engagement in your organization. Follow these simple steps to determine your organization's engagement levels.
STEP 1: MAKE THE BUSINESS CASE FOR ASSESSING EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Conducting a comprehensive assessment of employee engagement levels requires a focused and time-intensive effort to better understand the key drivers and detractors of engagement in your organization. You will need top-level executive support for this initiative to ensure that your organization not only gathers valid data on engagement levels, but also acts upon the findings. This sustained effort of data collection and action, therefore, requires that you get up-front backing from organizational leaders, managers, and frontline staff. They need to understand the value of engagement, the consequences for not having it, and the actions that they may need to take to help strengthen engagement levels.
Call for an initial meeting with a few mid- and upper-level executives who are likely to be the most supportive of a targeted effort to raise engagement levels. Do your homework and bring statistics to this meeting that reflect the recent research on the effects of active engagement and disengagement levels. Be prepared to demonstrate the bottom line impacts of an engaged workforce and the role that leaders must play in building engagement levels. Referencing the research results identified earlier in this Infoline and in the References and Resources section is a good place to start.
The major focus of your demonstration of the importance of employee engagement, however, should be on the performance metrics that matter most to your executives. Use the research findings cited above to calculate the theoretical positive impact of raising employee engagement levels in your company, such as
• the financial impact of higher engagement on your company's employee turnover rates
• the financial effects of engaged employees on customer satisfaction and the relationship between customer satisfaction and sales levels
• the potential impact of a more engaged workforce on total shareholder return.
At this meeting, develop your “next steps” strategy for selling the engagement assessment and development initiative to those in the executive boardroom. Identify both your allies in this effort and those who may be reluctant to embrace an engagement effort. For those executives who you suspect may lack enthusiasm for strengthening engagement, identify specifically what is in it for them. If possible, develop a one-page summary of the bottom-line impacts of an actively engaged and actively disengaged workforce. The more you can customize this summary to the specific metrics that matter for your organization, the better.
ENGAGEMENT STEERING COMMITTEE
Key stakeholders that should be represented on your steering committee include the following:
• Executive sponsor: someone at the highest level of the organizational hierarchy who is positioned to both acquire the necessary resources and advocate for moving the engagement initiative forward based upon the data.
• Human resource manager: someone who can provide information on key human resource metrics (such as turnover rates, absentee, health care benefits utilization, workplace injuries, and so forth).
• Human resource development/organization development professional: someone who knows and understands the organization's culture and practices and who can guide the connection between engagement and performance outcomes.
• Operations managers: one or more managers who know the work environment and climate of the organization.
• Frontline employee representatives: one or more employees who can represent the perspectives and interests of those most affected by the organization's engagement efforts.
• Union representative: if appropriate, a representative of the union who can represent the union's interests in exploring the impact of engagement on union members.
• Employee assistance professional: someone who knows the impact of low engagement levels on employees and who can help shape constructive responses to the engagement data.
Armed with key mid- and upper-level executive support and organization-specific engagement data, make the case for the engagement assessment and development initiative to the final decision makers. Include why the initiative will benefit the bottom line and possible action strategies that might emerge from the engagement study, such as reviewing hiring and “onboarding” policies and practices; adjusting performance rewards and recognition systems; revitalizing employee and leadership development programs; and strengthening the overall talent management system.
STEP 2: CREATE AN EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT STEERING COMMITTEE
Building or rebuilding engagement levels in your organization will require a comprehensive, thoughtful, and strategic approach. For this reason, once you have the support from the executive leadership, you should pull together a cross-functional employee engagement steering committee. The purpose of this steering committee is to guide the engagement assessment and development process, ensuring that the right issues are explored; that the right people are involved; that data-based action strategies are developed; and that all engagement efforts are sustainable by being deeply integrated into the organization's talent management infrastructure.
After making the business case for enhancing engagement in your organization, creating the steering committee is one of the most important steps in the process. The steering committee will both define the engagement assessment process and become champions for promoting engagement efforts following the assessment. For this reason, selecting the correct members of this committee is crucial to a successful effort. See the sidebar Engagement Steering Committee for a list of people you should consider to be a part of your steering committee.
STEP 3: DESIGN YOUR ENGAGEMENT ASSESSMENT PROCESS AND TOOLS
The first task of the employee engagement steering committee is to determine what processes and tools to use in the engagement assessment. Assessment strategies might involve online employee surveys, interviews with a select number of people at all levels of the organization, and a number of employee and leader focus groups to explore engagement issues within the dynamics of a group. For more information on these tools, see the sidebar Assessment Strategies.
Once you decide on your assessment strategies, you must also ensure that your data collection leads to valid and actionable information. For the quantitative survey, you can enhance the validity of your engagement data, first, by choosing measures that truly measure engagement (versus satisfaction or something else) and, second, by ensuring that your survey data uses a census (100 percent of the employee population) or a random sample from your employee population.
For the qualitative focus groups or interviews, you can enhance the validity of the data by selecting a stratified random sample of participants for the focus groups and interviews. Both the focus groups and interviews need to be conducted by skilled facilitators who are able to guide the individuals or groups through the engagement questions without influencing their answers.
STEP 4: GATHER ENGAGEMENT DATA AND COMPILE THE RESULTS
With your assessment process well defined, the next step is to deploy your assessment strategies and begin collecting your engagement data. As with any assessment process, the purpose of the employee engagement assessment is to drive decision making and action planning by people at all levels of the organization. It is essential that you compile, analyze, and synthesize the results into findings that tell a compelling story about the engagement levels in the entire organization as well as in different groups of respondents.
Some of the questions you want the data to answer include the following:
• What is the overall engagement level in the organization?
• How do the engagement levels in one part of the organization (e.g., operations, union employees, managers, and so forth) compare to engagement levels in other parts of the organization (e.g., administration, non-union employees, customer service representatives, and so forth)?
ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES
Consider using these tools to best assess the current engagement level of your employees:
• Online Surveys. There are a number of standardized employee engagement assessment surveys in the marketplace. Gallup's Q12 and DDI's E3 instruments are perhaps the most well known and researched, but there are other assessment tools available as well—each based upon its own engagement model. Alternatively, your steering committee may choose to design its own tool or to work with an outside consulting firm to develop an assessment tool customized to fit your organization.
• Interviews. While online surveys will give you good quantitative data, what is often lacking is a deeper exploration of the forces and factors shaping engagement levels in the organization. A powerful way to examine these issues is through interviews with a stratified sample of executives, managers, supervisors, and frontline employees. Each interview should discuss each person's engagement level and the key factors that influence his or her own engagement level.
• Focus Groups. Whereas both the online surveys and interviews deal with single data points (one person's survey submitted and an interview conducted with one person), focus groups enable a dynamic and interactive group process to discuss engagement issues. Within the focus group, the forces influencing engagement levels in the organization can be explored in more complex and nuanced ways than simply by checking a box on a survey or answering a question during an interview. Through the interactive process of a group, cultural, social, and behavioral factors can be examined at a far deeper level, and the information gathered offers an opportunity to identify strategies and possible solutions to strengthening engagement.
• Can the relative engagement levels in various departments and work areas be correlated to such organizational outcomes as productivity, quality, turnover, absenteeism, union grievances, high/low customer satisfaction data, and so forth?
• How does this organization's engagement level compare to the engagement levels in other organizations?
Formulating all of these and related questions at the design phase of the process (see Step 3) will help ensure that your data will offer insights into the depth, location, variability, and durability of engagement levels in the organization. Using descriptive statistics and graphical displays of the data, the employee engagement steering committee tells a compelling story about engagement in the organization that is driven by valid information. The goal of a compelling story, in turn, is to guide leaders, managers, supervisors, and frontline employees in formulating strategies for building, rebuilding, or sustaining employee engagement levels.
STEP 5: DEVELOP PRELIMINARY ACTION STRATEGIES
Data without action represents both a lost opportunity and a waste of precious organizational resources. For this reason, it is critical that the “compelling story” from the employee engagement assessment lead to specific action strategies that, in turn, lead to positive engagement outcomes and measurable results. The first level of action planning begins with the steering committee reviewing the assessment data, extracting the “story,” and then developing a preliminary set of strategies to address the engagement issues emerging from the data.
The preliminary action strategies should include, at a minimum, the following components for each engagement issue surfaced by the engagement assessment:
• Engagement issue and its importance. What is the specific engagement issue—identified by the data—that requires some organizational response?
• Desired outcome. If the organization successfully addresses and makes progress on this issue, what is the desired effect or outcome that the organization hopes to achieve?
• Likely causes. Based upon the data, what are the possible causes of this engagement issue? What are the internal and external forces and factors that have contributed or are contributing to this engagement effect?
• Responsibility for taking action. Who, within the organization, should take the lead in helping the organization move forward in addressing this issue?
• Timeframe. This component of the preliminary action plan identifies both a timeline for taking action and an expected “end date” by which the desired outcome will be achieved.
The steering committee should develop a relatively detailed preliminary action plan for each engagement issue that is deemed significant for its impact on the organization as a whole or upon specific areas. The purpose of these preliminary plans is to make the case to the organization's leadership for committing resources toward addressing these issues.
STEP 6: BUILD TOP-LEVEL OWNERSHIP AND SUPPORT
Building executive ownership and support for addressing the engagement issues arising from the assessment depends upon the steering committee making the business case for why committing organizational resources to these issues is important. The steering committee presents the engagement assessment findings, highlights the “story” identified by the data, and presents its preliminary recommendations for action on high value/high importance engagement issues.
Because the committee is asking for a commitment of organizational resources, it needs to both make the connection between employee engagement levels and valued organizational outcomes (such as productivity, customer satisfaction, higher quality, and so forth) and identify critical “next steps” for the organization in building or rebuilding engagement levels. Leaders need to understand and see that focusing on employee engagement offers a good return on investment.
Getting leadership buy-in on building, rebuilding, or sustaining engagement levels is essential if the steering committee wants its action strategies to be implemented. Without top-level support, your engagement effort will be just one more passing fad. Make the business case, tell the story from the assessment data, and present a preliminary action plan that sustains or moves the organization toward higher engagement levels to, in turn, enable it to achieve its high value strategic outcomes.
Of course, leaders alone do not build an engaged workforce. See the sidebar Who Is Responsible for Employee Engagement? for some insights into who has the responsibility for creating and sustaining employee engagement.
STEP 7: FINALIZE AND IMPLEMENT YOUR ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES
With the executive leadership behind your engagement development efforts and an executive sponsor advocating for and protecting engagement development resources, your next step is to finalize the engagement strategies and begin implementation. Finalizing the engagement strategies involves integrating additional feedback and ideas from the executive team and sponsor as well as getting their final “sign-off.”
Once the strategies are approved for implementation, the steering committee publishes the plan under the signature of the top executive or the executive sponsor.
The steering committee's work continues as it tracks progress made, adjusts strategies to meet emerging challenges and setbacks, provides feedback to the executive team, and communicates results to the entire organization.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT?
Here are a few of the key responsibilities of both leaders and frontline employees in contributing to an engaging workplace.
| LEADER AND MANAGER RESPONSIBILITIES | FRONTLINE EMPLOYEE RESPONSIBILITIES |
| • Hire the right people for the right jobs. | • Bring energy and passion to your job. |
| • Communicate company strategy. | • Take responsibility for your own success. |
| • Listen to frontline employees. | • Be proactive in shaping the job around your talents and interests. |
| • Link strategic goals to employee performance goals. | • Ask questions. |
| • Provide feedback on employee performance. | • Pitch in and help others when needed. |
| • Ensure that pay is sufficient, fair, and equitable. | • Take responsibility for your own career development. |
| • Recognize employees' ideas and contributions | • View change as a positive force driving personal and organizational success. |
| • Build people management skills in leaders and managers. | • Be proactive when solving problems and making decisions. |
The road to happiness lies in two simple
principles: find what it is that interests you and
that you can do well, and when you find it, put
your whole soul into it—every bit of energy and
ambition and natural ability you have.
STEP 8: REASSESS ENGAGEMENT LEVELS
The true test of whether or not the engagement strategies have been successful is determined by periodic reassessments of engagement levels. Whether these reassessments target specific departments or work areas, focus on specific engagement dimensions, or involve a repeat of the full assessment methodologies, gathering longitudinal data will be useful to the steering committee in gauging the success of the strategies.
Based upon what is learned when reassessing the organization's engagement levels, additional actions and strategies can be initiated as needed.
STRENGTHENING ENGAGEMENT
While strengthening employee engagement hinges upon which engagement dimensions are underdeveloped in your organization, there are some generic strategies that organizations can adopt to grow engagement. A few of these strategies are
• Hire the right people and place them in the right jobs. Jim Collins, author of the best-seller Good to Great, suggests that to become great, an organization must get the right people on the bus and in the right seats. Hiring for the right talent and temperament both helps the organization become great and ensures that people are in jobs that align with their personal goals and passions. This, in turn, increases the likelihood that they will be engaged in their work.
• Build the people management skills of managers and supervisors. Supervisors and managers who are unable to focus and reinforce the talent and passions of their direct reports significantly undermine engagement levels. When employees do not know what is expected of them, do not receive constructive and timely feedback on their performance, do not understand where their work fits into the larger context, and do not feel that their ideas and suggestions are listened to or respected, they are less likely to feel engaged in their work.
• Ensure that recognition and reward systems are fair and equitable. When people believe that the reward system is unequal in its distribution of who wins and who loses, engagement suffers. Organizations that take engagement seriously ensure that there is fairness and equity in the way that good performance is rewarded and that poor performance leads to fewer rewards.
• Hold people accountable. When people feel held accountable for their performance, they tend to take their work more seriously. When performance matters to the organization, people tend to be more engaged. Furthermore, without good systems in place to hold people accountable, the lack of accountability can lead to perceived inequity in the distribution of rewards.
• Build a culture of personal responsibility. People who are engaged in their work tend to believe that they are responsible for their own success. Creating a sense of personal efficacy is crucial to a fully engaged workforce: When people take responsibility for being connected to and rewarded through their work, they tend to feel more engaged. In contrast, people tend to be actively disengaged when they feel victimized by the organization, helpless in the face of adversity and performance setbacks, bored when performing everyday tasks, and powerless to change the circumstances of their jobs.
(In his book The Corporate Culture Survival Guide, Edgar Schein offers insights and strategies for understanding and influencing your organization's culture.)
• Provide a strategic framework for people's work. When employees know the context and overarching purpose of their work, they tend to approach their work with a clearer sense of purpose and meaning. In landmark research on the effects of organizational strategy on employee performance, Sears discovered that employees had more positive attitudes toward the company the more that they understood the business strategy, the connection between their individual work and the company's strategic objectives, the future direction of the company, and whether the company was making the changes needed to compete effectively. These positive attitudes toward the company—what we would call a key aspect of engagement—translated into positive employee behavior. The Sears researchers concluded that “an employee's ability to see the connection between his or her work and the company's strategic objectives was a driver of positive behavior” (Rucci, Kim, and Quinn, Harvard Business Review, p. 90).
• Provide people the tools, resources, and training that they need to do their jobs well. While it seems like stating the patently obvious, when people have the resources, tools, skills, and information that they need to do their jobs, they are more likely be engaged in their work. When employees are supported in achieving their performance goals, they are more likely to bring enthusiasm, commitment, and passion to their work. While the absence of this supportive infrastructure doesn't preclude engagement (some people are able to be engaged in their jobs regardless of their work environment), it certainly makes engagement harder to attain.
• Facilitate employee participation and involvement. The research on goal theory conducted by Edwin Locke, Gary Latham, and Miriam Eriz suggests that people tend to have a higher level of commitment to a goal when they participate in setting that goal. The implications of this are that when employees participate in making decisions that affect their work or are involved in designing their work tasks, they are more likely to have a commitment to the decisions and tasks. In addition, engagement efforts will be enhanced when managers and supervisors are trained on how to involve employees in goal setting, job design, and critical decision making.
• Strengthen employee resilience. Resilience is important to engagement in that people who are resilient are more able to deal with adversity, obstacles, and failures. Engaged employees tend to see failures not as fatal flaws but as temporary setbacks on the road to positive results. Resilient people learn from these challenges and integrate the lessons learned into their future thinking, decision making, and actions.
Organizations can influence employee resilience by creating a supportive environment where learning is encouraged, bringing people together to create a sense of community and encouraging employees to find their own path to performance and success.
TAKING THE NEXT STEPS
Engagement is something that no organization can take for granted. Whereas some people easily become and stay fully engaged with their work, others find it difficult to do so. Organizations that benefit most from employee engagement take steps to assess the level of employee engagement and then develop strategies to address potential engagement vulnerabilities.
Your next steps are to assess your own engagement level (see the Job Aid at the end of this issue), make the personal and professional adjustments you need to make to enhance your engagement, and then focus on your role in leading an engagement initiative in your organization. If you make the business case for why employee engagement is essential to your organization's long-term success, you will find that people in leadership roles and in the boardroom will be ready to listen and respond. The bottom-line results of employee engagement are reason enough to get your leadership engaged in this journey.