Making Employee Engagement a Focus

Organizations used to focus on improving on employee satisfaction. It was conventional wisdom that satisfied employees would do a better job, serve customers better, and the effect will be felt on the bottom line. While this seems to make sense intuitively, results don't bear this out. Numerous studies have shown that there is a very poor correlation between employee satisfaction and bottom line results (see "Shattering the Myths of Customer Loyalty"). Sometimes the connection is there, but just as often, it isn't.

Why is the connection sometimes missing? Explaining this, one industry commentator cited a worst-case scenario depicting an employee who is lazy and unmotivated: the employee always does the bare minimum or less, and the quality of his or her work is less than adequate, yet somehow no one ever takes this employee to task. This employee could very well be highly satisfied with their work situation, but they are probably not pulling their weight in improving the bottom line.

Recognizing this, executive leaders and human resources departments alike have begun to shift their attention from mere satisfaction to employee engagement. An employee who is truly engaged with their work is more likely to recommend the products and services to others, to stay with the organization longer and of course, to be more productive. A person who feels attracted to a challenge they have been presented with, who is confident that their knowledge and skills are highly relevant to addressing that challenge, and who is curious to discover the solution, is more likely to pursue that challenge and be resourceful overcoming obstacles. Add to this, the person feeling a sense of receiving rewards and recognition, both from within and from others in the pursuit and the successful achievement of the objective is much more likely to be a person who is fully engaged in their work (see "How to Set Your Staff On Fire: Investing in Employee Relationship Management for Business Innovation"). The aim of leadership and HR professionals ought to be to inspire engagement, and let satisfaction be the natural by-product.

24 Factors for Higher Employee Engagement

This evolution in thinking presents a number of challenges for leaders and HR professionals, the first of which is determining what contributes to higher engagement. Here is a list of 24 contributing factors:

1. Understanding of corporate goals/mission
2. Understanding of job and how it contributes to overall corporate goals
3. Clear communication of goals, expectations, directions
4. Job design
5. Job fit
6. Support and tools
7. Independence & innovation
8. Relationship with boss/direct reports
9. Clear feedback on performance
10. Recognition
11. Fair compensation
12. Learning and development opportunities
13. Opportunities for advancement
14. Leadership practices
15. Confidence in senior leadership
16. Pride in organization/quality of product or service provided
17. Employee input
18. Employee involvement in decision making
19. Work-life balance
20. Workplace culture/morale
21. Co-worker relationships/good team environment (enjoy colleagues)
22. Orientation/on-boarding
23. Safety and well-being
24. Fair HR practices

All of these factors are equally important, but you don't need to address them all. Every organization is unique, and what might be the most important factor for engagement in one organization may differ from another organization with different dynamics and different needs. And organizations change: what might be critical during one period may change when new circumstances develop.

Do all criteria apply to all employees? No, different factors have different effects on different people. Ideally, the strategy of the HR professional is to set priorities and focus on each successive priority:

1. Is securing high engagement among certain categories of employees more important now than among other groups?
2. Using something equivalent to the 80/20 rule, is it possible to identify the dozen or so dimensions that are most effective in increasing the engagement of these groups of employees?
3. What tools are available for addressing each of these dimensions? Is it a matter of training? Is it a cultural modification process? Is it a process redesign? Is it simply a matter of providing information?
4. When and how could you measure engagement? You can only manage what you can measure.

Fortunately, there are a number of tools and techniques to address each of the four points. Let's take them one at a time.

1. Prioritizing Groups or Categories of Employees

   For some, this will be a highly controversial idea. Some people will feel that it is not right for the organization to focus on some employees more than others--or focus on some before others. Whether this is fair or not, it is in fact how all organizations operate. While all categories of employees contribute and the organization could not function properly without them, the contributions of some employees are far more effectual at different points in time than the contributions of others..

   For example, suppose you face a competitive challenge that necessitates that, above all, you grow rapidly. Nothing else is more important. It could be argued that at that particular point in time, you need your sales force--the front-line customer-facing people--to be very engaged, so they are going "the extra mile," and staying with your company so you retain their intellectual capital. At this same point in time, you also need employees in the warehouse to feel good about their work, resolve process problems, and to go the extra mile, but it won't be affect the bottom line as quickly. Engaging the folks in the warehouse is less effective--at this point in time--than that of the folks on the sales team.

   We are not advocating that some categories be ignored. No doubt, we've all heard stories about companies that always prioritize their sales force and leave the support groups such as the folks in the warehouse feeling underappreciated or undervalued. We regard this rigidity as a mistake. What we are saying is that, depending upon your circumstances, it is sometimes prudent to pay more attention to some--or to pay it sooner--than it is to pay attention to others because of the business challenges facing the organization.

   Selecting which categories should be prioritized requires the involvement of senior management, and will require that you bring to bear your skills in the area of diplomacy. Of course, no formal announcement that certain groups have been prioritized needs to be made. Employees don't generally need formal announcements to realize this--hence the need for your diplomatic skills.

   Even if this idea offends your sense of fairness, consider this: most large-scale programs that flounder run into trouble simply because most organizations have difficulty concentrating on and sustaining too many objectives at any one time. Better to succeed at a few things first and then move on to second and third priorities than to fail to have a positive impact on anyone.

2. Identifying the Employee Engagement Factors

   In the late `90s, dotcom companies were making money hand over fist, and employees were flocking to them. The dotcoms were doing a number of things well--from free coffee to stock options, from foosball tables in cafeterias to free laptops, and, of course, meaningful work. Another company could run out and buy a bunch of foosball tables in hopes of increasing engagement by emulating the dotcoms, only to find engagement does not go up, It would just be just trial and error. Instead, it's prudent to determine which factors will shift engagement.

   Employee surveys are conducted in many circumstances. Most likely, you already have some of these in place in your organization:

   • Employee Opinion Surveys
   • Employee Survey on Customer Care
   • Internal Customer Satisfaction
   • Expatriate Surveys
   • Leadership Surveys
   • Climate Goal Surveys or Pulse Checks
   • Merger & Acquisition Services
   • Employee Development Survey
   • Employee Engagement Survey
   • Exit Surveys
   • Message Testing & Recruitment

   A good research partner would be able to devise techniques that will help you determine how to measure engagement on each of the 24 employee engagement factors and help you narrow down the choices that are likely to make the most difference for your culture using a version of the 80/20 rule: to explain 80% of your target employee group's engagement, you need to identify only three or four dimensions to concentrate on. If you can't narrow your focus to three or four engagement factors, we'd suggest you get another research partner, because if you can't focus, you make your task exponentially more difficult (and longer).

3. Employee Engagement Programs

   This is where the organization's leaders will depend upon the skills and expertise of their HR professionals. Having narrowed the task to three or four levers that will meaningfully improve engagement among the target group of employees, identifying the programs, guiding the implementation, and sustaining key changes will require special insight and expertise. Having narrowed the task down, the opportunity to create inspired recommendations will be vastly enhanced.

4. Measuring the Impact of Employee Engagement

   Don't forget to measure the impact of your employee engagement program, before and after. Or, if the program is lengthy, do a before, middle, and after set of measurements so you can manage the process and calibrate your focus. Having gone to all the trouble of refining your efforts, make sure you have enough feedback to understand the impact as you work your magic and progress toward the desired goal.

   These tools and techniques both help make employee engagement the focus, and help focus your employee engagement efforts. A successful program will not only inspire employee engagement, but also create employee satisfaction--and bottom-line results that impact shareholder satisfaction too!