Assessing employee engagement from afar

[Jeffrey Cherry]

Hi all:
I'm working for an investment management firm and our thesis is that companies who engage all of their stakeholders as opposed to overemphasizing shareholders are poised to outperform in the future. One thing we've been struggling with is how do we understand, as outside potential investors, not inside consultants, if a company has highly engaged employees. Does anyone have any ideas about how we could gather this type of information or ideas about proxies we could use to determine employee engagement? Any help will be returned ten-fold!! This is a big issue for me. Thanks in advance.

Jeff

[salvatore rasa]

Hello Jeff,

Specific recommendations for tools, organizations and methodologies for this kind of "outside" look would require some more conversation. But, they exist.

However, as an overall attitude, I believe that The Network Is The Value and People Define The Network.

In other words, to accomplish what I am can only presume at this point you wish to achieve, I am suggesting a very different look at conventional terms like employee engagement. Our connecting
on this very network is an example of the natural drive towards different inclusion, potential new measurements and dynamic community/organization driven results.

Just as a thought lever, transpose the idea of Employee Engagement to Community Engagement for a moment.

For me, It's a constant need to realize where paternalistic activities still reside in our seemingly most progressive companies. This is not a criticism but rather, an observation on just how fundamental a change is required to understand today's diverse work place.

Employees come and go in formal and informal teams as needed. The traditional org construct may be misleading in our current environment. We all need to learn how to hear and not just see how people are working.

Great question you have posed.

Sal Rasa

[Carol Wain]

Hello Jeff
You might find what you are looking for in "research" and "white papers" at http://www.performanceforum.org Also, please find attached some files from the Forum.

I was at the Recognition Professionals International conference in April and one of the speakers was talking about the stock value of companies with high employee engagement scores. I went to his site www.contentedcows.com and bought his books (although I haven't yet opened them!).

Hopefully this will help steer you (pun intended) in the right direction. Cheers, Carol

[Jeffrey Cherry]

Carol:
Thanks for your input. This is great stuff. I actually have a plan to contact the folks at the Forum to see if they can add some insight or capabilities to this issue. Thank you so much for the attachments as well. I'll get to them today and give you my impressions.

Best!
Jeff

[Stephen J. Gill]

Jeff-
I have found the Success Case Method of evaluating performance interventions to be quite useful. In the situation you described, the method would involve: first, defining what is meant by "engagement" in a particular company; then conducting a very short survey to identify employees who report high levels of engagement; and then interviewing a small number of those employees to find out how and why they are engaged. What you have as a result of this kind of study is an understanding of how many employees are engaged, in what ways they are engaged, why they are engaged, and what promotes and what gets in the way of greater engagement.

Engagement proxies that you might consider are employee retention, indicators of employee productivity, demand for jobs at the company, sick days used, and employee generated social events. The proxies you use all depend on how you define employee engagement.

[Jeffrey Cherry]

Hi Stephen:

I know this is a long lag time for a response but I was just going back over some of my content on the issue of measuring employee engagement from afar and re-read your comments. The problem with the Success Case Method you outlined is that we are attempting to evaluate 100s of companies and have very little if any access to the employees of those companies. We've thought about the proxy route but found any single one of them to be inadequate indicators of engagement, no matter your definition. What I DO like about what you've said is the idea of using multiple proxies. If Job demand is high, productivity is high, turnover is low and sick days are being left on the table...isn't it likely that you have engaged employees again, no matter the definition? Our particular definition revolves around the idea of discretionary effort, and willingness to provide such.

Can you think of any other proxies that I might add to the mix?

[Jean Douglas, CMC]

I am not sure about other countries, but in Canada, some companies are including their engagement scores in their annual reports. Some organizations include engagement in the balance scorecard.
You might also google best employers/best companies to see if there are lists in the country you are interested in.
Jean

[Jeffrey Cherry]

Hi jean:

Thanks for the response. We are using the outcomes based lists (best companies to work for..etc.) but later on in our research we are looking for a deeper dive to understand engagement and discretionary effort. I think you're right though, the GRI and sustainability reports are a good source for engagement scores!

Thanks
JC