What percentage of companies care about employee engagement?

[Olaug Nørsterud Gardener]

Hi all, 

I have been trying to find some statistics on the "trend and development" of employee engagement itself. 

What is the percentage of companies that consider employee engagement to be an important issue, that hire EE professionals or run EE initiatives?

What is the considered importance of employee engagement for the future. Personally, I am particularly interested in its impact on companies approach professional and organizational development. 

I can find vague statement, like that the market of employee engagement consultancy is growing, - but nothing more concrete. 

Any tips or reference material you can provide on this would be greatly appreciated!!!

Ollie

[Craig Althof]

Dr. Square Wheels Scott is the "Stats and Factoids" guru, heopefully he and others will check in on this. I have one tidbit to offer:

Right Management is the professional talent branch of employment services giant Manpower. They conducted a survey of senior leaders the winter of 2009 to identify top strategies to counter the growing economic crisis. Wish I had more details on the sample size and demographic, but the results are interesting nonetheless.

Two strategies garnered nearly 3/4 of the top spot. 51% indicated their top leadership priority was "engaging employees to ensure organizational alignment and commitment". The second highest "vote getter" was "clearly defining roles and expectations (21%).

The Right Mgmt press release

[Olaug Nørsterud Gardener]

Brilliant thanks ;)

51% - Engaging employees to ensure organizational alignment and commitment
21% - Clearly defining roles and expectations
13% - Making efficient and informed personnel decisions
15% - Developing current skill base and capabilities within organization

I am a bit sad to see "employee development" on forth place..
In an ideal world - an engaged employee with continuous opportunities for learning and development would take more initiative and find/expand upon their own role to maximize their ability to contribute to the organization.
I dont want to knock the importance of clearly defining roles and expectations, but overdoing it or doing it in the wrong way could undermine both employee engagement, development and ultimately the company's profitability.

But I guess it takes a particular type of employee - one that you would surely want to keep mind!!

Thanks Craig ;)
Ollie

[Craig Althof]

Good Morning / Evening Ollie:

Here again is the issue with surveys. You have to wonder about the semantics and definitions respondents were working with. Were they using an operational definition of "engagement"? If so, what was it? If not, how meaningful is that 51%?

To me, "clearly defined roles and expectations" is a critical to-do, but as you noted it must be done in the right way. Providing a clear line of sight to the top vision / mission / strategy is a good thing, command and control and micromanagement is not!

I would have also been a bit upset about the low importance given to employee development. However, "developing current skill base and capabilities" was the wording, meaning maintenance and ensuring competency levels are adequate. They better be already!

"Opportunities to learn and grow" which is to me the true role of "employee development" has been identified as critical to engagement. I know that is toward the top of my personal list! But we don't know if the respondents were including that in their 51% responses for engagement being #1.

Again, I hate to rant about it but surveys and stats can be misleading and meaningless without clear definition and understanding what the questions are really asking and what the numbers really mean. A tiny dose of good old leadership intuition would be appropriate now and then!

Too much thinking too early-more coffee!

[Anil Saxena]

Ollie,

We (the Coffman Organization) did a study just this year regarding employee engagement. Here is what we found:

At work, have you participated in an employee satisfaction or employee engagement survey?
NO = 35% YES = 65%

Did you see the survey result in extremely positive changes?
NO = 73% YES = 27%

Do you feel your leaders are really committed to building a great work environment?
NO = 63% YES = 37%

The issue is not that companies are not working on surveying to find out the level of engagement. It is what they do with that data to impact the organization's success that is not done well. Organizations see the value of engagement (see Craig's awesome comment), but aren't reaping its benefits...

[Gary Cattermole]

Hi Anil,

What's interesting here is that many organisations do implement positive changes as a result of engagement surveys. In fact, in our experience nearly all organisations undertaking an engagement style survey do implement positive change.

However, where organisations do come unstuck is that they do not communicate that the changes they make or remedial work undertaken is as a direct consequence of the survey feedback. Therefore, when asked a question such as 'Did you see the survey result in extremely positive changes?' a lot of employees 'perceive' that no change has happened, when in actual fact it has and it's been incredibly positive.

Many organisations forget the ongoing communication involved in conducting surveys of this nature - it isn't a single hit over a two or three month period - all actions as a result of the survey should constantly be communicated to employees and employees themselves should be involved in that action planning and implementation process.

Gary.

[Olaug Nørsterud Gardener]

So there are three types? Lies, damned lies, and statistics?! :D

Surveys can give an cooperation a good starting point in acting on the right things in the right way to improve engagement. Personally, I would think a much more effective strategy would be to take the time to "engage" with their employees - communicate (as in two way), listen and understand the motivations, preferences and concerns of the people they work with. In this regard, I cannot think of a less "engaged" communication style than a survey!!

Maybe employee engagement is the wrong term? Most definitions focus on the employees feelings towards their job and their loyalty towards their employer. Being focused on the wished-for end result, it seems more like categorization of the ideal employee.
Couldn't this easily lead to a dismissal of responsibility?! A temptation to count the number of engaged employees instead of taking a walk to see them face to face, listening to what they are telling us and taking action on their suggestions and encouraging their initiative?

A survey without follow-up actions are just another example of one way communication - and whatever its title it surely had nothing to do with engagement!

I wish there was further focus on the engagement leadership style and the internal conditions from which engagement can grow. Maybe the definition should be more along the lines of "the employer's engagement with and commitment towards their employees".
I think it would be a lot more interesting to survey the underlying values of company leaders on this front.
Where do they place the emphasis? On "Engaging employees" or "ensuring organizational alignment and commitment"? How do we find the balance, and not simply a way to exploit the one in order to pursue the other?

To be a truly engaged organization - I believe leaders need to place the question about engagement on its head. If they did I am confident that the percentage of employees feeling that their leaders are committed to building a great work environment would be higher than 37% !

Thanks for your views and statistics!!
Ollie

[David Bowles]

Ollie, a survey is not a "communication style", its a measurement device. Communication happens before, during and especially after good surveys. To conduct a survey, and not commuicate the whole time, is to be at minus 50 when one could have stayed at zero and been better off!

CEOs demand surveys when they want to know "how are our people doing". Surveys are only part of an integrated engagement strategy, but they are a critical part. It is foolish to start out on an engagement process without knowing from where you start (or, later, if you ever got there). Try doing that when going on a road trip!

Anil, I am amazed you got 27% positive for a question which asked if "extremely" positive changes happened as a result of a survey. I think that is a great result. What if you had just asked if positive changes had happened? Might have been 70-80% dont you think?

best, David
www.moraleatwork.com

[Anil Saxena]

David
It might have altered the results. What we have found though is that people have a tendency to feel like extremely positive impacts them as an individual. An increase in pay can be positive, but still not have someone be engaged...

[Gary Cattermole]

My understanding is that, in terms of employee engagement' pay can often rank much lower on the drivers of engagement. The caveat being where large proportions of employees are on or near minimum wage.

Gary.

[Anil Saxena]

You are absolutely correct. Pay is a lagging indicator of engagement.

[Olaug Nørsterud Gardener]

I dont disagree with you David, we use surveys first and foremost as a measurement device - but it would be foolish not to think that doing a survey doesn't communicate! Not to mention what we do or don't do as a result of it.
All I am advocating is that surveys should come in addition to regular face to face interaction with a genuine interest to engage with the individual employee.
I seen too many companies where the only time employees can give feedback to their employer is in a satisfaction survey... That in itself communicates!! I just wished that the first port of call when these CEOs want to know "how are people are doing" for the first time is not to send out a survey..

As a said, I think surveys are a great starting point when working towards improved engagement - not least to know where you stand.. However, if you haven't already got a healthy dialogue with your employees, I doubt you would ask the right questions, understand how to interpret their answers and/or know what to do to improve the situation.

Quoting Anil: "The issue is not that companies are not working on surveying to find out the level of engagement. It is what they do with that data to impact the organization's success that is not done well".

To understand the result of a survey and know how to deal with that well you have a great understanding of the corporate culture and the people building it. You will not get this from a survey. But you might have a half decent chance if you take the time to converse and engage in personal communication...
If you are genuinely interested in what people have to say it is amazing how people will open up to you. And personally I believe the richness of the data and your understanding of what needs to be done to improve engagement will be that much greater if you do that - than if you are content with sending out a survey.

Shall we agree on "Yes, please both"?
I honestly do believe surveys are both valuable and important - but everything in its place ;)

Ollie

[David Bowles]

Ollie of course we can agree on Yes, please both! I would never advocate otherwise, and have argued here at EEN about not making a binary world of either...or. As far as regular face to face communication, that's what managers are meant to be doing every day, and HR people, basically everyone has that responsibility. Parachuting in with a survey, that was never what I recommended and in fact would never have agreed to.

Look the issue here is, how good is day to day communication, or even more structured formats like focus groups at getting to the truth of how people really feel and what is going on? I've given this some thought and set it out verbally and graphically here. In some areas perhaps very good, in others probably terrible. And at what level and how are all these conversations aggregated? Also, some people don't know what's really going on, even if you talk to them; this includes CEOs! One, in a very big defense company, told me how decentralized they were; I went to a subsidiary the next day in another state and mentioned what he had said. They laughed and said "we cant even buy paper clips here without asking him for permission".

This is why I have to clearly disagree with you that conversations are the only way to find out about the culture. Good surveys are designed to do exactly that! They weren't designed in a vacuum, but based on a lot of talking and group sessions, etc. But to me nothing shows up the real culture (not the one touted in Annual Reports and fancy videos...or by the CEO in interviews....) like a well run survey. Time and again I have found that the stated values of the organization are just that: stated but not lived (e.g. "we put people first").

Where we do agree strongly is that a good survey must go beyond these simple engagement questions. I never ran a survey with 12 questions and never will. We had/have many questions on leaderships style, values, etc. I think all surveys should.

For all these reasons, this is why a company which is very open with its people, Google, not only talks constantly but also surveys constantly....with 100+ question surveys too. They probably (and smartly) don't even see an artificial line between talking and surveying. I don't think anyone here could credibly argue that they are not an "engaged" organization. Isn't that a great example of "Yes, please both" that we both agree on?

best to you

David
www.moraleatwork.com