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

[Jeannette Paladino]

David, Olaug, Jen and Craig -- I'm glad to have started the discussion about the role of social media in employee engagement. The genie is out of the bottle -- there is no turning back. Employees are forming their own communities on social media networks and management needs to be part of the discussion. These communities are a great way for companies to learn what their employees are talking about -- their fears, their gripes, what they like about what the company is doing, what could be done better. Management should actively solicit feedback from these employee communities. There is no sense in fearing what employees might say on social media -- they are already out there having conversations. I truly believe employees want to be engaged with the company. They want to included in in decisions that impact how they do their jobs -- because they want to do their jobs better. Employee engagement isn't about making employees happy -- that will be a byproduct of ensuring that employees are given the tools to do their jobs, they know what the company's goals are they feel they are valued for what they contribute to the company's success.

[David Bowles]

Ollie there was some new data out of the UK this weekend, from the Observer, which might enlighten us on this topic.

Here is the link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/aug/22/employee-engagement-res...

and here is a quote:

"Our research is encouraging in that it suggests large companies are making more of an effort to engage: nearly 70% conduct regular surveys and the proportion of those carrying out a poll at least annually has risen from 34% to 41% in the past year. Lloyds Banking Group, British Airways, BT and J Sainsbury all conduct quarterly surveys. However, only 25% of companies publish data allowing the outside world to compare how they are doing from one year to the next – which raises questions over how willing they are to be open about possible adverse findings. More companies are giving examples of how they engage with staff in their annual report, with 40% of the FTSE 100 doing so this year, compared with 29% in 2009

interesting eh?

best to you

David
www.moraleatwork.com

[Olaug Nørsterud Gardener]

That is exactly the kind of thing I was after!! Thank you ever so much :)
Very interesting indeed!

You could argue that the question to give examples of how they engage with staff, could get a higher rating - not just because more companies are doing engaging stuff - but because they link what they do already with the term "engagement". But I would like to think it was mainly the former reason :)

They have also very neatly described what I was trying to get across earlier in this discussion:
"Having procedures in place to engage with staff and to report on the results is not the same as having a genuinely good workplace culture. Surveys of staff or "back to the floor" exercises by senior executives are no substitute for treating employees fairly and with dignity and paying them well [...]

What makes a good employer from the point of view of a worker is to a large extent subjective as each individual has their own career aims, work-life balance issues and personal priorities. And companies with no explicit employee engagement schemes might nonetheless be excellent places to work because good relations with staff are part of their whole ethos.
LOVE IT!

but then they manage to continue with this sentence;
In some businesses, such as investment banking or software development, where staff are highly paid and can easily find alternative employment, there is an argument that employee engagement exercises are unnecessary.

The what?? So if employee are more likely to leave if they don't get engaged, we should give up on it.
"It" being
* getting them most value from our employees while they are with us
* creating a positive, supportive, productive and innovative corporate culture
* building our employer brand (so that when they leave, others will come)
* upping the chance that ex-empoyees come back with an increased network within the industry, valuable experiences and learning to pass back into the company.

That's like saying:
If I'm in a place where lots of girls are hitting on my boyfriend, my best strategy is to stop being nice to him?!!!

hmmm..
Am I missing something here??

Surely it would be the other way around - in the industries and markets where employees have limited employment options that employers might (mistakenly, but more understandably) argue that engagement exercises are unnecessary?
:)
Ollie

[David Bowles]

Ollie agree 100% and love the boyfriend example! As we have recently seen, high pay is not enough: maybe if Goldman Sachs' had a culture which supported ethics as well as all the other good stuff, they might not have had so many problems, severely tarnished their brand and wiped tens of billions of value off their market capitalization? Dog eat dog, lying to customers, it will work for a while but then comes back to, er, bite you.... :-)

By the way our Observer/Guardian writer, having done a good job with the article, blew it when she said something I vehemently disagree with, at the end of her piece:

But the jury is out on whether those companies that take engagement seriously will perform better.

Say what?????? The jury came back with a resounding conviction on that one! There is so much great data on that, that I was able to write a whole book on it! Where do these people come up with such things?

best to you

David
www.moraleatwork.com