Ideas for Ongoing Engagement Focus

[Marilyn Leccese]

I've just discovered this great resource and all of you. I look forward to sharing and learning many new things re: employee engagment.

I also have a question and hope this is an appropriate place to be asking.

Our organization conducts and employee engagement survey annually. And, many of the managers and employees see "engagement" as the survey. I've been given the responsibility to help people (most specifically managers) think about engagement as a "state of being" (my words) -- that everything they do every day impacts employee engagement. And, the survey is one data point to measure how things are going.

I am looking for any ideas you have that might help me accomplish this goal.

Thanks much !

[Phil Haussler]

Hi Marilyn. You’ve just hit on one of the most common questions we get from our clients. “This is a great snapshot of engagement RIGHT NOW. But how do I make this real for my managers so they can build engagement throughout the year?”

We just released an online action-planning tool called TeamPlan. It slices the survey results into each manager’s area of responsibility and helps each manager identify the drivers most correlated with overall engagement – with analysis focused on their own team. Based on the items the manager decides to build into her action plan, TeamPlan suggests tactical steps she can take to build engagement and additional resources if she wants to explore further. The user can modify the suggested action items/resources, add her own, and track her progress against the plan throughout the year.

The goal is to make it easy to share the survey results across the organization and help managers build an action plan – without overwhelming them with data. Tough to describe with text so I’ll include a snapshot; it’s much simpler to absorb when you see it. I’d be happy to give you a sneak-peak under the hood.

Welcome to the network and best of luck!

[Derek Irvine]

This is not an uncommon struggle, Marilyn. A good definition of employee engagement is from the International School of Human Capital Management (London), which I paraphrase as: an output-based concept describing how aligned and committed employees are to the company, such that they are at their most productive.

So you are exactly right -- it is a state of being. You are following the right path in educating your managers. But I also believe it is very important to help employees become "aligned and committed" to the company. One of the easiest and most effective ways to do that is through your company values. Unfortunately, if a company has spent the time, effort and money to develop a concise list of values, they often reside on a plaque on the wall. Many employees couldn't recite them if forced -- and yet these are what senior management have defined as the defining elements of who and what the company is and wants to become.

We've found that the best way to instill the values in the minds of the employees so that they understand them and begin to change their daily behaviors to align with them is to recognize the employee frequently and appropriately every time he or she does something that exemplifies a value. We believe this is one factor that raises an employee recognition program from its usual tactical level to being truly strategic.

I've blogged about this elsewhere. Feel free to check those posts out at: http://globoforce.blogspot.com/2008/03/common-mistake-4-rewarded-ac....

Good luck!

[Marilyn Leccese]

Hello Derek,
Thank you for your thoughts. One thing I've discovered with your reponse and others I've received is that we are doing some things well.

Many years ago our organization identified and defined our corporate values and they are alive and well today. Our employees know them (more than reading them off the wall poster), we interview for them and our coporate recognition is build around them.

In addition, we do expect that managers work with their team in developing an action plan focused on their level of engagement. In some areas of the business, it is successful. In other areas, not as much.

The thing that I am really trying to help the managers understand is that their relationship with their employees, how they dialogue with them, how they respond to them, how they involve them in decisions, how they encourage and support their development, etc. all impacts employee engagement. That is what I am calling the manager's state of being.

As I said, I am encouraged by the responses and that we are doing some things well. My challenge is helping managers get to the next level.

Thanks for your all your thoughts -- and I look forward to the continued discussion and sharing.

[Derek Irvine]

I congratulate you, Marilyn. You and your organization are much more advanced than many large companies we speak with. You clearly have the proper ambition for the power of strategic recognition and have put it to work for you to the benefit of your company.

To address your concern with helping managers involve employees in decision making, communicate with them, etc., we recently hosted a webinar with John Smythe, author of the book The CEO: Chief Engagement Officer -- Turning Hierarchy Upside Down to Drive Performance. In the webinar (and the book, of course), John describes how to better engage employees by appropriately sharing power with them in the decision making process for company strategy and change management. He also discusses communication techniques to move away from "talking at" employees to "talking with" them and ultimately, "engaging employees."

I blogged more about this on my own site. I encourage you to check out the book as well as I think it may give you some good tips in the areas where you are specifically seeking guidance.

[Jean Douglas]

Hi Marilyn,
I've just spent a week with a client management team as they worked on their three year business plan. One of the components they wished to include was a plan around 'improving employee engagement' (i.e., the "score"). My goal was to a) help them understand their engagement survey results (which was what they hired me for) and, more importantly, b) help them see and understand that engagement isn't just a score nor a standalone activity, but something that should be integrated with the business planning process. I was very fortunate in that they allowed me to attend the full week of business planning (I volunteered most of my time so I could really get to know these folks) which gave me first-hand knowledge of the strategies and goals they were working with and toward. The fabulous thing was that I could demonstrate - in the moment - how the business goals aligned with employee engagement (for example, improving work flow processes was identified as a key area to better meet the customer's needs and just happened to be one of the top three drivers of employee engagement). It took me most of the week to get the the management team to see how they could accomplish their goal of improving employee engagement by integrating the employee information (i.e., survey results) and business planning, and continuing that integration into the communication planning as well. But it was time well spent on my part. They left feeling so much more positive about improving engagement now that they could really see the connection to the business. Side note: they knew all the right stuff about engagement - communication, recognition, line-of sight with the business goals, etc., but it didn't really come alive for them as it did when I was able to interject at key points to highlight, remind, point out how engagement fit into the business plan thinking.
I'm not sure if I have explained this very well. Let me know if I need to expand on anything - or clarify what I have said.

[Carol Wain]

Jean.... how amazing that you were in the thick of things to be able to do this. Kudos to you... too often, we consultants/providers can't/don't manage to get the insight that you were able to. .... And you've proven that being in the strategy sessions it is really important to have someone speak up for EE at every stage of the game.

[Terrence Seamon]

This reminds me of the old TQM days, when employees (at one company where I worked) saw "Quality" as the quality survey, rather than seeing it as their job. A lot of time and effort went into getting people to think of and see Quality as a "state of being." The quality survey was a measuring stick, a means to the end.

Terry