EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT DEFINITION
Employee engagement is the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs, are committed to the organization, and put discretionary effort into their work.
Employee engagement is not the same as employee satisfaction
Employee Satisfaction is defined by how happy or content your employees are. It does not address their level of motivation, involvement, or emotional commitment. For some employees, being satisfied means collecting a paycheck while doing as little work as possible.
Employee Engagement
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Employee Satisfaction
When organizations focus on how to improve employee satisfaction, changes won't necessarily lead to increased performance. Oftentimes, the conditions that make employees “satisfied” with their jobs are the same conditions that frustrate high performing employees. Oftentimes, the conditions that make employees “satisfied” with their jobs are the same conditions that frustrate high performing employees. Top performers embrace change, search out ways to improve, and challenge the status quo. They search out feedback from management, expect all employees be held accountable for delivering results, find meaning with their team and at work, whereas low performers avoid accountability, cling to the status quo, and resist change.
Why is employee engagement important?
Employee engagement is defined by commitment and passion; it goes beyond activities, games, and events. Employee engagement drives performance. The benefits cannot be overstated. Engaged employees look at the whole of the company and understand their purpose, where, and how they fit in. This leads to better decision-making. Employee engagement matters because more engaged groups show these improvements:
Increases:
- 22% in profitability
- 21% in productivity
- 10% in customer ratings
Decreases:
- 41% in quality defects
- 48% in safety incidents
- 37% in absenteeism
Moreover, expectations of employees have changed. Mobile professional careers are much more common than “job for lifers”. Employee turnover costs organizations thousands of dollars each year. Retention of top talent is more difficult than before. A company that has an effective employee engagement strategy with programs, ideas and initiatives to engage the workforce is more likely to retain top performers, attract new talent, and increase performance throughout the organization. The role management and human resources plays in improving workplace engagement and morale is critical.
How is employee engagement measured?
Measure what matters.Employee engagement surveys have been developed specifically to measure the performance, strategic alignment, competency, and satisfaction of contributors. The survey must be statistically validated and benchmarked against other organizations, to assess and improve drivers of engagement in your company. Based on results, HR and management will develop strategies and actionable ideas.
Engagement can be accurately measured with short surveys that contain just a few questions, but such short surveys can only provide an indication of whether employees are engaged. They have a hard time detecting drivers of engagement or disengagement because they lack detail. This can leave organization leaders and HR with more questions about employee motivation, unable to pin-point challenges the company, management, or specific departments face. Without sufficient information, an organization cannot develop strategies, create meaningful activities, training programs, actionable ideas, and initiatives to increase levels of engagement.In order to get a complete picture of employee engagement, a survey needs to include about 50 to 80 questions that cover a complete range of relevant topics. There should also be open ended questions to further diagnose and give organizations a better picture of how to improve potential engagement problems in a company.
When should an organization measure employee engagement?
The best time to conduct an employee engagement survey is now. Keep in mind that peak holiday seasons might reduce response rates for your survey.
The best time to conduct an employee engagement survey is now.
Also, conducting a survey during bonus periods or periods of high stress might skew your results either positively or negatively. The timing of an engagement survey will influence survey results, but it is always a good time to have a better understanding of how engaged your employees are. We work with HR and management to implement the survey process. It is always a best practice to ask for meaningful feedback from staff.
Prepare for the engagement survey:
Before conducting an employee survey, create a readiness assessment and communicate the reasons for doing the engagement survey and its benefits. Be responsive and quick to communicate results, thanking your employees for their time and input. Management and company leaders should develop activities, ideas, and implement strategies and solutions to improve engagement based on survey results. The engagement survey is only as effective as the effort the organization, managing staff, and teams put into post-survey action plans to drive necessary changes.
Components of employee engagement
There are two primary factors that drive employee engagement. These factors are based on statistical analysis and widely supported by industry research.
| Engagement with The Organization measures how engaged employees are with the organization as a whole, and by extension, how they feel about senior management. This factor has to do with confidence in organizational leadership as well as trust, fairness, values, and respect - i.e. how people like to be treated by others, both at work and outside of work. | Engagement with "My Manager" is a more specific measure of how employees relate to their direct supervisors. Topics include feeling valued, being treated fairly, receiving feedback and direction, and generally, having a strong working relationship between employee and manager based on mutual respect. |
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| The two Organization factors deal with how employees relate to and connect with the organization. | The two Manager factors look at whether managers display the essential skills and behaviors needed to be effective. |
Beyond the Two Core Engagement Factors
High performance organizations, and highly engaged employees, also excel in these areas:
Strategic Alignment: Do employees have clarity of purpose and direction? Do employees understand how the work they do contributes to the organization's success?
Strategic Alignment ensures that employees have clarity of purpose and direction, and that their efforts are focused in the right direction. If those efforts are not focused in the right direction, they could be wasted.
Managing Execution:
The most effective managers excel at the people skills, but they also provide clear expectations, hold people accountable, and stay focused on delivering results.
Leader and Manager Competency is measured as part of the employee survey via upward feedback.
For a more complete assessment of manager competency, we recommend using a 360 Degree Feedback Survey.
Leader and Manager Competency is measured as part of the employee survey via upward feedback.
For a more complete assessment of manager competency, we recommend using a 360 Degree Feedback Survey.
Who should be involved in employee engagement initiatives?
Research shows that many organizations struggle to bridge engagement survey results to its financial impact on the organization. It is important to understand how engagement affects a company's bottom line.A high-performing workforce is necessary to remain competitive, even survive. Developing programs to raise levels of employee engagement must be intentional, have meaning, purpose based on survey results.
HR can lead the charge to create an effective employee engagement strategy, but it needs to be embraced by the entire organization. There is a clear gap between the optimism of upper management and what middle managers experience with their teams. To understand the whole-organization picture, it's essential to have an effective, multi-directional communication strategy in the organization. Effective communication is one of the most important factors that is most likely to bring company success. Organizations that thrive are able to articulate and communicate what success looks like – as individual employees, teams and departments, and the company as a whole. This increases engagement organization-wide.
Employee Engagement Dynamics
Drivers of Engagement - What matters most?
Employee engagement surveys provide organizations with invaluable information. Knowing whether employees are engaged or disengaged is only the first step. You also need to be able to take action on the results. You need to understand the key drivers of engagement and disengagement, and you need to be strategic in order to be able to plan activities or initiatives that will have the greatest impact on increasing engagement.
The elements that drive engagement are usually similar across most companies, but the specific concerns and level of importance are unique and specific in every company and even in different demographic subgroups within a company.
We employ two techniques that enable you to identify the key drivers of engagement in your company and to understand what to focus on and how to improve in those areas.
1. Priority Level - we look at the statistical patterns across all groups in your organization to determine which items are impacting overall engagement within each demographic group. Items with low scores that are strongly linked to engagement are the areas where you will want to focus your change initiatives and engagement strategy.
2. Virtual Focus Groups - next, we ask targeted follow-up questions at the end of the survey that ask employees to provide examples of problems as well as suggestions for how to improve. Once you have identified an area that needs improvement, you can turn to the comments where you will often find detailed information that provides the specific what, why, and how so you can take action.
Pockets of Discontent - An employee engagement survey can identify "at-risk" demographic groups within your companyEven companies with high overall levels of engagement will have areas that are struggling. These problem areas can have a big impact on company performance, with high levels of localized turnover and employee apathy.
Understanding what is happening in these different demographic groups within your organization is at least as important as the overall level of engagement. When you find an at-risk group or an area where engagement is low, you can quickly drill down and look at the specific issues and dynamics within that group.
Sample scores in each of the four factors related to org and employee performance are illustrated below. In this example, we see that there is a high level of engagement with managers, but there are problems with how employees feel about the organization. The most problematic area appears to be strategic alignment.
