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Fostering a Culture of Engagement
Introduction
Like many pieces of industry jargon, people have been throwing “engagement” around at management meetings for a while now. It was the great new buzzword a few years ago and now it has become part of the corporate lexicon. But what does it really mean? Here’s one definition from the Conference Board's 2008 review of employee engagement:
"Employee engagement is a heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for his or her organization and that influences him or her to exert greater discretionary effort to his or her work."
It's the personal connection that you feel towards your work and the organization that supports it. The level to which your people feel strongly connected to the success of your company is a great indicator of their happiness with their jobs. Engaged employees communicate openly, help willingly, and have the best interests of the organization in mind.
Strategies
Sounds great, right? So how do we get to this magic state of mind? Towers Perrin listed the top 10 drivers of employee engagement from their 2007/2008 survey:
1. Senior management sincerely interested in employee well-being
2. Ability to improve skills and capabilities
3. Organization’s reputation for social responsibility
4. Employees inputs into decision making
5. Quick resolution of customer concerns
6. Setting of high personal standards
7. Excellent career advancement opportunities
8. Challenging work assignments that broaden skills
9. Good relationships with supervisors
10. Organization encourages innovative thinking
This is a great starting point for developing a longer term strategy to retain your best people. Fostering an engaging work environment means focusing on these 10 factors, and the good news is that many of them are inexpensive or even free.
First let’s recognize that the factors above can be grouped into a few broad categories:
- Bottom-up Feedback – Engaged employees know that their voices are heard and valued. Although not every suggestion will be implemented, great employers solicit input from all levels of the organization.
- Professional Development – Whether it’s formal training or a buddy system for mentoring, organizations that value their employees are always looking for opportunities to grow talent internally. Managers should work directly with their direct reports to create customized personal development programs.
- Organizational Values – No one wants to work for a company that takes advantage of people, wastes resources or destroys the environment. Publishing a strong mission statement that focuses on the customer and the values of the company helps people feel like they are part of something that adds value and benefits others.
Conclusion
So building on these drivers of engagement, your focus should be on developing programs to solicit feedback, foster and encourage personal and professional development, and communicate organizational values through the use of mission statements and internal publicity. Here are some concrete actions you can implement at any organization to foster these goals.
- Quarterly Feedback Meeting or Survey
- Build a Buddy System for Mentoring
- Create a Newsletter to Keep Employees Up To Date on Corporate Decisions
- Solicit Bottom-Up Feedback
- Develop a Customer Focuses Mission Statement
- Create an Employee Recognition Program Voted by Peers
- Consider Flexible Hours or Telecommuting
Employee turnover costs an average of 30-45% of salary. Recruiting a new team member, losing efficiency during the ramp up period and re-establishing relationships with customers, vendors and team members are all part of the fallout of high turnover. Fostering engagement as a retention strategy can help you substantially lower both the hard and soft costs of this challenge. For more tips and strategies on retaining high performers, please join me on April 28th for a free webinar!
This article includes facts from two major employee engagement surveys:
- Towers Perrin - Closing the Engagement Gap
- The Conference Board - Employee Engagement - A Review of Current Research and It's Implications
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9 Comments
In my experience, it is almost impossible to "foster a culture of engagement" without genuine and sincere effort from senior management, which is usually already there if it's going to work.
If you don't have it, the first place to start is usually with a high-level shake up replacing those managers unable/unwilling to participate rapidly. Otherwise it always ends up as a cosmetic exercise.
It's also worth noting that your ideas while excellent, often lack genuine commitment and are assigned as side tasks to already busy people, who put in the effort for a little bit and then give up. This is particularly common with in-house newsletters.
There are easier to implement alternatives such as monthly briefings from executive teams which enables information exchange in a more concise and effective manner while enabling bottom up communication too.
Very well said! I want to pass this article on to my colleagues. Here's the only think I will add. Employees want to believe they are part of a higher purpose. They want to believe that their work matters and that they, in turn, matter to the company: that they are contributing to the noble cause.
Thanks for the well-written article.
So true!
Katy, your article is right on the money. You've nicely identified all the critical business drivers. Tony Loyd made an excellent point about employees understanding how they contribute to the overall organizationals success. Your strategies are spot on.
Here's a consideration for you, employers just don't believe the cost of turnover, I wish I knew why.
Nice synopsis Katy!
Katy, I realize that I missed an important point in my post. There may be a point of debate on the issue of engagement. We tend to focus our energies on employees, perhaps that's the wrong strategy. Remember who impacts employee engagement, supervisors and managers. Perhaps we should focus on engaging them first, they do effect the largest number of individuals.
John - great point! I've been re-reading "First Break All the Rules" and one of the key findings in their research was the relationship between an employee's happiness and their relationship with their immediate supervisor. Everyone from the bottom of the organization to the the top needs to be be involved and needs to buy into the process in order for it to work. As Nik pointed out earlier, if you don't have the full commitment of management at every level, and a genuine interest in improving the situation vs. going through the motions, the efforts will fail.
Katy
Employee engagement is the reward the employer receives for having all their employees doing their jobs well. This includes all supervisors, managers and executives. Employers would be wise to focus on job performance at that top and work down from there.
Katy - Excellent post! The data you referenced comes from 2007/08. I just wanted to share with you some of the latest data from Towers Watson. The latest round of the Global Workforce Study was in early 2010 and it contains great insights about the post-recession emerging employee deal. You could get a quick look at the exec summary, which is not chargeable http://www.towerswatson.com/global-workforce-study/reports
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