An Unstoppable Employee Engagement Strategy for 2016
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7/26/2019 An Unstoppable Employee Engagement Strategy for 2016
1/5
20/04/2016 An Unstoppable Employee Engagement Strategy for 2016 | Billy Bob Brigmon | LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unstoppable-employee-engagement-strategy-2016-billy-bob-brigmon?forceNoSplash=true 1/5
An Unstoppable Employee Engagement Strategy
for 2016
Employee engagement is hot! There is more hype surrounding employee
engagement than ever before. According to Deloittes 2015 Global Human Capital
Trendssurvey, employee engagement and culture issues exploded onto the scene,
rising to become the number one challenge companies face around the world.
Smart, well-financed, vendors are pouring into this marketoffering innovative
solutions for transforming the employee experience through open, anonymous,
employee feedback.
Over the last few years, the most common strategy for improving employee
engagement has been to increase the frequency of employee engagement surveys.
HR leaders have used employee engagement survey results primarily as an early-
warning system for engagement problems.
But, just as the hype is reaching its peak, some of the early adopters of
employee engagement surveys are jumping off the bandwagon. KPMG
made headlinesrecently when they announced they are phasing out employee
engagement surveys. Robert Bolton, the lead partner of KPMGs Global HR
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7/26/2019 An Unstoppable Employee Engagement Strategy for 2016
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20/04/2016 An Unstoppable Employee Engagement Strategy for 2016 | Billy Bob Brigmon | LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unstoppable-employee-engagement-strategy-2016-billy-bob-brigmon?forceNoSplash=true 2/5
Transformation Center of Excellence, had this to say about employee engagement
surveys:
There is a massive industry behind the belief that if a company drives
up engagement, productivity will increase. In reality, engagement is
an ill-defined term. And measuring it once or twice a year with some
static survey is not very scientific, no matter how its dressed up toappear so."
It turns out that senior executives have plenty of problems to manage already.
An early-warning system that helps surface more problems, more frequently, is
not the kind of help that CEOs want from their Chief HR Officers. It seems as
though many have forgotten that employee engagement is simply a
means to an end, not the end itself.
Dr. Jim Harter, Gallups Chief Scientist of Employee Engagement, believes that
too much focus on the survey scores produces greatly inflated engagement scores
that create a false comfort: Reporting high numbers seems to make a lot
of leaders feel good, but those wont get them where they need to be."
Galluphas been measuring employee engagement since 2000. Their reports
divide employees into of three categories: Engaged, Not Engaged, andActively
Disengaged. Most strategies for improving employee engagement are focused on
investments that hope to move employees from the less engaged categories intothe engaged category. This approach is expensive, risky, and slow. If you want
to use employee engagement to directly contribute to 2016 business
impact, then your strategy should focus on mobilizing your most
engaged employees.
Lets explore each of these groups to better understand the rationale for this
strategy:
If your business model depends on your retaining actively disengaged employees,
then your business is in big trouble. Your company would love to see a lot of
voluntary attrition among this group of employees, but these employees do not
leave voluntarily. If they had better options for employment, they
wouldnt be camped out at the water cooler spreading seeds of
discontent among their peers. Their responses to employee engagement
surveys are pretty easy to spot. They answer every question as negatively as
possible and then use open-ended comments to take personal shots at senior
leaders. Their feedback is not constructive. Disregard it. If you have an
unusually high percentage of actively disengaged employees (Gallups numbers
http://www.gallup.com/poll/181289/majority-employees-not-engaged-despite-gains-2014.aspxhttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/employee-engagement-isnt-getting-better-gallup-shares-mark-c-crowley -
7/26/2019 An Unstoppable Employee Engagement Strategy for 2016
3/5
20/04/2016 An Unstoppable Employee Engagement Strategy for 2016 | Billy Bob Brigmon | LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unstoppable-employee-engagement-strategy-2016-billy-bob-brigmon?forceNoSplash=true 3/5
are usually around 18%), then you have a problem, but it still wouldnt change our
recommendation to first focus on mobilizing your engaged employees.
The assumption behind a lot of the investments in employee engagement is that t
With just a little persuasion, they can be pulled into the "engaged employee
club". If this were true, I think we'd see employee engagement initiativesproducing quicker impact.
Going into 2015, Deloitte foundthat employee engagement was a top priority for
87% of companies globally.
The investment pouring into this space is unprecedented
and yet the numbers, according to Galluparen't moving.
In fact, they haven't really moved since the turn of the century.
Even if Chief HR Officers can convince their C-Suite colleagues that growing the
number of
engaged employees will lead to business impact, they can't promise that their
recommendations will work. In a recent Deloitte surveyamong 80 of the most
advanced users of engagement surveys, only half believe their executives know
how to build a culture of engagement. (It was actually a much lower percentage
for the broader survey population.) Employees check out for a lot of
reasons, only some of which are related to your workplace culture.
Building a culture of engagement is a worthwhile endeavor, but its a long-term
investment.
In order to earn the patience of the CEO to pursue these long-term culture
investments, you need to leverage engagement to directly impact the business in
the short-term. The next group is your best opportunity for immediate business
impact...
In spite of all the flaws in your organization, theseemployees are engaged anyway.
Most employee engagement initiatives take these committed employees for grant
Churn among this group of employees is particularly expensive because they make
Every company wants these employees and you should assume that ot
This group isn't comprised of whiners, so there may not be any warnings before th
Yet,your company probably knows very little about this group.
There are many definitions of employee engagement but most of them
involve discretionary effort - an employees willingness to contribute above and
beyond their job description. Marc Woods, whowrote a book based on the
results of his research on discretionary effort, said, Employees have far
more potential to contribute to their organization than even their managers
https://www.i-l-m.com/Insight/Edge/2013/May/discretionary-effort-going-the-extra-milehttp://dupress.com/articles/employee-engagement-strategies/https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/employee-engagement-isnt-getting-better-gallup-shares-mark-c-crowley?trk=v-feedhttp://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/human-capital/articles/introduction-human-capital-trends.html -
7/26/2019 An Unstoppable Employee Engagement Strategy for 2016
4/5
20/04/2016 An Unstoppable Employee Engagement Strategy for 2016 | Billy Bob Brigmon | LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unstoppable-employee-engagement-strategy-2016-billy-bob-brigmon?forceNoSplash=true 4/5
imagine. Why wouldnt you want to create an environment in which
discretionary effort is able to flourish? The discretionary effort of your
most engaged employees is a tremendous resource that you can tap
into for immediate business impact in 2016.
Employee surveys are still an effective feedback system, but the design of those
surveys must adapt for this purpose. Many employee engagement surveys are
designed to learn why unengaged employees are not engaged. Learning the
percentage of employees that are unengaged and their reasons for lack of
engagement is interesting, but not particularly useful for generating 2016
business impact. Asking more business-centric questions gives
employees an opportunity to demonstrate they are engaged while also
producing more actionable feedback for management. Those employees
that provide thoughtful, solution-oriented responses to business-centric
questions are self-selecting as engaged employees. Separate those responses
(expect 10%-20% of total survey population) from the other responses and
prioritize your next actions based on what youve learned from this community.
If your survey platform enables targeted follow up, then we recommend follow up
surveys throughout the year that only go to the engaged community. Some of
those targeted follow ups should give your engaged community opportunities to
opt-in to collaborative virtual forums and facilitated workshops. By choosing to
sign up for these collaborative opportunities, the members of your engaged
community have the option to move out of anonymity and make themselves
known to your leadership team. Once employees learn that the path to
internal influence begins with submitting valuable feedback, you'll see
employees adopt an entirely different attitude towards surveys.
Dr. John Kotter is a Harvard Business School professor and NY Times best-
selling author, regarded by many as the authority on leadership and change.
Kotters 8 Step Process for Leading Change begins with Create a Sense of
Urgency. Heres his advice for creating a sense of urgency:
http://www.kotterinternational.com/the-8-step-process-for-leading-change/ -
7/26/2019 An Unstoppable Employee Engagement Strategy for 2016
5/5
20/04/2016 An Unstoppable Employee Engagement Strategy for 2016 | Billy Bob Brigmon | LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unstoppable-employee-engagement-strategy-2016-billy-bob-brigmon?forceNoSplash=true 5/5
Written by
Would you recruit traitors (actively disengaged) or pacifists (not engaged) to join
your army of volunteers? To get widespread support for your
employee engagement strategy, you need to demonstrate a sense of
urgency for creating business impact. Mobilizing your employees who are
already engaged is an unstoppable strategy for rapid business impact.
How would you deploy an urgent army of volunteers in yourcompany? I look forward to your comments. Please share with others who have
a point of view on employee engagement.
Billy Bob Brigmon is Founder and CEO of mpathy. We design and execute high-
impact employee feedback campaigns. To learn more about how mpathy
uses anonymous employee feedback with targeted follow-ups to
mobilize engaged employees, click here.
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