Employee Engagement

Employee Engagement represents the relationship and connection between an organization and

its employees. This is not just a rational connect, but is also an emotional bond that binds

employees to organizations. It manifests in, how do employees feel about the organization they

serve? Do they feel energized and motivated to bring their best selves to work every day, day

after day? Are the individual goals of your best talent aligned with the goals of the organization?

If the answer is an overwhelming yes, then the organization has succeeded in consistently

engaging its employees. However, this is seldom the case, with most firms only barely being able

to attract, retain and further engage the best talent.

Worldwide studies have indicated that only 13% of employees are engaged at work (Gallup,

2012). This number has only marginally improved over the years. Further, 24% of employees are

actively disengaged – meaning they are unhappy, unproductive and liable to spread negativity

among coworkers. About 63% of the employees are not engaged, which means they lack

motivation and invest less than optimum time and effort into meeting organizational outcomes.

Engaged employees perform better than their disengaged counterparts due to the following

reasons:

They often experience positive emotions

They experience better health and well being

They create their own job and personal resources

They transfer their engagement to others (cross-over)

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Employee engagement, on the other hand, is a positive psychological state characterized by high

levels of energy, enthusiasm, passion and involvement in one’s work that lead to superior

individual and organizational performance. Engaged employees:

Think positively about their work and the workplace

Feel passionate about their work and the organization

Act with enthusiasm and put their heart into their work

Engaged employees care about the future of the company and are willing to invest the

discretionary effort – exceeding duty’s call – to see that the organization succeeds. In his book,

Rutledge urged managers to implement retention plans so that they could keep their top talent.

The need to do so is supported by a 1998 McKinsey & Co. study entitled The War for Talent that

reported that a shortage of skilled employees was an emerging trend. Today, there is widespread

agreement among academics and practitioners that engaged employees are those who are

emotionally connected to the organization and cognitively vigilant. They SAY, STAY AND

STRIVE for their organization.

Difference between Job / Employee Satisfaction and Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is often confused with employee satisfaction in that satisfaction is a state

of satiation or contentment whereas engagement is a state of activation, characterized by high

levels of energy and action orientation. This is perhaps the most important distinction from a

manager’s perspective as the implications are not difficult to see. A state of satiation and

contentment triggers a homeostatic response – a need to offset any changes in the environment,

an attempt to maintain the status quo.

Another important issue for managers is the performance outcome. Does satisfaction lead

to higher levels of performance? Are satisfied employees necessarily more productive?

Well, that has been the conventional wisdom. Despite the intuitive appeal of satisfaction-

performance linkage, recent meta-analytic studies (studies that contrast and combine the

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results of many different studies to identify common patterns) find only a modest support

at best for the satisfaction-performance linkage.

Research on employee engagement, on the other hand, shows that a high level of

employee engagement is linked with higher levels of individual and organizational

performance. Positive business outcomes for the organization include higher sales, higher

productivity, higher revenue and better customer satisfaction on one hand and lower

employee turnover, lower absenteeism, lower waste and fewer accidents on the other.

Another way of looking at the issue is to look at both sides of the equation. From this

perspective:

Satisfaction is an index of: The extent to which employees are getting what they need

from the organization

Engagement reflects: The extent of both employee’s satisfaction and contribution. If

the organization is getting what it needs from its employees, characterized mainly by

focus and intense involvement in one’s work because they are satisfied.

The challenge for organizations lies in harnessing the strengths of their individual employees. A

one-size-fits-all approach to engagement is unlikely to work because the strengths of no two

employees are exactly the same. Given this reality, identifying what the organizational talent

pool is capable of accomplishing – both individually and collectively - becomes the key

differentiator for organizations.

Principles of Employee Engagement

1. The first step towards engagement lies in recognizing and leveraging individual strengths

by identifying their needs and motivations.

According to Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton, ‘strength’ consists of three crucial

components –

Talents – Naturally occurring patterns of thought, patterns or behaviour.

Knowledge – Consists of the facts and lessons learned.

Skills – Steps of an activity.

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Engaged employees are those who bring their best into their workplaces and consistently

contribute to the organizational objectives by leveraging their own, individual, unique strengths.

This results in a win-win for both the individual and the employee.

2. Aligning organizational and individual values

It is a misconception that an organization’s culture is purely driven by the values that it defines

for itself and then communicates to its workforce. The adoption rate of an organization’s values

among its employees depends on the ability of the firm to align firm values with individual and

team values. Take for example, ’respect for individual’ as a firm value. For an organization, this

would need to be defined in terms of what it means to an employee in the sales team vis-à-vis

someone in the legal team. Also, ‘respect’ through the frame of reference of multiple

stakeholders – both internal and external – would also need to be spelt out. Additionally, value

for an individual goes beyond the realm of just the office space. For employees to bring their

complete self to the workplace, the definition must consider the how they might relate to firm

values at a personal and interpersonal level, and consider the definition of the value holistically.

3. More Personalized Engagement Plan

Manager v/s individual focus – Traditionally, engagement has been measured at the managerial

level, i.e. how well employees are motivated, supported and led by their immediate supervisors.

With the increase in the population of millennia’s at the workplace, this single lens of measuring

engagement might not suffice. The lens of engagement, which was hitherto focused on the

manager-subordinate relationship, must move away from this one area to include multiple touch-

points that are of relevance to each employee. For example, a sales professional may interact and

deal with a number of key clients, and is likely to be supported by teams apart from his own. If

this individual experiences differentiated levels of collaboration while dealing with key

stakeholders, he is likely to feel disengaged and demotivated. Therefore, a more personalized

engagement plan, which defines each employee’s key result areas, and ensures that all touch-

points are optimized for her to perform to the best of her abilities is the need of the hour.

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4. Building a Culture of Engagement through Open Communication and Culture

Healthy work culture sustains employee engagement .Proactiveness, initiative and responsibility

are key traits that organizations desire of their engaged employees. When there is a personal

connect based on trust, it leads to better engagement. For this, firms would do well to stretch out

and meet the employees where they are, listen and ask their workforce to VOICE as to what

more could be done to keep them engaged. This allows for two-way communication. The

feedback could then be utilized to align and optimize organizational systems and processes to

ensure maximum all-round engagement.

In conclusion, employees are better engaged and more productive, if their individual strengths

are harnessed well, their values are aligned to firm values, the focus is on enabling the employee

to perform to her maximum potential (not just enhancing the manager-employee relationship),

and by being constantly tuned in to the needs of the workforce.

Engagement Enablers

Although there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach and no master model for successful employee

engagement there were four common themes that emerged from the extensive research captured

in the Engaging For Success . Taken together, they include many of the key elements that go to

make successful employee engagement.

These enablers of engagement have proved to be useful lenses which can help organizations

assess the effectiveness of their approaches.

Visible, empowering leadership providing a strong strategic narrative about the

organization, where it’s come from and where it’s going. Vision and value Penetration are

key to engaging employees

 

Engaging managers who focus their people and give them scope, treat their people as

individuals and coach and stretch their people.

 

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There is employee voice throughout the organizations, for reinforcing and challenging views,

between functions and externally, employees are seen as central to the solution.

 

There is organizational integrity – the values on the wall are reflected in day to day

behaviours. There is no ‘say –do’ gap.

 

Engagement Strategies: The Ten C’s of Employee Engagement

How can leaders engage employees’ heads, hearts, and hands? Theory and Practice offers several

avenues for action, these can be summarized as the Ten C’s of employee engagement.

1. Connect: Leaders must show that they value employees. In First, Break All the Rules, Marcus

Buckingham and Curt Coffman argue that managers trump companies. Employee-focused

initiatives such as profit sharing and implementing work–life balance initiatives are important.

However, if employees’ relationship with their managers is fractured, then no amount of perks

will persuade employees to perform at top levels. Employee engagement is a direct reflection of

how employees feel about their relationship with the boss. Employees look at whether

organizations and their leader walk the talk when they proclaim that, “Our employees are our

most valuable asset.”

One anecdote illustrates the Connect dimension well. In November 2003, the CEO of WestJet

Airlines, Clive Beddoe, was invited to give a presentation to the Canadian Club of London.

Beddoe showed up late, a few minutes before he was to deliver his speech. He had met with

West Jet employees at the London Airport and had taken a few minutes to explain the corporate

strategy and some new initiatives to them. He also answered employees’ questions. To

paraphrase Beddoe, “We had a great discussion that took a bit longer than I had anticipated.”

Beddoe’s actions showed that he cares about the employees. The employees, sensing that he is

sincere, care about Beddoe and the organization; they “reward” his behavior with engagement.

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2. Career: Leaders should provide challenging and meaningful work with opportunities for

career advancement. Most people want to do new things in their job. For example, do

organizations provide job rotation for their top talent? Are people assigned stretch goals? Do

leaders hold people accountable for progress? Are jobs enriched in duties and responsibilities?

Good leaders challenge employees; but at the same time, they must instill the confidence that the

challenges can be met. Not giving people the knowledge and tools to be successful is unethical

and de-motivating; it is also likely to lead to stress, frustration, and, ultimately, lack of

engagement. In her book Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and

End, Rosabeth Moss Kanter explains that confidence is based on three cornerstones:

accountability, collaboration, and initiative.

3. Clarity: Leaders must communicate a clear vision. People want to understand the vision that

senior leadership has for the organization, and the goals that leaders or departmental heads have

for the division, unit, or team. Success in life and organizations is, to a great extent, determined

by how clear individuals are about their goals and what they really want to achieve. In sum,

employees need to understand what the organization’s goals are, why they are important, and

how the goals can best be attained. Clarity about what the organization stands for, what it wants

to achieve, and how people can contribute to the organization’s success is not always evident.

Consider, for example, what Jack Stack, CEO of SRC Holdings Corp., wrote about the

importance of teaching the basics of business:

The most crippling problem in American business is sheer ignorance about how business works.

What we see is a whole mess of people going to a baseball game and nobody is telling them what

the rules are. That baseball game is business. People try to steal from first base to second base,

but they don’t even know how that fits into the big picture. What we try to do is break down

business in such a way that employees realize that in order to win the World Series, you’ve got

to steal x number of bases, hit y number of RBIs and have the pitchers pitch z number of innings.

And if you put all these variables together, you can really attain your hopes and dreams … don’t

use information to intimidate, control or manipulate people. Use it to teach people how to work

together to achieve common goals and thereby gain control over their lives.

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4. Convey: Leaders clarify their expectations about employees and provide feedback on their

functioning in the organization. Good leaders establish processes and procedures that help people

master important tasks and facilitate goal achievement. There is a great anecdote about the

legendary UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden. He showed how important feedback – positive

and constructive – is in the pursuit of greatness. Among the secrets of his phenomenal success

was that he kept detailed diaries on each of his players. He kept track of small improvements he

felt the players could make and did make. At the end of each practice, he would share his

thoughts with the players. The lesson here is that good leaders work daily to improve the skills of

their people and create small wins that help the team, unit, or organization perform at its best.

5. Congratulate: Business leaders can learn a great deal from Wooden’s approach. Surveys

show that, over and over, employees feel that they receive immediate feedback when their

performance is poor, or below expectations. These same employees also report that praise and

recognition for strong performance is much less common. Exceptional leaders give recognition,

and they do so a lot; they coach and convey.

6. Contribute: People want to know that their input matters and that they are contributing to the

organization’s success in a meaningful way. This might be easy to articulate in settings such as

hospitals and educational institutions. But what about, say, the retail industry? Sears Roebuck &

Co. started a turnaround in 1992. Part of the turnaround plan was the development of a set of

measures – known as Total Performance Indicators – which gauged how well Sears was doing

with its employees, customers, and investors. The implementation of the measurement system

led to three startling conclusions. First, an employee’s understanding of the connection between

her work – as operationalized by specific job-relevant behaviors – and the strategic objectives of

the company had a positive impact on job performance. Second, an employee’s attitude towards

the job and the company had the greatest impact on loyalty and customer service than all the

other employee factors combined. Third, improvements in employee attitude led to

improvements in job-relevant behavior; this, in turn, increased customer satisfaction and an

improvement in revenue growth. In sum, good leaders help people see and feel how they are

contributing to the organization’s success and future.

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7. Control: Employees value control over the flow and pace of their jobs and leaders can create

opportunities for employees to exercise this control. Do leaders consult with their employees

with regard to their needs? For example, is it possible to accommodate the needs of a mother or

an employee infected with HIV so that they can attend to childcare concerns or a medical

appointment? Are leaders flexible and attuned to the needs of the employees as well as the

organization? Do leaders involve employees in decision-making, particularly when employees

will be directly affected by the decision? Do employees have a say in setting goals or milestones

that are deemed important? Are employees able to voice their ideas, and does leadership show

that contributions are valued? H. Norman Schwartzkopf, retired U.S. Army General, once

remarked:

I have seen competent leaders who stood in front of a platoon and all they saw was a platoon.

But great leaders stand in front of a platoon and see it as 44 individuals, each of whom has

aspirations, each of whom wants to live, each of whom wants to do good.

A feeling of “being in on things,” and of being given opportunities to participate in decision

making often reduces stress; it also creates trust and a culture where people want to take

ownership of problems and their solutions. There are numerous examples of organizations whose

implementation of an open-book management style and creating room for employees to

contribute to making decisions had a positive effect on engagement and organizational

performance. The success of Microsoft, for example, stems in part from Bill Gates’ belief that

smart people anywhere in the company should have the power to drive an initiative. Initiatives

such as Six Sigma are dependent, in part, on the active participation of employees on the shop

floor.

8. Collaborate: Studies show that, when employees work in teams and have the trust and

cooperation of their team members, they outperform individuals and teams which lack good

relationships. Great leaders are team builders; they create an environment that fosters trust and

collaboration. Surveys indicate that being cared about by colleagues is a strong predictor of

employee engagement. Thus, a continuous challenge for leaders is to rally individuals to

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collaborate on organizational, departmental, and group goals, while excluding individuals

pursuing their self-interest.

9. Credibility: Leaders should strive to maintain acompany’s reputation and demonstrate high

ethical standards. People want to be proud of their jobs, their performance, and their

organization. WestJet Airlines is among the most admired organizations in Canada. The

company has achieved numerous awards. For example, in 2005, it earned the number one spot

for best corporate culture in Canada. On September 26, 2005, WestJet launched the “Because

We’re Owners!” campaign. Why do WestJet employees care so much about their organization?

Why do over 85 percent of them own shares in the company? Employees believe so strongly in

what WestJet is trying to do and are so excited about its strong performance record that they

commit their own money into shares.

10. Confidence: Good leaders help create confidence in a company by being exemplars of high

ethical and performance standards. To illustrate, consider what happened to Harry Stonecipher,

the former CEO of Boeing. He made the restoration of corporate ethics in the organization a top

priority but was soon after embarrassed by the disclosure of an extramarital affair with a female

employee. His poor judgment impaired his ability to lead and he lost a key ingredient for success

– credibility. Thus the board asked him to resign. Employees working at Qwest and Continental

Airlines were so embarrassed about working for their organizations that they would not wear

their company’s uniform on their way to and from work. At WorldCom, most employees were

shocked, horrified, and embarrassed when the accounting scandal broke at the company. New

leadership was faced with the major challenges of regaining public trust and fostering employee

engagement.

Practitioners and academics have argued that competitive advantage can be gained by creating an

engaged workforce. The data and argument that that we present above are a compelling case why

leaders need to make employee engagement one of their priorities. Leaders should actively try to

identify the level of engagement in their organization, find the reasons behind the lack of full

engagement, strive to eliminate those reasons, and implement behavioral strategies that will

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facilitate full engagement. These efforts should be ongoing. Employee engagement is hard to

achieve and if not sustained by leaders it can wither with relative ease.

Measuring Engagement

Traditionally, employee engagement is measured through an annual employee engagement

survey that goes out to the entire organization. The engagement survey questions generally ask

employees to rate their agreement with statements such as:

I would recommend this company to a friend

My talents are well utilized

I believe in the mission of the organization

My work is recognized and valued

I have a sense of my career path

Many organizations will also run small, more frequent “pulse” surveys. As opposed to

comprehensive employee engagement surveys, pulse surveys are generally narrower in scope,

e.g. given to a smaller number of employees or questions focused on fewer topics. They allow

managers to get a quick snapshot of certain areas of the company to see if their efforts to

improve engagement are working.

How is an Employee Engagement Survey Different from Other Surveys?

The content of employee engagement surveys is quite different from a regular employee survey

as engagement measures a lot more than just happiness or satisfaction. But the biggest difference

comes in reporting.

Reporting for employee engagement is sophisticated, primarily because managers need to

identify engagement issues or successes to pinpoint where they are in the organization. They

need sophisticated hierarchical reporting and individualized, interactive dashboards.

Hierarchical reporting lets managers drill down into the data – for example, comparing divisions,

regions and teams. They can quickly see pockets of high or low engagement that allow them to

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discover whether something is pervasive or localized to a specific group. Hierarchical reporting

also tells managers exactly which levers they need to pull to fix problems and create a stronger,

more engaged workforce.

Individualized, interactive dashboards show managers only the results that are relevant to their

piece of the organization. That means the CEO can see engagement results across the entire

organization, while the VP of Sales sees results only for members of the sales team. Dashboards

allow managers to slice and dice the data in a way that’s useful to them.

Results of Employee Engagement

Practices have endorsed the well-established connection between employee engagement and key

performance outcomes:

customer ratings

profitability

productivity

turnover (for high-turnover and low-turnover organizations)

safety incidents

shrinkage (theft)

absenteeism

patient safety incidents

quality (defects)

Gallup researchers studied the differences in performance between engaged and actively

disengaged work units and found that those scoring in the top half on employee engagement

nearly doubled their odds of success compared with those in the bottom half.

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Work units in the top quartile in employee engagement outperformed bottom-quartile units by

10% on customer ratings, 22% in profitability, and 21% in productivity. Work units in the top

quartile also saw significantly less turnover (25% in high-turnover organizations and 65% in

low-turnover organizations), shrinkage (28%), and absenteeism (37%) and fewer safety incidents

(48%), patient safety incidents (41%), and quality defects (41%). (See graphic "Employee

Engagement Affects Key Business Outcomes.")

The 2012 meta-analysis verified once again that employee engagement relates to each of the nine

performance outcomes studied. Gallup also finds that the strong correlations between

engagement and performance are highly consistent across different organizations from diverse

industries and regions of the world.

Organizational Recipes for building a constituency of engaged employees

If employees truly are a company's best asset, then their care and support should be a priority.

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Though important at the organizational level, engagement starts with each person and is

subjective. Employees don't check their personalities at the door when they come to work.

Knowing that they are respected as individuals at work can have a significant impact on how

employees view their overall lives.

Each person's potential extends well beyond his or her job description. And tapping that potential

means recognizing how an employee's unique set of beliefs, talents, goals, and life experiences

drives his or her performance, personal success, and well-being.

Managers and leaders should know their people -- who they are, not just what they do. Every

interaction with an employee has the potential to influence his or her engagement and inspire

discretionary effort. How leaders manage their employees can substantially affect engagement

levels in the workplace, in turn influencing the company's bottom line. Here are five strategies

organizations can use to help build their constituency of engaged employees:

1. Use the right employee engagement survey. When a company asks its employees for their

opinions, those employees expect action to follow. But businesses often make the mistake of

using employee surveys to collect data that are irrelevant or impossible to act on. Any survey

data must be specific, relevant, and actionable for any team at any organizational level. Data

should also be proven to influence key performance metrics.

2. Focus on engagement at the local and organizational levels. Real change occurs at the local

workgroup level, but it happens only when company leaders set the tone from the top.

Companies realize the most benefit from engagement initiatives when leaders weave employee

engagement into performance expectations for managers and enable them to execute on those

expectations. Managers and employees must feel empowered to make a significant difference in

their immediate environment. Leaders and managers should work with employees to identify

barriers to engagement and opportunities to effect positive change. Employees are familiar with

the company's processes, systems, products, and customers. They are also experts on themselves

and their teams. So it makes sense that they will have the best ideas to maximize these elements

and deliver improved performance, business innovation, and better workplace experiences.

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3. Select the right managers. The best managers understand that their success and that of the

organization relies on employees' achievements. But not everyone can be a great manager. Great

managers care about their people's success. They seek to understand each person's strengths and

provide employees with every opportunity to use their strengths in their role. Great managers

empower their employees, recognize and value their contributions, and actively seek their ideas

and opinions. It takes talent to be a great manager, and selecting people who have this talent is

important. Whether hiring from outside or promoting from within, businesses that scientifically

select managers for the unique talents it takes to effectively manage people greatly increase the

odds of engaging their employees. Companies should treat the manager role as unique, with

distinct functional demands that require a specific talent set.

4. Coach managers and hold them accountable for their employees' engagement. Gallup's

research has found that managers are primarily responsible for their employees' engagement

levels. Companies should coach managers to take an active role in building engagement plans

with their employees, hold managers accountable, track their progress, and ensure that they

continuously focus on emotionally engaging their employees. The most successful managers

view the Q12 as the elements for great managing, not just questions for measuring. By doing so,

they gain a powerful framework to guide the creation of a strong, engaged workplace.

5. Define engagement goals in realistic, everyday terms. To bring engagement to life, leaders

must make engagement goals meaningful to employees' day-to-day experiences. Describing what

success looks like using powerful descriptions and emotive language helps give meaning to goals

and builds commitment within a team. Make sure that managers discuss employee engagement at

weekly meetings, in action-planning sessions, and in one-on-one meetings with employees to

weave engagement into daily interactions and activities and to make it part of the workplace's

DNA.

6. Make engagement plan a part of the strategic plan .Leaders in the best companies

strategically align their employee engagement efforts. They find ways to communicate

engagement's effect throughout the year and share best practices across the organization. They

use every opportunity, touch points, and communication channel to reinforce and recognize the

organization's commitment to employee engagement. They integrate employee engagement fully

into the business' lexicon.

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Engaging Millennials

The 3S approach to engaging millennials

In order to engage the millennials, it is critical to have a 3S model – Speed, Satisfaction & Shine

 

The millennia generation, more popularly known as the Gen Y, is the social media savvy

generation. They are always in touch with what’s happening around them, informed about the

latest updates in the city. They keep the employers on their toes as they will always be looking

for change and exploring innovative opportunities. They’re looking strategically at opportunities

to invest in a place where they can make a difference, preferably a place that itself makes a

difference.

Gen Y-ers in the workplace – they’re projected to compose 75 per cent of the workforce by 2025

– and noted that this is a generation with an entrepreneurial bent, with an estimated 70 per cent

of young professionals around the world aspiring to be their own boss.

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My approach would be 3S model: Speed + Satisfaction + Shine to engage the millenial

employee.

1. Speed: Pace is critical. Communicate and respond to them fast and bring in speedy changes.

Surprise them with pace, they like it that way! Also don’t keep sitting on decisions and

communications. The decision making and actions need to be prompt and spontaneous just like

the profile updates and check-ins. They expect immediate gratification and applause for their

contributions.

2. Satisfaction: Gen Y is out there for deep satisfaction needs from all engagements in life and

jobs. It’s important we know doing what they would be most satisfied with in terms of sense of

achievement, leveraging what they have learnt. Make their jobs and days at work deeply

satisfying. They can easily be disillusioned with the meaning of success and elders at work must

help in defining that for them. The Gen Y is more concerned with engaging in something which

is small but fulfilling. A sense of internal satisfaction needs to be achieved to keep them going.

3. Shine: We are living a social media life driven by social recognition and acknowledgements.

It’s critical that they are recognized, appreciated and made a hero out of their efforts. Find ways

to give pats and claps at work, celebrate successes with them without going overboard of false

hero creation! Giving them the necessary recognition for their contributions is extremely crucial.

Along with the 3S approach, a few key pointers to be kept in mind while dealing with the Gen Y

at the workplace:

a. Provide them with purpose

Millennials in particular crave meaning in their jobs. They want to feel connected to their work

and to the company’s mission. Commitment to one’s work gives all employees a sense of

purpose and companies are learning that an excellent conduit to this feeling is involvement in

cause.

b. Act as a mentor

Gen Y thrives on feedback and positive recognition. Mentorship support can help them feel

guided along a path towards their goals. The opinions and recognition of their friends and

superiors are important to millennials who seek attention through feedback and praise from

people who are important to them.

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c. Give them responsibility

Millennials have a “can-do” attitude and want to feel challenged in the workplace. No to

micromanagement; yes to letting them run with an idea. Ambitious and achievement-oriented,

the millennial search for meaning and learning extends to their work. They seek out new

challenges and have high expectations of their employers. This group is not afraid to question

authority and eliminate old and traditional methodologies may longer be relevant in the current

dynamic environment.

In a nutshell, to keep the millennial employee engaged organizations have to focus on Total

Rewards Framework

Millennials understand the benefits of a balanced life, personal growth providing career growth

opportunities and being productive. They tend to like their jobs more than previous generations

and stay in jobs that fit their talents and passions, but they won’t stay in jobs and organizations

just for security and loyalty. Given an opportunity to showcase their talents at their workplace,

employees would develop a sense of belongingness with the organization.

Employee Engagement in India

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A total of 41 per cent of the respondents in the country said they were "totally engaged" to their

current employer, according to the latest results from Kelly Global Workforce Index titled

'Engaging Active and Passive Job Seekers (KGWI),2014

Employee Engagement Best Practices

Our most successful employee engagement initiatives use a multi-faceted approach:

Adopt and communicate a clear and practical working definition of employee engagement

(not to be confused with mere job satisfaction)

Demonstrate Senior Team commitment — in deeds and in words — to building a culture of

engagement

Develop a well-planned organizational cascade strategy

Run an engagement survey on a regular cycle with a focus on continuous improvement of

internal results (not a report card against external benchmarks) and achievement of strategic

priorities

Communicate findings and organization-wide action plans in an open and honest fashion

Establish roles for executives, managers, and individuals in making the engagement of each

employee a daily priority

Develop Engagement Champions throughout the organization to support the initiative in

between survey cycles

Equip managers to involve their team in understanding the findings and increasing team

engagement.

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Challenges of Employee Engagement

Employee Engagement is an individualized equation. 

What might engage one person will be a frustration to their colleague next door. Half the team

loves social events but the other half find them a bore. Some crave public recognition and some

shun it. Some hope for a promotion and a chance to prove themselves while others are breaking

under an unbearable workload. So how do we help engage a diverse workforce?

This is one of the biggest challenges for managers and executives alike.

What Do Best Employers Do Differently?

In short, they focus effort and take visible ownership of the solutions. One executive from a Best

Employer states:

“The most important aspect is to make employees feel part of an open process. Engagement is

not something you do to employees. [One way] of improving working conditions is to

communicate the survey results at all levels and develop action plans that are clearly visible for

all.”

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What Do Best Employers Do Differently? (Source: Aon Hewitt 2012 Global Engagement

Database)

1. Senior Leadership

2. Employee Value Proposition

3. Total Rewards

4. Enabling Performance

1. Senior Leadership

A vast majority of employees at Best Employer organizations experience strong leadership. In

fact, strong leadership is the primary differentiator between Best Employers and average

companies. The best leaders are decisive and provide a clear vision of the future of their

company. In addition, they are also comfortable with ambiguity and understand the emotional

side of change and transition. Finally, great leaders are engaged themselves. Responses from

executive interviews varied in terms of company engagement practices. However, the most

significant finding was the frequent call for leadership to be more accountable at all levels of the

business, and for the CEO to ultimately drive engagement from the top. Both employees and

employers see leadership as the ingredient that makes or breaks employee engagement efforts.

An executive from a Best Employer noted a marked difference with a new leader:“We’ve just

hired a new CEO. He’s very big on engagement and the people side of the business. So the

commitment from leadership to engagement is stronger than it has been in the past. He’s

especially interested in leadership development and what leaders can do to build a more engaged

workforce. He strongly values engagement and wants to help other leaders understand its value.”

How do you go about creating leadership interest and accountability for employee engagement if

this is currently lacking? Our interviews suggest two effective strategies. The first has to do with

gaining buy-in by using data to prove the business value of engagement in terms that are relevant

to leaders. As an executive from a retail company that is looking to drive the engagement

strategy states:

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“[We] will be looking at the correlation between engagement and customer scores and sales. We

need to make the business case as to why engagement matters to them.”

The second set of strategies focuses on building leadership capability in the engagement of their

teams. Consider these actions from different executives around the world:

“What has worked here is when leaders have told people clearly where we are and where the

business is going—articulating a clear direction for the future is what engages employees.”

“We have individual and team coaching programs and Engagement Action Groups led by each

manager.”“We are absolutely relentless with unit managers regarding action plans and ensuring

the right leadership sponsor.”“We established a Leadership Style program, with hand-picked

managers whose teams have high engagement scores—we analyzed their leadership style and

behaviors to define a desired (company) leadership style.” “We [have a] Role Model program—

strong people managers become buddies to managers with low people management scores. They

share stories and practices to encourage a change in behavior.”

2. Employee Value Proposition

Companies who have one, two, three, or more unique and valued elements of the employment

“contract” are those that have a strong and differentiated employee value proposition. These

programs are highly connected to promises made and kept. ”

[We are] looking at our whole EVP—is it the right one? Looking at our employee brand from an

attraction perspective, are we attracting the right kind of people into the organization?” (Average

Employer)

“[We] have worked on EVP and last year received so many entries of stories from employees

regarding their workplace, that they published a book on the topic.” (Best Employer)

“We are linking together work streams regarding customer brand promise, culture, engagement,

employee value proposition, and total rewards.” (Best Employer)

3. Total Rewards

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Organizational leaders can improve employee engagement via a total rewards focus. Our

employee research suggests engagement can be improved by taking a holistic view of

compensation, benefits, learning and development, and work environment. Executive interviews

indicate that performance recognition and performance development are the key areas within

total rewards that are most relevant to improving engagement:

“True recognition of high performers (i.e., the ignoring of poor performance) is a real

disincentive for employees.” (Average Employer)

“We are devoting more focus on internal candidates by development of a career lattice.” (Best

Employer)

Half of employee ratings that differentiate high-performing companies are related to

compensation, benefits, recognition, and development—employees take note of these differences

and it impacts their engagement. This indicates that there are opportunities for improvement and

to create a holistic total rewards strategy tied to engagement as a primary outcome. However,

total rewards were not a major theme in our executive interviews. The employee data shows a

clear 20% average gap between how the “Best Employers” and the “Rest” of companies are

perceived to be rewarding their employees. These data suggest that not only is it important to get

the basic pay and benefits needs right, but those leaders also needed to focus on recognizing

performance and developing talent for the future.

4. Enabling Performance

Providing employees with the tools and resources to do their jobs effectively can make a real

difference in employee morale and productivity. The employees of Best Employers state that

they have access to the tools, resources, and processes to perform at a much higher rate than

employees from average companies. Is it possible to have engaged employees without enabling

them? An engaged employee who is not enabled to perform is not likely to stay engaged or stay

with the company for long. Executive interviews provide a contrast in the level of importance

placed on enabling employees:

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“We have issues around work processes. It’s increasingly difficult to work here—how do we

tackle this?

We also need to understand how much they want to invest in this.” (Average Employer)

An ongoing initiative has been to focus on ensuring that barriers to completing work tasks (e.g.,

work process effectiveness) are limited.” (Best Employer)

“[We have] technology reporting action planning websites that become a social tool for

managers where managers come together to learn and share best practices.” (Best Employer)

The Path Forward Toward Engagement Solutions

According to consulting organizations action to improve engagement levels - CEOs must be

accountable for engagement across the company (not just survey scores, but actual employee

engagement), be interested in new survey results, and let the employees know engagement is an

area of focus. Engagement initiatives must be part of ongoing business management—and

surveys become leading indicators of other important business performance metrics.

One executive sees some hope in the future and captures the nature of the solution well:

“I have been in numerous organizations conducting surveys and I’ve seen one really good

success story. The entire organization just dove into action planning. They didn’t keep it simple,

they didn’t keep it small. They mobilized a lot of people. They used a lot of people. It became

the driving focus, every conversation, everything. It was talked about in every discussion. It had

the attention and focus of leadership and employees.”

All of these quotes and survey analyses lead to a clear point—that engagement matters. It matters

both in terms of employee perception of the organization, and in how that perception can lead to

higher levels of worker performance.

The answer for engagement lay in Engaging Holistically, Innovatively, Sensitively and

Passionately….

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References:

1. Trends in Global Employee Engagement (2012 ,2014) http://www.aon.com/attachments/human-capital-consulting/2014-trends-in-global-employee-engagement-report.pdf accessed on 15/2/2015

2. Galluphttp://www.gallup.com/strategicconsulting/en-s/employeeengagement.aspx accessed on 15/2/2015

3. Seijts and Crim (2006) Ten Cs of Employee Engagement, Ivey Business Journal

4. www.forbes.com/sites/.../2012/.../ employee - engagement-what-and-why/accessed on 15 /2/2015

5. Woodruffe, C. (2006). The crucial importance of employee engagement. Human Resource Management International Digest, 14(1), 3-5.

6 Schaufeli, W. B., Bakker, A. B., and Salanova, M. (2006). The measurement of work engagement with a short questionnaire a cross-national study. Educational and psychological measurement, 66(4)

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