What positive signs indicate an organization is on track for facilitating employee engagement?
It’s probably easier to start this discussion by pointing out negative signs that suggest an organization may benefit from employee engagement initiatives. These signs include decreased employee job satisfaction, increased employee health issues and increased lost work time.
All three signs can be observed and may be indicators of low employee engagement that can negatively impact the organization’s productivity and success. However, keep in mind these are indicators and only through research can an organization accurately understand its level of employee engagement and the cost of not taking action.
Employee engagement by definition involves employee perceptions and values. For example, it may take a leader three months to build credibility and trust within a group of employees but only a minute to lose both. The employee engagement equation goal is to define an organization-specific path for transforming engagement words into reality.
I recently published a book called Why They Stay and Why They Go. In this book I provide leaders with a model for exploring core drivers that influence the employee engagement equation through a model called triangulation theory. Though there is no one theory that can define all the drivers and elements, the purpose of the triangulation theory is to give leaders a place to start to focus on employee engagement strategy and implementation planning.
Triangulation theory suggests there are three core drivers that collectively influence engagement:
Organizational maturity – how developed are the people, process and product/services. Variables that can influence this include leadership capacity, quality of communications, quality control, useful feedback and a performance management model for developing and retaining a workforce.
Cultural reality – what is the organization really like to work in – not what leaders claim based on an annual employee survey but what the majority of employees are saying to each other and believing. Some examples are employee level of respect and trust for their managers, level of fear, and level of co-operation.
Employee job satisfaction (external and internal) – External examples are employees’ satisfaction with their pay and benefits, working conditions and organization brand. Internal examples refer to the employees’ internal satisfaction, which is defined by personal sense of achievement, interest in role and perception in regard to recognition.
All three drivers are synergistic and interdependent. The equation for facilitating employee engagement depends on each of the above drivers, the organization’s commitment to understand its gaps and the desire to develop and implement appropriate action.
What an organization can do to improve its employee engagement equation:
- Understand how it’s doing in each of the above three drivers. There are no shortcuts for finding facts. Determine the dollar risk for doing nothing, to prove to all stakeholders the value of taking action.
- Institute strategic planning and implementation planning. If resources are not available internally, an external expert can pay for themselves fast.
- Put in writing an employee engagement equation and how it will be monitored and measured.
- Develop and mentor middle managers in the leadership core competencies that are required to implement this formula.
- Commit to monitoring potential negative signs that indicate the organization is on the wrong track, and take corrective action.
- Accept that employee engagement is a dynamic process and a moving target requiring constant attention, commitment and action.
- Constantly challenge the numbers behind balance scorecards. Understanding employee engagement requires both qualitative (e.g., focus groups, interviews) and quantitative (e.g., surveys) elements that collectively provide data to complete an accurate narrative and statistical report.
