Are You Aimlessly Engaging Employees?

Studies show that engaged workers are over 40% more productive and effective than their unengaged counterparts. At the same time a whopping 70% of the workforce is at best complacent and at worst actively disengaged.

While Employee Engagement has garnered considerable interest in the last few years, we believe that few companies have scratched the surface of the impact that Employee Engagement efforts can have on a company’s bottom line. There are two primary reasons for this:

1. The Pursuit of Aimless Engagement
2. A Contingent Action Strategy

Most companies approach Employee Engagement similarly to how they have approached employee satisfaction, pulse, or opinion surveys. They identify the lowest scoring areas and pursue corresponding actions to “improve” those areas. This approach is also fostered by most survey companies who are new to the Employee Engagement survey arena and provide little in the way of real engagement solutions.

LSA believes that an effective Employee Engagement initiative must be strategic, systemic, and focus on implementation from the beginning. Our consulting roots in employee retention and engagement have shown that there are proven approaches and fundamental practices that drive engagement.

Companies that have realized the most significant benefits from Employee Engagement have made it an organizational discipline. The following 4 Best Practices in Employee Engagement will help you do the same and ensure that your company’s investment in Employee Engagement produces a meaningful return:

1. Identify Employee Engagement’s Role in Your Business Strategy
Clearly identify what you want people to engage in and the role of Employee Engagement in the company’s business strategy. Connecting people with the organization’s business strategy is a key foundation for Employee Engagement. This role should be a central focus in the design, execution, and measurement of your Employee Engagement program.

2. Focus on Implementation First, Then the Survey
Look for a solution that provides a breadth of training and support around methods, practices, and tools that have a track record for increasing engagement. Too often companies jump into selecting “the right survey” without considering solutions that will support effective implementation and attainment of engagement results. The extent of implementation for most survey companies is a generic PowerPoint presentation on what to do with the results.

3. Select a Survey Tool that Enables Management Action
Customize your survey to answer important organizational questions and identify engagement drivers that are most important to your people. Standardized or abbreviated surveys will require additional information gathering before your organization’s leaders can consider action.

4. Make the Employee Engagement Index a Key Performance Indicator
Your engagement index is the equivalent of your company’s stock price and market capitalization for people. It is the cumulative result of leading and managing people in a way that produces higher performance and should be used as an annual litmus test to judge the effectiveness of HR programs, particularly your Employee Engagement initiative.