Receive posts by emailEngage employees to improve retention and performance
This week’s guest blogger is Beth Armkrecht Miller, CMC – Leadership Advisor, Coach and Vistage Chair.
An Employee Engagement Survey conducted by HR Solutions of Chicago revealed that employees were more engaged with their work when they felt:
- Supported by their manager when making suggestions to correct work place problems.
- Valued and recognized as an important part of the team.
- Their manager was helpful and friendly.
So what can happen if your employees are disengaged?
According to the study, business leaders will experience a lower level of productivity from team members. And based on the research done by Marcus Buckingham in First Break all the Rules, employees who don’t feel valued are more likely to leave in search of an employer who does value and recognize them for their accomplishments. Low employee engagement can also lead to lower profits and levels of customer satisfaction.
Ultimately, it is the employee’s manager who is the key driver in employee engagement. The CEO’s responsibility is to ensure that managers are provided the development opportunities to increase their leadership capacity. Because managers are the ones who directly influence employee opinions and attitudes, their development is critical.
What is your company’s level of employee engagement and how do you measure it?
For most companies, an employee satisfaction survey provides anonymity to employees, and provides them with a platform to be open and honest with their feedback. However, for smaller, emerging growth companies a survey may be overkill. Personal interviews using an outside consultant can also provide honest feedback. The key to a good survey are obviously the questions. You need to understand how to create good survey questions or outsource this process to someone who has the expertise.
Once you’ve received feedback, then it is time to develop an action plan to increase employee engagement. Results of your survey or personal interviews may show a systemic problem across your organization or may show intermittent problems. The problems could be with a specific department which may mean managerial development is needed.
What should be the key steps in your action plan?
First, identify those areas that could have the biggest impact on improving future survey results. Concentrate on only one or two areas to improve and identify those leaders that need to be involved with implementing the improvements. For instance, your survey may show that recognition for a job well done is not given in a timely fashion. If this is the case, identify what processes can be implemented to improve the recognition process and then provide the necessary training for the managers who will be involved with implementing the changes. Next, determine ways of measuring the effectiveness of the changes you’ve made to the process. In this case, you don’t want to find out in your next survey that the changes made had no effect in solving the problem of untimely recognition.
Remember that results of the survey and your committed action steps for improvement also need to be communicated to employees in a timely fashion. This is critical to the ongoing process of honest employee feedback and for increasing employee engagement levels.
By implementing an employee engagement action plan, your employees will be more engaged with their work, will truly feel valued, and will know they will be recognized for their accomplishments. Company loyalty and employee retention will rise. Furthermore, engaged employees contribute to higher levels of customer satisfaction and increased profits.
Beth Armknecht Miller, of Atlanta, Georgia, is Founder and President of Executive Velocity, a leadership development coaching firm accelerating the leadership success of CEOs and business leaders. She is also Chair to two Vistage groups. She is certified in Myers Briggs and Hogan leadership assessment tools and is a Certified Managerial Coach by Kennesaw State University. Visit http://www.executive-velocity.com or http://executivevelocityblog.com or follow her on twitter @SrExecAdvisor..
November 9th, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Excellent Beth! Thank you for blogging about this! If I’ve understood well…
An “employee engagement action plan” charts a path to measurable improvement. And moreover, the *questions* we ask ourselves, whether by survey or interview, hold the keys to our future! Those questions have the power to shape our organizational [re]design. I’d like to amplify that point…
I believe that the careful *design* of our survey questions (expressing our “measures of success”) is what ultimately *inspires* our organizational change. In other words, our surveys define the criteria by which we may chart our course through seas of change. Thus, survey *design* has the potential to steer (or ‘drive’) our organization to its future… for better or for worse! On that belief, I heartily recommend seeking the guidance of inspired professionals (for example, you and your colleagues) rather than attempting yet another misguided, ad hoc “employee satisfaction survey.”
Every time I read one of the Gallup books, such as Buckingham & Coffman’s “First Break All the Rules” or Buckingham’s “The One Thing You Need to Know” I find myself both awestruck and inspired! In contrast, I have seen surveys that yielded little or no actionable results, and without any empirical reference basis in research data. When it comes to data, the Gallup Organization has acquired massive data… and they have published and shared much with us from their understanding. As for survey design, the [copyrighted] Gallup Q12 (R) is, as far as I know, still the gold standard for measuring employee “engagement” …and predicting business results! When I first learned of it, I reflected on my experiences and recognized that “engagement” was, indeed, a powerful predictor. I also realized that if we were to *design* our organizational relationships and processes around such questions (and corresponding measures of success), then we could *engineer* a more effective organization!
In a nutshell, that realization is what prompted me to attempt this hopefully-supportive, amplifying comment. If I’ve misunderstood your intent, or failed to add value, please feel free to remove my comments or supplement them with whatever clarification, correction and instruction seems right.
Thanks, again, for focusing on this line of thought…and action! Please, “Press ON!” I’ll be cheering!
November 21st, 2011 at 9:51 am
Beth -
Thanks for writing about this important research study.
I think surveys are a great way to gather information on engagement, but sometimes the process backfires. Two things I found: 1. The survey asks so many questions that the readers get too much data and they tune out, or to make this information manageable, they begin to PowerPoint the results. “We need to communicate better” “show more respect” etc. etc. Once this happens, the potential richness of the survey dies. One client told me, “all organizations have communication problems.” Therefore, he didn’t have to do anything about this. 2. Sometimes there is a long time lag between survey and results. When this occurs, there is a danger that whatever urgency prompted the survey has been lost.
I do use surveys, but I like to couple them with one-on-one conversations and focus groups run by the leaders themselves and not by consultants like us. I want my clients to hear the stories directly and not filtered through my eyes or slides.
I hope you write further pieces for this blog.
Rick