<img src="/files/siftmedia-photolib/photo_joe.jpg"
Engaged, participating, involved, motivated, enthused. Aren’t these all words that we would love to use to describe our workforces? In the last few years the combined corporate effort to create “engaged” teams has amounted to a major campaign; with budgets to match.

But hasn’t the employee engagement movement, with HR terminology of its own and whole internal communication structures dedicated to its creation, become a bit faddy? Surely we are just talking about good, fundamental managerial practices.

What’s all the fuss about?
There is little doubt that ‘employee engagement’ has become one of the foremost issues for those in HR and internal communications functions. Increasingly UK plc sees a growing number of programmes and campaigns dedicated to it. And the reasons why? Obvious isn’t it.

It takes little to convince corporate leaders that the company gets a lot more out of motivated and committed employees than those that turn up to work, do what they have to and leave.

Gallup research in the UK in 2003 calculated that disengaged staff were more likely to leave within a year (48%) than those who felt they were part of things (4%).

In 2004, Accenture’s High-Performance Workforce study showed that engagement ranked third among the factors that senior managers considered critical to business performance. So even if it’s just on the cost of employee turnover, there seems to be a reasonable business case for focusing on the issue.

Key drivers of employee engagement
As I mentioned in my last article on organisational culture the studies and books covering this subject are considerable. Gallup’s Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman’s 12 key questions to attract, focus and keep talented employees are supported by recent work done by Melcrum.

Their 2005 survey into employee engagement found that in 48% of organisations surveyed, senior leadership was a key driver (listed in their top three) in achieving employee engagement. The top 10 drivers of employee engagement include:

• Senior leadership




• Direct supervisors/managers




• Belief in company direction




• Involvement/consultation on decisions that directly impact the individual




• People-centric culture




• Formal internal communication




• Influence over how their job is done




• Understanding of key business issues




• Opportunity for career advancement




• Company values reflect personal values

It is somewhat surprising that companies are still failing to take steps to gain the commitment of their workforce.

To embed employee engagement as a real business strategy requires commitment, measurement and alignment of solutions. One of the pitfalls, for example, many companies that want to develop an engagement strategy encounter is the lack of robust and useful measurement.

Yes, small fortunes are spent in UK Plc on employee attitude and satisfaction surveys, but even assuming that anything is done with the information gathered to feedback to employees and develop action oriented solutions, many of the measurement tools employed only offer surface level information.

What is required is diagnostic data that enables organisations to track back to find the causes of their employees’ perceptions and attitudes.

What’s the return for the effort?
Among the factors that many organisations point to for choosing to focus on employee engagement is the expectation that it will significantly impact business performance. In linking these strategies with the bottom line, many organisations cite the well heard metrics of employee retention, customer satisfaction, productivity and profitability.

Since the work done by Harvard professors Heskett, Sasser and Schlesinger on the Service-Profit Chain and Pfeffer on the Human Equation in the late 1980’s and beyond, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence as to the business impact of employee engagement.

In Melcrum’s own research, the trend from 2001 to 2004 for companies focused on employee engagement shows a growing percentage of companies reporting increased operating profit, mirroring a decreasing profit trend for companies that are not.

At a time when the debate about measuring and reporting on human assets is hotting up, apart from anything else, it seems to be good business sense to think about the organisation in this way. And it’s “the way things are done around here” that really sets the engagement tone; the environment, mood, and style of the organisation that creates a people-centric culture.

JGMP
Taking all this into account, one is left feeling that there is quite a lot of hype about what is essentially common sense and Just Good Management Practice.

Among the array of methods deployed in companies to empower employees and generate feelings of involvement, participation and part of the solution to business challenges, the role of leaders at every level and their seeming lack of capability continues to fuel the debate about the quality of management.

In citing line managers and senior leaders as one of the most influential factors driving employee engagement, it’s what they actually do that counts. A vast majority of employees believe that:

• communicating a clear vision of the future




• creating a climate of open communication




• being seen to respond to feedback




• demonstrating genuine commitment to employees’ well being




• helping employees to understand their role in the company’s success, and




• building trust

These are some of the most important things managers can do to build employee engagement.

But hold on a minute. Haven’t we been here before? Despite the publicity that employee engagement seems to have generated within HR and internal communications communities it seems that, even if we could clarify what we are talking about, this ill-defined issue has the potential of yet another consultancy generated fad.

Who would argue that ensuring that most employees feel committed to the enterprise; have a clear line of sight between the general direction of the business and their contribution in making it happen, who feel listened to by their ‘higher-ups’, and who enjoy working in an atmosphere of integrity, trust and fun doesn’t contribute significantly to organisational performance?

But saying you want it and creating those conditions in which employee engagement exists doesn’t happen by osmosis. We know through personal experience and the wealth of case study material that it takes conscious and intentional managerial action. The value of employee engagement makes common sense. It’s just good management practice, isn’t it? Unfortunately, common sense doesn’t always equal common practice.

Joe España is MD of Performance Equations

Other articles by this author:

• Culture – help or hindrance?




• Opinion: Turning a vision into reality




• How Did I Get Here? Joe Espana, MD of Performance Equations