Are your colleagues and employees "engaged"?
Stephen Walker of Motivation Matters has outlined 10 key indicators for identifying whether your colleagues and / or employees are engaged (below).
The question is, in these austere times, can organisations afford for their employees not to be fully engaged?
1. Financial performance
Let's start with the obvious, the financial numbers. The finance department will produce these figures if they don't already. Compare this data with peer organisations through published accounts or sector organisations like the EEF.
- Return on Investment (ROI)
- Sales per employee
- Fixed costs as a percentage of sales
2. Customer service level
As important as the financial numbers is your ability to create satisfied customers. If you don't have data on customer satisfaction you might consider running a survey. There are many organisations that will do it for you. Sector journals publish data on client feedback. Look at sector standard data such as:
- Customer satisfaction levels
- On-time delivery
3. Sickness and absence
The HR people will have data on attendance. Take care to get the raw data as it is sometimes 'normalised' to remove anomalies. Compare data on:
- Total absence
- Number of occasions absent
4. Staff turnover
Again HR should be able to provide this data. Look at data in your sector and in your geographic area using:
- Percentage staff turnover
- Exit interview surveys
5. Staff satisfaction surveys
There are people who will design and run staff surveys for you. I do urge you to take the time to talk to people yourself however. When you meet people in the lift, by the water cooler – in the toilet if you have to – encourage people to share hopes and fears with you. Be careful not to undermine intermediate managers and make sure you listen to lots of people not the local know-it-all! Compare survey results across sector and geographic area using staff surveys.
6. Innovation
Is your organisation introducing innovative new products or processes? Compare your organisation through:
- An executive review of product/service innovation
- A comparison with the sector innovation leader(s)
The board is well-placed to commission and conduct such a review.
7. Managerial workload
The more engaged people are in their work the more helpful they are in assisting the organisation achieve its objectives. This makes the management task significantly less arduous. Managers will usually try to take up any extra work themselves that needs to be done. This can have terrible consequences individually as well as for the organisation. Is your organisation:
- Exhibiting high stress-related incidents
- Finding management time to help the boss with his or her tasks
- Finding time to look outside your organisation for threats and opportunities
How do you assess the managers working for you? Do they bring solutions to your problems? Do they bring new ideas to the table? Or do they look like they work a 60-hour week just to keep things as they are?
8. Working hours
- Are people expected to routinely do more than 10% extra hours?
- Conversely will people stay to finish an urgent task?
- Is the workplace empty a few minutes after finishing time?
- Does the workplace emptying depend on the presence of the 'boss'
9. Work rate
If the boss walks into the workplace:
- Does the work rate increase because people are not working effectively normally?
- Does the work rate decrease as everyone wants to talk to the boss!
10. Instinct
- Do you feel the organisation is working satisfactorily?
- Do you feel dissatisfied but are told everything is the best that is possible?
- Do things get better when you put them under a spotlight?
- Do things get worse when you stop asking about them?
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Interesting stuff Colin. How does your place score?
Hi Adi,
I haven't undertaken the assessment yet but, now that you've mentioned it, I won't pass up the opportunity for a plug - despite breaking the ranks!
Forth Valley CMI will be hosting an evening with c-t-c Ltd to discuss employee engagement; what it is, why it matters and what you can do to improve it.
The event's taking place in the Falkirk Wheel on Wednesday 24th November 2o1o - more details to follow in due course. That's not been made public until now......!
But enough of that unashamed promotion!
I do however think this is going to become increasingly important in the new workplace once the axe has fell a few times, especially on the public sector which accounts for around 40% of Scotland's working population.
I'd guess that engagement will decrease and survivor syndrome increase as people watch their colleagues and friends depart the office for the last time, just at the time where we're asking people to produce more with or for less.
The inclusion of managerial workload and instinct surprised me slightly - but probably because these are the 2 most subjective on the list - likely to be the two areas that could skew the results.
Does present a comprehensive list of indicators though.
Hi Colin,
An interesting and useful list of indicators that would, I am sure, shed light on any organisation.
However, a report to government in 2009, titled "Engaging for Success" suggests that the general factors for employee engagement are:
LEADERSHIP - providing a strong strategic narrative
ENGAGING MANAGERS are at the heart of organisational culture– they facilitate and empower rather than control or restrict their staff
VOICE An effective and empowered employee voice
INTEGRITY Behaviour throughout the organisation is consistent with stated values
The full report can be downloaded here: http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file52215.pdf
Communication is the golden thread across all these factors and academic research for CIPD conducted in 2006 indicates that the three drivers for employee engagement are:
1. having opportunities to feed your views upwards
2. feeling well informed about what is happening in the organization, and
3. thinking that your manager is committed to your organization.
Again it is internal communication that stands out. That’s where I’d put the focus of any assessment of employee engagement.
Kevin
Hi Adi,
I haven't undertaken the assessment yet but, now that you've mentioned it, I won't pass up the opportunity for a plug - despite breaking the ranks!
Forth Valley CMI will be hosting an evening with c-t-c Ltd to discuss employee engagement; what it is, why it matters and what you can do to improve it.
The event's taking place in the Falkirk Wheel on Wednesday 24th November 2o1o - more details to follow in due course. That's not been made public until now......!
But enough of that unashamed promotion!
I do however think this is going to become increasingly important in the new workplace once the axe has fell a few times, especially on the public sector which accounts for around 40% of Scotland's working population.
I'd guess that engagement will decrease and survivor syndrome increase as people watch their colleagues and friends depart the office for the last time, just at the time where we're asking people to produce more with or for less.
The inclusion of managerial workload and instinct surprised me slightly - but probably because these are the 2 most subjective on the list - likely to be the two areas that could skew the results.
Does present a comprehensive list of indicators though.
Sounds like an interesting event Colin. I'm miles away but if you could publish the slides or something that'd be great.
Hi Colin,
An interesting and useful list of indicators that would, I am sure, shed light on any organisation.
However, a report to government in 2009, titled "Engaging for Success" suggests that the general factors for employee engagement are:
LEADERSHIP - providing a strong strategic narrative
ENGAGING MANAGERS are at the heart of organisational culture– they facilitate and empower rather than control or restrict their staff
VOICE An effective and empowered employee voice
INTEGRITY Behaviour throughout the organisation is consistent with stated values
The full report can be downloaded here: http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file52215.pdf
Communication is the golden thread across all these factors and academic research for CIPD conducted in 2006 indicates that the three drivers for employee engagement are:
1. having opportunities to feed your views upwards
2. feeling well informed about what is happening in the organization, and
3. thinking that your manager is committed to your organization.
Again it is internal communication that stands out. That’s where I’d put the focus of any assessment of employee engagement.
Kevin
Hi Kevin, I think those three miss out a huge one, and that's providing a culture that people can believe in. Younger managers now don't want to just go to work, they want to engage in something they can believe in and make a real difference to the world. This includes both formal work and more informal stuff such as volunteering elsewhere on work time.
Hi Nicola,
Will do - we'll put as much of the event as we can on the Forth Valley area of the CMI website so that people can get a general flavour if possible.
Hi Kevin,
Similar to Nicola's observation, the list does seem to lack something for me. It feels quite clinical but there's no EI and no realy assessment?
Did they explore how to measure employee engagement too? I'm an accredited EFQM Business Excellence Assessor and the first thing I always look for is a suite of measures demonstrating positive or negative trends in key areas.
The list sounds more like a list of values or a mission statement rather than a means for measuring engagement.
Hi Nicola,
Yes, I agree that organisational culture has a very significant impact. I also think that all managers, not just young people, want to engage in an organisation that has clear values and a strong CSR programme.
One way for an organisation to develop an engaging culture is to invest time in giving employees a voice on what goes on and keeping them informed in a transparent and authentic way about what is happening. This is about informed employee voice. Switched on organisations are realising the value of this and are thinking beyond more job related dimensions of employee engagement such as satisfaction surveys - engagement is not the same as satisfaction.
Kevin
Hi Colin,
I agree that these findings do look different from established thinking on employee engagement.
Both reports are though, highly credible. Engaging for Success was a major report for government in 2009 and is based on a large number of interviews and case studies. The CIPD report was based on interviews with 2000 employees from across the UK.
What this suggests to me is that it is time to think differently about employee engagement. I am currently doing a PhD on rethinking internal communication measurement and this has led me to review a large number of academic and practitioner based articles and books that include employee engagement measurement. What I’m finding is that the term “employee engagement” itself is problematic. Two schools of thought are emerging in the academic world. One is focused on work engagement, or immersion in work through “vigor, dedication and absorption”. This has led to the development of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale by academics Schaufeli and Bakker.
Other academics, such as Macey and Schneider in the US point to wider, organisational identification factors. This is more interesting to me, as it is where a new approach to internal communication can really add value to employee engagement. It is interesting to see that this is also closer to the common understanding of “communicating and building good relations” used in a Guardian article on 22 August: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/aug/22/employee-engagement-research
Macey and Scheider claim that most current attempts to measure engagement get the construct wrong, so perhaps it is time for some new thinking?
Hi Kevin,
What I would say is that I like things to be kept simple and practical. For me, engagement can be as simple as "I know what's expected of me and how my contributions link to organisational or social attainment".
I say that because of the voluntary sector in particular where people are often very highly engaged with what they're doing (and need to be as they are doing it for reasons other than financial recompense) so to remain engaged they need to believe that without their contributions either:
1. The goal or objective would not be met and thus progress would not be made; or
2. Status quo cannot be maintained and we would regress?
My example would be a previous role I held where the staff were (and I use the term exceptionally loosely as I have no qualitative evidence to back up the statement) disengaged - they were performing well below the expected or necessary standard and they knew this.
They felt disengaged from the organisation and made comments such as "they" don't understand what we do here; "they" don't care etc.
No-one actively communicated to me the role that these people were playing in the organisation or in society (and we were having an impact on society) but once I was able to recognise that, I concede I shared my views with the team and, along with other significant changes, people started to perform better and make useful suggestions about how we could better work with other colleagues and departments, suggesting they were now "engaged".
The 1 step I think I experienced in my journey which is missing in the BERR research was "realisation" - you need that before you can provide a strong narrative; vision etc.
The last step I think is missing is qualitative and quantitative measurement of engagement.
Has your research brought you into contact with a yardstick for "engagement"?
Hi Colin,
I like simplicity too and I think your definition is good. I would add a further dimension about being able to contribute to decisions and strategy. This is informed employee voice. It means that managers communicate with employees and give them a say in what goes on. As your example illustrates, communication is the key factor. We come back to the findings in the CIPD research that focus on three primary drivers:
1. having opportunities to feed your views upwards
2. feeling well informed about what is happening in the organization, and
3. thinking that your manager is committed to your organization.
There are lots of communication and engagement measures out there. They are often provided by consultancies such as Gallup http://www.gallup.com/consulting/52/employee-engagement.aspx and Towers Perrin http://www.towersperrin.com/tp/getwebcachedoc?webc=HRS/USA/2008/200803/GWS_Global_Report20072008_31208.pdf
In terms of a yardstick, this is tricky as different surveys place an emphasis on different facets of engagement. According to the CIPD in 2006, levels are alarmingly low - only three in ten of UK employees were actively engaged with their work. According to Towers Perrin, only 12 per cent of UK public sector staff are highly engaged. However, some organisations, such as Molson Coors, claim engagement levels of 80 per cent: http://tiny.cc/1r46g
So, you pays your money and takes your choice when it comes to measuring and benchmarking engagement.
Kevin
It is estimated that only 19% of employees are actively engaged at work at any one time, while another 19% are actively disengaged. Active disengagement at work costs the UK economy about £38bn a year. David Bolchover (Bolchover D (2005) The Living Dead. Capstone) found out what actively disengaged employees do when at work (and also when not). He found that:
. 1 in 3 people have taken illegal drugs at work: ecstasy, cannabis, and cocaine
. 1 in 5 people have had sex at work
. 70% of porn site hits happen during working hours
. The actively disengaged have twice as much time off sick (and many of them are to be found at Alton Towers, apparently)
. 1in 5 people describe themselves as constantly surfing the net, while a majority of people estimate they spend the equivalent of a day a week on non-work websites at work
. 7% send more than 20 personal emails a day
. 1/3 of young professionals confess to being hung over twice a week at work
. A quarter of people have fallen asleep at work
Hi Rebecca,
Quite astonishing set of statistics! If ever there was the need to build a business case for increasing "employee engagement" and making it a board level concern, £38bn a year might be a good start.
Then there's the concerns regarding what people are doing when they're not working.......
Does the author suggest approaches to measuring or increasing employee engagement?
Are there also outward signs of disengagement (assuming you don't walk into the store cupboard when 2 disengaged employees are inhabiting it; there's funny groaning noises coming from the pc in the booth next to yours or there's the lingering smell of tobacco and cannabis in the smoking shelter)?
Are there also outward signs of disengagement (assuming you don't walk into the store cupboard when 2 disengaged employees are inhabiting it; there's funny groaning noises coming from the pc in the booth next to yours or there's the lingering smell of tobacco and cannabis in the smoking shelter)?
That sounds a pretty cool office :-D
Seriously though, those stats are awful, especially the one about so many young professionals turning up to work hung-over quite so often.
New research from University of Exeter and Ambius has shown that by giving employees input into the development of their workspace they can improve employee engagement by 32%.
Results also showed that the more people identified with and reflected their own personalities in their work space the happier and more productive (+17%) they were in their jobs. They felt physically more comfortable at work, identified more with their employers, and felt more positive about work in general.