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CTDO Magazine

The Frustrating World of Employee Engagement

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

A lack of understanding of how to measure and interpret employee engagement data is causing frustration among C-level executives.

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Why does employee engagement cause so much anxiety among C-level executives?

Is it because it is a soft science that wasn't taught in business school? Or because years of change initiatives haven't improved employee engagement in your organization?

Whatever the reason, many recent surveys have illustrated the frustration with how to measure employee engagement, and how to interpret data from surveys and initiate changes in the company culture. Many executives don't realize the true employee engagement issues in their workplace until they see employees leaving the company in droves or experience poor results on the year-end employee engagement survey.

"We are focusing on symptoms rather than causes," says Michael Stallard, author of Connection Culture and co-founder and president of E Pluribus Partners. "You can't come up with a short checklist of things that have to be done. Culture is more complex than that. Engagement requires managers who care about people and care about results—both are essential."

A 2015 Oracle-Human Capital Institute report, More than a Number: Agile and Actionable Employee Engagement Measurement, found that most organizations use exit interviews or employee engagement surveys to measure engagement, but more than 50 percent of the survey respondents—327 expert practitioners, Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 corporations, government agencies, global consultants, and business schools—plan to increase the frequency of their surveys to at least quarterly.

Having good data is essential, but knowing how to interpret that data and use it is equally important. Respondents stated that the biggest challenge is to "translate the feedback into change initiatives."

"The number one problem of executives in moving from data to action is that they are simply interpreting the results wrong," explains Tracy Maylett, CEO of DecisionWise, a management consulting firm specializing in leadership and organization development. "They are interpreting it from the executive level rather than looking at things from the employee lens. The most important thing for them to do is look at it through the employee lens—ask them, 'What are you saying here?'"

The problem with surveys

Most engagement surveys don't measure engagement, admits Maylett. "Most of them measure all types of things that go into engagement. What executives should be paying attention to are those elements that are true indicators of engagement: They should include anchor questions such as 'Would you recommend this company to your friends or others?'"

Stallard adds that many employee engagement surveys are too complex, and that complexity scares away executives and managers, who don't have the time to interpret the results. "Employee engagement surveys should include questions that assess the core values of your organization—you are promising to deliver that to your employees and it creates a great deal of cynicism if you don't."

In a 2015 DecisionWise survey of 200 organizations, one respondent said, "The problem with our surveys is that people think management will find out who answered what, and this makes them less honest and way too positive. So then HR thinks that we're doing really well and I haven't been able to prove otherwise. We do pretty well, but we could definitely improve our level of engagement."

Maylett says that surveys should be viewed as organizational report cards, and organizations should take ownership of the results.

From data to solutions

Five key metrics that people should be looking for involve the acronym MAGIC: Do individuals have meaning in their lives? Do they have autonomy in their jobs? Are they growing? Do they have impact on the organization in the work that they do? Do they have a connection to the organization?

These metrics are critical to finding solutions to your organization's engagement challenges, but how you look at those metrics prove just as valuable.

"We are approaching engagement from a top-down perspective, not a bottom-up perspective," explains Maylett. "We are assuming that engagement is something that we inflict on employees. Engagement is a choice, and 50 percent of the responsibility of engagement resides with the employee. All the organization can do is put the environment in place in which I choose to be engaged.

"Right now, particularly in the last five years, we are using perks to solve the engagement problem," Maylett adds. "Perks don't create engagement. So by throwing more money at the problem, we are not solving the engagement problem. Organizations have been approaching it the wrong way."

Managers, the direct link

Both Maylett and Stallard agree that managers play a crucial role in the engagement of their employees. "Use data to identify which managers are engaging people and which managers need help," Stallard explains. "For the managers that need help, be sure to read responses to open-ended questions to give you a clear understanding of why that particular manager has not created a culture that is connecting with people. It will help you come up with a plan that should include a mentor or a coach who provides support, encouragement, and accountability."

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Involving managers and employees in the action-planning process to increase engagement has shown positive results in the 2015 DecisionWise survey. Only 32 percent of responding companies involve managers in the action-planning process, and only 19 percent involve all employees. Of the companies that don't have employee engagement programs, 54 percent said it is because of lack of support from managers.

Maylett explains that managers need to meet with their employees and go through the "explore, explain, and execute" process.

  • Explore: A lot of times, it is difficult to understand the results of the survey. The employees may be saying something, and the executives or managers are saying, "I just don't know what this means." It is about asking many questions.
  • Explain: Sometimes the executive team has not explained things very well. The employees may be saying that they are not getting the benefits out of this organization, and the organization may have those benefits, but just haven't explained them very well.
  • Execute: Based on the information we found out, what can we do as managers to make this happen? What level of power does each employee have to execute on the changes?

"If I am a manager, I'm sitting down with my employees and saying, 'Some of these things we don't have the power to change, but there are things that we can do to increase this element of engagement,'" Maylett adds.
Managers have direct links to the employees. They create subcultures that directly affect the behaviors and attitudes of their employees.

"I don't think managers understand attachment and connection and the basics of it," says Stallard. "Managers need to get back to the basics and focus on how to create a culture and become an attachment figure for the people you are responsible for so they feel safe. Then once they feel safe and connected, managers can challenge them to achieve things. But if they don't have that foundation of attachment, they are not going to be engaged."

Delivering results

More than 90 percent of organizations responding to the 2015 DecisionWise survey are very concerned about employee retention, but the survey also found that few organizations (9 percent) measure the return on investment of their employee engagement programs.

"Measuring and managing engagement alone is insufficient," a survey respondent said. "Workforce surveys need to be retooled to focus on measuring strategy alignment and organizational capabilities."

Those organizations that measure employee engagement saw higher employee retention, higher employee satisfaction, higher performance, and improved company or brand image. The survey found that those organizations that measure ROI are twice as likely to see success with engagement programs.

The Chemistry of Employee Engagement, a whitepaper by the employee engagement platform Glint, points to several best practices to measure and improve employee engagement:

  • Create a sustainable program to measure employee engagement.
  • Take frequent pulses of your employees and share those results with the employees.
  • Empower managers to take the results of those pulses and act on them.
  • Find and fix any disengagement loops before they become major problems.

It is important that you measure the right things at the right frequency; deliver actionable insights based on the data collected; deliver data and insights to managers, not just HR and executives; and equip your managers to act quickly. The more transparent you are with the results and the actionable items, the more your employees will begin to buy in to the culture change.
Read more from CTDO magazine: Essential talent development content for C-suite leaders.

About the Author

Paula Ketter is ATD's content strategist. Previously, she served as editor of ATD's periodicals.

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