
Do engagement surveys work?
Millions of words have been written about employee engagement, and
over a billion dollars is spent annually in the U.S. on surveys and improvement interventions.
What progress has been made, though?
In Gallup’s
Worldwide Employee Engagement Crisis report, the authors assert:
- “Though there have been some slight ebbs and flows, less than one-third
of U.S. employees have been engaged in their jobs and workplaces during
these 15 years.”
- “Employee engagement has barely budged in years.”
- “Measuring engagement isn’t sufficient to improve it.”
Three key factors stand out: execution flaws, paradigm flaws, courage
flaws.
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Execution flaws.
Most HR pros will concede the following problems:
-
Survey results are kept a mystery.
Not reporting results tells the staff, “Your input doesn’t really
matter; nor do we care about you.” It also fosters a
learned helplessness: Employees stop trying to make a difference or show initiative.
-
The results are reported, but aren’t acted upon.
In this mode, employees clam up. They don’t share ideas for process
improvements nor point out obstacles to productivity. The prevailing
mindset becomes: “Why speak up? It won’t make a difference.”
-
Improving engagement is deemed an “HR thing” rather than
“everybody’s thing.”
Everyone must play a role in employee engagement, from the CEO to
front-line contributors. Each must understand their role, take
responsibility and be held accountable. Human resources should be a
facilitator of engagement, not the driver.
-
“Solutions” such as fun committees, employee appreciation days and
other goodies, gimmicks and galas are seen as the answer.
This is “the American Way” when it comes to morale, motivation or
engagement.
The default response is finding and using the latest management fad or perk from a “Best
Places to Work” list. Throwing goodies, gimmicks and gala event
“solutions” at engagement problems says, “Management just doesn’t get
it,” and, “Management isn’t really serious or sincere about doing
anything about this issue.”
Enacting viable solutions requires recognizing the paradigm flaws that keep
most organizations from addressing engagement.
Paradigm flaws.
Engagement surveys, even those soliciting comments, give you only the tip
of the iceberg. When these surveys are deemed a comprehensive gauge,
employers miss out on valuable, actionable information that can be elicited
only through in-depth, one-on-one interviews. Furthermore, these direct
exchanges can help you to:
- Target A-list talent in hard-to-fill positions to learn what’s most
important to them and whether your organization delivers it.
- Gather useful information about pivotal manager/employee interactions
that boost or hurt engagement and productivity.
- Identify bright spots—examples of departments where employee engagement
is high—and those managers’ successful practices to spread throughout the
organization.
-
Gather
stories you can use in employer branding and
new hire orientation.
Too often, engagement is viewed as a statistic rather than an experience.
When poring over survey results, you might see engagement in terms of
organizational and divisional statistics.
In reality, what matters to each employee is their experience, not your
stats. If Justin in your IT department doesn’t feel a sense of purpose or
doesn’t believe his boss cares about him as a person, it offers little
solace that, on average, most of his co-workers feel this way. That
statistic doesn’t affect his engagement.
Also, each employee has an
engagement recipe, including a unique combination of drives, de-motivators and preferred
feedback style. To create high engagement, customize your management
approach to an individual’s personality and satisfaction recipe.
Employee engagement is about conversations, not surveys.
Courage flaws
Most people get anxious
giving or receiving feedback.
Hiding behind a survey to gather data rather than having candid
conversations has huge repercussions.
If managers don’t have the skills to bring up touchy issues without
triggering defensiveness, if they can’t manage their own discomfort or
de-escalate that of others, why would they initiate potentially heated
conversations?
Thus, for staffers to have effective ongoing engagement conversations,
managers need training and coaching to facilitate them. Investing in giving managers these
interpersonal skills might be the most important step an
organization can take to improve engagement.
Next steps
Don’t sink time, money and social capital into yet another survey followed
by ineffective “solutions.”
Try the following:
-
Discuss candidly which execution failures you are committing.
-
Discuss which faulty paradigms that underpin your strategy.
-
Discuss whether, and how, your leaders and managers are avoiding the
sometimes difficult conversations required for engagement to improve.
-
Discuss candidly the cost of not having your desired level of employee
engagement and whether you are serious about enjoying the benefits of
engagement, including:
- Great productivity and value generated per employee
- Better customer service
- Lower voluntary turnover
- Greater ability to attract A-list talent
- Conduct in-depth interviews with employees in hard-to-fill,
ultra-competitive, high-value positions, as well as conversations with the
“Steady Eddies” who are the backbone of your organization and have a
different “engagement recipe” from that of your high flyers.
- Invest in helping your managers develop the requisite interpersonal
skills for employees to engage comfortably in candid, mutually beneficial
conversations and interviews that provide the feedback your organization
needs for an engaged, productive workforce.
David Lee is the founder and principal of
HumanNature@Work. You can follow him on Twitter
at
@HumanNatureWork. A version of this post first appeared on
TLNT.