Global Roundtable I
Employee Engagement Today
While it hasn’t yet earned the acronym EE, in less than a decade Employee Engagement arguably has become the most popular concept for organizations eager to improve employee motivation and productivity. The Gallup Organization triggered interest in the concept in 1999 when its research found that engaged employees are more productive, more customer-focused, safer and less likely to depart.
But how do you effectively engage your employees? This is the subject that three workplace specialists tackle in this global roundtable. Meet them:
Jill Semegran, managing consultant, Stromberg Consulting, New York 
Marc Wright, editor, simply-communicate.com, a knowledge site for internal communication professionals, United Kingdom
Sarah Barrett, director of human resources and development, Ketchum London-
What does employee engagement mean to you?
In today’s fast-changing communications landscape, how have employee desires changed for ongoing dialogue with management and real workplace conversations?
What difference can employee engagement make within a large organization?
How can senior leaders make a real difference in engaging employees? Positively and negatively?
What difference can supervisors make in engaging their direct reports, and what are some things that supervisors are doing differently today to accomplish that?
How should companies employ new media and technology to support employee engagement?
Increasingly, the lines are blurring between internal and external communications. What do you see as the relationship between external communications, marketing and reputation, and internal employee engagement?
What are the business benefits of engagement to an organization's top-line performance and bottom-line results?
Q: What does employee engagement mean to you?
Jill Semegran: The best definition ties closely to the unique needs of the organization. It’s connecting people emotionally (with their hearts) and intellectually (with their minds) to their company or job so they become proud advocates. Often this leads to an investment of extra energy.
Marc Wright: Employee engagement is changing – to actually involving employees in the decisions and, therefore, the strategy of their organization rather that simply getting people aligned with the brand.
Sarah Barrett: For me, employee engagement means ensuring that the company upholds the “promise”’ that it makes to employees at all stages of their careers. From the first touch point when we attract candidates to join us through their experience when they become alumni, their experience should match the expectations we set out. It’s also about developing a transparency around our business goals, helping employees access these, and creating conditions, structures and policies that enable employees to contribute genuinely to the organization’s overall success.
Semegran: Today's employees demand communication that goes beyond simply telling the truth. A Towers Perrin survey of 25,000 employees concludes that employees who believe their senior leaders care about them are most likely to judge company communications as effective.
Employees want open and honest communication – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Here are some quick tips for engaging in a two-way dialogue with employees: Greet employees in the hallway; make an effort to get to know employees beyond their expected role; provide forums for information and opinion sharing; when meeting with employees, make it clear they have your attention; and schedule regular times for meetings with employees and honor those commitments.
Barrett: Employees want real-time and, if possible, ahead-of-time dialogue. A “what’s in it for me?” culture also is emerging, which can be difficult to respond to if an organization doesn’t have the right mechanisms in place.
Q: What difference can employee engagement make within a large organization?
Semegran: A huge difference, with numerous tangible and intangible benefits. Consider: A Hewitt Associates study found that companies with more than 60 percent of their employees saying they’re engaged in their work had an average total return to shareholders of 24 percent, while those with engagement levels below 25 percent had a negative 10 percent return to shareholders. In terms of retention, two-thirds of highly engaged employees haven’t any plans to leave their jobs versus one-third of the moderately engaged and 12 percent of the disengaged, according to a 2004 Corporate Leadership Council study.
Higher levels of engagement also lead to a fair, trusting environment in which employees feel a greater sense of satisfaction, pride and achievement. In turn, this impacts “harder” metrics such as absenteeism, profit margin, customer satisfaction, etc.
Wright: I worked on an engagement project with British Airways from 1998 to 2001. During that time, profits quadrupled and its share price rose 40 percent. Then-chairman Lord Marshall said the project “Putting People First Again” helped reinvigorate the airline with a sense of excitement.
Q: How can senior leaders make a real difference in engaging employees? Positively and negatively?
Semegran: In one major employee-engagement survey by Melcrum, a London-based research and training firm, actions of senior leaders were the top driver of employee engagement at 48 percent. Not only are formal communications from senior leadership important, their informal communications and actions also are critical. For example, senior leaders need to be visible, act with integrity, build a sense of trust in the organization, involve and listen to their employees, and be able to communicate the organizational strategy, values and direction. Effective senior leaders often are able to achieve higher levels of employee engagement, more satisfied customers and profitable growth.
Wright: I remember working with the late Robert Maxwell, who managed to align staff and impose his iron will negatively on his giant publishing company. When he needed something from anyone outside the company who had any power or influence, he used incredible charm. When it was one of his own employees, he used terror.
Barrett: They’re a major factor in engagement. Senior leaders who enthuse, develop and involve their teams in delivering business goals are more likely to have engaged employees.
Semegran: While frontline management often serves as the linchpin of an organization, we often hear that managers don’t have the right attitude, time or skills to make a true difference with regard to engaging their direct reports. Some things that great supervisors do to engage their direct reports include: involve them in conversations about the type of work they want to do and the goals they seek to achieve; set clear role expectations; ensure that the work they do aligns well with their talents, skills and developmental goals; provide coaching and regular and constructive feedback; and be open and responsive to suggestions from their direct reports.
Gallup research found that the typical employee wants his or her manager to know me, care about me, focus me, hear me, help me feel proud, help me review my contributions, equip me, help me see my value, help me grow, help me see my importance, help me build mutual trust and challenge me.
Wright: The line supervisor is least equipped in the art of employee engagement. Very few do it intuitively. In the United Kingdom, insurance company Norwich Union has focused on training line managers in these areas with great success.
Barrett: Supervisors have one of the hardest roles in the organization. They must translate the business vision and goals into realities. And their old-style role of pay-and-promotion gatekeeper has been replaced with being a coach, mentor and communicator. They also must assess and respond to the career aspirations, views, opinions and ideas of their teams while being sensitive to the work-life balance that matters to each individual. Oh, they also must be experts in their chosen field.
Q: How should companies employ new media and technology to support employee engagement?
Semegran: Technology has transformed the world of internal communication. Information is now a widely available commodity. With access to e-mail, wikis, and blogs, employees can create, comment on, or contradict internal communications. Faced with this democratization of information, internal communicators must learn how to leverage new media technology and develop strategies for engaging their employees.
Here are some suggestions:
- Simplicity: Internal communicators must “break through the clutter” and be simple and direct.
- Personalization: Internal communicators must determine how to segment, customize and personalize media and messages so that employees opt in rather than select out.
- Globalization: Leading organizations are investing in improving communications abroad by establishing global networks, employing technological innovations and mapping the “digital divide.”
Wright: The rise of social media offers a huge opportunity to change the rules on employee engagement. I call it the Perfect Storm – where employee engagement and social media meet. Generation Y will be hard to engage and they’re the very people who use social media. As a corporate communicator, you will either ride this storm or drown.
Barrett: Embrace it. Take risks. Give individuals the opportunity to blog, network and contribute to the bigger picture. Replace intranets with user-generated-content sites that are organic and experimental.
Semegran: It is essential that the brand and messaging be fully aligned – inside and out. This means that internal and external communication, human resources and marketing must all be aligned and work together to promote employee engagement and the internal brand.
After all, employees, in essence, are ambassadors of your brand. So companies must create strong emotional bonds and foster a sense of deep loyalty so their employees “live the brand” and focus on delivering an outstanding customer experience. With the advent of new media, internal communications no longer are considered private but public information. As a result, employees either can help or hinder the brand’s reputation.
Barrett: They must be aligned, although tailored for different audiences.
Semegran: A study by Gallup, using a well-known survey intended to measure engagement levels, compared stores alike on all dimensions except the human factor. It found that stores with higher employee engagement scores markedly outperformed poorly performing stores on a number of dimensions. Among them: Stores scoring in the top 25 percent were, on average, 4.56 percent above their projected sales, while those in the bottom quartile were 0.84 percent below budget. In dollars, this sales difference equaled $104 million a year.
Barrett: It’s well documented that a direct correlation exists between engagement and performance. When individuals become our brand ambassadors and generate word-of-mouth buzz about our business, they attract new employees and new clients. You couldn’t ask for anything more.
