Over 5,000 Fortune 500 employees were surveyed (2006-07) by PeopleMetrics, "a leading research firm specializing in employee engagement, customer engagement, and strategic market research." A key finding from the survey was this: companies in the highest quartile in profitability had twice as many "engaged employees" as those in the lowest quartile.
The survey went on to determine on the ratio was identical for individual performance: the people who performed at the highest levels were 100% more engaged than those whose performance was evaluated as lowest.
I offer that any other end measure--profit, productivity, retention, customer satisfaction, error rate, or anything else--shows a positive connection to employee engagement. The organization whose employees engage more fully in their work has higher rates of return in specific areas measured than its competitor has.
Here's another way of looking at that fact. If your organization improves the engagement factor among your employees, you will see internal measures improve. Employees who involve themselves in their function, their responsibility, their performance will generate outcomes beneficial for the organization. When that happens your absentee/tardiness rates decline, turnover drops, morale increases, customer satisfaction rises, conflict ebbs, and more.
My hunch is that PeopleMetrics looked first at profits because they know profit motivation is at work in Fortune 500 (and more) companies. Nothing wrong with that.
However, your focus may not be on profitability. You may want your hospital's patients to return higher evaluations of quality of care, pleasure of stay, treatment of staff. You may look for increased productivity among your employees. You may strive to have more successful recruitment and improved retention.
It does matter what you want. That's the target for your strategic plan, your goals and objectives, your managers' action items. And so it does matter how you attain those desired results.
There are as many approaches to "goal achievement" as there are goals and managers seeking to achieve them.
There is one approach I believe in and that evidence supports. An Engagement Culture.
An organization's culture is bigger and deeper than a training program. It goes farther and lasts longer than a motivational strategy. A culture does more than work for an organization; it lives and breathes as the organization. And it becomes part of the way employees live and breathe their association with the organization, figuratively speaking, of course.
An Engagement Culture promotes and increases engagement among employees. It does so in a variety of ways. Here are just a few:
- The organization demonstrates value in ways meaningful to the employee.
- The organization demonstrates awareness of the employee's value to the organization.
- A manager communicates continuously and for a variety of reasons (work and not work) with the employee.
- An employee is provided clear information of her job's, manager's, and organization's expectations.
- Tools and resources (including education) are made readily available for the employee to initiate her/his individual improvement.
Check in next week. We'll explore that first bullet: how an organization demonstrates meaningful value to/for its employees.
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