Emotions Drive People. People Drive Performance

THREE CASE STUDIES OF DOUBLING EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT WITH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

ServRx, Westcomm Pump and Siemens Healthineers work in different industries and different countries, but they faced a common dilemma: corporate cultures and employee engagement levels that couldn’t take them where they wanted to go. A lack of trust. A lack of emotionally intelligent leadership. A lack of joy. And they’re certainly not alone: 75% of organizations report their biggest problem being people-related – relational, emotional. The even bigger problem? Even though engagement issues are widespread, few organizations focus on the DRIVERS of engagement, they look at the behavior and attempt to change it at the surface level, and fail.

Case 1: ServRx is a tech startup based in the United States. They faced the classic dilemma of a startup: the company was growing, but the culture was not.

Case 2: Westcomm Pump is an engineering firm based in Canada. They faced the reality that morale, productivity, and the general outlook for the business were negative, largely due to personnel issues.

Case 3: Siemens is a global healthcare technology company. Its corporate team in Latin America faced unprecedented pressure due to economic and political uncertainty, and performance had begun to suffer.

Measuring Engagement and Its Drivers

In all three cases, leaders committed to confront reality and get at the emotional drivers of engagement. This commitment to "get real" is the first step -- all too often leaders say, "I know there are issues" but are unwilling to put them on a graph and deal with the reality.

These cases all used Six Seconds’ Vital Signs assessment, a best-in-class suite of tools for measuring team and organizational climate. Individuals take the assessment anonymously, and a report is generated that aggregates the answers and provides a snapshot of the culture. The results provided a wake-up call for all 3 organizations. As Todd Delano, the CEO of ServRx put it, “The results were not pretty, and it caused a lot of people on the team to sit up and finally take notice. We knew there were significant issues, but getting it on a graph in the front of the room — well, it was no longer an option to kick this down the road.”

One variable measured by the Vital Signs Assessment is employee engagement at 3 levels; here are the pre-intervention scores for each company:

Engaged – Employees who are fully involved, connected and committed: ServRx = 31%; Westcomm Pump = 0%; Siemens = 22%

Neutral – Employees who are meeting requirements, but mostly following, passive. ServRx 38%; Westcomm 60%; Siemens 52%

Disengaged – Employees who are isolated, disconnected and moving away. ServRx 31%; Westcomm 40%; Siemens 26%

So - across the three cases, engagement scores were not far different than the global average (on the Vital Signs tools, the average is 25% engaged) -- but they could see that these levels of engagement were not going to support their desired results.

Step 2: Developing EQ Skills to Change Culture

The common misassumption is that knowing the issues will be enough to catalyze change. That's naive: If team members and leaders could create a better workplace, they'd have done it already. But the best news in these cases: For a few thousand dollars of coaching & training, these companies positioned themselves to save millions from wasted talent.

Rather than assuming there's "a quick fix," in each case, the leaders & teams worked for months on developing and practicing emotional intelligence skills. Change is significant work, and while it's not massively expensive, it does that a serious commitment of time over time. In each, leaders worked with a Six Seconds' Preferred Partner as an ally to build internal capacity to lead and collaborate in new ways.

In the ServRx case study, it started with Todd Delano, the CEO, going deep into his own EQ development and even earning EQ Practitioner Certification, then bringing Michele Royan in to work with his entire org via monthly EQ workshops.

In the Westcomm Pump case, the senior leadership team worked together with Hanley Brite to take the Six Seconds Emotional Intelligence Assessment and building skills through individual and group coaching.

For Siemens Healthineers, Carlos Aldan De Araujo & his team led a series of workshops and retreats on EQ, trust, and purpose using several EQ assessment tools. In the end, Carlos was able to develop a case study that was also published in Spanish by Harvard Business Review.

EQ Skills Drive Culture

In all three cases, embedding emotional intelligence skills for leaders and teams led to major improvements in employee engagement:

ServRx experienced a major growth in the culture, highlighted by a remarkable increase in employee engagement throughout the company (% of engaged employees went from 31% to 71%, and % of disengaged dropped from 31% to 5%).

Westcomm Pump experienced a dramatic increase in employee engagement throughout the company (% of engaged went from 0% to 22%, and % of disengaged dropped from 40% to 11%)

Siemens experienced a significant increase in trust and engagement throughout the company – including a 139% increase in the number of highly engaged managers and a 46% increase in engagement scores overall.

How Much Are You Throwing Away This Year?

Each year, the United States experiences $450 billion to $550 billion in lost productivity due to low employee engagement. As these cases show, that waste is preventable -- and, beyond the financial gains: What about the lifeblood of employees who are not thriving due to an unsupportive organizational culture?

The solution starts with a simple formula: Emotions drive people, and people drive performance. If you want to get better performance, isn't it time to build the skills so you teams can create the conditions where people FEEL engaged?

To learn more about these and numerous other cases on emotional intelligence supporting increased performance, see the EQ Case Study Library.