Engagement doesn't have to be 'Analysis Paralysis'

Employee Engagement is always a hot topic in the HR community, especially now post the move away from traditional working patterns and the ongoing debate on what is the best environment to achieve optimal engagement levels; home, hybrid or a full return to the office.

Over the last few years the economic climate has been challenging for most organisations. This has meant sometimes the people agenda has been deprioritised and the focus on progression or career development has been left at the side of the road.

But is the cost of living crisis or economic downturn the real driving force behind the lack?of engagement or increase in absenteeism, that is at an all time high for over a decade. Or are there other factors that we have chosen to ignore?

In my opinion Employee Engagement is often overcomplicated.? When organisations talk about Employee Engagement they usually go straight into surveying employees.? The survey is completed and data comes back, but what happens with the data? It gets analysed to try and find out what the issues are and how we can overcome them, but it’s missing key elements – personal feelings and human connection.

Surveys, questions and data – they can only tell us so much. A computer can’t truly assess the answer to questions such as:- How is the employee feeling about their role? Are they satisfied at the end of the day? Likewise, can a survey truly measure how effectively the individual is doing their job and the level of productivity they are adding to the organisation? With the answer to all of these questions being NO, surely we have to question the validity of the survey approach.

When you look at most global engagement survey results, employees typically want organisations to further improve on the same areas; Pay, Flexibility & Wellbeing and Personal Development & Career opportunities.?Even though we already know these are likely to be the most important focus areas for employees we still continue to run the survey.? If the general responses from a survey don’t tend to veer away from these themes then how does a survey truly help us create a more engaged workforce?

If we go back to the 1970’s, training was generally viewed as a tick box exercise for an organisation to say they were developing their employees. Individuals would go on a ‘training course’ and then come back to the day job and carry on as usual. Rarely were the learnings further discussed or changes implemented in their roles and it feels like the same ‘Groundhog Day’ approach is happening with Employee Engagement and other significant topics like Wellbeing.

What is the value in investing in Surveys (or other initiatives) and not seeing direct ROI? Why ask employees to take time to complete if limited change occurs? Why expend effort, cost and time in surveys if you are not going to get any commercial gain from them?

As we think about changing the definition of employee engagement to our employees we need to make it meaningful by firstly asking WHY are we doing it, HOW do we make it impactful and WHAT are the outputs we require. Too often we jump to the HOW and WHAT but forget about the WHY. When this happens it becomes meaningless to most employees, a tick box exercise and just a number or a percentage that is shared up to executives.

One dead battery can’t jump-start another…Engagement is contagious and building a culture of engagement has to start at the top of the organisation. If your senior leadership team are not clear about the definition of engagement in the organisation, don’t see the value of it and are not achieving their own levels of passion and performance then they will struggle to create a fully engaged organisation.

Whose responsibility is it to develop engagement??It has to be everyone’s! Engagement is like confidence, it is not a skill you can instil in someone, individuals have to OWN it for themselves.? Leaders must act as engagement ambassadors and organisations must provide tools and create an environment that has an open culture of communication, trust and action.

With an estimated 73% of employees not fully engaged there is no time like the present to start changing the narrative and thinking differently about Employee Engagement. It’s time to put the individual at the heart of the conversation, support them to grow and develop and stop worrying about benchmarks, net promoter scores and percentage points.

Rather than spending hours of analysis on the outputs of a Survey that are likely saying the same thing as last year, let’s truly understand what engages our employees.? Let’s support them to achieve their passions, which in turn drives performance and increases productivity. After all, aren’t Shareholders more interested in profit than eNPS?

At Engage to Succeed we support organisations, leaders and individuals to make Engagement meaningful through the Engage to Succeed Engagement Model, a new disruptive and engaging tool that helps everyone understand it, own it and drive engagement. If you are an 'Early Adopter' of something new or just need a refreshing new approach to Employee Engagement then engage with us to find out more.