More bad news about employee engagement. Is it time to ditch the survey and rethink how we engage employees?
A recent Forbes article, “U.S. Employee Engagement Keeps Dropping, Hits 10-Year Low,” means that employee engagement is in the news yet again.? This time, hitting an even more abysmally low 31%.? Its widely known and accepted that engaged employees are the backbone of industry. It impacts product quality, customer interactions, and even peer-to-peer relationships that either enhance or inhibit organizational effectiveness. ?Gallup points to several culprits for declining engagement:
·?????? Rapid organizational changes.
·?????? Hybrid and remote work challenges.
·?????? Outdated performance management systems.
·?????? Shifting customer and employee expectations.
?While all of the above issues certainly impact the employee experience that can lead to engagement issues, no one is addressing the elephant in the room: our organizational managers really have no idea what to do or how to engage their team members. Worse yet, the apathy that is a part of that overall unwillingness to recognize that they, not the employees, may be the problem.
Here are just a few examples that I hear from team members on a regular basis:
·?????? The equipment receives better care than we do,
·?????? I haven’t had a one to one with my manager in over a year, and yet she holds me “accountable” for missing information,
·?????? My manager does all of my work.? I call this role compression.? This is a direct example of managers not understanding how their role shifts as they climb the corporate ladder,
·?????? Fired for grieving too long after the unexpected death of a spouse. Yes, it really happened.
·?????? Managers completely ignoring their team members: passing them in the hall without any acknowledgement, failing to recognize good work, failing to recognize human needs for security and psychological safety.?
And yet, even from Gallup a supposed leader industry in employee engagement, seem to have suggestions with no direct impact on employees, I include my responses:
·?????? Clarify Culture and Purpose.?Leaders must define the culture they want and align it with their organization’s goals. When employees see a clear purpose, they’re more likely to stay engaged.
DL responds: Yet, in the midst of well-defined culture and values we still see bad behavior rewarded and promoted.? Employees are unwilling to stay committed when bad behaviors are reinforced despite all efforts to work towards a purpose or goal.? Take for example the employee who was publicly disciplined for pointing out an error on an RFP. The team manager accepted the less acceptable vendor response even though the outlined work was in direct confrontation with the organizations goals.?
·?????? Empower Managers.?Train managers to build strong relationships with employees. Clear priorities, frequent feedback, and consistent accountability are key.
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DL responds: First, lets remove the word training from managerial development, but that’s a diatribe for another day.? While I strongly support relationship building with employees, it has to be much more than priorities, feedback, and accountability.? In the absence of a true, meaningful relationship employees will remain in a state of self-preservation.? Make it about the relationship and trust ahead of everything else, than the conversations can move beyond one-way and more about the organization overall.
·?????? Select the Right Leaders.?Hire and promote managers who can connect with and inspire teams. Not everyone has this skill, but it’s vital for engagement.
DL responds: 100%!? The challenge is that these are often the people who have been your best employees.? They get promoted and in light of all the new priorities, meetings, and goals that they now have to meet, their development in these relationship-based skills becomes secondary.? The result: they become even better at doing what they did as the stress of the new role, priorities and goals becomes evident.? Make leadership development available to everyone. This ensures that team members can understand the true nature of leadership and organizations can begin to identify who has these innate skills rather than trying to develop a skill-set that might not exist.
·?????? Invest in Engagement.?Use proven strategies to measure and improve engagement. Monitor progress and change course as needed.
DL responds.? This is an area where I really disagree with Gallup.? There is no need to measure and implement strategies when you make an engagement a quality and daily interaction.? The idea of constant measurement and strategies is one-more expense on a managers to-do list, both in terms of dollar and time costs.? When we make engagement a daily interaction, a simple hello, rounding, or a thank you note, we don’t need to spend our limited dollars or time in creating a strategy that is both time-consuming and may not even be impactful.? Quality. Daily. Interactions. They are free and go so much further.?
“The Visier survey highlighted another recurring problem: The disconnect between management and staff.”
A recent survey from Visier identifies a lack of trust as one of the most significant concerns.? According to the survey, 37% of employees do not have trust in the confidentiality of employee engagement surveys.?? Having been a survey administrator and working with third party vendors as well as being the gatekeeper of said data, I can assure employees that surveys conducted outside of the organization are indeed confidential.? This lack of trust speaks volumes to three important points, however:
·?????? With nearly 40% of your employees unwilling to share their thoughts due to lack of trust, are you getting the most value from your high-cost survey,
·?????? This is confirmation that employers should avoid in-house surveys at all cost, and
·?????? Validates the very point that a survey is not necessary if you make employee engagement about daily, quality interactions.
Here are some additional insights:
Nearly half (47%) of 1,000 U.S.-based employees surveyed in October 2024 said they often or occasionally feel pressured to withhold feedback, and another 6% rarely or never answer honestly, the responses showed, 44% believe their manager would rate their emotional state differently than they would, while 21% said their manager would inflate it.
Around 1 in 10 respondents confessed that being honest in these types of surveys takes too long, Visier reported, which is yet one more reason why quality, daily interactions are key. Avoid the time it takes to map the survey, encourage others to complete the survey, wait for the results, then the time it takes senior leadership to choke on the results, and the planning period. Engage everyone. Everyday.