On optimism

The commencement of a new year provides a chance to talk about different things, or talk about things differently. Usually, I devote column inches to a piece about what the year may hold in reward, or HR or for organisations in the broadest sense This time I’m spending some time on the subject of “optimism”.

We live a world driven by sentiment. Facts are interesting, but secondary. The key is how do you feel about something happening or not happening?

The quickest route to determine feelings in a work context is via a survey of some description. These come in all shapes and sizes, but, essentially, all are seeking to identify and score sentiment or identify a mood trend. Put simply, “do you like it here or not?”.

There are a few sacred cows in the HR world that you criticise at your peril.? Measuring employee engagement is one of them.? It is viewed as nothing short of essential.? And I am in no way brave enough to suggest otherwise.? I am also very clear that an organisation understanding whether its employee engagement is going up, down or staying the same is unequivocally a “good thing”.

But even sacred cows need some constructive, developmental, feedback.? And my feedback would be focussed on the simple fact that an employee engagement measure, as a standalone data set, needs to be treated with caution and used with care.

Think about the following:

1. Employee experience is not the same as customer experience.? I am wholly persuaded that an organization that delivers superlative customer experience will see higher profit (or whatever measure of performance it swears by) than one that does not.? Conversely, I cannot get anywhere near as comfortable that higher levels of measured employee engagement will lead to higher performance.? It may do, clearly.? But the opposite is equally possible - namely that higher performance makes for higher engagement. Which comes first? If I were being negative, I would say that no one has worked this out. Or that the research base is "weak". So, to pursue high employee engagement in and of itself requires an organisation to be wedded to it in its own right – and not as a precursor to anything else happening.? (I accept that this is an unpopular view, by the way.)
2. In reality there are a myriad of people measures used by organisations that are really driving strategic imperatives and allocation of spend.? Employee engagement (in isolation) is not one of them.? Employee attrition.? L&D spend per employee.? Revenue per employee.? Margin.? Average tenure. Gender mix by grade.? This is where the action is.? (On reflection, I think this is possibly an unpopular view also.)
3. Sentiment is a very fleeting emotion.? Timing is everything in the world of engagement surveys.? Unless you are putting them out very frequently, it’s super hard to plan a year of interventions based on what some people thought at a point in time some months ago.?
4. Chasing popular opinion doesn’t achieve anything.? Being popular is not the same as doing the right thing.? So, working out how popular you are provides an input that (usually) leads to worse decisions not better ones.? I base this view on our last 10 years of political discourse.? I think its an irrefutable position, whatever your political persuasion.?

So, am I against employee engagement surveys?? Not at all.? I am very happy to perpetuate the status quo.? But will offer four caveats when working out how best to evaluate and respond to the data gleaned therefrom:

1. Use it as a relative measure against an external benchmark set by higher (or other high) performing organisations.? ?Knowing that most great businesses produce an output of “x”, but that you languish at “y” is important.? And useful.? But knowing that you sit at “y”, but last year sat somewhere else, is an internally driven loop which every business will explain away by “events”.? And knowing that a department “a” has a higher score than department “b” feels valuable, but isn’t if both scores are pitifully low against the benchmark.? ?
2. Don’t incentivise people to increase your employee engagement score.? It’s always useful to ask the question when, when evaluating non-financial measures of performance, “is it worth paying for?”.? I know it’s wrong to bring everything back to reward, but it’s hard to kick the habit.? I may be in the minority on this, but I wouldn’t want to pay anyone a higher bonus for delivering a higher employee engagement score in isolation.? It just feels a bit too business as usual.? And a bit too susceptible to management influence.?
3. Accept its limitations as a tool.? It’s difficult to argue that increasing employee engagement is not a good thing. But it doesn’t offset other forms of poor performance.? So, it’s usually only valuable when used with the word “and” after it.? For example, “we delivered the planned financial synergies deriving from our merger and employee engagement increased”? Or, “revenue grew by 25% and employee engagement increased”.? The use of the word “and” is critical.
4. Which takes me to the most important point – which is that you must use employee engagement as part of your broader HR dashboard, never in isolation.?

Finally, and I alluded to this at the start of this ramble, if you have customers, a differential focus on customer experience (and measurement of same) offers, I believe, a more compelling focus for your attention if you were wondering where to place your bets.? Not least because it is difficult to imagine a business with a market leading customer net promoter score that did not have an engaged workforce.? And the connectivity between business performance and customer experience is a much more compelling story.? For the avoidance of doubt, applying my “is it worth paying for?” test to improved customer experience scores, I would be very happy to pay for this.?

So, I remain optimistic about the value in seeking employee views.? Not as optimistic as some.? But balance is all…