Key Implications and Recommendations

To reap the rewards that a more engaged organization promises, your entire workforce needs to
be accountable for their piece of the 'engagement equation' every day. The 2011 Employee
Engagement Report clarifies those roles and responsibilities.

Individuals: Ownership, clarity and action. Individuals need to know what they want
— and what the organization needs — and then take action to achieve both.

Managers: Coaching, relationships and dialogue. Managers must understand each

individual’s talents, interests and needs and then match those with the organization’s
objectives — while at the same time creating personal, trusting relationships.
Furthermore, they need to discuss engagement often.

Executives: Trust, communication and culture. Executives have to demonstrate

consistency in words and actions, communicate a lot (and with a lot of depth), and align
all business practices and behaviors throughout the organization to drive results and
engagement.

Introdution:
Employee engagement is an idea whose time has come. We have seen it transition from academic
literature to OD practitioners to executive teams as a top strategic objective. Employee engagement , as
a metric of business success, is getting more attention than ever before.

And yet the topic remains elusive, even murky. The chemistry of individual engagement is complex,
many organization has stagnant engagement levels despite yearly cycles of measuring and action
planning
Why engagement is so important today

Organizational working relationships have changed since many of today’s CEOs started work.
Before the early 1990s recession an unspoken contract existed between employer and
employee: Commit to working here for the long term and we will offer you job security, good
pay and promotions. But the recession led to reengineering and downsizing, breaking that
contract.

Moreover, there is a new mindset among young people who began their careers in the boom
years after the 1990 recession. They do not expect lifetime employment with a single employer.
They consider personal fulfilment in their work as a birthright — and this is extremely unlikely
to change during economic downturn. They will just take different options —

for example, freeagency or self employment — rather than work for a low-reputation
employer.

Many organizations that have not recognized this significant change in agendaare struggling to
cope. Frustrated executives say,we raised their salaries, gave them performance-based
incentives and instituted flextime — but we’re still losing good employees and having
productivity problems. What do these people want anyway?

The demands of employees are beginning to mirror the demands customers now make on
businesses. In the past two decades, customers have become increasingly demanding and
businesses have responded by forging new “value propositions” for customers, usually through
value-added service.

Hay believes that you have to start thinking about the people you employ the same way you
think about customers. That means offering them a rewarding environment to work in, not just
financial rewards.

six motivational drivers that help tocreate an engaged workplace :

They are:

1.Quality of work
 Perception of the Value of Work
 Challenge/Interest
 Achievement
 Freedom & Autonomy
 Workload
 Quality of Work Relationship
,2. Future Growth/Opportunity:

 Learning and Development Beyond Current Job

 Career Advancement Opportunities
 Performance Improvement &Feedback

3. Inspiration andValue:

 Quality of Leadership
 Organizational Valuesand Behaviors
 Reputation ofOrganization
 Risk Sharing
 Recognition
 Communication

4. Enabling Environment:

 Physical Environment
 Tools and Equipment
 Job Training
 Information and Processes
 Safety/Personal Security

5.Work/Life Balance :

 Supportive Environment
 Recognition of Life Cycle
 Security of Income
 Social Environment

6. Tangible Rewards:

 Competitive Pay
 Good Benefits
 Incentives for Higher
 Performance
 Ownership Potential
 Recognition Awards
Major combination of engagement:

IES (INSTITUTION OF EMPLOYMENT STUDIES)

defines engagement as:

‘a positive attitude held by the employee towards the organisation and its values.
An engaged employee is aware of business context, and works with colleagues to
improve performance within the job for the benefit of the organisation. The
organisation must work to develop and nurture engagement, which requires a two-
way relationship between employer and employee.

Engagement levelcan be said to have three dimensions:

 intellectual engagement – thinking hard about the job and

how to do it better
 affective engagement – feeling positively about doing a
good job
 social engagement – actively taking opportunities to
discuss work-related improvements with others at work.
 What Is Employee Engagement?
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Employee engagement is often talked about these days, yet few organizations practically define,
measure or apply this concept.  Consequently, job satisfaction, a major component of engagement, has
decreased 23% in the US in the last 20 years and 10% in the last 2 years.*   Clearly, many companies are
not getting it.

Engagement is a relatively new way of thinking about leading people — a sort of magnetic rather than a
coerced approach to getting people to want to do whatever is necessary to ensure the continuous high
performance and success of the business.  As a goal of management, employee engagement is about an
individual’s degree of dedication to the organization and its goals with an implied reward of personal
growth.  The assumption in the business world is that engagement level predicts the positive intensity and
quality of effort the organization can expect from an individual within job confines.  In this regard,
engagement’s value to the business is a predictor of future behavior and effort.

Business leaders should care about employee engagement because, when correctly measured,
engagement profiles provide management with a statistical method to maximize return on human capital. 
For example, our studies show that positively engaged employees have higher than average individual
productivity and innovation events plus they remain with the company longer than disengaged
employees.  In addition, the discretionary efforts of the fully engaged are of higher quality and of a more
positive intensity than other less-engaged employees: their economic contributions to the business
consistently exceed their employment costs.  From a quality of work life perspective, positively engaged
employees are often energetic and enthusiastic which makes them more productive in group efforts and
makes them enjoyable to work with.  Our research also shows that fully engaged employees solve
problems.  

The failure to positively engage people in organizations today often stems from poor definition and
measurement of employee engagement.  Managing engagement cannot be effective without practical,
reliable measurement and reliable, concrete definition.  Contrary to most published materials, calculated
responses to a host of random “benchmarked” opinion questions are not reliable measures of employee
engagement.  In fact, this false assumption lies at the heart of leaderships’ failure to engage.   Meaningful
engagement measurement is derived from tried and true attitude classification psychometrics, and
collected via survey responses to a validated, complete inventory of questions about employee feelings
and experiences towards verified engagement “drivers”.  The fact is, few employee engagement surveys
reliably measure the 15 proven drivers of engagement. 

Best Employee Engagement Definition

Leading the way in thought leadership and employee engagement measurement, Scarlett Surveys
defines employee engagement as an individual’s degree of positive or negative
emotional attachment to their organization, their job and their
colleagues.  Fully engaged employees, according to our proven measurement classification formula,
contribute better-than-average individual productivity, and the preponderance of innovation events. 
Moreover, the fully engaged populations we classify routinely devote over 50% of their discretionary time
and efforts attempting to add extra value to their work and the business.

While the understanding and nourishment of employee engagement is paramount to an organization’s

business success and competitive advantage, it is essential to measure and manage both individual
engagement and group engagement.  Doing so ensures a balance between individual needs and
synchronized unity of effort.  Thus, leaders have the data to fulfill a bona fide engagement survey’s
business purpose, which is to increase associate economic contribution in sync with organizational goals
while improving the workplace. 

Group engagement profiles are best calculated from employee responses to battery question sets
encompassing 15 universal intrinsic and extrinsic engagement factorsproven to measure group dedication
and unity of effort.  Individual engagement is best measured by classifying each individual’s level of
positive or negative emotional attachment to the organization and its goals using the same 15 bona fide
engagement factors but arranging the data profiles by engagement level, rather than work group.  Both
engagement profile data sets show the effect of various employer practices on levels of engagement,
individually and collectively, thus making it easy to identify and address key opportunities for improvement
and better engage employees. After all, the validity of employee engagement measurement is in the
efficacy of improving human effort and business performance by applying engagement metrics.

In a world of fast-changing markets and hard-to-measure intellectual work, employee engagement has
emerged as an often misunderstood business imperative and responsibility of leadership to measure and
manage.  When correctly defined and measured, employee engagement is a manageable predictor of
future behavior and effort that enables business leaders to boost associate economic contribution and
improve business performance while enhancing quality of work life.
EHere are 26 keys to employee engagement from A to Z.
Acceptance. We must begin with acceptance of the current state of engagement
and begin to make changes out of our full acceptance of what is as we move to
what can be.

Benefits. If employee engagement is to be sustained over time it must benefit

employees, leaders, managers, organizations, and customers.

Connection. Employee engagement is created through caring connections with

others in the workplace and connections to our work — stay connected and you
will stay engaged!

Disengagement. Although chronic disengagement is a workplace scourge we

need to balance engagement and disengagement to maintain productive work
over the long term.

Energy. Energy is the raw material of employee engagement and those who
master energy management have a huge resource to draw upon for their own
engagement and for energizing others.

Flow. The ideal state of work is when we experience flow - we engage so

completely in our work that work, time, and self are transformed by the
experience.

Gumption. Balancing flow is old fashioned gumption - sometimes we just need

to engage in work even when we don’t feel like it, yet this very gumption will act
as the primer to experiencing higher levels of emotional engagement.

Human. Employee engagement is human, not human capital or human sigma or

human resources, just HUMAN, period.

Integrity. Our work must stem from integrity and our connections with others are
strengthened by our integrity fused with their integrity.
authentic and genuine employee engagement.

Leadership. Leaders need to create vision, direction, and strategy that foster
engagement and also communicate this fully to all employees while also being
open to employees helping to co-create the organization’s vision and direction.

Management. In many studies, the single biggest contributor to employee

engagement is the relationship people have with the person who manages them
so managers must manage their own engagement while connecting fully with
their staff to prime employees’ engagement.

Networks. Employee engagement works better together - create a network of

best friends at work, create a social media network to communicate with each
other

Oprah. You know how engaged Oprah is in her work, imagine yourself on the
Oprah show and she is asking you how you engage in your work, how would you
answer her so that her audience would take notice and be inspired by your
response?

Purpose. Employee engagement must be directed at achieving a purpose for the

organization such as: productivity, profit, recruitment, retention, project success,
high functioning teams, quality, customer engagement, etc.

Questions? We are all looking for answers to enhance and improve employee
engagement but never overlook the value of a good question, such as: Who is
engaged, with what, for how long, and for what reason?

Results and Relationships. Employee engagement works best when results

are woven with relationships.

Strengths. Engagement levels increase when we know our strengths, hold

strength-based conversations, work with our strengths, work strengthens us, and
we move from listing strengths to fully living our strengths in the service of others
and our organization.

Today. Employee engagement is about today, don’t wait for some magic
measurement or better time - do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.

Understanding. Employee engagement requires comprehensive understanding

of the uniqueness of each individual and each culture within each workplace -
seek first to understand and demonstrate that understanding before seeking to
be understood.

Values. Make employee engagement a value or promise to all employees that

their work matters and makes a difference and you will see economic value come
out of this value.
We. In the co-created world of work the old line: If it is to be it is up to me must
be rewritten to, If it is to be it is up to we.

X-ray. We must get to the bare bones of engagement and avoid using
anonymous surveys that at times seem to measure engagement but actually
produce disengagement.

You. This alphabet list of employee engagement from A to Z will only only become
alive if you take the ideas from this article and put them into practice — did you
notice the only thing missing from the Corporate Alphabet picture at the start of
this article was “u”?

Zen. Zen teaches a person to engage with their breathing, their mind, and their
world — as you let yourself become more mindful in daily activities, including

work, you will find yourself becoming more and more engaged.

Here are 10 principles of employee engagement.

I encourage you to determine your own or to
add yours in the comment section.
Employee engagement is a human endeavour. Engagement is depersonalized when we
refer to employees as human capital or human resources. I manage capital or
resources, I work with people!
Employee engagement must create results that matter. This means results that are
important to the employee, manager, leaders, organization, and customers. There is
little point in having engaged employees if they are not contributing and creating
significant results. In addition, if the results only matter to the organization and not the
employee – or the employee and not the organization – employee engagement will not
be sustained over time.
Employee engagement is connection. Connection is the key. Authentic employee
engagement involves connection to our work, others, our organizations and ourselves.
When we disconnect we disengage. Read this short post on employee engagement and
connection.
Employee engagement is fueled by energy. We must pay close attention to mental,
emotional, and spiritual energy at work. In addition we need to enhance organizational
energy through meaningful connection and high quality interactions.
Employee engagement is more encompassing than motivation. Employee engagement
embraces our emotions about work, how hard we work, how much we care about the
organization, etc. I think it is a richer and more complex concept than simply using
motivation to look at work.
Employee engagement is specific. We cannot sustain engagement all the time and
everywhere. When we talk about engagement we need to ask: Who is engaged, with
what,  for how long, and for what reason?
Employee engagement requires purposeful disengagement. We need periods of rest,
recovery, and rejuvenation to sustain engagement over the long term. Theoretically we
may be able to work 24/7 but practically we work best when periods of full engagement
are punctuated with periods of disengagement from specific work or tasks.
Employee engagement makes a difference. Employee engagement can improve
organizational performance while also contributing to individual performance and
satisfaction.
Employee engagement is vital in recruitment, retention, and satisfaction. I believe the
majority of workers want to be engaged and look for work that will engage them. People
will often leave organizations when they feel disengaged. It may even be worse for all if
they remain when they are disengaged.
Employee engagement is now. Look to the now. Don’t wait for some survey results or
diagnosis from a management consultant. Look at the work you are doing right now and
determine how you can engage with it more fully. Look at who you are working with and
determine how you can help them to be more engaged. In addition, look at what you are
engaged with now and make sure the results matter!

Influences
* Employer engagement - A company's "commitment to improving the partnership between employees
and...employer."[15] Employers can stay engaged with their employees by actively seeking to understand
and act on behalf of the expectations and preferences of their employees.

* Employee perceptions of job importance - According to a 2006 study by Gerard Seijts and Dan Crim,
"...an employees attitude toward the job['s importance] and the company had the greatest impact on
loyalty and customer service then all other employee factors combined."[13]

* Employee clarity of job expectations - "If expectations are not clear and basic materials and
equipment not provided, negative emotions such as boredom or resentment may result, and the
employee may then become focused on surviving more than thinking about how he can help the
organization succeed."[5]

* Career advancement/improvement opportunities - "Plant supervisors and managers indicated that

many plant improvements were being made outside the suggestion system, where employees initiated
changes in order to reap the bonuses generated by the subsequent cost savings." [14]
* Regular feedback and dialogue with superiors - "Feedback is the key to giving employees a sense of
where they’re going, but many organizations are remarkably bad at giving it." [5] "'What I really wanted to
hear was 'Thanks. You did a good job.' But all my boss did was hand me a check.'" [10]

* Quality of working relationships with peers, superiors, and subordinates - "...if employees'
relationship with their managers is fractured, then no amount of perks will persuade the employees to
perform at top levels. Employee engagement is a direct reflection of how employees feel about their
relationship with the boss."[13]

* Perceptions of the ethos and values of the organization - "'Inspiration and values' is the most
important of the six drivers in our Engaged Performance model. Inspirational leadership is the ultimate
perk. In its absence, [it] is unlikely to engage employees."[10]

* Effective Internal Employee Communications - which convey a clear description of "what's going on".
"'If you accept that employees want to be involved in what they are doing then this trend is clear (from
small businesses to large global organisations). The effect of poor internal communications is seen as its
most destructive in global organisations which suffer from employee annexation - where the head office in
one country is buoyant (since they are closest to the action, know what is going on, and are heavily
engaged) but its annexes (who are furthest away from the action and know little about what is happening)
are dis-engaged. In the worst case, employee annexation can be very destructive when the head office
attributes the annex's low engagement to its poor performance… when its poor performance is really due
to its poor communications.

* Reward to engage - Look at employee benefits and acknowledge the role of incentives. "An incentive to
reward good work is a tried and test way of boosting staff morale and enhancing engagement." There are
a range of tactics you can employ to ensure your incentive scheme hits the mark with your workforce
such as: Setting realistic targets, selecting the right rewards for your incentive programme,
communicating the scheme effectively and frequently, have lots of winners and reward all achievers,
encouraging sustained effort, present awards publicly and evaluate the incentive scheme regularly
The ten C’s of employee engagement
by  G EO RG E A MB LER   on  TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2007
How can leaders engage employees’ heads, hearts, and hands?“, by starting to apply the following 10
C’s of employee engagement:
1. Connect: Leaders must show that they value employees. Employee engagement is a direct
reflection of how employees feel about their relationship with the boss.
2. Career: Leaders should provide challenging and meaningful work with opportunities for career
advancement. Most people want to do new things in their job. For example, do organizations
provide job rotation for their top talent? Are people assigned stretch goals?
3. Clarity: Leaders must communicate a clear vision. Success in life and organizations is, to a
great extent, determined by how clear individuals are about their goals and what they really want
to achieve. In sum, employees need to understand what the organization’s goals are, why they
are important, and how the goals can best be attained.
4. Convey: Leaders clarify their expectations about employees and provide feedback on their
functioning in the organization.
5. Congratulate: Exceptional leaders give recognition, and they do so a lot; they coach and
convey.
6. Contribute: People want to know that their input matters and that they are contributing to
the organization’s success in a meaningful way. In sum, good leaders help people see and feel
how they are contributing to the organization’s success and future.
7. Control: Employees value control over the flow and pace of their jobs and leaders can create
opportunities for employees to exercise this control. A feeling of “being in on things,” and of being
given opportunities to participate in decision making often reduces stress; it also creates trust
and a culture where people want to take ownership of problems and their solutions.
8. Collaborate: Studies show that, when employees work in teams and have the trust and
cooperation of their team members, they outperform individuals and teams which lack good
relationships. Great leaders are team builders; they create an environment that fosters trust and
collaboration.
9. Credibility: Leaders should strive to maintain a company’s reputation and demonstrate high
ethical standards.
10. Confidence: Good leaders help create confidence in a company by being exemplars of high
ethical and performance standards.