Employee Engagement: What Is It Really About?

Posted by Mathew French

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13 November 2014

Let’s pause and really think about this quote from Gallup’s State of The Global Workforce Report for a moment:

‘Low levels of engagement among global workers continue to hinder gains in economic productivity and life quality in much of the world.’

If you’re an HR Professional, a Manager, or someone in a Senior Leadership position, is your view of your role as broad and deep as considering life beyond the balance sheet of your own organisation?

Based on Gallup’s quote (and the full content of the report), it is fair to say that it’s not just the profitability and success of your organisation that hinge on the engagement levels of your employees. The way you engage your employees actually impacts elements as far reaching as the economic productivity of your country, and even the world. Not only that, the ability of HR Professionals, Managers and Leaders to provide great work, great workplaces and inspiration to employees, has significant impacts on the overall quality of life of, well, pretty much everyone that has a job.

According to Gallup’s latest findings, 87% of workers are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” and are emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and less likely to be productive. The proportion of actively disengaged employees has decreased from 27% to 24%. However, actively disengaged employees continue to outnumber engaged employees by nearly 2-to-1, implying that at the global level, work is more often a source of frustration than one of fulfillment.

It also means countless workplaces worldwide are less productive and less safe than they could be and are less likely to create badly needed new jobs and happy thriving human beings.

Now I’m sure that engagement is an issue that many of us sit and ponder, and scratch our heads over. However, how many of us are really taking as deep a look at how to create better engagement as we could, or should be?

Engagement Criteria

The criteria on which Gallup based its employee engagement (Q12) measure, are universally applicable because they address fundamentally human emotional needs. These needs include respect, positive relationships, and a sense of personal development, amongst others.

The specific questions which Gallup uses to assess employee engagement levels are as follows:

  1. I know what is expected of me 
at work.
  2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
  3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
  4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
  5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
  6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
  7. At work, my opinions seem to count.
  8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job 
is important.
  9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
  10. I have a best friend at work.
  11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
  12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow. 

Four Stages of Employee Engagement

In addition to discovering the essential nature of these 12 areas in terms of measuring engagement, Gallup also found that the order of these elements is just as important. The 12 items above, represent the four stages of a hierarchy that an employee goes through on the path to complete engagement in any given organisation.

  1. Items 1 and 2 represent employees’ primary needs. When your employees start a new role, their needs are basic. They ask, “What do I get from this role?”
  2. In the second stage, encompassing items 3 through 6, your employees tend to think about their own individual contributions and consider how others view and value their efforts. The support of their Managers is most important at this stage because Managers typically define perceptions of value.
  3. Once your employees advance through the first two stages of this hierarchy, their perspective begins to widen and they evaluate their connection to their team and your organisation as a whole. In the third stage, encompassing items 7 through 10, employees ask themselves, ‘Do I belong?’
  4. Then, during the fourth and most advanced stage, composed of items 11 and 12, your employees want to make improvements, learn, grow, innovate, and apply their new ideas within your organisation.

Gallup has found that these four stages help management evaluate workgroup performance and concentrate their efforts on areas most relevant to where their team is on the journey to complete engagement.

Reading from this list, it doesn’t seem like engagement should be that difficult, however, if you look at the scoreboard, it is blindingly obvious that many organisations are still getting it wrong. Very, very wrong.

The 
top performers in Gallup’s Q12 Client Database consistently make employee engagement part of their formal review process, and most use these improvements as a criterion for promotions.

 

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Avenues for Improvement

Of course, Gallup has also spent a considerable amount of time researching and assessing what organisations can do to improve engagement. Their recommendations are outlined below:

  • Bring engagement into the company’s everyday language.
  • Use the right employee engagement survey.
  • Focus on engagement at the enterprise and local levels.
  • Select the right Managers.
  • Coach Managers and hold them accountable for their employees’ engagement.
  • Define engagement goals in 
realistic, everyday terms.
  • Find ways to meet employees where they are.

Still, as organisations, from multinational corporations to small-business startups, seek to benefit from ongoing development in these rapidly changing markets, all of us need to learn how to maintain adaptive, high-productivity workplaces in order to be able to grow our customer bases in widely varying social, cultural, and economic environments.

The next blog will look at how Gallup advises that organisations actively incorporate such processes into everyday business practice. Until then, I would like to pose these questions to our readers and your feedback on this would be greatly appreciated:

  1. How many of you out there in the world who are privileged enough to hold positions of responsibility in the workplace, actually consider a broader / deeper perspective (global productivity levels / quality of life) when looking at employee engagement?
  2. Do you work on the understanding that you’re not just providing work to people in order for you and them to make money, and provide a good return to shareholders, but that there’s a much deeper responsibility at play?
  3. Is there an aspect of your role where you can and do provide meaningful work to your employees that engages them so deeply that they’re not only highly productive, but their quality of life outside of work is amplified because they do a job that they find fulfilling and thus go home happy?

In closing for this week, I wonder, what kind of a world, or workplace, do you think would be possible if those who lead were acutely aware of the opportunity they have at their fingertips to make the world a better, happier more productive place for everyone to enjoy? What if HR Professionals, Managers and Leaders everywhere chose to ensure that their organisations didn’t just generate profits and returns to shareholders, but took on changing the world through work. Through engaging in creating inspiring, aligned, valued and appreciated work where the talents, likes and strengths of each and every individual are recognised, harnessed, encouraged and supported?

Not only do the statistics say that your organisation will become more profitable as a result, but the added benefit is that the world will be a better place, filled with happier human beings who enjoy both their work, and their lives.

Credit: The image used in this blog is taken from Galllup's State Of The Global Workforce Report 2013.

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