For those of you not already familiar with it, The HR Certification Institute recently released an interesting and inspiring book titled ‘The Rise of HR: Wisdom from 73 Thought Leaders.’ The book is an anthology of perspectives which highlight the key themes confronting business and HR professionals in enabling the growing trend of people as the primary driver of organisational success. The book is an essential read for HR professionals and business leaders who want to help shape the future of the workplace as it transitions through one of the most transformative moments in the history of HR.

It's easy for HR to dismiss the benefits of measuring the metrics within your organisation. After all, numbers are often considered to be the responsibility of the Finance Department. However, case studies prove time and again that if you want to know what your people think, what matters to them, how you're tracking against the important things and generally how you're performing as an organisation, it is imperative for you to decide on some metrics and then measure them religiously and regularly.

Starlight Children's Foundation is an organisation whose star is definitely on the rise. Those of you who know Starlight’s mission and the fantastic programs they provide to seriously ill children, young people and their families, know that they do great things out in the world. However, as an organisation that is now 27 years old, their journey to greatness internally, as an organisation of choice for employees, has been a long and sometimes challenging journey.

Here’s the bottom line about the best organisations; according to Gallup, those brands who deeply integrate employee engagement into their everyday business procedures, processes, strategies and activities, outperform, outshine and are generally leaps and bounds ahead of those that don’t.

Leaders incorporate employee engagement into their organisation in the following four ways without fail, and Gallup believes that it is these things that give such organisations their edge.

Now that we’ve taken a deep dive into employee engagement and the enormous potential available through a commitment to facilitating such engagement, let’s take a look at the benefits this will produce for your customers. According to Gallup's  research, when organisations successfully engage both their customers AND their employees, they experience a 240% boost in performance-related business outcomes. Yes, that is a zero after the 24, not a typo – 240%.

In last week’s blog we outlined the avenues for improvement that Gallup recommend for increasing employee engagement. According to their research, Gallup’s knows that factors such as EPS, profitability, productivity, and customer ratings are all key indicators in determining an organisation’s health and its potential for growth. These factors are also significantly impacted by engagement levels.

It is clear that concentrating on employee engagement can help an organisation withstand, and potentially even thrive in challenging economic times.

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.’

So what exactly does Gallup mean when they talk about engaged, not engaged and actively disengaged employees? It’s wise to get clear on exactly how each of these levels of engagement look in action. Having an awareness of / being able to know something when you see it, makes it easier for you to know what to do to transform the situation if needed (in the context of not engaged and actively disengaged), so let’s dive a little deeper.