You Probably Missed the Memo About Employee Engagement

by Kelly Riggs

As a manager, you surely have become aware of the importance of employee engagement in the workplace, and its impact on the critical metrics companies care about – profitability, turnover, safety, and customer satisfaction. Safety, given the coronavirus pandemic, has been recognised as priority number one which is why ppe equipment has become essential for workplaces across the globe.

Hint: As it turns out, engaged employees do better work. Yes, I know. Absolutely shocking. But, it’s true; those employees that feel genuinely connected to the company, feel valued by the boss, and derive satisfaction from their work, significantly outperform their disengaged counterparts.

With the coronavirus pandemic, many employees are suffering from burnout, stress, and anxiety more than ever. Even employees that are remotely working are beginning to fall out of love with their company which is why some employers are looking at swag packs for remote employees to help lift their spirits.

So yes, it is important for employees to feel engaged, especially in this environment. But what evidence is there to support this?

In the 2016 Forbes article entitled, “Employee Engagement in The Digital Age,” author Christopher Skroupa shares the insights of Sandy M. Nessing, Managing Director of Corporate Sustainability at AEP:

“One of the things that happens when you engage employees is that people get excited and passionate and become invested in success…”

“From an employee engagement perspective, we consider it to be a business imperative. Without employee engagement, you cannot execute on your business strategy or achieve your business goals if everyone is swimming in opposite directions,” she added. “Employee engagement from that perspective is critical from a business aspect.”

First researched and reported on back in the late 90s and early 2000s, employee engagement has been studied, measured, and graphed by Gallup for almost two decades. However, despite what might appear to be a much greater awareness of the importance of employee engagement, engagement numbers overall haven’t increased at all in the past ten years.

In fact, during the economic downturn following 2008, engagement actually declined significantly. In an American Management Association article entitled, “Emerging from the Rubble: Reengaging Employees in a Post-Recession Workplace,” it was reported that the biggest decline occurred among high-performance employees:

According to Watson Wyatt’s 2009–2010 U.S. Strategic Rewards Report, levels of engagement are down 9 percent among all employees, but down 23% among high-performing employees. This research found more bad news when workers were asked about the line of sight between their efforts and company performance. The number of high-performing workers who said that their performance goals are linked to their company’s strategy and goals was down 20% from 2008 to 2009. The number who said that their supervisors tie rewards to organizational performance was down 37% and the number who said that their performance objectives are motivating was down 24%.

The truth is that companies don’t typically look at high-performance employees and see trouble on the horizon. Instead, they see people who like challenges and handle them well. They have talent to spare, plenty of drive, and bang out stellar performance month after month without complaint.

Right up until the day they leave.

Do Your Managers Have a Clue?

In 2008, when I wrote 1-on-1 Management: What Every Great Manager Knows That You Don’t, the percentage of “engaged” employees in U.S. companies hovered around 33 percent.

Now? According to Gallup, that figure is 32.6 percent.

Apparently, most companies missed the memo.

Or maybe they just ignored it.

The problem may be that addressing the issue of employee engagement begins and ends with a company’s managers. In fact, things like casual business attire, birthday parties, flex-time, bigger break rooms, and other superficial employee perks – in the absence of strong leadership – have almost nothing to do with employee engagement.

According to extensive research done by Leigh Branham and the Saratoga Institute, 70 percent of employees leave companies due their immediate manager or supervisor. And that agrees completely with the research done recently by James Harter and Amy Adkins, as reported in the Harvard Business Reviewarticle, “What Great Managers Do to Engage Employees:”

Our research shows that managers account for as much as 70% of variance in employee engagement scores. Given the troubling state of employee engagement in the U.S. today, it makes sense that most managers are not creating environments in which employees feel motivatedor even comfortable.

The most important question is how do managers actually go about creating that environment?

The Two Hyper-Critical Engagement Elements

While there are a number of critical skills for leaders to learn to be effective in the workplace, the twin pillars of employee engagement are, 1) effective communication, and 2) recognition.

Despite even more ways for individuals to communicate (email, text, chat, Skype, and the now seemly antiquated voice mail), nothing seems to have substantially changed in the workplace with regard to effective communication in the workplace. Setting up sharepoint alerts can be very helpful to keep that communication going with employees, it is another level of contact that is needed throughout the workplace.

In teaching 1-on-1 Management™, I have long advocated the importance of regularly scheduled, formatted, one-on-one meetings to radically improve communication, coaching, and performance management. Recently, in the article, “Employee Engagement in The Digital Age,” AEP Managing Director Sandy Nessing throws her strong support behind the one-on-one meeting as well:

“Communication is essential to employee engagement. We are all plugged in and on our phones; we are always looking for ways to connect with employees electronically. In the workplace, it is the face-to-face that matters the most. The communication between a leader, a manager, or a supervisor and their employees is the most effective.”

The 1-on-1 Meeting™ structure that I have taught for ten years dramatically impacts employee communication (and provides the perfect opportunity for employee input), and also creates a consistent venue for leaders to recognize performance excellence, the second pillar of engagement.

In their 2007 best-seller, The Carrot Principle: How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their People, Retain Talent, and Accelerate Performance, authors Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick reported on their extensive research that demonstrated the value of recognition – done right. Not surprisingly, it has an enormous impact on employee engagement and significantly influences corporate performance.

It’s also important to note that “recognition” as a one-size-fits-all, programmatic approach almost never succeeds as an adequate replacement for individualized, real-time, genuine recognition. In the recent article, “What’s the main culprit behind poor employee engagement? It’s complicated,” Representative Gerry Connolly, the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations, offered this observation:

“You have to differentiate between performers and non-performers, people with stellar performance and people with adequate or sub-adequate performance,” Connolly said. “If you treat everybody’s performance the same when it comes to recognition, you are saying to your stellar performers, I can come in early and stay late. I can donate time on the weekends and it doesn’t matter. I’m going to be treated like Harry Houdini there, who is a clock-watcher, shows up at 9, leaves promptly at 5 and doesn’t volunteer for anything.”

Translation: Everyone doesn’t (and shouldn’t) get a trophy.

But don’t think that lets you off the hook, Boomer Manager. It’s not like some generic plastic trophy is actually a worthwhile way of recognizing performance.

Conclusion

So, as it turns out, improving employee engagement is actually pretty straightforward.

Clear, consistent dialogue. Genuine, heartfelt recognition.

But, clearly, executing on these two ideas is the issue since the “engagement” needle has barely moved in ten years.

But what’s your excuse?

You may have missed the first memo, but it’s pretty hard to use that same lame explanation twice.