What’s in store for the future of employee engagement?

How will organisations cope with technology and developments in tools like social media, while preserving human interaction and maintaining a relationship with employees? Mel Tunbridge explores this and examines what best-in-class employee engagement programs will look like in the future

Making engagement happen is the ultimate objective for organisations today. Real employee engagement means that employees are maximising their value to the organisation. But the definition of what it takes to make engagement happen is a moving target; it is determined by the employee and is not based on any one aspect of the relationship.

Engagement, going to the heart of the workplace relationship between employee and employer, it can be a key to unlocking productivity and to transforming the working lives of many people for whom Monday morning is an especially low point of the week. Further to this, I think, engaging people and engaging them well on a sustainable basis is becoming a clear differentiator for organisation’s and their employee value proposition.

Employee engagement strategies enable people to be the best they can at work, recognising that this can only happen if they feel respected, involved, heard, well led and valued by those they work for and with.

“Engaged employees freely and willingly give discretionary effort, not as an ‘add on’, but as an integral part of their daily activity at work”

Engaged organisations have strong, authentic values, with clear evidence of trust and fairness based on mutual respect, where two way promises and commitments – between employers and staff – are understood, and are fulfilled. Levels of engagement matter because employee engagement can correlate with performance. Even more significantly, there is evidence that improving engagement correlates with improving performance.

Although improved performance and productivity is at the heart of engagement, it cannot be achieved by an automatic approach which tries to extract discretionary effort. Employees see through such attempts very quickly; they lead instead to cynicism and disillusionment. By contrast, engaged employees freely and willingly give discretionary effort, not as an ‘add on’, but as an integral part of their daily activity at work. They think nothing of it.

An engaged employee experiences a blend of job satisfaction, organisational commitment, job involvement and feelings of empowerment. It is a concept that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Employee engagement is not a science, but the development of survey tools allow levels of ‘engagement’ within an organisation to be measured. Exactly what aspect of engagement these questionnaires analyse varies. But the data gleaned from engagement surveys should be good enough to allow organisations to address their identified issues and analyse the factors behind their success.

“Organisations must assume that communications going to employees will find its way to external social media”

Did you know, the origins of engagement surveys started in the late 1800s when Fredrick Taylor, a pioneering industrial engineer, studied how people’s attitude impacted their productivity in the steel industry? A sophisticated or expensive survey is not always appropriate or necessary to measure engagement levels; many organisations supplement questionnaires with staff focus groups. For small organisations in particular the cost could certainly be prohibitive and the process may seem overly bureaucratic. Similarly, engagement does not necessarily involve outlay on consultants or expensive surveys.

Of course simply doing a survey and publishing the results is not the same as an engagement strategy. Measuring engagement is simply a tool to allow you to find out how engaged your people are. Don’t make the mistake by assuming that doing a survey is doing engagement – it’s an important part of the process, but only part of it. Creating a high performance organisation and environment is complex. We are constantly communicating a mission and values, developing leaders to live these values, and thoughtfully selecting the right people who fit. And if that’s not enough, we strive to continuously improve, redesign, and tweak to keep things modern, relevant and enjoyable.

There are many other outcomes of an engaged workforce; less absenteeism; better customer engagement; improved retention; better organisational advocacy ( as a workplace and of their services/products ); increased creativity and innovation to name a few. Employee engagement also affects the mindset of people. Engaged employees believe that they can make a difference in the organisations they work for. Confidence in the knowledge, skills, and abilities that people possess – in both themselves and others – is a powerful predictor of behaviour and subsequent performance.

AON Hewitt do a great job at capturing the relationship between engagement and business outcomes in the model below.

The interesting thing about this model is to notice how many of the Engagement Drivers managers and leaders of organisations have a direct or indirect influence on.

The eight C’s of employee engagement
How can leaders engage employees’ heads, hearts, and hands? There are several paths to action, these are summarised below as the eight C’s of employee engagement.

1. Connect personally: Leaders must show that they value employees and these programs must have a personal human touch. The success of future employee engagement campaigns will rely heavily on the ability to target segments of the organisations population. This involves identifying specific segments that will play an escalated role in helping to achieve a desired corporate outcome. Employees become targeted much more specifically than the current typical targeting, for example, by level (e.g. “all senior managers, or department “X”) or location.

Content needs to be bite sized and dynamic using infograms and video. Because content will be easier to create, this shift will allow for content to be created and published faster and by more people – everyone is now a content producer. Employees of the future may become heavily involved in creating and publishing content for their organisations.

2. Career: Leaders should provide challenging and meaningful work with opportunities for career advancement. Most people want to do new things in their job.

3. Porous clarity: Leaders must communicate a clear vision internally and externally.

Organisations must assume that communications going to employees will find its way to external social media. How can we harness that to our advantage? Organisations need to make it easy for employees to share internal communications externally via their personal social networks and this trend will only accelerate. Don’t forget it’s not just current employees you are speaking to, it’s the passive and potential employees of the future.

4. Communicate, Communicate and then communicate again: Leaders clarify their expectations about employees and provide feedback often.

Engagement efforts focused on driving operational performance and accelerating “step changes” in cultural transformation need to be prioritised. Communications need to segmented and targeted to relevant groups cutting done on mass general “nice to know” noise.

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 organisation’s success in a meaningful way.

7. Collaborate. Great leaders are team builders; they create an environment that fosters trust and collaboration. Communication needs to move way beyond newsletters, town hall/all employee forums and intranets and move to “surprise and delight” moments to break through the organisations “noise” get employees’ attention in unanticipated means. Engagement techniques need to become more consumer like in getting and keeping the attention of employees.

8. Credibility: People want to be proud of their jobs, their performance, and their organisation.

Despite there being some debate about the precise meaning of employee engagement there are three things we know about it: it is measurable; it can be correlated with performance; and it varies from poor to great. Most importantly employers can do a great deal to impact on people’s level of engagement. That is what makes it so important, as a tool for business success.

CEO’s the world over are talking consistently about retention issues, carefully watching their Glassdoor ratings, and we are all striving to build an inclusive, passionate, multi-generational workforces.

The old adage “people leave managers, not organisations,” is perhaps not entirely true. It’s usually a combination of the organisation and its leadership in its entirety. A bad manager can force the issue, but usually there are many other factors that create low performance or a departure. Employee engagement is the difference that makes the difference.

Image source: iStock