The great news is that employee engagement (EE) has become
one of the most widely acknowledged topics in business today. Companies recognize what many statistics
show, namely that the majority of employees experience low levels of
engagement. Like many business topics,
EE has become an industry to itself with survey providers, consultants,
authors, and active discussion boards across social media. It’s heartening to see the interest, but the
danger for many organizations is that EE becomes yet another “initiative” for
busy executives to attend to. While some
take the topic with great sincerity, others are simply looking for shortcuts or
quick fixes to get the EE monkey off their back.
The preponderance of material and thought leaders in EE comes
from either human resources (HR) or communications. However, the soul of engagement in my opinion
is strategy. Without a strategic
foundation, EE is wholly ineffective.
What’s the sense of getting employees excited without a compelling
focus; that focus should be the organization’s strategy. Sustaining high levels of engagement can only
be possible when the majority of employees understand both the “what” and “why”
they should be energized. Getting people
all ‘pumped up’ without that foundation becomes wasted energy and employees
grow cynical as they perceive they are being manipulated rather then
authentically engaged.
A colleague who leads EE for a large organization recently
asked me where it belongs in the company.
The dialog inside of his organization is not unlike what I’ve
consistently observed and heard across a wide range of industries. There are many lobbying for EE to be an HR
responsibility and others are pushing for Communications. There is yet a third voice from the
Organizational Development (OD) group.
All three options miss the mark from my experience. I suggested to him that it become an integral
component of the Strategy team. The recommendation
caught him off-guard, so I explained the logic.
In most organizations today, talent acquisition and
retention has become a strategic imperative.
HR departments are generally focused on process – namely getting people
recruited, placed, and then managing performance management and compensation
systems. The legal obligations of HR
often make them conflicted when it comes to engagement and innovation. Communication on the other hand is skilled at
just that, communicating. Most
communications departments are focused externally on getting the company’s
message out and are less equipped for the hands-on demands of an effective EE
effort. One could argue that OD may be a
good place, but many organizations don’t have a strong OD group. Also in my experience, OD behaves more like
an outside consultancy spending time diagnosing problems rather than as an
integral part of the team.
Strategy is focused on the future and with that emphasis,
they can project where and how an organization needs to be oriented in order to
achieve objectives. By focusing
engagement efforts on areas of strategic leverage, acceleration can be achieved
and employees have a better sense of direction and logic for the effort they
expend on behalf of the company. Companies
could be well served by spending less effort diagnosing problems and more on
bringing the company’s future into reality.
Many organizational issues dissipate when people get focused on a common
set of objectives. It’s also much easier
to identify employees unwilling to share the journey and address them more
directly. When EE becomes an integral
component of the company’s strategy, it gets more executive attention and
individual actions can be evaluated in context.
Employees can ask themselves the question: how are my actions advancing
the objectives of the team?
The final missing component is translating company level
strategy into focus areas tailored to the roles and responsibilities of
individuals. This isn’t easy and
executives often fail to connect those dots.
Simply briefing the company’s strategy to employees is wholly insufficient. People need to relate the work they do with the
accomplishment and advancement of the whole.
Therefore, engaging employees in the process of associating their work
with the strategy is vital and usually takes substantial effort. When done well however, momentum comes more
readily and easily.
Engagement therefore is a strategic imperative and shouldn’t
be treated as simply another employee morale initiative. You’re probably better off not trying to
implement an EE initiative if you’re not going to commit to doing it well. Failed efforts accelerate cynicism and
undermine company performance. If you’re
serious about EE then, make it a cornerstone of your strategy.
Duane Grove is founder of Connect2Action, a strategy execution
specialist at the intersection of employee engagement and executive leadership,
igniting innovation as a lever to accelerate your growth. Follow Duane on Twitter @connect2action and
connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+. Learn more by visiting
www.connect2action.com.
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