Employee Engagement surveys are great for taking the pulse of your organization. There is no question that engaged employees perform better than those who are not. And organizations with higher rates of engagement perform better than organizations with lower rates. So why don’t all organizations work harder to increase engagement levels?
As I described in a previous article on this, employee engagement levels have flat-lined since the turn of the century. I believe organizations are trying to treat the symptoms identified through the surveys instead of root causes.
Communication is bad? Let’s run communications workshops, do more town halls, start a newsletter.
Poor collaboration? Let’s do team building exercises and sponsored retreats.
Sorry – these are symptomatic of root cause issues that also impact engagement. Communications workshops and team building exercises, while not bad to do, will not in themselves drive higher engagement.
I came across this article by Delia Radu at Accelerole. She does a great job of analyzing the situation and coming to the same same conclusions as I have. Plus she has come up with 20 great tips to help get to root cause and actually improve engagement.
“Your managers seem to be going through a rough patch motivating executives. They hardly ever communicate the mission and vision of the company and they don’t seem to be able to inspire those around them. 1 on 1 conversations are rare.
“And then you read in the Bersin report that US organizations spend 720 million dollars per year on employee emotivation. Or in the Gallup State of the American Workplace report that disengagement costs businesses between 450-550 billion dollars per year.
“Yes. It is that bad.”
Read the article here!
About the Author:
Delia is doing a PhD in Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute and holds an MSc in International Relations Theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her professional background is in EU external policy, marketing communications and educational NGOs.
