7. AVERAGE EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
DOES YOUR COMPANY HAVE AN EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT PROGRAM?
WITH WITHOUTALL WITH WITHOUTALL
EMPLOYEES EXECS
5.5 5.9 4.7 5.9 6.6 5.2
9. WHAT HAS IMPACT?
CORRELATION COEFFICIENT:
1.0 = perfect correlation
0.7 - 0.9 = strong correlation
Correlation coefficient: likelihood that the variable predicts engagement.
PROUD TO WORK
HERE
0.8
RESPECT FOR
LEADERSHIP
0.75 0.75
POSITIVE
CULTURE
10. AVERAGE EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
DOES YOUR WORK MATTER TO...?
CUSTOMERS LARGER
CAUSE
COMPANY
MATTERS
6.2 5.8 6.2 2.8 3.4 4.2
DOESN’T MATTER
CUSTOMERS LARGER
CAUSE
COMPANY
11. 11
SO - FOUR THINGS THAT ENGAGE EMPLOYEES
RESPECT PRIDE WORK THAT
MATTERS
CULTURE
Intro - I’m deb lavoy, CEO of Narrative Builders – we help companies explain why they matter to their markets, customers and employees. But I was VP marketing at Jostle, and we still enjoy working together.
We all know employee engagement matters. We’ve all seen Gallup and Blessig White stats on how low engagement is, and how strong engagement leads to strong profits and innovation.
Jostle, Brian Solis and I got together and said – but what do we know about how to make engagement happen?
So we put together a big fat survey and passed it around. We got some interesting info.
Good news. Most execs ranked employee engagement as a very high priority. We assume the 1% are retiring this year.
And we asked employees to rate their own engagement on a scale from 1-10 and we asked execs to speculate on their employees level of engagement. Execs are slightly more optimistic, but we know where we stand here. Meh-ville.
Then we asked if they had an employee engagement, and looked at the average engagement of people who did. It’s a little better with, a little worse without. And again, execs overestimate the impact slightly.
Then we asked them about their employee comms programs. And yipee. They are extremely lukewarm
So then we did some stats magic to find out what things actually did correlate or predict high levels of engagement. And here’s what we saw.
intuitively you know that these are not independent variables. Great leadership promotes pride, work that matters, impacts culture, etc. But we can look for a few things that we know drives each and
That’s nice talk. Can we really do anything about it?
Key here is that you can’t create respect, you have to earn it, and this is how leaders earn it.
Success story. Houlihans restaurant group had some locations that were rocking and others that weren’t. Leadership was essentially absent from the outposts, so they did something about that.
When people are proud of the company they work for the lean in. Seems obvious, right? The truth usually does, when we see it.
But what makes people feel pride? Tshirts? Company picnics? Pep rallies? A questing disposition for the company. A quest – more than purpose, more than mission, a quest an ambitious adventure toward something that matters. Authenticity. Stated company goals, values, mission that everyone knows is false will certainly fail. Then two that should be super easy but are often fumbled (sports metaphors – I can do it now, I’m a football mom). Make the company’s impact and each person’s contribution to that impact clear and well known.
Cottsway is an organization based outside of London. They manage thousands of low-income housing units. They are landlords. They are responsible for repairs and maintenance, etc. They hit some bad times financially that gutted them from a morale point of view. They were remarkably brave about their comeback. They talked about what they were for and started doing things like sharing stories about the residents they helped, and their projects
You are probably not surprised to hear that work that matters, matters. Neither were we. What we were surprised about was how different ways of mattering uh mattered.
Work that matters to a great cause a larger purpose a quest – you’ll recognize this as part of the company pride story as well. Build an authentic quest and be serious about it, and people will indeed get in line.
THIS is where your employee engagement and comms plans should focus.