One of the things that continues to surprise me is when times are bad organizations still spend money on employee engagement surveys. One would think that a general look around the organization and tea room discussions would make it obvious to all that wanted to see it that employees are not so much engaged as they are worried about their jobs. This leads us to two major issues to consider during tough times, the first is how we inspire confidence and innovation in an organization that appears to be in freeze mode. The second is what you should measure as an indicator of employee engagement.
Let’s deal with inspiring confidence and innovation in your organization. Well this boils down to a communication strategy that focuses on getting employees actively involved at all levels in understanding the business and how their ideas can have a positive impact. Here’s an example of what you could do. Take real business data and share it with groups of employees at all levels that deal with customers in specific sectors. Ask them for ideas on improving or innovating just one aspect of your service offering or product line and test in a specific market segment on a small scale, say a sales territory or state. Then after testing those ideas for a six week period ask employees to examine the business results. Take those ideas that have shown a substantial improvement in sales and implement either state wide or nationally depending on your organization. Design a reward and recognition program around the impact of these ideas on the business outcomes and start to energise your workforce. It really is that simple, treat employees with respect, stop telling them what to do instead listen to what they have to say, put some rigor around the framework for ideas and reward outstanding results. This is how innovation happens and how you can energise an organization to respond quickly to changing market conditions.
So what about employee engagement surveys? I say save your organization the tens of thousands of dollars they cost and invest your time in a well thought out employee communication strategy like that outlined above. This will ensure a climate where communication is open, ideas are valued and actions are implemented. All these steps are indicative of a workforce that is focussed, has purpose and feels a greater level of confidence about the future of their organization and therefore their role because they are actively involved in designing the future, not being told what do and when to do it. If you just change the paradigm from budget cuts, budget cuts and budget cuts to opportunities, growth and involvement your organization’s business results will be your barometer of employee engagement, no survey required.
I fully agree with your discussion, communication is a strategic issue, employees are to be inspired and their confidence level increased in order to achieve this. In fact, good communication between the employee and the employer start building up a psychological bond and it makes makes the employees to feel valued and it untimately produces their contribution in the organization.
What I would like to highlight is an important question regarding employees involvement. The formal employee Involvement may refer to management strategies that are formulated for overall system functioning relevant to a set organization rules. However, informal involvement is an agreement that arise in an informal way between employee and an organization. In another word employee involvement and its concepts act as a community and sharing hub of knowledge, from all concerned participants and employees alike, where mostly they are encouraged and motivated in their job responsibility. Or in another words, social range of employee involvement also refers to individual involvement in teams or individually, where they have a self directed responsibility towards their job. Mostly employee involvement also is a formal participation of members from among a team in achieving team-work goals and objective.
Best Regards,
Raj Kandy
Sr. IT Strategic Planning Analyst
Abu Dhabi National Oil Company
Abu Dhabi
UAE
This article is not applying to all companies, it will depend on situation.
Let me also share with you my own view
When we are asking first line managers to communicate to their staff, each supervisor is communicating the message on his way which at the end gives non consistent message.
In some cases, we have to keep the communication from top management only to ensure consistent message
If we plan to use first line managers in communicating one subject, we have to give them the full context not only part.
We have to ask them to communicate good news as well as bad news, not only bad news.
Mahmoud Sabry
I couldn’t agree more with you, Marcia !
Nothing is better than ‘inspiring confidence and innovation in your organization than
a communication strategy that focuses on getting employees actively
involved at all levels in understanding the business and how their ideas can have a positive impact’
is much, much better than a survey.
It’s an ongoing process.
One your employees will be thankful for.
A communication strategy should always involve employees.
Another inspiring article, Marcia!
Thanks, Henry Delong