Fully-Engaged

Successful workplaces move beyond surveys to see results

By Theresa Suart

Engaged employees are happy, more productive, and help businesses be successful.

That’s the consistent message from experts in the field, including David McLean and Daphne Woolf, two presenters at the Your Workplace Conference, Being Engaged at Work May 4-5, 2010.

McLean, Chief Talent Leader and CEO of GetKeepGrow, Inc., and Woolf, managing partner of the Collin Baer Group, Ltd., also agree that engagement is an individual proposition.

Plans for engaging employees need to be “detailed and specific and practical for the individual,” Woolf says.

“You can’t engage and retain the herd,” McLean says. “You have to work on the level of the individual.”

“It’s great what Gallup group did the Q12, because they identified 12 common things that are critical to employee engagement,” McLean says. The 12-statement employee engagement survey has people rate things such as “At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day,” and, “I have a best friend at work”.

“But some of those things are critical to you, some of those things are critical to me, and some of those things are not critical to either of us, and there are other things that do matter,” McLean says.

“The challenge with surveys as a data tool is the questions are open to interpretation,” Woolf points out. “We’re going to answer the questions differently. There’s a subjective element that comes into play – and by their nature the questions have to be of a general nature.”

Surveys are not an effective tool for application or action planning, either, they point out.

“The primary issue from my perspective is you have relevant data—say, from an employee survey, you have relevant statistics—now what do you do?” Woolf asks. “How do you actually impact employee engagement on the ground?”

“They don’t tell you what you have to do specifically,” she says.

“The dominant model is we do a survey and then we do another survey, and there’s often not as much action taking place,” McLean says. “We have to equip organizations to take action.”

Woolf notes there’s a time-lag factor in administering surveys, that’s why she recommends a two-year cycle of measurement and action. “The reality is you can only do so much. You’ve got to give enough time in the process to have an impact to change results.”

“Stop the measurement madness,” McLean says. “This mentality of planning to do something versus actually doing something… there’s a shift in energy— measuring doesn’t really get us any further ahead.”

Woolf uses a tool she calls Action Planning Discussions (APDs), rather than traditional focus groups. “You want employees engaged in planning, not venting,” she said. “You want to be solution-focused, not problem-focused.“

Data from APDs are compiled, and from these, action plans are drafted, approved and put into place. The plan is well-communicated and target dates are attached to specific goals.

One strategy McLean promotes is one-to-one dialogues between supervisors and employees. This is not chit-chat, but a meaningful conversation about where an employee is and where they want to be. One tool he suggests to help facilitate these conversations are “Retention Cards”. These cards have a series of statements about what an employee wants from his or her job. Employees select their top 10 or 15 cards and then rank them as strengths, averages or weaknesses in their current job.

These provide a framework for the discussion. From the discussion, a plan for action can be developed.

“Companies need to make employee engagement real,” McLean says. “They’ve got to define the impact on their company and move it from a theoretical concept. Define it in terms of what you see people doing, the results they deliver, and the impact they have on others.”

McLean sees a sustainability imperative: “Employee engagement in some organizations is still flavour-of-the-month, or flavour-of-the-year, or there’s an emphasis on measuring it versus actually taking action. You’ve got to take action and make an impact on employee engagement.”

An engagement initiative cannot be a ‘one off,’ Woolf adds. “For change to be sustainable, it must be gradual, continuous, and progressive.”

Accountability is also key, Woolf says.

“There’s got to be real consequences for it,” McLean adds. “If I do something that has an impact on employee engagement, is there a positive consequence? If I don’t take action, is there a consequence?”

Encouraging and fostering employee engagement is an ongoing responsibility, Woolf says. “It’s dynamic. It never stays the same.”

Originally published in issue 12-3 of Your Workplace magazine.

Page updated on September 1, 2010