Why Bother with Employee Engagement?

Why should you bother with employee engagement – especially now when so many other concerns fill your plate? In this Forbes article, Douglas Conant, CEO of Campbell Soup put it simply and well:

“I saw that of all the measurable elements related to culture building, engagement correlates closest to shareholder returns. We can use engagement as a tool to measure our progress in building a high-performance culture and to set higher standards for our leaders. To win in the marketplace, we believe you must first win in the workplace. I'm obsessed with keeping employee engagement front and center and keeping up energy around it."

Conant’s approach is in line with Towers Perrin’s as outlined in Closing the Engagement Gap as well as the results we’ve seen with our own customers -- frequent, timely, personal and (importantly) accountable recognition and appreciation of employee efforts leads to improved market and financial performance.

As Conant continues:

“I understood that Campbell as an organization needed to demonstrate its commitment to its people before they could be expected to demonstrate their own extraordinary commitment to it and its success. Learning to celebrate success is a key component of learning how to win in the market. On a personal level, I send out about 20 thank-you notes a day to staffers, on all levels.”

Conant reflects what many are anticipating from the MacLeod review of employee engagement, due out anytime now. As Greg Aitken, head of human capital strategy at the Royal Bank of Scotland, said in anticipation of this study:

“If an organisation wants to come out of the recession and attract the best staff, then employee engagement has to be a factor they focus on. It’s a strategic imperative. Employee engagement directly affects customer service, financial performance and the future well-being of the organisation.”

Are you on board with the financial and organizational benefits of employee engagement? Is engagement a strategic initiative in your organization, relegated to an annual employee survey with no measurable actions, or ignored entirely? In any of those scenarios, what do you think the impact is on employee morale, productivity and behavior?

Undercover Lessons * Over-communicate to Engage

Has anyone watched Undercover Boss? It aired last month in the UK and my American colleagues tell me a U.S. version is slated for sometime this year. The premise has a high-level company director going undercover to film a “documentary” as an average worker in various roles in the company. In the 25 June episode, Stephen Martin, CEO of the Clugston Group, took on the role of “Martin Walker,” an office worker wanting to learn the ropes of physical labour in various capacities throughout the construction company.

While the episode was interesting, I have to admit I was more intrigued by Mr. Martin’s insights in this Financial Times article on his experience:

"What lessons has he learnt? 'Our key messages were just not getting through to people,' Mr Martin says. 'People working a shift on a large site do not have time to read newsletters or log on to websites. You have to communicate with people on their terms, and it is different for every location. One size does not fit all.'

"Leaders may know exactly what they want to see happening. They send out messages down the management line. Employees ought to understand. But between the top table and the shop-floor something goes wrong. And right now there is a bigger, more urgent point. In a recession it is even harder to have an effective, open dialogue with an anxious workforce. Mr Martin shared what he had learnt with his team of managers after filming was over. It provoked a (frequently repeated) response: 'They’ve never told us that!'

"Mr Martin feels he needs to 'over-communicate' to reassure staff who have seen big redundancies in recent months. 'If you don’t pass on enough information, even if it is bad news, they will fill the gap with something else, probably worse than the truth.' "

This aligns with findings from our own recent market research showing that while 77% percent of HR leaders and employees agree that more communication about company strategy and company values would be effective ways to counteract the negative effects of layoffs and reductions, employees are in the dark about some of the good news, such as increases in budget funding or stability of the company in this economy.

In the fearful environment created by this economy, communication, appreciation and recognition are a cheap and very effective means to reconnect your employees with your objectives and engage them in the work at hand. What are you doing to open the lines of communication with your team?

Are You Watering Your Culture Tree?

I’m a fan of Wally Bock’s Three Star Leadership blog. A couple of recent posts focused on company culture and how easily it can be destroyed to the detriment of company success.

In Home Depot at 30: A Lesson in Corporate Culture, Wally tells the story of how the founders created a company based on trust of its employees, especially knowledgeable salespeople easily found and approached on the warehouse floor and store managers with a great deal of local autonomy. Then one founder retired and Bob Nardelli came in as the new CEO, cutting those knowledgeable salespeople to the bone and replacing 98 percent of executives. As Wally says, rebuilding the culture under a new CEO will be difficult as “the old, experienced people took the old culture with them. It’s not likely that many will come back.”

In Lessons from the Rise and Fall of Delta Airlines, Wally describes an airline so beloved by its employees that they banded together to buy the company it’s first Boeing 767. And business travelers extolled Delta’s great service far and wide as it became the premier airline for business travelers. Then Ron Allen came in as the new CEO, instituting cost-cutting measures and leading acquisitions that decimated the company and its culture.

In each post, Wally offers a few nuggets of wisdom – his “Boss’s Bottom Lines.” These two in particular rang true with me:

“Culture is a slow growing tree. In the beginning it needs protection. But after a couple of decades the culture will be stronger than you are. You need to work with it, not against it.”

“Culture is a powerful but fragile thing. If you burn down the culture tree, it takes a long time to grow another one.”

What is your company culture today? Is it the same culture as always – decades in the making and strong – or a sapling that is just beginning to grow, perhaps after the old culture was burned down? Many of our clients have been able to manipulate their social architecture to change their culture into one of appreciation. Is your culture one that needs to be destroyed and replaced with one of appreciation? Be sure to take our weekly poll (upper left corner, or email subscribers click through).