Why You Must Secure Executive Sponsorship for Strategic Recognition

Securing executive sponsorship is one of our five tenets for strategic employee recognition, but not one I blog about frequently enough. So this week I’m focusing my blog posts on the importance of executive sponsorship, kicking off with an excellent article by Judy McLeish in Engagement Strategies Magazine.

“Employee Engagement is an employee’s psychological and emotional connection with their job, which influences both their loyalty and performance. The definition seems logical enough. So how hard can it be to foster an environment where employees want “to stay; say positive things; and use their discretionary effort to benefit a company”? …

“I believe that this traditional approach on solving for the “whole” has caused companies to brush over those that have the greatest impact on engagement: themselves – in other words, senior leaders and managers. After all, it’s the leader who has to drive engagement, the leader who has to understand how to engage his/her staff, and the leader who has to show progress and motivate change. It’s the engagement of these leaders and managers that companies rely on to move the needle. Yet, according to Development Dimensions International, only 25% of senior leaders and 17% of frontline leaders are highly engaged. No wonder companies are having a difficult time making progress.

“To reap the full benefits of engagement, companies must first engage those that lead the effort. The old adage holds true: “one bad apple can ruin the bunch.” If you have one leader who is actively disengaged, then this leader (according to Gallup) is three times more likely to have disengaged employees working for them. So if this traditional approach of creating company-wide engagement initiatives isn’t delivering the expected results, what should a company do differently? …

“Start by engaging your senior leadership team. We have heard it all before: “It’s not the senior leaders who engage employees it’s the frontline managers.” Wrong…it’s every leader at every level of the organization, and it starts in the Executive Suite. Unless all executives believe in and want to foster engagement, there will be no engagement.”

Judy strikes to the heart of the matter in this piece, which I think needs no further embellishment from me. I’ve addressed it before in a discussion about holding managers responsible for engagement. Are you having a difficult time making progress with your employee engagement efforts? What are you doing to secure executive sponsorship