I’ve posted before on the importance of engagement (here, here and here). I recently stumbled across an interesting article “The ten C’s of employee engagement” from The Ivey Business Journal which provides a number of insightful pointers as to what’s required to improve employee engagement. The authors describe an engaged employee as a person who:
“….is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about, his or her work…… Engaged employees care about the future of the company and are willing to invest the discretionary effort exceeding dutys call to see that the organization succeeds.”
The shocking part of the employee engagement challenge is that research indicates that only between 17% and 29% (depending on the research) of employees are actively engaged in their job at any one time. This would mean that if you were a soccer or football team only 2-3 players on the team would be 100% committed to the team’s success. It seems to me that the odds of winning a game with only 2-3 players 100% committed to a teams success are pretty slim!
So, “How can leaders engage employees’ heads, hearts, and hands?“, by starting to apply the following 10 C’s of employee engagement:
- Connect: Leaders must show that they value employees. Employee engagement is a direct reflection of how employees feel about their relationship with the boss.
- Career: Leaders should provide challenging and meaningful work with opportunities for career advancement. Most people want to do new things in their job. For example, do organizations provide job rotation for their top talent? Are people assigned stretch goals?
- Clarity: Leaders must communicate a clear vision. Success in life and organizations is, to a great extent, determined by how clear individuals are about their goals and what they really want to achieve. In sum, employees need to understand what the organization’s goals are, why they are important, and how the goals can best be attained.
- Convey: Leaders clarify their expectations about employees and provide feedback on their functioning in the organization.
- Congratulate: Exceptional leaders give recognition, and they do so a lot; they coach and convey.
- Contribute: People want to know that their input matters and that they are contributing to the organization’s success in a meaningful way. In sum, good leaders help people see and feel how they are contributing to the organization’s success and future.
- Control: Employees value control over the flow and pace of their jobs and leaders can create opportunities for employees to exercise this control. A feeling of “being in on things,” and of being given opportunities to participate in decision making often reduces stress; it also creates trust and a culture where people want to take ownership of problems and their solutions.
- Collaborate: Studies show that, when employees work in teams and have the trust and cooperation of their team members, they outperform individuals and teams which lack good relationships. Great leaders are team builders; they create an environment that fosters trust and collaboration.
- Credibility: Leaders should strive to maintain a company’s reputation and demonstrate high ethical standards.
- Confidence: Good leaders help create confidence in a company by being exemplars of high ethical and performance standards.
Looking at the above list it seems that many of the characteristics are about practicing effective leadership. To me employee engagement is not really about the employees, it’s really about effective leadership.
How engaged are the employees in your organisation? Are you leading effectively?
Technorati Tags: Engagement, Management, Leadership, Winning, Business, HR
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George:
I think leadership is huge when it comes to engagement yet I also believe it is co-created with employees and that we as leaders are also employees too!
I sometimes wonder about the figure of only 17% engagement. When I do workshops on engagement I do not find that low a number. It could be the difference between a private survey and a public declaration. I will ned to continue to explore this.
Maybe we need to go more public with engagement.
Let’s give engagement an A for each person as we keep applying the 10 C’s!
David
I cant’ agree more. Companies will be successful if they possess many engaged employees. All they need is a leader who know how to engage their employees.
I’d be curious as to who of the 17-29% come to work without knowing why, i.e., don’t find their work purposeful or meaningful…went into it, for example, for the money, and now are caught up in a victim-consciousness, unhappiness, dissatisfaction mindset…that their work is not “making me happy.” Thus, they are not, or choose not to be, engaged in spite of management efforts to engage them….yet somehow find themselves blaming management for their unhappy lot in life at work. Hmmm
This is excellent research. The fact that it is neatly 10 makes me wonder if there are really more or less, but certainly a useful start.
# peter vajda Says:
March 3rd, 2007 at 5:56 PM
I’d be curious as to who of the 17-29% come to work without knowing why, i.e., don’t find their work purposeful or meaningful…went into it, for example, for the money, and now are caught up in a victim-consciousness, unhappiness, dissatisfaction mindset…that their work is not “making me happy.” Thus, they are not, or choose not to be, engaged in spite of management efforts to engage them….yet somehow find themselves blaming management for their unhappy lot in life at work. Hmmm
Speaking as an actively disengaged employee I’d like to address your questions and assumptions.
I continue to come to work because I have bills to pay. I took this job based upon the interviews and the job description – it was a bait and switch, utterly. I stayed hoping that it would get better, and yes I actively participated is raising my concerns with suggestions for remedy. These were squashed by management. After 8 months I realized it was hopeless and began to ‘disengage’, it has now been one year and I can barely get past my anger at being so ripped off that I can look for a job. Oddly enough, when I do have any work that is related to the job I was hired for, I am happy with the work. It is the heavy-handed inept management that makes my blood boil. This could have been a really, really good position, but it isn’t because I’m not willing to be sucked into the bait and switch (into a world of empire building/head count).
There have been NO true efforts to engage me as an employee. I am not kidding. I could site example after example of asinine remarks and decisions that would curl your hair. One example: I asked the senior manager (15 years experience) why he had never enquired of me ‘how’s it going’ or ‘how is the new job working out’ I was told “you are only here to prove you are capable of doing the job, it you’re not happy, or if it’s not meeting your expectations, you can quit’. I was looking for communication and empathy, not a boot to the head.
Yes I do blame the people that hired me, more so the people who should have been excising oversight but didn’t. I have been screwed over. Until I find a real job, in an organization that can post an honest job description here I will stay; I have bills to pay.
Organization size – 50,000.
Average employee engagement from last survey – 31%
Survey response to ‘your next career goal’ – majority response: ‘a job outside this organization’
My age: 46
Profession: Project Manager with 10 years experience, prior – systems analyst
Average length of employment per company: 7 years
It’s not always the employee’s fault.
Is folowership not equally important. We all have to lead & follow. Any guidance on this postulation would be appreciated
Interesting. Engaged employees need engaged leaders. If leaders themselves are engaged it makes a big difference to the culture they create at the work place. They lead by examle and become role models.
Engaged employees lose the edge when they perceive their leaders as lacking engagement themselves.
I agree with many of the points that you have stated with your 10 C’s of engagement. I think that you will see some similar aspects in an article, which was published in the January issue of T & D Magazine, my partner and I wrote.
By comparing the articles, one point is missing from your evaluation that our company believes is MOST important: Match.
You do not take into consideration the personality of people. Therefore, not all aspects of these statements will work for every type of employee. People will react differently to their environment. One size will not fit all. These points, as does 9 of our 10 M’s, may fit a large number of employees. However, the 10th point, Match, becomes the MOST important point as an attempt to engage an entire company of employees. Match the job, task, position to the personality of the employee and engagement will become a far easier task.
A lot of companies going through major restructuring, either via downsizing, mergers or expansion, really need to focus on total employee engagement to help make the changes stick within the culture. I saw this in one of my clients who was expanding. Engagement was the pillar to making this a reality. Being a retail organization, this meant keeping the store managers, district and regional managers involved and committed to the changes.
I agree strong leadership is essential to employee engagement.
Mel W. also makes a great point about match. The strengths-based approach recommends focusing not just on personality strengths, but also skills, values and character strengths.
The issue of alignment and dialog cannot be under-estimated. While these are probably assumed in “collaboration” & “contribute” under your model, I would also suggest that a leadership-centric viewpoint risks missing the importance of the whole system. Engagement is about a deep heart-connection. This requires each individual to know how their personal life mission and purpose connects to the vision and mission of the organization. At the deepest level. This involves an alignment of values. If enlightened leaders are in place, and values, vision and mission are clear and well-communicated, the final step involves transforming the old top-down communication pattern and developing structures where front-line employees help drive the strategic and tactical planning since they are closest to the customer.
I currently work in a company where the executive leadership is entrenched (most 15+ years) and very out of touch with the functional aspect of the work. They spend a great deal of time issuing directives (under the guise of strategy) without any thought given to execution. When they continue to get poor results, they fire the functional or lower management level, but leave the executive leadership in place. This has built a distinct environment of mistrust and employees who lack engagement.
And how do you measure and report on the the 10 C’s?