Effectively Moving From “Employee Puls Survey” to Agile Employee Engagement

Nowadays, you seldomly encounter someone who argues that employees are not a critical asset for any organization. Yet, it is difficult to calculate their actual value for a variety of reasons. It all boils down to the true engagement level of the workforce.

When employees are “disengaged”, they take long lunch hours and disappear at the stroke of 5:00 PM, not staying a moment longer than they have to. More important, they will not fully deploy or employ their minds to solve problems effectively or rather innovate to excel at what they are supposed to be doing. When they do not contribute enough, they will negatively impede their company’s success, growth, and/or profitability.

On the contrary, when employees are engaged, they are crucial to the success of the company, bringing motivation, innovative ideas, and willingness to go the “extra mile” to exceed expectations. In this case and only in this case, they will be the company’s greatest assets. 

Post Covid-19 pandemic, business is being disrupted and the vitality of maintaining employee engagement has magnified. New business models, exponential technology, agile ways of working, and regulation are constantly changing the way organizations work. COVID-19 has only accelerated transformation, grounded in human experience principles, and which, in turn, can drive sustainable change on a behavioral, cultural, and organizational level. We all need to take a closer look at lessons learned through the experiences of employee engagement during COVID-19.

Despite COVID-19’s negative effects, it is likely that we all agree on one thing – we’ve learned a lot! After local businesses were forced to close shop and manage all their employees remotely, the learning curve for managers was initially steep. Yet this new way of functioning has brought with it some valuable lessons about how to boost employee engagement that should not be forgotten in the "new normal".

Employee engagement refers to the emotional commitment an employee has to their organization and its employees, vision, and goals. It is not about employee satisfaction anymore, high salaries, or thanking an employee after a long day of work. Many companies make the mistake of treating employee engagement as a human resources issue when it is actually a business one. The onus is on management to introduce work methods and policies that nurture the emotional connections between employees and their workplaces and motivate them to remain committed to the company for the long term.

It looks like many organizations in various industries needed this wake-up call! Now we are witnessing:

-      The advancement of Employee Engagement as a vital HR KPI that dwarfed in importance many historically persistent HR KPIs (like employee turnover and employee satisfaction) on the CEO’s business operations and business continuity dashboards.

-      A growing number of organizations are explicitly included Employee Engagement in their organizational strategy.

-      An eminent need to measure and improve factors that affect Employee Engagement.

-      A clear increase in budgets allocated to Employee Engagement activities, initiatives, and technology implementations that serve the purpose.

-      A rise in the vitality of Employee Engagement even within the startup and SME ecosystems.

In an attempt to measure and improve Employee Engagement, HR departments (as the custodians of the Human Capital in any given company), business consultants, subject matter experts, and industry influencers are trying to:

-      Define and redefine what Employee Engagement actually means for their organization, industries, or geographies in the light of industry standards, market dynamics, norms, and comparative benchmarking.

-      Measure/monitor factors, symptoms, and micro-conditions that influence Employee Engagement, directly and indirectly, using a number of reactive tools that read the plus of what employees feel about the work environment.

-      Run reactive initiatives and regulated processes that mitigate shortcomings of the factors and conditions in the hands of the employers.  

-      Maintain programs to “deal” with disengaged employees, yet, on an induvial case to case basis.

But is it working? This is the question that matters, I think! Many global, regional, and local studies reveal relatively low employee engagement rates, and the usual outcome usually revolves around identifying wide gaps and vast rooms for improvement.

Current employee engagement strategies tend to do very little to engender a sense of employee ownership in the engagement process. In fact, employee engagement assessments often do exactly the opposite, prompting employees to externalize the need to fix engagement onto management’s shoulders. The workforce tends to collectively think, “I hope management figures it out this year. They’ve got a lot of work to do to get me re-engaged!”

When an organization is disheartened by low levels of employee engagement, pressure kicks senior leaders into action-planning mode. They begin assembling lists of "80-plus" ways to improve engagement levels. This shotgun approach is usually highly decentralized and unfocused, generating skepticism among employees and leaving management under-appreciated for their efforts.

As the most commonly used tool, employee engagement surveys have more than externalizing questions in common – they also fail to get to the root cause of poor employee engagement. That’s because these assessments are designed for measuring an outcome (overall engagement rates) without attempting to address many of the deeper challenges underpinning employee satisfaction. Only leaders who get to the source of the problem are able to boost employee engagement in a sustainable way.

To sum it up, externalization, an endless cycle of action-planning, and misdirected focus weaken the effectiveness of the already-ineffective modern engagement assessment. If current engagement assessments reveal lower engagement ratings, it’s time to question our current tools and methods.

Moving forward, the equation is simple! Custodians of The Human Capital need to move from being reactive to being proactive or move towards “Agile Employee Engagement”. This means that, firstly, employers need to face the facts and make the paradigm shift to believe that the word of mouth inside the organization is a materialization of the internal employer brand the company builds in the minds and the hearts of the people who shape its success… Employees. They need to adopt a holistic long-term vision of the employee engagement pulse and deal with it (both strategically and tactically) as a dynamic wave that will have its ups and downs over time.

Micro-measurement of symptoms and one-off initiatives don’t actually pay. Employers need to simply accept this fact and focus on building and maintaining “Employee Engagement Assets” that foster employee experience from the very first moment of the employment gurney and embraces the sense of belonging of the employee (as a person) to the company, not in the light of rigid or a rather controlled relationship.

Employee Engagement Assets can be materialized in:

-      Operational strategies, policies, procedures, processes, and tools that capitalize on internal employer branding.

-      Aligning employee personal objectives with that of the organization.

-      Embracing employee 360-degree communication and have the "voice of the employee" heard and considered.

-      Apricating performers and celebrating achievers.

-      Adding a personal flavor to all the tough points with the employee

-      Scaling the care of the company to cover the employees, their families, and loved ones with voluntary benefits and saving programs.

-      Improving contemporary learning resources within the organization.

-      Maintaining adequate room for leadership opportunities growth and career advancement.

Implement this and only then (and without micro-measuring the plus of engagement), will employers gain the hearts and minds of the people who shape and share the success of the company, and “Employee Engagement” will be the most valuable byproduct of these employers produce.

Finally, I encourage you to share your vision and experience in the comments. Mention a policy, an initiative, or a project that you have witnessed. An initiative that you can call a true “Employee Engagement Asset” and the impact you have seen on Employee Engagement.