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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Providing both practical advice, tools, and case examples, Employee Engagement translates best practices, ideas, and concepts into concrete and practical steps that will change the level of engagement in any organization.
- Explores the meaning of engagement and how engagement differs significantly from other important yet related concepts like satisfaction and commitment
- Discusses what it means to create a culture of engagement
- Provides a practical presentation deck and talking points managers can use to introduce the concept of engagement in their organization
- Addresses issues of work-life balance, and non-work activities and their relationship to engagement at work
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011
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Table of Contents
Cover
Praise for Employee Engangement
Talent Management Essentials
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Series Editor’s Preface
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Engaging Engagement
How Engagement Makes a Difference and What Engagement Is
How an Engaged Workforce Creates Positive Financial Consequences for Organizations
On High Performance Work Environments: Four Principles for Creating an Engaged Workforce
The Remainder of the Book
Chapter 2: The “Feel and Look” of Employee Engagement
The Feel of Engagement
The Look of Engagement: Employee Behavior
Strategically Aligned Engagement Behavior
What About Employee Satisfaction?
Where Does This Take Us?
Chapter 3: The Key to an Engaged Workforce: An Engagement Culture
What is Organizational Culture?
Creating a Culture for Engagement: How People are Valued in Organizations
The Role of Culture in Creating Strategic Employee Engagement
Summary
Chapter 4: Phase 1 of Creating and Executing an Engagement Campaign: Diagnostics and the Engagement Survey
Pre-Survey Diagnostic Activities
The Engagement Survey
Chapter 5: Phase 2 of Creating and Executing an Engagement Campaign: Action Planning and Intervention
Survey Results Interpretation
Survey Results Feedback
Preparing the Organization for Taking Action7
How Much Measurable Change is Possible?
Actual Changes That Build and Maintain Engagement
Summary
Chapter 6: Burnout and Disengagement: The Dark Side of Engagement
Disengagement: Early Unmet Expectations at Work
The Nature and Trajectory of Burnout
Effective Coping With Burnout
Additional Stress Factors and Disengagement
Remedies and Interventions
Resistance to Change and Engagement: Another Dark Side of Engagement
How Should Engagement Initiatives be Communicated?
Conclusion
Chapter 7: Talking Points: Introducing or Rethinking Engagement in Your Organization
The Slide Show
Notes
Author and Name Index
Subject Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1: Engaging Engagement
Figure 1.1 Engagement and financial performance
Figure 1.2 Employee engagement value chain
Chapter 4: Phase 1 of Creating and Executing an Engagement Campaign: Diagnostics and the Engagement Survey
Figure 4.1 “How do we bring employee engagement to life?”
Figure 4.2 “Engagement next steps: Professional best”
Chapter 5: Phase 2 of Creating and Executing an Engagement Campaign: Action Planning and Intervention
Figure 5.1 Quadrant analysis
Chapter 6: Burnout and Disengagement: The Dark Side of Engagement
Figure 6.1 Engagement and burnout
Chapter 7: Talking Points: Introducing or Rethinking Engagement in Your Organization
Figure 7.1 Slide 1: Introduction
Figure 7.2 Slide 2: Introduction (cont.)
Figure 7.3 Slide 3: Principles of employee engagement
Figure 7.4 Slide 4: Feelings of engagement
Figure 7.5 Slide 5: Engagement requires trust
Figure 7.6 Slide 6: Creating alignment
Figure 7.7 Slide 7: Recommendations
Figure 7.8 Slide 8: Recommendations (cont.)
Figure 7.9 Slide 9: Barriers
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Praise for Employee Engangement
“Macey and his colleagues provide a fascinating analysis of engagement – what it means, why it works, and, most importantly, how to create and maintain an engaged workforce.”
Fritz Drasgow, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Employee Engagement walks us through the complexity of this deceptively simple concept and makes concrete the process of translating engagement into hard financial results.”
Peter Cappelli, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
“A hugely important topic, handled with just the right mix of scholarly insight and practical experience. This book is a valuable addition to the literature.”
Jeffery S. Schippmann, Balfour Beatty Construction
“If you want to increase employee engagement to achieve your organization’s strategic objectives this is the book for you. It deconstructs what engagement really means, explains what factors shape it, shows how to diagnose your organization current state and tell you what managerial levers you can use to increase it and consequently raise organizational performance. This book is at once scientifically sound and highly readable.”
Michael Beer, Harvard Business School
“No one knows more about employee engagement, in all its forms, than do these authors. They give careful, useful and practical advice on using employee opinion surveys to measure and increase employee engagement!”
Allen I. Kraut, Baruch College, C.U.N.Y.
Talent Management Essentials
Series Editor: Steven G. Rogelberg, PhD
Professor and Director Organizational Science, University of North Carolina – Charlotte
Senior Advisory Board:
Eric Elder, PhD, Director, Talent Management, Corning Incorporated
William H. Macey, PhD, Chief Executive Officer, Valtera Corporation
Cindy McCauley, PhD, Senior Fellow, Center for Creative Leadership
Elaine Pulakos, PhD, Chief Operating Officer, PDRI, a PreVisor Company
Douglas H. Reynolds, PhD, Vice President, Assessment Technology, Development Dimensions International
Ann Marie Ryan, PhD, Professor, Michigan State University
Lise Saari, PhD, Director, Global Workforce Research, IBM
John Scott, PhD, Vice President, Applied Psychological Techniques, Inc.
Dean Stamoulis, PhD, Managing Director, Executive Assessment Practice Leader for the Americas, Russell Reynolds Associates
Special Features
Each volume contains a host of actual case studies, sample materials, tips, and cautionary notes. Issues pertaining to globalization, technology, and key executive points are highlighted throughout.
Titles in the Talent Management Essentials series:
Performance Management: A New Approach for Driving Business ResultsElaine D. Pulakos
Designing and Implementing Global Selection SystemsAnn Marie Ryan and Nancy Tippins
Designing Workplace Mentoring Programs: An Evidence-Based ApproachTammy D. Allen, Lisa M. Finkelstein, and Mark L. Poteet
Career Paths: Charting Courses to Success for Organizations and Their EmployeesGary W. Carter, Kevin W. Cook and David W. Dorsey
Mistreatment in the Workplace: Prevention and Resolution for Managers and OrganizationsJulie B. Olson-Buchanan and Wendy R. Boswell
Developing Women Leaders: A Guide for Men and Women in OrganizationsAnna Marie Valerio
Employee Engagement: Tools for Analysis, Practice, and Competitive AdvantageWilliam H. Macey, Benjamin Schneider, Karen M. Barbera, and Scott A. Young
Online Recruiting and Selection: Innovations in Talent AcquisitionDouglas H. Reynolds and John Weiner
Senior Executive Assessment: A Key to Responsible Corporate Governance.Dean Stamoulis
Real-Time Leadership Development
Paul R. Yost and Mary Mannion Plunkett
Employee Engagement:
Tools for Analysis, Practice, and Competitive Advantage
William H. Macey
Benjamin Schneider
Karen M. Barbera
Scott A. Young
This edition first published 2009
© Valtera Corporation
Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.
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The right of William H. Macey, Benjamin Schneider, Karen M. Barbera, and Scott A. Young to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
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Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Employee engagement: tools for analysis, practice, and competitive advantage / William H. Macey . . . [et al.].
p. cm. – (Talent management essentials)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-7903-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4051-7902-7 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Employee motivation. 2. Employees–Attitudes. I. Macey, William H.
HF5549.5.M63E47 2009
658.3′14–dc22
2008054917
For George and our family – Bill, Todd, Lauren, Katherine, Amanda, and Billy (WHM)
For Jack Bartlett, mentor, friend and The Great Engager (BS)
For Michael and Carter, who give meaning to all I do (KB)
For my wife Jennifer and our three amazing girls, Hannah, Carly, and Kayla (SY)
Series Editor’s Preface
The Talent Management Essentials series presents state-of-the art thinking on critical talent management topics ranging from global staffing, to career pathing, to engagement, to executive staffing, to performance management, to mentoring, to real-time leadership development. Authored by leading authorities and scholars on their respective topics, each volume offers state-of-the-art thinking and the epitome of evidence-based practice. These authors bring to their books an incredible wealth of experience working with small, large, public, and private organizations, as well as keen insights into the science and best practices associated with talent management.
Written succinctly and without superfluous “fluff,” this series provides powerful and practical treatments of essential talent topics critical to maximizing individual and organizational health, well-being, and effectiveness. The books, taken together, provide a comprehensive and contemporary treatment of approaches, tools, and techniques associated with Talent Management. The goal of the series is to produce focused, prescriptive volumes that translate the data-and practice-based knowledge of organizational psychology, human resources management, and organizational behavior into practical, “how to” advice for dealing with cutting-edge organizational issues and problems.
Talent Management Essentials is a comprehensive, practitioneroriented series of “best practices” for the busy solution-oriented manager, executive, HR leader, and consultant. And, in its application of evidence-based practice, this series will also appeal to professors, executive MBA students, and graduate students in Organizational Behavior, Human Resources Management, and I/O Psychology.
Steven Rogelberg
Preface
Rarely has a term that represents a “soft” topic resonated as strongly with business executives as employee engagement has in recent years. Part of the reason is likely an increased focus on human capital as a source of competitive advantage. As technology has quickly reduced or eliminated many operational sources of competitive advantage, the focus has shifted to human capital as an avenue to competitive advantage that is difficult to imitate.
In addition, the early part of this decade saw enormous increases in layoffs; “d o more with less” was the mantra heard by employees in countless corporations. Executives in many organizations were not only looking for ways to increase the productivity of their workforces, but were also attempting to accomplish this with a leaner staff. Thus, much of the interest in employee engagement stems from a general concern for productivity. Further contributing to the interest are general concerns about the viability of today’ s workforce, particularly given the seeming lack of a long-term commitment by companies to their employees and the simultaneous control employees have taken for their work lives.1
This interest has led to a flood of ideas about what can be done to harness the “discretionary” effort of employees. The essential notion underlying these ideas is that employees will be more likely to direct their efforts toward things that matter for company success if they receive more of what management thinks will satisfy employees. Consistent with this line of thought, it has become common to regard concepts such as employee satisfaction and employee engagement as equivalent. We take issue with that view and make it clear why such an approach leads organizations to misdirect both their time and resources.
Thus, this book takes a dramatically different approach and shows how satisfaction differs from engagement. Whereas satisfaction represents contentment or satiation, we define engagement in terms that connote energy and provide a simple and compelling set of principles on which any organization can create and sustain a more engaged workforce. Going further, we give practical guidance on how to establish the kind of culture that both drives and sustains engagement.
It is important to recognize that engagement is not about a zerosum game of getting more from employees at less cost. Rather, focusing on employee engagement means facing the challenge of how both organizations and employees can simultaneously benefit – a “win-win” scenario of enhanced organizational effectiveness coupled with heightened employee well-being. It is our conviction that both are not only achievable but likely when a well-designed engagement campaign is defined and executed. In the chapters that follow we provide the essential background in concept and practice for HR professionals, management consultants, and others who advise organizations on how to achieve the full benefits of competitive advantage through employee engagement.
Acknowledgments
Our thoughts on engagement reflect an exciting journey that has been shared with our colleagues, whose insights, contributions, and research partnership have been instrumental in shaping our views. First, we wish to acknowledge our colleagues at Valtera who have helped us to frame our views on engagement, create diagnostic measures to assess it, and conduct the research to show how an engaged workforce does in fact lead to competitive advantage. In particular, we would like to thank Holly Lam and Wayne Lee in this regard. We would also like to thank our colleagues at Valtera for their support while writing this book, as well for the dedication and professionalism they bring to every client interaction. The relationships that they forge allow us the opportunity to continue to consult with and learn from so many excellent organizations. Our journey also has been shared with our colleagues in the client organizations with whom we are so proud to partner, and in particular Karen Paul of 3M, and Alan Colquitt and David Futrell of Eli Lilly and Company. Our clients have challenged our thoughts, given us new insights, and provided us with practical and compelling examples of how engagement matters. Special thanks must go as well to the following individuals for so willingly sharing with us their experiences in implementing employee engagement initiatives in their companies as we prepared this book: Nigel Martin, VP of HR, Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc.; Terry Seamons, Senior VP of HR, Entergy; Angela Lalor, Sr. VP of HR, 3M; Anthony Murphy, Sr. VP of HR, Eli Lilly and Company; and Carl Walker, Sr. VP of HR, North America, Huhtamaki.
We need to express particular thanks to Jennifer Stoll, Laura O’shea, Laura Schiff, and Saifee Doriwala who helped with creating the manuscript including editing and graphics. Without their energy we wouldn’t have been able to finish the project. Special thanks are also due to Steven Rogelberg for his help and patience throughout the process and to an anonymous reviewer whose suggestions greatly helped to improve the book. We were fortunate to have such excellent help and advice as this project unfolded but need to state with certainty that we are completely responsible for any errors that remain.
Certainly most important is for us to acknowledge the support and encouragement of our families, who we know got much less attention than they deserved during this period. Bill is particularly grateful to George for her patience and support during a time when she faced a most daunting challenge of her own with remarkable courage.
About the Authors
William H. Macey is CEO of Valtera and has 30 years of experience consulting with organizations to design and implement survey research programs. He has served as an advisor to the Mayflower Group since 1992 and is the co – author of several recent publications on employee engagement. He is a Fellow of SIOP, APA, and APS and is a SIOP past president. He received his PhD from Loyola University Chicago in 1975.
Benjamin Schneider is Senior Research Fellow at Valtera and Professor Emeritus of the University of Maryland. He has won Distinguished Scientific Contributions Awards both in Psychology and Marketing, he has published nine books and more than 140 journal articles and book chapters. He has also consulted widely with many Fortune 100 companies especially on issues concerning organizational service climate and employee engagement, and the way these link to customer satisfaction and financial success.
Karen M. Barbera is a Managing Principal at Valtera Corporation, responsible for overseeing the practice group focused on employee engagement surveys and organizational diagnostics. She consults with numerous Fortune 100 level companies on the design, execution, and use of employee surveys to drive organizational improvement efforts, including the delivery of C-suite presentations of results. She is also the principal author of Valtera’s feedback and action planning programs. She received her PhD in industrial and organizational psychology from Bowling Green State University.
Scott A. Young is a Managing Consultant at Valtera Corporation. He consults with the firm’s organizational survey clients on content development and measurement, reporting and interpretation of results, research, and action planning. In addition, he has consulted with clients on multirater feedback and employee selection, and oversees the development of Valtera’s proprietary employee survey normative data and research. He received his PhD in industrial and organizational psychology from Northern Illinois University.
Chapter 1Engaging Engagement
Employee engagement is an engaging notion – we get excited by it, we get involved in it, we’re willing to invest time and effort in it, and we get proactive about pursuing it – that’s why you are reading this book. Engagement implies something special – something at least a bit out of the ordinary and maybe even exceptional. Moreover, it sounds like something maybe too good to be true, both for employee and employer. Many would envy those who are so absorbed in their work that time flies, who seem passionate about their work, who find meaning and challenge in their jobs, and frankly, who simply look forward to coming to work every day. It just seems like the kind of job that we all deserve – indeed, it’s what people expect when they start a new job. At the same time, we envy the organization where employees are focused, passionate, and want to be there and who are innovative, proactive, and do the right things the right ways. It’s no wonder then that some of the most admired business leaders speak wistfully about engagement, and see it as essential to organizational success. As Jack and Suzy Welch suggest: “Employee engagement first. It goes without saying that no company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it.”1
How Engagement Makes a Difference and What Engagement Is
The general thinking on the notion is that engaged employees give more of what they have to offer, and that as a result, an engaged workforce is simply a more productive one. In her testimony before the US Congress, workforce pundit Tamara Erickson said: “Improving engagement – finding ways to encourage individuals to invest more psychic energy in work – is the single most powerful lever that corporations have to improve productivity.”2
That’s a powerful statement and it raises difficult questions: Does a more highly engaged workforce truly produce superior performance in organizations? Just what is psychic energy? And just as importantly, how does the corporation create or release that energy?
The Business Case for Employee Engagement
The claims being made for engagement are substantial. If employees are more engaged their organizations should demonstrate superior financial performance, the ultimate metric against which success and failure is judged. We have good evidence from some of our research of that potential and it is shown in Figure 1.1. There, we show how employee engagement across companies is reflected in three different indices of financial performance.
We had employees in 65 firms in different industries complete our engagement index and then for each company we averaged the data from their employees. Then we asked the following question: If you take the top and bottom 25 percent of the companies on the engagement index and look at the financial consequences what are the results?
You can see in Figure 1.1 that for Return on Assets (ROA), Profitability (actually profits divided by revenues), and Shareholder Value the differences are quite dramatic with shareholder value being more than doubled. Shareholder value was calculated using an approach commonly used in financial research.3
Figure 1.1 Engagement and financial performance
Good to Know:
Shareholder Value as a Measure of Engagement Impact
One challenge in evaluating the impact of an HR initiative is the choice of the outcome measure. All measures are not equal; their interpretation is often clouded by differences within and between organizations. For example, accounting measures (like ROA) are generally not comparable across firms or at least industries. This makes it difficult to evaluate the impact of a program on the competitive advantages that accrue, for example, to an engaged workforce since such evaluation by definition requires a comparison between companies.
In contrast with accountingbased measures, measures of shareholder value are forwardlooking and cumulative. An appropriate measure of shareholder value allows for comparability across firms and industries. Most important, the cumulative and forward-looking nature of share-holder value means that it reflects anticipated and sustainable impact. It is sustainability that reflects the essential nature of competitive advantage.
Capital market measures of shareholder value, such as Tobin’s q, reflect the value of the firm that has been created beyond the replacement costs of the firm’s assets (that is, the ratio of the market value of the firm to the replacement cost of its assets). Thus, firms which have higher such ratios have greater anticipated market returns relative to the investments that have been made.
Figure 1.1 clearly shows that firms that achieve higher levels of employee engagement also create higher levels of shareholder value … certainly good news for their investors and the executive teams who design and implement their strategies.
If an engaged workforce produces such dramatic financial outcomes how can we understand what this energy is that is associated with engagement? It turns out there are two kinds of energy: psychic energy – or what people personally experience – and behavioral energy – what is visible to others. At least as important is the question: What kinds of conditions can we create in the work place to foster such energy? We briefly describe each of these.
Engagement as Psychic Energy: On the Inside
Psychic energy brings to mind powerful images. Simply put, those who apply more psychic energy to a given task focus intensely on it and spend less energy focusing elsewhere. Common sense tells us that an organization that can capture more of that energy on the tasks that need doing in turn has a greater opportunity to create value.
Most of us have had the experience of being totally absorbed, totally focused on the task at hand. We use various expressions to refer to these moments, such as being “in the zone” or in “flow.”4 We think of these moments as peak experiences, and in that sense they are memorable and positive. The question of whether we are satisfied at the time simply doesn’t arise because our attention isn’t on being satisfied, it’s focused on the task at hand. Most people can identify when they have such experiences and the common ingredient of those experiences: It happens when we have a clear objective or goal we are trying to attain, when we have a sense of urgency about completion, and when we put intense effort into attaining it.
It may have already struck you that if events like being “in the zone” are relatively uncommon, then the goal of creating an engaged workforce might be elusive. So, engagement is probably best thought of as something that comes in degrees, perhaps at the extreme levels representing being “in the zone,” but without necessarily implying that engagement can only refer to such extreme moments.
We make this important point because engagement can be an important concept only to the extent that it is realistically sustainable. Being “in the zone” isn’t ordinary. Nonetheless, the allure of the extreme is one that captures our imagination, and serves in the extreme as the defining nature of what engagement feels like.
It’s the emphasis on energy that sets engagement apart from other popularized HR concepts, especially employee satisfaction. Employee satisfaction implies satiation and contentment with what has been obtained whereas engagement implies going after, seeking, and striving. We’ll see later that it’s a little bit trickier than this – primarily because of the way these different ideas about employees have been understood and measured. Nevertheless the notion of energy is key to engagement whereas satiation is the key to understanding satisfaction. With energy in mind, let’s sketch out what it means to be psychologically engaged from an employee’s view by imagining we are interviewing employees about it. For example:
Describe the feelings of enthusiasm, focus, and being energized
. “Work doesn’t feel tiring, but exhilarating. I feel a sense of enthusiasm for what I do. I feel a sense of self – efficacy, not self – satisfaction, but of vitality and competence that comes from doing something that I personally value. I see myself as part of the vitality of the organization, as a significant contributor to accomplishing organizational goals.”
Tell me how absorbed you feel in your work.
“I frequently have the sense of being lost in time, as ‘suspended’ in the present. I find that I am fully involved in my work. I am very attentive to what I am doing and do not suffer from distractions. ”
So, are you saying you are more focused?
“Good question. I feel fully absorbed and aware of my place in relationship to my co-workers and what they and the organization are trying to do. ”
Engagement is the psychic kick of immersion, striving, absorption, focus, and involvement. In its fullest form it is not a usual sensation for if it were we would not obsess about how to achieve it. But engagement is not only psychic energy felt and sensed by employees; it is observable in behavior.
Engagement as Behavioral Energy: How Engagement Looks to Others
Engagement is visible to others in the form of behavior and we want to focus in on that behavior because, ultimately, this is what produces results. Importantly, we know that employees can serve as effective and valid reporters of what is going on in the organization. So, it’s helpful to think of what an engaged workforce looks like to those who actually do the work inside the organization. We’re going to go into some detail about what behavioral engagement looks like. We do this because it is sometimes like other notions of behavior we have but it is more than those. For example, some speak about commitment to the organization and involvement in one’s work but if that’s all it is, then it seems we could stop right here, because much has been written about those topics. It’s precisely because engagement captures something different – something more – that we need to find a level of precision in our thinking and expression that distinguishes engagement from those concepts. As we’ll see later, thinking about engagement in the ways it is different can lead us to a path less traveled, one with very different consequences for the organization.
Here is what an engaged workforce looks like:
Employees will think and work proactively: Engaged employees anticipate opportunities to take action – and actually do take action – in ways that are aligned with organizational goals.
They will expand their own thinking about what is necessary as job demands shift and expand their roles to match these new demands: Engaged employees aren’t tied to a job description. Rather, they are focused on the goals they are trying to achieve and that are consistent with the success of the organization. Doing something more or different isn’t the question; it’s a matter of doing what’s necessary without thinking of whether what’s necessary is part of the job.
Employees actively find ways to expand their own skills in a way that is consistent with what’s important to their roles and organizational mission: Engaged employees take ownership for their personal development not just for their own sake but so that they can contribute more effectively. Employees see their own self-interest in skill development as consistent with what is good for the organization but they do more than think about this, they do it. So, this self-d evelopment behavior isn’t seen as a matter of ultimate selfsacrifice, but what makes sense in a relationship between employee and employer; engagement is not just about what I can get but what I can give.
Employees persist – even when confronted with obstacles: Engagement matters most when things aren’t easy to do, aren’t going according to plan, and/or when situations are ambiguous and call for a matter of trust on both sides. The reason why executives are so attracted to the notion of discretionary effort is that they recognize that all activity is not subject to management design or control, and that questions of motivation are quite difficult to address. What executives want are employees who don’t need reminding or prodding, and who not only sense the need to get things done but do it, whether or not now is the convenient time or it is perfectly clear who should be doing it.
They will adapt to change: A key characteristic of an engaged workforce is employees who adapt when circumstances require. This can take shape in different forms, but the key is that they respond to the uncertainty that is inherent in a changing business environment and they actively embrace change – indeed sometimes proactively suggest change.
We will expand on these component notions – both of what engagement looks like and what it feels like – in Chapter 2. For now, though, we offer the following working definition:
Engagement is an individual’s sense of purpose and focused energy, evident to others in the display of personal initiative, adaptability, effort, and persistence directed toward organizational goals.
Good to Know:
Engagement in a Talent Management Framework
Talent Management refers to those human capital systems that attract the right talent and leverage that talent in a way that achieves the greatest return from individual and collective employee capabilities. In addition to sourcing, recruitment, on-boarding, and selection, this embraces managing the employee – employer relationship including performance management and issues related to sustaining employee motivation. It is particularly out of concern for the latter and the desire to capture unrealized employee potential that engagement falls under the talent management umbrella. Perhaps less obvious, employee engagement addresses another focus of talent management, namely, the need for organizations to adapt quickly to changing conditions. A more engaged workforce is more adaptable and therefore can be deployed more readily and likely at lower overall costs.
How an Engaged Workforce Creates Positive Financial Consequences for Organizations
Earlier we made the business case for an engaged workforce. We showed (see Figure 1.1 ) how companies with an engaged workforce had superior ROA, profitability, and more than double the shareholder value if they were in the top 25 percent compared to the bottom 25 percent on engagement of the companies we studied. Since then we have been outlining the attributes of an engaged workforce in terms of the psychic and behavioral energy we can expect from engaged employees. But that energy itself of course does not translate directly into the financial outcomes we showed are related to that energy. Obviously there is a process whereby the translation into financial outcomes occurs. This process is our focus here because it has direct consequences for the kinds of conditions that must exist for: (a) employees to feel and be engaged; and (b) produce the financial consequences hoped for. Look at Figure 1.2 as we describe this process and focus in for now on the second and third boxes, the ones labeled “Employee engagement feelings” and “Employee engagement behaviors.” We’ll deal with the “High performance work environment” in the far left of the figure later.
Figure 1.2 presents a schematic overview of how we conceptualize engagement with both its antecedents and its consequences. The antecedents are in the work environment and we refer to and think of such a work environment as one that facilitates, permits, and allows employees to be engaged. Engagement has two important facets, one psychological and the other behavioral. The psychological has all to do with the way people feel – focused, intense, enthusiastic – and the behavioral has all to do with what they do – they are persistent, adaptable, and proactive. As shown in Figure 1.2, engagement provides the bases for creating tangible outcomes such as enhanced performance, and a set of intangible assets including customer loyalty, intellectual capital, and brand image rarely addressed in human resources and human capital writings. Also, engagement serves to lower the risk profile of the organization. This happens because employees are more dedicated to creating value for the company, more consistent in their interactions with customers and other stakeholders, and less likely to leave the organization. All these in turn impact cash flow and ultimately shareholder value.5 What we want to emphasize in particular is the role of employee engagement in creating the intangible assets shown in Figure 1.2 and thereby lowering risk, both of which extend far beyond the implications of greater productivity generically defined to create shareholder value.
