What's the Big Deal About Employee Engagement?

Training & Development, Jan 2008 by Ketter, Paula

Engagement is all about creating a culture where people do not feel misused, overused, underused, or abused.

For several years, employee engagement has been a hot topic in the executive suite because there's mounting evidence that employee engagement correlates to individual, group, and organizational performance in the areas of productivity, retention, turnover, customer service, and loyalty.

It also has captured the attention of workplace learning and performance professionals, but according to many experts, engagement isn't a new concept.

"We are pretending that engagement is a new thing," says Beverly Kaye of Career Systems International. "Engagement is a new word for a very old thing. Engagement is a new word for motivation, passion, and commitment. Are you motivating your people, are you caring about your people, and are you challenging your people?"

Jean Martin, executive director of the Corporate Leadership Council agrees, adding, "Engagement is made up of rational and emotional commitment. On the rational side, it is largely about getting enough compensation and development opportunities to make it worth your while. Emotional commitment is the ever-elusive love of your job and love of your manager or organization."

According to Kaye, engagement became a topic for concern in early 2000 when the dotcom bubble burst, 9/11 occurred, the economy dipped, and unemployment rose. At that time, the common response from managers to employees was, "You should be happy you have a job." Work expectations rose, while companies froze employees' pay. The result was a disengaged workforce.

According to a Towers Perrin study, only 21 percent of the global workforce is engaged, while 38 percent is disengaged. That leaves 41 percent who are unsure whether they like their jobs or not.

"A buzzword becomes big when the pain is great enough," Kaye explains. "Employees have been put through so much and they finally realize that they have choices elsewhere, and that has caused pain for employers who are afraid of losing them. Employers have started doing engagement surveys, engagement studies, and engagement workshops to develop engagement strategies. I don't think it is any different than what learning professionals have tried to do-and that's build a development culture, one where everyone is used to giving their maximum effort in the workplace.

"Engagement is all about creating a culture where people do not feel misused, overused, underused, or abused," Kaye adds. "Now that employees have options-and they will have these options for at least another decade-if they feel any of those things, they can jump ship and that will cause a lot of angst for the ship they left behind."

Martin admits that the turmoil surrounding organizational change during the last five years has forced employees "to do more with less," and that mandate is forcing many employees to "check out" or lose their commitment at work.

"Our data has proven, year after year, that the emotional side of engagement is actually four times more powerful than the rational side when it comes to driving the business impacts we care about, which are essentially employees who want to stay with the company and employee productivity," Martin says. "One specific finding is that when employees move from being disengaged to being highly engaged, their productivity improves 20 percentage points in performance levels."

The impending retirement of the baby boomers, the competitive job market, and the multigenerational workforce also are placing more importance on engagement in the workplace. These factors are pressing organizations to find ways to retain their top talent and that is necessitating the need for engaged workers.

"The newer generations in the workforce also are speaking up, saying, T am not a happy camper and you need to do more to keep me here, or I am going to pick up my skill set and go somewhere else, where they will take advantage of my skills,'" Kaye says. "Those younger workers also are giving voice to boomers and mature workers, who have been there all along griping by the water cooler or to each other."

Many different engagement studies-from Gallup Organization, Towers Perrin, Hewitt, Blessing White, the Corporate Leadership Council, and the Conference Board-have used different definitions of engagement to come up with 26 key drivers of engagement that managers must take into consideration when supervising employees. Those drivers include doing exciting and challenging work; having career growth and learning and development opportunities; working with great people; receiving fair pay; having supportive management; and being recognized, valued, and respected.

"The top drivers of engagement come down to the employee's connection between their work and the organization's success. The second driver is an employee's belief that his work matters to the organization," Martin says. "Both of those drivers are determined by senior leadership's communication with the employee."

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