Increasing and Measuring Engagement©
Ed Gubman, Ph.D.
Do not reproduce without permission of the author.

News flash: McDonald's announced it hired Golin/Harris International, a big PR firm, to do a major communication campaign directed toward its employees. McDonald's wants to improve retention of store employees and build an employer brand that links with its external branding. I believe in employee branding as part of becoming a better employer, so if this helps toward that goal, itís a step in the right direction. However, even if itís well executed, it wonít be enough.

A communication campaign, no matter how much it revs people up, canít possibly address all the things that engage people at work and motivate them to stay. At best it only can get at a few aspects of engagement, albeit important ones.

Another news flash: Maritz Research said its recent nationwide poll of employees found that 21% of people would fire their bosses if they could. Frankly, I'm surprised the number is that low. I would have guessed at least 40%, just based on the complaints I hear. Maybe people didnít want to put others out into the cold during a recession, despite how lousy they are at supervising. Or maybe theyíre willing to accept mediocre supervision as long as the boss stays out of the way.

The McDonaldís and Maritz news brings me to some of the recent thinking and consulting Iíve been doing about engagement. Engaging people for mutual successóyour companyís and their ownóis an essential leadership challenge because it leverages a most potent value driver for building profits and growth in our economy. When information is king, value comes from talent. Engaged people are powerfully committed to their work. Disengaged talent doesnít create much value.

After years of working on engagement issues, Iíve come to see engagement as a hierarchy, structured according to the words of the late anthropologist Clyde Kluckholm. To paraphrase Kluckholm, all people are like all other people, some other people and no other people. Of course, he used the word ìmenî instead of ìpeople,î but he was working a long time ago. This was his way of saying that, after years of studying different cultures, weíre all alike in some ways, some of us are alike in some ways and each of us is unique. Not a huge revelation, but a very useful way to address engagement. I think it can help you increase engagement in your organization.

Engagement Hierarchy
This nugget from Clyde leads me to create an engagement hierarchy that looks like this:

To make your company more engaging you have to address all three levels as they relate to your workforce: values and responsibilities, programs and relationships.

Before I start explaining how to use this hierarchy, you should know there is one major assumption behind itóyou have the right people in your company. In his excellent new book, Good To Great, Jim Collins talks about this as having ìthe right people in the right seats on the bus.î Heís absolutely correct, but heís talking about having the right senior team on boardóIím talking about everybody. Of the big consulting firms that address engagement, Gallup does the most with this concept of right people/right jobs. But it focuses on matching talents to positions so people can do what they naturally do best.

That's fine but it doesn't go far enough. Before you even hire people, you should be sure they fit your culture. Most companies ignore this and start with whether people can do the job, but values have to align before talent matters. After you hire people who fit the culture, you can help them move around to find jobs that suit their talents, and really good companies do this. We did this at Hewitt all the time, usually with success. If you hire cultural misfits, all the talent in the world wonít helpóthe more talent they have, the more irritated youíll become when they show they donít belong.

If you truly have the right people in the right seats on your bus (values and talent), you can work on increasing engagement. Iíll use the table below to explain.

I've included just the two approaches to measuring engagement I know pretty wellóGallup and Hewitt. Gallup measures engagement through its Q12 survey (12 standardized questions). Hewitt looks at its seven factors. Its surveys are customized to the client and include varying numbers of items based on what clients want. Both are very different but very sound methodologies, based on good organizational science and research. However, each has big gaps. Hewitt and Gallup both cover stage 1—Values and responsibilities. Hewitt covers stage 2—Programs—quite well as befits their consulting model, but only partially gets at stage 3. Gallup addresses stage 2 in a very limited manner but does more with stage 3. Make sure your measurements assess all three areas.

If you have to work all three stages, does it matter where you start? Probably not, since they overlap so closely. For example, so many of your organizationís values get expressed through the relationships managers have with employees, itís hard to imagine dealing with anything in isolation. In fact, attacking engagement issues from a systems perspective, recognizing how values, policies, tactics, behaviors and communications interact probably is best. If you have any strong negatives in your work environment you have to attack them first. Disrespectful or abusive behaviors, perceived (or real) unfairness in the promotion system, the lack of a competitive or needed benefit, a lack of appropriate recognition and other basics have to be eliminated first before you can start building positives.

All: I've listed the values I hear employees talk about the most—the ones they say impacts them. These resonate throughout western culture. You probably have others too. Excellence, teamwork and customer focus appear on many companies' value statements. Weíre seeing how failures in fairness and/or integrity are taking down two big companies—Enron and Arthur Anderson. And it doesn't have to be everybody; just a few people in power can do it. Trust and respect are equally crucial. A recent nationwide survey said employees define success as being trusted by their supervisors to do a good job. That's powerful and speaks to the issue of responsibility—having a well-defined job, clear expectations, and the tools and information needed to get the job done.

Contribution to society represents the feelings of employees who say it's important to them that their companies provide something of worth to their communities and country. This provides meaning to their work lives, so that a day spent with you is a day well spent. This may be easier to see in some industries than others, like health care or education, but it means leaders at McDonald's must make sure employees know that eating at McDonald's brings smiles to kids' faces (if not to their parents) and provides a huge convenience to millions. (This was not a commercial.)

Some: When you start working on programs, be strategic. Focus your limited resources on what employees require to do a better job for your customers and try to meet employees' most critical compensation, benefit, work/life and development needs. This is where branding can be a big help. Use it to clarify your promise of value to your employees—that's what a brand is. Then align your programs to it so you deliver. Remember you can't provide everything to everybody. Nobody does, and groups of people differ in what they need and want. Fitness centers and elder care are great, but they arenít necessary for everybody (though casual dress might be). For a while, when the economy was in the bubble, it seemed like you had to keep upping the ante of employee programs and perks, just to compete. Use this slower period as an opportunity to get focused on creating and meeting a set of expectations appropriate to your business model and situation.

Each: Relationships may be the most overlooked part of building engagement. They're certainly the most difficult to do, but they hold the most value. This is where you must address unique personalities. Yet, the number of senior executives who still can't make eye contact or say hello to employees in the hall is staggering. If they can't do this, imagine how hard it is for them to take time to get to know their people on a personal level. We have a long way to go here, but this is where the big payoffs are. The stronger the relationships, the more people invest themselves in the work place and produce great product or service. The most crucial relationship is always with the boss. But, as Gallup demonstrates, having close friends at work is critical too.

I have started companies down this path with a simple mantra, "treat each other well." If they can begin by working on that, then relationships and the work climate get better quickly. Bad behavior is no longer tolerated, and positive interactions become the norm. Here's where the management of mood, also usually ignored, becomes essential. A friendly work climate grows when people, particularly leaders, are held accountable for coming to work (and staying) in an upbeat frame of mind. Believe it or not, there are ways to manage and measure this.

World-class companies go further and do a lot of celebration. This is what distinguishes the best of the best from the rest. Southwest, CDW Computers, much of Wal-Mart, Synovus, Harley-Davidson and others spend a lot of attention on this. They pay for the extras (usually not very expensive) and build managers' skills so celebration occurs regularly and sincerely. This is great stuff, but don't focus here until you get the other things right. What good is celebration if people donít feel trusted or arenít paid right?

Beyond Engagement
What lies beyond engagement? Lately I've come to think that even engagement doesnít fully describe attachment to work. Iím talking about people who really love what they do, who have a passion for their work. No engagement model gets all the way there. Whatís missing is a fourth stage, the individual psychological dimension, which is harder to measure or address on a group basis. Passion for work is a function of three things: Who you are, what you do and where you do it. Engagement focuses most on where you work, some on what you do and very little on who you are, so itís crucial but still falls short.