Priceless

Last week I wrote about listening and asking the right questions is the key to solving many of the issues in the workplace (and more broadly, life!). I made the point that the counter point to employee engagement surveys not working (as suggested in the article from People Management) is to ask the right questions and then listen to the answers (rather than get too caught up in process, surveys etc).

Hot on the heels of that post, I read an interesting white paper (Chandler and Macleod), which talks more about why ‘engagement surveys are so disengaging’. The paper asks:

Content – what are you really measuring? (and I would add – ‘and why?’)
Is your engagement survey process engaging?
Actions speak louder than words (ie – are you actually doing something with the results!)

The paper makes the point that many engagement surveys : “neglect the fact that engagement is personal. – Each individual is different and will be engaged by different factors. Organisational interventions often attempt to enhance engagement levels from an organization – wide perspective – unless this explicitly addresses the needs of the individuals, it may miss the mark..”

It’s a crucial point. How do organizations develop programmes that meet the needs of the individual and are still workable? More worryingly – do organizations even know what motivates and engages each employee?

The broader organization probably won’t – HR probably won’t – but the line manager, if they know their team, if they’ve listened, if they’ve observed – they’ll know. They’ll know what will work and what won’t and for whom.

A quick example to illustrate this: I was working with a client a few weeks ago, where given external market considerations, it was inappropriate for this client to recognize a particular employee’s contribution with a monetary amount. We talked about the employee, what was important to her, where she was in her career, what would be most impactful for her and came up with the idea of offering her access to a fabulous external mentor.

The employee was delighted. The impact: ongoing and powerful. The cost: negligible.

For organizations who want standardization and ease of administration, and who want consistency of process and reward this individual type approach won’t get past the door – but for those that are prepared to put the time in to getting to know their employees and think laterally – the potential for interventions that grease the path of engagement is huge.

As an aside: the above will almost always be less expensive than a blanket approach that misses the mark with a large percentage of employees (and is therefore money down the drain).

What do you think – are engagement surveys worth the time and effort? Do line managers really possess the answers? Is it workable to develop individual approaches to individual employees?

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Comment by Benjamin Whitfield on August 22, 2011 at 13:06: Hi Tammy,

I completely agree with your comments – surveying an organisation is only half of the equation. For an organisation to increase engagement and motivation levels effective actions need to be implemented. To this end, Hinds has developed an action planning method and processes which allows actions to develop and deployed at both the organisational (strategic) and local (operational) level. It is a very effective process which, when employed, has seen significant year on year increases in employee motivation and engagement levels for the respective host organisation.

This said, the actual survey and action planning process are not divorced from each other. The action planning processes is reliant on the data and insights gained from the survey process. Similarly, the engagement / motivation survey serves as a measuring stick to determine year on year changes within a respective organisation.

Comment by Kirti Jacobs on September 3, 2011 at 11:28: Having just gone through the first engagement survey with our non-profit organization, I can vouch for the value of this tool in helping to initiate a discussion about espoused and enacted values - it's a useful way of starting a conversation about what needs to change. Also great for making explicit all those corridor conversations that go on in organizations. That said, HR professionals need to have the staying power to hold when those conversations get tough (as they will) and to keep the conversation going till you get to the other side with defined actions; and then to follow through on those. would I do one every year? Hmm, haven't decided on that yet. It's time consuming and causes disequilibrium, which may not be what you want all the time. I agree, strong line management is critical, but it's not always a given. Focusing on building line management skills in the areas you suggest, Tammy, has measurable pay-offs.

Comment by Tammy Tansley on September 7, 2011 at 16:49: Kirti - thanks for joining the conversation on this. Did your survey also focus on what is good about the organisation and what should be built on? We spend a lot of time focussing on the bad when there is equal (more?) bang for our buck on maximising what is working and using that strength to start to leverage the weaknesses.. What do you think?

Comment by Kirti Jacobs on September 7, 2011 at 20:48: I agree, Tammy, there was a whole heap if good and I focused my messaging on that. I guess when its the first time you've done in a pretty stable culture, the negative come as a surprise. I saw the large part of my role as being the constant voice saying, "Yes, and they also said x, which is really great.". It's just such a human response to struggle with the negative stuff before it becomes a learning opportunity. The big lesson for me was to hold and not personalise the discussion, see it instead as part of the continuum of change. It's been thought-provoking and useful in many ways.

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