Rethink Employee Engagement -- Already?

Employee engagement continues to be a hot-button issue for employers and HR professionals worldwide.

Some of the questions swirling around this issue include: How, exactly, should we define employee engagement? Does engagement really drive productivity? Are employee satisfaction and happiness part of employee engagement? And, of course, how can we improve our engagement levels?

Last year, Forbes published an article with the provocative title, “It’s Time To Rethink Employee Engagement.” While many organizations had just begun seriously thinking about engagement, the article declared that we already needed to rethink it. To be fair, the author makes a number of points worth considering. For instance, for companies conducting employee engagement surveys: “Don’t treat every opinion the same. Listen to what your top performers tell you. They’ve proved their value and earned their credibility, so go ahead: play favorites.”

Naturally, whether to think (or rethink) about employee engagement is something each organization must evaluate on its own. And there’s plenty of research available to help. (Just cruise through some of our past posts for links to a variety of helpful reports and sources.) But as we all give thought to engagement, here’s a summary of specific items that have the greatest impact on employee engagement, as ranked by 6,000 HR professionals who participated in a 2013 SHRM/Globoforce survey.

• Appreciation by direct supervisor – 71% 
• Opportunity to advance – 41% 
• Salary and bonus – 36% 
• Ability to be effective in one’s job – 35% 
• Company’s care for employees’ well-being – 30% 
• Confidence in executive leadership – 29% 
• Relationship with peers – 22% 
• Belief in company’s mission – 18% 
• Appreciation by peers – 11% 
• Job title – 4% 
• Other – 2%

Again, it’s your decision whether to rethink your organization’s employee engagement. But here’s an interesting quote from William Werhane of Hay Group, the global management consulting firm: “In the current economic environment, high performing organizations have remained focused on employee feedback, and as a result, have achieved significant business results through enhanced levels of employee engagement and enablement.”

That’s something worth thinking about.

From the Flight Deck: Clear a Runway for Your High Performers

A Bersin by Deloitte study has shown that organizations with highly effective employee development plans have about twice the revenue per employee as organizations with poor plans. And earlier research from Bersin & Associates revealed that senior leaders who coach and develop employees (and who hold others accountable for doing so as well) are three times more effective at producing improved business and talent results than those who do not.

Of course, to get these kinds of results you can’t rely on a one-size-fits-all employee development strategy. You need to tailor strategies to fit your people. One perfect example: design strategies specifically for your high-performing employees.

These are the individuals who keep your company running right now. Their work and their contributions are vital to your success today. Don’t confuse high performers with high-potential employees—those who aspire to holding top leadership roles within your company. While high-potential employees are often high performers, high performers don’t always have their hearts set on holding senior leadership roles.

Distinguishing between these two groups is important because your high performers need their own “runway” to maximize their success. This runway includes dedicated development plans and budgets as well as timely, ongoing performance assessments to ensure their work remains aligned with key company goals and targets. Without these regular assessments, it’s all too easy to allow high performers to keep plugging away at tasks and responsibilities that no longer reflect the company’s evolving needs and goals.

Here are three tactics that you can use to help your high performers take flight:

1.     Set clear expectations with managers: Give your managers a clear understanding of what high-performance behaviors are—and how they might vary by function, department, team and role. Sharing these expectations makes it easier to identify high performers and communicating back up the chain to executive leadership who those individuals are. It also makes it easier to build out development plans and anticipate what an individual’s or group’s productivity will look like after further development.

2.     Manage performance proactively: True performance management is relentless and requires proactivity—anticipating the challenges you’re your employees will face and then providing them with the tools, guidance, support and constructive feedback they need to overcome these challenges as quickly as possible. Development doesn’t always have to focus on the long-range or on future roles. And don’t forget to reward success. While simple recognition and pats on the back are useful, they’re not acceptable on their own where your high performers are concerned, especially not for those making serious contributions to the organization.

3.     Keep everyone on track: Make sure that high performers are getting the support they need, particularly when their work environment changes or becomes chaotic. Temporary assignments and rotation of team members, for instance, can decrease the productivity of even your highest performers. Managers should focus on the individual performance of team members first and then look to manage disruptive external factors. Managers who put performance first—and do what they can to facilitate success—also build trust with their teams.

Some employers are tempted to focus most of their resources and attention on high-potential employees because they foresee a greater/longer return on their investment. But this is a mistake. While high-potential employees are important, high performers keep our businesses running in the here and now. Ignoring them can prove far more costly than we imagine.

Download our white paper, “Giving High Performers a Runway,” to read more about creating robust development strategies for your company’s high-performance employees.

A Pee Wee Herman "Listening Culture"

Sometimes managers just talk too much. Our mantra is listen more, talk less. Employees who believe they are being heard with resulting changes or tweaks to how things are run are generally the most satisfied in their jobs. They feel empowered and they feel they are a part of the process. Those who don't feel they can share ideas, concerns and frustrations freely with their managers tend to feel isolated and constrained.

It isn't uncommon for employees to feel that they aren't being heard. Listening to employees is a great way to get far greater buy-in from employees. What are their frustrations? What ideas do they have for improving things? Are there things the manager isn't aware of that could help in addressing a number of performance and morale issues?

A critical point here is that you want to avoid listening just to listen. Employees will quickly sniff out the manager who is insincere about asking employees to sound off. They will wonder what is up. Why is the manager suddenly asking for input when it rarely, if ever, happened before? If a manager is going to be a good listener, it's important to actively listen and then use feedback from employees to move things forward and improve things.

A trap to avoid is believing everything you hear. The feedback from employees can range anywhere from completely accurate to complete rubbish. Over some period of time, astute managers form opinions about what is really happening by listening to all employees and piecing things together. Good listeners are active listeners and they ask good questions that will draw out important information and help sort out the inaccuracies.

Creating a listening culture takes some time. Building trust is probably the most crucial element of the process. Employees have to feel they can trust managers to keep confidential information they share and to use that information in a positive and productive way. When managers blab and misuse the information, there can be no traction toward a culture of active and productive listening.

Does your organization have a "listening culture"? If so, what does it look like? Is is embedded in such a way that the feedback from employees feels natural and not contrived? Do employees more often than not bring forward good ideas and offer solutions rather than just problems? Are employees comfortable sharing information? Take a look around and see what you find.

How Do You Spell Morale?

Employee morale is not something to be taken lightly. According to the Harvard Management Update, in roughly 85% of companies, employees' morale declines sharply after their first 6 months on the job and it continues to deteriorate for years afterward.

Getting employees motivated is a commonly heard theme in organizations. But the real problem appears to lie in stopping those same organizations from demotivating their employees. When morale declines as much as is suspected in so many organizations, there is something amiss in how the employees are being managed and interacted with.

Managers, supervisors, and executive management often unwittingly damage employee morale little by little by saying and doing things that rub employees the wrong way. Stopping that behavior is sometimes easier said than done. But it can be managed.

Here are some things that seem to impact morale positively:

- Create an environment that is fun and lively.
- Carefully evaluate your management style. Is it facilitating in nature or is it dictatorial or overly assertive and direct.
- Encourage employees to come forward with problems, suggestions and issues. Listen carefully and acknowledge their concerns. Follow up on them and communicate results of your findings back to them. Don't leave them hanging.
- Address compensation and benefits to make certain that you are competitive with the market.
- Be consistent in how you administer rules and policies.
- Be fair and reasonable.
- Set expectations for all employees about team work and working cooperatively. Let it be known that you expect employees to get along while on the job.
- Be clear in your expectations and follow up when they aren't met. Don't ignore low performers. If they can't become good employees, terminate them. Bad employees affect those around them.
- Don't allow double standards. What's good for one employee is good for all of them.
- Eliminate a punitive mentality. Don't make employees feel that they will be punished if they make mistakes.
- Encourage innovation and creativity.
- Show employees that you care about them.
- Communicate as much as possible to all employees. Keep them well informed about what's going on in the business. Provide quality feedback regularly.
- Look at the work environment. Is it light and airy or is it dark, dreary and counterproductive?
- Complete performance reviews on time and in a thorough and accurate manner.
- Keep promises and follow through.

These are all reasonable expectations and behaviors within a culture of high morale and high productivity. The impact on morale by doing these things consistently can be dramatic. Look around your organization and see how often these things are actually happening with a high degree of regularity. If they aren't, the culture isn't supporting or requiring them. It's time to start changing that culture.

Know Any Chickens?

We all know managers who just don't have the intestinal fortitude to bring performance issues to the attention of their employees when needed. These "chickens" aren't doing themselves, their employees, or the organization any favors. Far from it, in fact.

The damage done by these managers is almost unforgivable. Believe it or not, most employees actually want to know when their performance isn't living up to expectations. To ignore or soft-sell performance issues creates a culture lacking appropriate accountability. And there is an ongoing deterioration of productivity and effectiveness that impacts overall success.

We all know these kinds of managers. Some classify them as being afraid of confrontation, but the reality is that most performance discussions are not confrontational at all. What they really boil down to are opportunities....coaching opportunities. So we'll just say they're "coaching averse"

There are some real tell-tale signs involved when a manager is coaching averse. Here are just a few:

- Communication is more often than not in written form as opposed to verbal. Whether it is by email or memo or whatever, the manager prefers to communicate in writing without discussion. This is true particularly when the topic is touchy.
- Marginal employees or employees with bad attitudes are allowed to continue unabated in their employment. In other words, the chicken won't fire bad employees.
- Performance reviews for all employees are at least acceptable by most standards. Because a performance review is intended to reinforce, document, and formalize performance, the chickens just can't bring themselves to mark down performance because they know they'll have to deliver the news personally.
- Employees get away with murder...well not literally, but figuratively speaking they sure do. Negative behavior and subpar productivity is tolerated. The impact of this behavior on other employees is disastrous over time.

The adage about employees leaving managers and not companies sure seems to play itself out a lot. Managers obviously have a direct positive, negative or neutral impact on employees. The "chickens" we address in this article have such a detrimental effect on employees that they usually lose many of their best employees leaving the bad ones in place. When left unchecked, this pattern really turns things upside down for the work unit involved.

Organizations have to be on the lookout for the chicken and then hold them accountable for changing their approach and behavior. In most cases, it's a lost cause, but there are some success stories. Let's just hope the chicken's boss is not another chicken.

Sticks and Stones May Break Your Bones, But Words Will Hurt You Too!

The way feedback is handled is vital to the way the messages are received by employees. It never ceases to amaze just how careless some managers can be in how they provide verbal and written feedback.

During feedback about performance, employees have a heightened sense of sensitivity about what they are being told and with the normal "noise" that occurs in interpersonal communication, the stage is set for misunderstanding and hard feelings to develop. Being crystal clear when providing feedback during informal and formal interactions is more than just a little important.

Some managers believe that just giving feedback is sufficient. They lack an awareness about how much impact their words can have on their employees. Because employees often misintrepret what they are being told or they hear what they want to hear, the words spoken or written by the manager have to convey exactly what they mean.

Lack of clarity, use of "trigger" words (those that provoke anger or resentment), lack of thoroughness, conflicting messages, and the inability to present negative feedback in a constructive manner are all land mines for performance reviews and ongoing feedback. Employees have certain expectations about the feedback they will receive during a performance review or feedback session. They want clarity, they want to understand exactly how the manager believes they are performing and they expect to be treated with respect regardless of the message.

Managers need to prepare for delivering feedback so that the words being used are the ones that will deliver the message in a way the employee will understand and respect. Managers who think they can ad-lib or just throw some verbiage together are inviting confusion and resentment on the part of the employee. Here are some recommendations for getting the right words into the feedback:

1) Put yourself in the employees' shoes. Think about how your words will affect them. And think about feedback you have received. What did you think was fair and objective feedback and what did you think was unfair and inaccurate or incomplete? How did you feel in both situations? Did certain words trigger certain emotions in you?

2) Prepare. Write down what you want to say, read it, tweak it as necessary, reread and tweak again if needed. Get to the point where you feel the message you want to convey is accurate, thorough without being redundant, and is not offensive in any way.

3) Look at and think about each word you're using in the feedback. Ask yourself if there is a better way to get your message across. Does a particular word or phrase convey more negativity than it should? If so, replace the word or phrase to "soften" the impact yet still deliver an accurate and complete message about the employee's performance.

4) Keep the words simple. Using big words to impress the employees will only turn them off and close down the communication process. If the employee doesn't understand what a word means and doesn't ask what it means, imagine the potential to misinterpret or conjure up inaccurate definitions of the word.

These simple guidelines will go a long way in getting your messaging more clear and more accepted by the employee. Try these next time you're providing feedback or preparing comments for a performance review and you might be surprised at how much more receptive employees will be.