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SERGEANTS MAJOR ACADEMY Department of Professional Studies

Lesson S301 Human Resource Management Processes and

Systems

Reading B Employee Engagement: Creating Positive Energy at

Work Chapters 1, 6 and 7

Employee Engagement

Chapter 1 High levels of employee engagement benefit everyone

In this chapter we will explore the following topics:

■ The challenges we face as HR and as leaders in companies.

■ The reasons why employee engagement has become a high priority for organisations.

■ How companies prioritise the importance of the customer, the shareholder and the employee.

■ The changing expectations that employees have of their employers.

■ What we mean by the term “employee engagement”.

■ Is employee engagement the same as employee satisfaction?

■ The term “Employee Experience” is used often. Is that the same as employee engagement?

■ Is “engagement” just another term for “workaholism”?

■ Can the impact of employee engagement on company performance be quantified?

■ How important is it to employees that they feel highly engaged at work?

■ How does work contribute to well-being?

■ How well are companies doing when it comes to employee engagement?

■ Reflective questions.

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EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 2/21/2021 4:52 PM via US ARMY SGTS MAJOR ACADEMY AN: 2322279 ; Joan Peters.; Employee Engagement: Creating High Positive Energy at Work Account: s4061880

Chapter 1: High levels of employee engagement benefit everyone

The challenges we face

Rochelle leaned back in her chair as her team left her office after their weekly meeting. She was feeling uneasy. Rochelle was new to her company, RoofCo, a manufacturer of roof tiles, having only joined two months ago. She headed up the Marketing team, which was responsible for functions such as sales forecasts, identifying sales outlets, market research, promotions and advertising.

Rochelle had inherited a small team of talented and well-qualified people. Two team members were over the age of 45 and had great knowledge and experience with the company. This should have made them an excellent support to the four younger employees who were below the age of 35. Rochelle’s expectations were that team meetings and one-on-one meetings should generate lively discussions and many ideas, and that people should be energised in their roles and willing to take on projects and test ideas.

So far this was not the case, however. Meetings were fairly quiet; only one or two employees offered any ideas and people seemed to be waiting for instructions. There was a strange, cautious atmosphere with little initiative and low energy. Rochelle was wondering what her strategy should be to build higher levels of energy amongst her team. The goals for the department were tough, so she needed everyone to be fully engaged and to collaborate, innovate and achieve the targets she had agreed to.

Meanwhile, 20 kms away in the industrial area, the CEO of Rozzby, Daniel, was preparing for a Board meeting. His frustration level was rising as he worked through the numbers; customer satisfaction was down, absences were edging higher and warranty costs were rising, which was no surprise as the in-house quality management system was highlighting many faults picked up at the end of the production line, despite the extra quality checking stations they had installed. There was constant conflict between the people in the production, quality and engineering divisions. Employee turnover was low, but in the past three months, four of the company’s top talent had

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Employee Engagement

resigned. It seemed to Daniel that his employees just did not care about the company or the quality of their work.

In a thoroughly bad mood, he phoned Laurisha, the HR Director. “Looking at company performance figures, I would say we have a people problem. And don’t tell me we don’t pay people enough. We pay above the market rate! We’ve upgraded the facilities on the line as well as the offices. We introduced flexible work hours for the office staff and the managers received great bonuses. It seems to me people just don’t care about the company, the product or the customer. And the people we recruited at great cost to help us turn the situation around are also resigning. There’s no loyalty anymore. We have a Board meeting coming up so I am putting you on the agenda to give the HR view on this and recommend a way forward.”

Employee engagement has become a high priority for organisations

As a leader in your company or as a Human Resources leader, I am sure you can relate to these scenarios. The challenge for leadership and HR is how to consistently get the best performance from employees so that the company can achieve its targets of productivity, customer experience, product quality and profitability. The business environment is certainly tough for most companies: customers are more demanding, the economy is sluggish, new competitors and technologies can suddenly emerge and disrupt the business, product life cycles are shorter as customers head off to buy the latest novelty, customer service must wow the customer, not just satisfy them, and products need to be manufactured faster, cheaper and better.

The customer, the shareholder and the employee

Traditionally, companies placed a high priority on the importance of the shareholder and the customer to the business. Leadership believed that for the business to be successful and profitable, the organisation needed to focus on their customers’ experience of doing business with the company and keeping the shareholders happy.

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Chapter 1: High levels of employee engagement benefit everyone

Then there was the realisation that the company’s employees determined the customers’ experience. A good customer experience is the result of engaged employees throughout the value chain. Think of every group of employees in a business who have an impact on customer experience, directly or indirectly. These include employees who:

■ designed, made and sold the product;

■ managed the customer’s account;

■ recruited and trained the employees in the business so they were able to do a good job;

■ set up the production lines, ordered parts and got them to the line on time;

■ developed business processes and systems;

■ managed and motivated others;

■ cleaned the offices; and

■ paid the staff.

Every employee contributes to the quality of the product or the service experienced by the customer, and the customer’s experience is the deciding factor on whether or not he or she will continue to do business with that company.

The Gallup organisation conducted research that supports the view that employee engagement is an important factor in organisational success. Their view is that “engaged workers are the lifeblood of their organizations” and to win customers, companies need to win the hearts and minds of their employees.1

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Employee Engagement

Leadership and Team

My job

Connection Support Trust

Aligned to my strengths

Purpose and meaning

Growth and development

Belonging Achievement Well-being

Great job performance

Initiative

Great Employee Experience

Engaged Employee

My job

Figure 1: Employee Experience and Customer Experience

If engaged employees lead to engaged customers, companies need to focus on how to engage their employees, meaning the employees’ experience at work becomes an important topic for business leaders. We need to reflect on how we create an employee experience that leads to engaged employees.

In practice…

Richard Branson was able to build Virgin into a global powerhouse by focusing on customer service, yet he revealed that Virgin does not put the customer first. In fact, Virgin employees are the company’s top priority. As Branson sees it, the formula is very simple: Happy employees equal happy customers. Similarly, an unhappy employee can ruin the brand experience for not just one, but numerous customers.

“If the person who works at your company is not appreciated, they are not going to do things with a smile,” Branson says. By not treating employees well, companies risk losing customers due to bad service. Branson says he has made sure that Virgin prioritises employees first, customers second, and shareholders third. “Effectively, in the end shareholders do well, the customers do better, and your staff remains happy,” he says.2

Employee engagement has thus become a high priority for all organisations, as for a company to be successful in a tough business environment, it needs highly competent and highly engaged employees who can meet the employer’s high expectations of them.

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Chapter 1: High levels of employee engagement benefit everyone

These include:

■ making sure the customer has a memorable experience;

■ being innovative and making the product more appealing,

■ creating better quality and less expensive to manufacture products;

■ being results-driven, hard-working and quick;

■ staying up-to-date with rapid changes in the field;

■ being collaborative;

■ being flexible; and

■ keeping their phones on so the company can contact them when they are not at the workplace.

The general belief is that when people are engaged and love their work, they do better work. According to a survey conducted by HR.com, over 90% of respondents believed that there is solid evidence linking engagement to performance, and that engagement has the strongest impact on customer service and productivity.3

In addition, according to executives at the World’s Most Admired Companies, a list prepared by Fortune magazine and Korn Ferry, an engaged workforce is essential to effectively cope with change. “Engaged employees are more willing to accept and embrace the organizational changes needed to address customer concerns and cost issues.”4

For all these reasons, the issues of retention and employee engagement have become high priority issues for business leaders. As employers’ expectations of employees increase, so do employees’ expectations of their employers. According to research undertaken by Deloitte, the employee work contract has changed.5 Talented employees are in a strong position, the job market is highly transparent, and companies are competing for highly skilled employees. However, as employers’ expectations of employees increase, so do employees’ expectations of their employers.

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Employee Engagement

Talent in the form of well-educated and tech-savvy people is generally not daunted by a demanding work situation. Many of these people have the approach of, “I would love to be part of the business challenge. It sounds exciting. I want to be challenged and to be part of exciting projects. However, I have my own expectations of the Company as my employer and of my leadership. The salary and benefits are important to me but my needs are greater than that. I am looking at the total work experience and things like meaningful work, the opportunity to be creative, ongoing development, inspiring leadership, recognition and a sense of belonging are also important if you want the best out of me”.

Talent in the form of the worker on the shop floor who is now working with sophisticated equipment and expected to turn out top quality work that would have been unthinkable a few years ago is also typically saying, “I am proud to be working at this company and I love the product. However, if you want the best out of me, please don’t treat me like a number or as an extension of the machine. Talk to me, listen to my ideas and concerns, address my problems with parts and equipment, respect me, get to know me, support me and involve me”.

Talent in the form of the older, wiser, more experienced and possibly less-qualified employees also has needs. They are saying, “Change and new demands are all happening rapidly, so I need support and reassurance. I have been doing a good job for years, I like my team, we’ve been together for a long time, and I don’t always agree that there is a need to change. For me, the old way still works fine, but if things need to change, please make sure I get the necessary training and the time I need to adjust”.

The challenge for leaders is to provide a work experience that brings out the best in all their people, which means more focus on the intangible factors that affect the way people feel about their work. This is often not familiar territory for many leaders, and is certainly an important aspect in our development and growth as leaders.

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Chapter 1: High levels of employee engagement benefit everyone

What do we mean by the term “employee engagement”?

There is no single definition of employee engagement, but there is wide agreement that it is an emotional commitment to one’s work and a willingness to give of one’s best at work. It is how people feel about their work that determines their levels of energy, ownership, persistence, commitment and initiative.

Signs of high engagement include:

■ the extent to which employees commit to achieving results and how hard they work;

■ a passion and purpose for what they do and a sense that they are contributing to something bigger than themselves, i.e. they want to make a positive difference to something;

■ how much initiative people take;

■ how long they stay in the organisation;

■ a high level of innovation and effort to assist a company or unit in the company to reach its goals/strategy;

■ the high, positive energy and enthusiasm with which people approach their work;

■ the level of ownership and involvement with their work that people display;

■ a willingness to take on a new challenge;

■ a receptiveness and openness to change;

■ the high standards people set for themselves in terms of their conduct at work, the quality of their work and the pride people take in their work;

■ a focus on the customer or client and meeting their needs;

■ efforts made to learn more about their field so they can do more and be more innovative;

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Employee Engagement

■ a willingness to be collaborative with colleagues in an effort to leverage others’ skills and the inputs that are needed to deliver a quality result or to solve a problem quickly;

■ how long a person perseveres when things are not going well; and

■ the extent to which people are prepared to “go the extra mile”. When employees care, i.e. when they are engaged, they put in the extra effort needed to resolve a customer’s problem, make sure the new process is working, or sort out a quality problem on the line.

This is referred to as “discretionary effort”; it is the level of effort people could give if they wanted to, above and beyond the minimum required. I can recall many examples of discretionary effort by employees, such as maintenance teams who worked through the night to get a vital piece of equipment working or a logistics employee who drove at night to the supplier’s warehouse to fetch critically needed parts to keep the production line going. In one case, a supplier had a fire at their premises so employees from the customer company volunteered to work at the supplier over the weekend to help them get their production going again.

Engagement levels influence a person’s willingness to go the extra mile at work. Engaged employees put in discretionary effort because they love their job and want to see their company succeed! Disengaged employees drag our business down. You will recognise the disengaged employee as they:

■ tend to do the minimum;

■ display low energy levels;

■ are often negative or cynical, especially about any proposed changes;

■ see the customer or client as simply too demanding;

■ are not interested in learning and innovation as it looks like too much of an effort;

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Chapter 1: High levels of employee engagement benefit everyone

■ want to reduce their role and responsibilities rather than expand them; and

■ have a negative impact on the team climate: younger employees tend to wonder if this is how you should be at work? Is this disengaged person maybe showing them the realities of work and how to survive?

It is very sad, of course, if your disengaged team member was once full of positive energy and has been closed down by bad experiences at work.

The bottom line is, your employees can come to work every day, but if they aren’t truly engaged in their work, they are harming your business in some way as mediocrity and minimal effort become the norm. Many organisations struggle with employees who are at work, but not fully contributing.

Is employee engagement the same as employee satisfaction?

Engagement is a feeling; it’s an emotional commitment to your work and comes about as a reaction to the intangible factors at work. Satisfaction, on the other hand, is based more on an employee’s rational assessment of the tangible workplace issues. If we map ENGAGEMENT and SATISFACTION as two separate topics, we can come up with the following scenarios:

SA TI

SF A

CT IO

H IG

H High satisfaction/low engagement

High satisfaction/high engagement

LO W Low satisfaction/low

engagement High engagement/low satisfaction

LOW HIGH ENGAGEMENT

Figure 2: Satisfaction and engagement scenarios

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Employee Engagement

High satisfaction/low engagement: Have you ever felt like the person who says this?

My job ticks all the boxes:

■ I earn a good salary.

■ I work for a company with a great reputation and product.

■ I have an impressive job title.

■ I have a beautiful office.

■ I have a great laptop and cell phone.

■ I enjoy high status at work and in my community.



However, I really cannot say that I love my job. In fact, I feel a little depressed at the start of the work week and I have to talk sternly to myself. I am paying off a house and car and my kids’ education is expensive. Plus, I have to save for retirement one day, so I need this job with its perks and benefits, and I enjoy the status it gives me in my family and community.

This scenario is sometimes referred to as “golden handcuffs”. Looking at this person’s work situation from the outside, one may feel a little envious and think this person has it made, yet high satisfaction alone does not lead to high engagement or mean you love your work. Many people start off their career aiming to achieve these factors, only to find that there are other intangible factors pulling at them. They may achieve their goals in terms of money and status, for example, but still feel something is missing. The relationship between the tangibles and the intangibles is actually more complicated than we realise.

Low satisfaction/low engagement: Being dissatisfied and disengaged is the worst scenario for the company and the employee! This person will hate coming to work and will radiate negativity. This is a no-win situation: the customer and colleagues will all have a bad experience dealing with this person.

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Chapter 1: High levels of employee engagement benefit everyone

High engagement/low satisfaction: This is the “flight risk” scenario. In this scenario a person would say: “I love:

■ the work that I do;

■ the challenges I face and the problems I solve;

■ the difference I make;

■ the colleagues and the leaders I work with;

■ the positive environment I experience at work; and

■ the sense of achievement.”

This person loves the work but feels the company is taking advantage of them. They feel they are giving a lot and are not appreciated or sufficiently valued in return in terms of salary, seniority or other tangible benefits. This person will soon be looking around for a new position and when they resign, there is often a quick scramble to make a counter-offer in the hopes of retaining their skills and positive energy.

High satisfaction/high engagement: This is the best scenario for the company and the employee. The person loves the work they do and feels fairly compensated and acknowledged by the business.

Many people confuse engagement with satisfaction and try to remedy engagement problems with solutions like pay increases, better offices, gym memberships, fixing the employee car park, improving the canteen, introducing concierge services and so on. These solutions do have an impact on satisfaction, but more satisfaction does not lead to more engagement. It is the equivalent of trying to buy love, so for high engagement, we need different solutions.

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Employee Engagement

I hear the term “Employee Experience” used often. Is that the same as employee engagement?

Employee experience includes all the workplace, employee policies and management practices that impact people on the job. If we look at the four scenarios above, whatever box you find yourself in, that is your “employee experience”. Companies need to examine all employment and management practices so that both the satisfaction and the engagement factors are top class. People are looking to work for organisations where they experience a fulfilling, rewarding and enjoyable work experience, i.e. high engagement and high satisfaction. Companies therefore need to reflect on how their employees experience the workplace and ensure it leads to high engagement.

Is engagement just another term for workaholism?

Positive psychology researchers view engagement and workaholism as two different ways of experiencing work.6 Whether you are engaged or a workaholic, you work hard but the experience differs. People who are highly engaged are in a positive state of “flow”, enjoyment and enthusiasm, whereas workaholics tend to experience more negative energy in the form of feeling tense, driven, irritable and under pressure. Engagement is a good type of working hard, whereas workaholism can lead to burnout.

Can the impact of employee engagement on company performance be quantified?

One organisation that has measured the impact of engagement on company results is Gallup. Gallup researchers studied the differences in performance between engaged and actively disengaged work units, and found that those scoring in the top half on employee engagement nearly doubled their odds of success compared with those in the bottom half.7

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Chapter 1: High levels of employee engagement benefit everyone

Gallup’s data reveals that business units in the top quartile of their global employee engagement database are 17% more productive and 21% more profitable than those in the bottom quartile.8

A research study into the impact of employee engagement on company performance based on 28 years of data was reported in the Harvard Business Review. The finding was that companies with high employee satisfaction and engagement outperform their peers by 2.3% to 3.8% per year in long-run stock returns. This adds up to an 89% to 184% cumulative increase. The data analysed were from the list of the 100 Best Companies to Work for in America, a well-respected survey where 250 workers are selected at random and questions covering credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie are asked of them. The research finding was that the benefits of employee satisfaction and engagement do outweigh the costs.9

How important is it to employees that they feel highly engaged at work?

So far, we have only looked at the benefits of high engagement to the leader and the company. Engagement at work is, however, also an important issue for the individual employee, as research shows it plays a significant role in a person’s overall well-being and happiness.10, 11

People in a corporate environment generally work long hours, so to be happy at work is crucial for overall well-being. Many research studies have confirmed that loving your job is a key component of a person’s individual happiness, life satisfaction, feelings of success and fulfilment, overall sense of well-being and even health.

“Returning from work feeling inspired, safe, fulfilled and grateful is a natural human right to which we are all entitled and not a modern luxury that only a few lucky ones are able to find.”

― Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t12

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Employee Engagement

How does loving your work contribute to your well- being?

Our well-being and happiness are important as they set off an upward spiral of success in many aspects of life, in turn leading to more well-being and happiness.

Shawn Achor, in his TED Talk, The Happiness

Advantage, shows us that happiness leads to success

and not the other way around:

https://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_

happy_secret_to_better_work

What do we mean by an upward spiral and how does well-being and happiness set this off?

When you feel good your brain generates happy chemicals like dopamine and serotonin, which

■ increase your energy levels;

■ improve your immune system;

■ make you more resilient and optimistic;

■ help you think more clearly;

■ help you to be more creative;

■ give you a greater capacity for learning and a willingness to take on new challenges; and

■ may also improve your relationships.

Successfully dealing with challenges leads to more feelings of success and self-confidence, which energises you to take on new challenges, develop new skills, and experience more successes, confidence, optimism and greater well-being. This is the upward spiral. Feelings of success in all of these areas of life fuel greater levels of happiness and well-being.13

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Chapter 1: High levels of employee engagement benefit everyone

Well-being & happiness

Success

More well-being & happiness

More success

Figure 3: The Upward Spiral

Your well-being and happiness increase your chances of good outcomes and these good outcomes increase well-being and happiness.

Work and well-being

As an employee, if you love your work, you have something to look forward to every working day, yet we often think that work robs us of our enjoyment of life. Take a look at all the “Monday” jokes on the Internet. We usually think about work from the standpoint of all the things we have to do; the pressure, the uncertainty as companies merge or re-structure, budget cuts, difficult bosses, colleagues and customers. Many people do not believe that work and happiness go together. Their view is that work is something you do in order to be able to pursue happiness elsewhere. And if you want to be successful at work, happiness must be sacrificed.

But work can contribute to well-being and happiness at many levels. Let’s look at work from the view of what it can do for the employee. Our first thoughts about work are usually, “I need to earn a living”. Yes, we need to work to pay the bills, and as we become more successful at work, the more we earn, which has a direct influence on our standard of living. More money certainly opens up more opportunities and options in terms of where and how we live, the car we drive, the material goods we can buy, the holidays we can enjoy and so on. Money also buys us security in the form of savings, medical insurance, retirement policies etc.

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Employee Engagement

However, there is more to work than just what we earn and what we do with it. There are more ways in which we can view work, so let’s look at working at its best and all the additional ways in which work can contribute to our well-being.

Work also provides employees with a sense of community and belonging; we are part of a team – we have managers, supervisors, colleagues and customers with whom we interact on an ongoing basis. For many people, we see more of our work colleagues than we do of our families. When relationships at work are good, we form deep bonds with people and look forward to seeing them at work. We develop a shared history with these people; we often recall the pressures we faced together, the problems we resolved, the hilarious situations we encountered and the people we had to deal with, and there is often fun and laughter as we reminisce. We also look to these people for support when we are under pressure and our colleagues often provide a listening ear when we have personal problems or we are going through difficult times.

Work can also help us feel good about ourselves, firstly, through a sense of achievement. When we achieve tough targets or get that promotion, we feel successful. When people depend on us for a product or service, we feel a certain sense of importance and pride. Also, when we are recognised and acknowledged for work done well, we feel good about ourselves. Work can also provide us with status in our communities and families, depending on where we work, what we do and how successful we are perceived to be. All of these feed our self-esteem and self-confidence, which are essential for our well-being.

We develop as people by working; we develop the functional skills we need to do our daily work, and we gain experience and develop expertise as we are exposed to new and more complex challenges. We also develop skills such as people skills, problem solving skills, the ability to be creative and innovative, an understanding of our organisation’s context and challenges, an understanding of our customers’ needs, the ability to deal with stress and pressure, and many more. Many of the skills we develop are solely as a result of being at work: we grow in response to new challenges, opportunities

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Chapter 1: High levels of employee engagement benefit everyone

and situations. Every new challenge stretches us a little further and we grow new skills and develop our personal qualities. Personal growth and realising our potential are strong needs in most people, and work certainly offers many opportunities for that.

Finally, work offers us the opportunity to use our talents and skills to make a positive difference in our world.

We are in our full power at work when our work aligns to our strengths and offers us an opportunity to make a difference to something that is important to us; something we are passionate about.

All of this is what work can potentially offer us; this is work at its best. Work offers us the opportunity to unlock our potential and achieve personal greatness, if we so choose.

How well are companies doing when it comes to employee engagement?

Now that we see the benefits of employee engagement to employees, leaders, companies, customers and shareholders, we may conclude that companies are working hard on the employee engagement issue, yet this does not seem to be the case. Most research suggests that organisations are not doing very well when it comes to employee engagement.14 As we all know, not everyone finds themselves in a situation where they love their work and look forward to being at work. There are people who are underpaid, in uncomfortable or hostile environments, doing mundane work and feeling unfulfilled. Work can be a source of stress and for many people, work can break down their confidence and self-esteem rather than build it. Some people simply feel plateaued in their career and lacking in energy for the challenges ahead.

According to Gallup, a staggering 85% of employees worldwide are not engaged. This is a barrier to creating high-performing cultures and amounts to wasted potential. Many companies are experiencing a crisis of engagement and aren’t aware of it.15

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Employee Engagement

Glassdoor, a company that allows employees to rate their employers, reports that only 54% of employees recommend their company as a place to work.

In a recent survey among 80 of the most advanced users of engagement surveys, only half stated that their executives know how to build a culture of engagement. Among the broader population, the percentage is far lower.16

In the HR.com survey of HR professionals, only two-fifths said their senior leaders prioritise employee engagement, and just 28% said their managers are highly skilled at fostering engaged individuals and teams. In terms of discretionary effort or going the extra mile, only 9% strongly agreed that their employees do so. This indicates that most employers still face major employee engagement challenges.17 The question for you as the leader or the HR leader in your company is: How do you prevent disengagement and how do you build teams of highly engaged people? Research carried out by Deloitte suggests that it is time for companies to focus on building “irresistible organizations”.18

Researchers in the field of positive psychology have concluded that for people to be fully engaged with their work, intrinsic factors need to be addressed more strongly.19 The most commonly mentioned are:

■ company culture; ■ inspiring leadership; ■ work aligned to my strengths; ■ work with meaning and purpose; ■ a sense of achievement and contribution; ■ autonomy; ■ clarity regarding role and goals and an empowering

performance review system; ■ opportunities for learning and growth; ■ recognition; ■ a sense of belonging and a positive work climate;

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Chapter 1: High levels of employee engagement benefit everyone

■ pride in the organisation; and ■ a flexible work environment.

Focusing on these factors should give us good results in terms of employee engagement, however people are fascinating and unique and driven by their own ever-changing needs, so expect surprises, new insights and increased leadership wisdom as you work with these principles. Judgement is required in terms of how to implement inspiring leadership and employment practices. People differ so we need insight into them as individuals in order to find out what it is that lights them up at work and what fulfilment, success and happiness at work means to each person.

The chapters that follow will help you to think through your work situation and offer ways to enhance or make changes at work that will take you in the direction of:

■ greater success, fulfilment, well-being and happiness if you are an individual employee;

■ inspiring leadership practices that bring out the best in your employees if you are a leader; and

■ employment policies and practices that contribute to high engagement if you are an HR leader.

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Employee Engagement

Sum mar

In this chapter, I have outlined the case for making employee engagement a high priority in any organisation. For an organisation to be successful, an essential is to make people feel engaged with their work.

I have also unpacked the meaning of the terms “engagement”, “satisfaction” and “employee experience”, and we can see that “engagement” is largely influenced by intangible factors. It is also important to consider the impact of work on employees; work can contribute to a person’s well-being in many ways. What I will address in the following chapters is the “how to” of employee engagement, which is aimed at leaders, HR leaders and individual employees. Briefly this is what I will cover in each chapter:

Chapter 2 The work climate for high engagement Chapter 3 Strengths-based leadership Chapter 4 How work can provide a sense of meaning,

purpose and contribution Chapter 5 Learning and development at work Chapter 6 Leadership for high engagement Chapter 7 Measuring employee engagement Chapter 8 Organisational issues

We will be following Rochelle’s progress with her team and in Chapter 8, Laurisha will reply to Daniel’s outburst.

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Chapter 1: High levels of employee engagement benefit everyone

Please spend time on the reflective questions at the end of each chapter as clarity will emerge from these. It might be good to work through this book with a trusted friend or a coach and share your thoughts.

Reflective questions: Employees

Schaufeli, Bakker and Salanova developed a questionnaire to measure work engagement, the

Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES).20 The questions that follow are based on their three aspects of engagement:

How engaged do you feel in your current job? (Rate yourself out of 10 on each of the following criteria.)

■ Energy: do you have high levels of energy and resilience at work, are you willing to put in a great deal of effort, and do you persevere in the face of difficulties?

■ Dedication: do you find the work that you do to be important and meaningful, do you feel proud of your job, do you feel a sense of responsibility, and do you feel inspired and challenged by your work?

■ Flow: are you totally engrossed in your work and do you have difficulty tearing yourself away from it? (Time passes quickly and you forget everything else around you.)

Energy score ___ Dedication score ____ Flow score ___Total score ___

What are your scores telling you?

If you are working currently, what impact is work having on your sense of well-being? What potential exists for a rich and interesting work life?

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What is your definition of success at work? How successful do you feel currently?

What energises you at work? How often is this happening currently? When do you feel most fulfilled at work?

Reflective questions: Leaders

Looking at the signs of engagement and disengagement on page 9-11. What are you seeing

mostly in your team/department/division/company?

What is your current approach to employee engagement and how well is it working?

Reflective questions: HR leaders

Is employee engagement one of the core business strategies in your company?

What does HR need to do to ensure informed discussion among top management on the topic of employee engagement?

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Chapter 6 The Leaders Role in Employee Engagement

In this chapter, we focus on the leader's role in the engagement of their people, the concept of Conscious Leadership, leadership styles and important personal qualities required of leaders.

“Let us all be the leaders we wish we had.”

― Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t

Rochelle and Nicholas discuss leadership

“Our final session”, said Rochelle. “What more is there to talk about?”

“A final reflection on your leadership role”, said Nicholas.

“But that’s all we’ve spoken about”, said Rochelle, “are you saying there is more for me to do?”

“Yes, it’s time to think holistically about your role as the manager of this department, as well as some of the personal qualities you need to be a success in a leadership role.”

The manager’s impact on engagement

A well-known observation from the Gallup Organisation is that people join companies but leave managers! Managers have a big impact on the everyday experience of employees; they account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores.102

You will have noticed throughout the preceding chapters how crucial the manager’s role is in employee engagement. People want to work for managers who support them, give them work in line with their

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strengths and passion, develop and engage them, and care about them both as employees and people.

Great companies are built by great leaders. Leaders’ decisions and behaviours and the cultures these create play an important role in the engagement of any employee. Some workplace cultures motivate employees and lead to high performance. Others are toxic and drain employees’ motivation, leaving people feeling discouraged and low in energy.

According to Gallup’s research, poor management costs the U.S. between $960 billion and $1.2 trillion per year in productivity lost to disengagement. Globally, the cost approaches $7 trillion, or 9% to 10% of the world’s GDP.103

Senior leaders need to be the champions of employee engagement; if they do that well, it’s more likely that middle and first-line managers will support and sustain the behaviours and practices that lead to high engagement. Senior leadership’s involvement and interest in employee engagement sends signals to all levels of leadership that engagement is a high priority for the organisation, and that leadership must accept accountability for employee engagement so that the company is successful in the long term.

Most companies have defined values and behaviours for their employees, such as excellence of work, quality, innovation, customer experience, collaboration, integrity and so on, and have communicated these expectations. Plus, there are stretch targets for employees in terms of production, market share, profit, as well as some employee metrics such as attendance, labour turnover and training.

Once organisations have clarified the goals of the company and their expectations of their employees, the missing piece is often how they will achieve the active support of their employees to help make this happen. How will they unlock employees’ drive and energy to want

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to go the extra mile? How do leaders establish an organisational culture in which engagement can thrive? How do leaders create an environment that attracts, retains and develops employees? This leads us to a reflection on our leadership brand and what we expect of our leaders. Teams are more autonomous and may be dispersed geographically, so in this complex and fast-changing world, the old “command and control” style of leadership is fast becoming irrelevant. One person simply cannot have all the answers! Employees today expect their managers to coach them to succeed at work, to value them as people, and to have real relationships with them. Management is key to every aspect of the workplace.

What is expected of leaders?

As we can see, in this rapidly changing world, people want their leaders to provide vision, direction, stability and support, and to be people who their employees respect.104 A leader’s role is to inspire and enable others to do their best work and ensure the business is successful in the long run.

However the qualities that made us stand out and be promoted to leadership are not always the ones that will make us great leaders. Being a strong technical specialist with personal drive and energy may not mean we know how to inspire and engage others. As leaders, we need to think through our leadership beliefs and practices and ask ourselves how best we add value to our organisations and the people we lead. Leadership requires a new mindset and skillset.

■ Are you more of a manager or more of a leader?

As business leaders, we need to be good at both management and leadership. We need a vision, as well as the ability to execute our vision and achieve results. To inspire and engage people at work we need to go beyond the traditional management role and be visionary, form bonds with the people we lead, and inspire them by helping them to find meaning, purpose and connection at work.

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In our leadership role, we:

■ lead and care for people; ■ have a vision for something better – we want to make a positive

difference to something important; ■ provide direction; ■ focus on the big picture; ■ are able to influence and inspire people; ■ challenge the status quo; and ■ focus on the horizon – we see the future approaching.

In our management role, we:

■ manage resources, which includes people; ■ plan; ■ organise; ■ measure/monitor; ■ improve current processes; and ■ focus on the bottom-line, with a short-term focus.

The leadership roles and the management roles need to work in harmony, as we can see from this quote:

“Work without vision is drudgery. Vision without work is dreaming. Work plus vision-this is destiny.”

―Gordon B. Hinckley

“Anyone who manages people has a leadership responsibility. Formal authority is never sufficient to gain enthusiasm from those to be managed. An essential part of the manager’s job is to enlist the full cooperation of those she leads, shifting their motivation from external compliance to internal commitment. Thus great leadership is a necessary condition for great management.”

―Fred Kofman, Conscious Business

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The leader’s intention

Vision and connection with people are the starting points to inspire employees.

Employees want to know: Am I working hard to further my leader’s career, am I working hard to develop my skills and further my own career, or am I working hard to make a contribution to something important? Leaders can be more ego-driven and personally ambitious or more contribution-driven, and how employees interpret their leader’s intention has a big influence on their engagement.

Great leaders understand that leadership goes beyond self-interest. This does not mean we do not take care of our own interests, but our intention is less on personal gain and more on the long-term benefits for others.

The most effective leaders are those who are motivated by purpose and service to people. They are more able to inspire people to achieve extraordinary levels of engagement, creativity and performance through vision, and through finding ways for people to achieve a sense of meaning, human connectedness, success and happiness at work. People who can see that their collective efforts contribute something positive to society, the company, the customer and the people working in the team are more engaged and feel greater trust and loyalty to the leader.

“If management views workers not as valuable individuals but as tools to be discarded when no longer needed, then employees will regard the firm as nothing more than a machine for issuing pay checks, with no other value or meaning. Under such conditions it is difficult to do a good job, let alone enjoy one’s work.”

―Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Leaders need to truly embrace the value of people and not merely see them as a commodity or a resource. This is what is meant by the term “Servant Leadership”, a term used to describe visionary leaders who have the intention to make a positive difference.

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■ Servant leadership: Robert Greenleaf

Servant leadership is a philosophy and practice of leadership, which was defined by Robert Greenleaf in the 1970s and has been supported by many leadership and management writers such as Simon Sinek, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Peter Block, Peter Senge, Max DePree and Margaret Wheatley.

Servant leadership emphasises the leader’s role as steward of the company’s resources: human, financial, technological, and so forth. It encourages leaders to serve others while staying focused on achieving results in line with the organisation’s vision, mission and values.

Servant leaders achieve results for their organisations by giving priority attention to a purpose bigger than themselves. Leadership is not about me and personal gain – it is about the people and the organisation I lead. Decisions I make will be based on the long-term benefits for all.

Robert Greenleaf felt that the power-centred authoritarian leadership style was not working. The following statement by Greenleaf summarises his thinking:

“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions… The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.”

―Robert K. Greenleaf.105

The servant leadership concept has evolved into Conscious Business and Conscious Leadership:

■ Conscious Business and Conscious Leadership

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This is a philosophy of doing business in which the business sets itself a higher purpose than simply making a profit. This purpose is the difference the company is trying to make in the world. By focusing on its higher purpose, a business inspires, engages and energises all its stakeholders.

The focus is on the “Triple Bottom Line”, where the aim of the business is to make a profit while providing value to people (employees, customer, suppliers and the community) and the planet.

Conscious businesses are created by visionary leaders who are committed to business as a force for good. Conscious leaders understand and embrace the vision and purpose of the business and focus on creating a culture, i.e. the values, principles and practices that support this.

A conscious business considers what is best for its employees as well as its customers, developing products and services that support their well-being.

As far back as 2013, a Harvard Business Review article showed companies that practice ‘Conscious Capitalism’ perform ten times better than their peers.106

Conscious Companies South Africa (https://www.consciouscompanies. co.za/) defines a Conscious Company as being led by a courageous and visionary leader who is deeply aware of his actions and the impact he has on all of his stakeholders.

“A Conscious Company is a transformational organisation. Its dominant ethos is: • Authenticity – creates a brand and operating culture that is

steeped in integrity

• Purpose – keeps its sights on a higher purpose that transcends the bottom line

• Stakeholder Engagement – is always conscious of the needs of all stakeholders including equity owners, staff, customers and communities

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• Visionary Leadership – the business is run by a conscious leader and fosters future visionary leaders

• Trust, Accountability, Ethics and Governance – maintains the principles of a moral code

• Creativity & Innovation – is progressive in its outlook, driving disruption and new methodologies

• Responsible Citizen – always recognises and exceeds its obligation in the communities it operates in effecting social impact”

Full Spectrum Leadership107

A conscious leader with a vision of creating a sustainable business focusing on profit, people and planet will practice Full Spectrum Leadership, which simply means covering all the activities required for a successful and sustainable business.

Richard Barrett’s Full Spectrum Leadership illustrates how we evolve as leaders. It describes all the aspects of leading and managing we must master if we are to fulfil our vision of a sustainable business contributing to something important.

Barrett’s seven levels of leadership consciousness is a holistic view of the leadership role; to be successful as leaders, we need to master each level:

■ Level 1 focuses on the survival and security of the organisation through strong operational and financial management.

■ Level 2 looks at building relationships of trust and belonging.

■ Level 3 aims to take the organisation’s performance to levels of excellence through ongoing process improvements. This ensures the company remains competitive in its market.

These are the traditional management roles and many companies do not expect more of their leaders than this. Companies that do not progress beyond Level 3 are usually unable to inspire employees.

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Visionary Leadership starts at Level 4:

■ At Level 4, leaders make an internal values shift; their vision broadens and they want to develop and empower themselves and others. They work collaboratively to make a significant contribution to something beyond themselves. They then enter the Servant Leadership/Conscious Leadership space, where they are more able to inspire and engage others.

■ At Level 5, the leader’s focus is on collaboration and winning support for the vision.

■ At Level 6 the focus is on partnerships, personal development, the development of others and the creation of a strong culture of ethics, integrity and contribution.

■ At Level 7 the focus is on contribution and service to people and the planet.

Table 1: The Seven Levels of Leadership Consciousness

Levels of consciousness

Characteristics

7 Service Wisdom/Visionary: Service to society, humanity and the planet. Focus on ethics, social responsibility, sustainability and future generations.

Displays wisdom, compassion and humility.

6 Making a difference

Mentor/Partner: Strategic alliances and partnerships, servant leadership. Focus on employee fulfilment, and mentoring and coaching.

Displays empathy and utilises intuition in decision-making.

5 Internal cohesion

Integrator/Inspirer: Strong cohesive culture and a capacity for collective action. Focus on vision, mission and values. Displays authenticity, integrity, passion and creativity.

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Levels of consciousness

Characteristics

4 Transformation Facilitator/Influencer: Empowerment, adaptability and continuous learning. Focus on personal growth, teamwork and innovation. Displays courage, responsibility, initiative, and accountability.

3 Self-esteem Manager/Organiser: High performance systems and processes. Focus on strategy, performance, excellence, quality, productivity and efficiency. Displays pride in performance.

2 Relationship Relationship Manager/Communicator: Employee recognition, open communication and conflict resolution. Creates employee and customer loyalty, and treats people with dignity.

1 Survival Financial Manager/Crisis Director: Financial stability, organisational growth, and employee health and safety. Displays calmness in the face of chaos, and decisiveness in the midst of danger.

Take the free Values Assessment at the Barrett Values Centre to

see what is most important to you:

https://www.valuescentre.com/our-products/products-

individuals/personal-values-assessment-pva

“The true price of leadership is the willingness to place the needs of others above your own. Great leaders truly care about those they are privileged to lead and understand that the true cost of the leadership privilege comes at the expense of self-interest.”

― Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t

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Leadership roles and skills

To be a Full Spectrum Leader and bring out the best in others, leaders need a range of leadership skills to meet the needs of the specific situation.

Daniel Goleman identified six leadership styles and skill sets leaders must be able to draw on, depending on the situation. Each set of skills is appropriate to specific situations and we cannot rely on only one or two skill sets if we are to be a Full Spectrum Leader. The most effective leaders know what is needed in each situation.108

1. The Command Style: A leader may need to use this autocratic approach on occasions. “Do-it-because-I-say-so”. It is also known as the “My way or the highway” style. This may be appropriate in crisis situations or when drastic change is required. It is probably best suited to the survival issues of Level 1 on Barrett’s model. This is when compliance and tight control and monitoring are needed. Orders must be followed unquestioningly.

This style is problematic when over-used as it tends to include threats, frequent criticism and rare praise, which eventually erodes people’s spirits and pride and satisfaction in their work. This is the least effective approach if used in situations other than a crisis; an autocratic and intimidating leader affects everyone’s mood and engagement, team input is minimal, the climate spirals down and performance suffers.

To use the commanding style well, a leader needs:

■ the drive to achieve;

■ the know-how to exert forceful direction in order to get better results;

■ initiative: the leader does not wait for situations to drive him/her, but rather takes forceful steps to get things done;

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■ emotional self-control and empathy to keep anger, impatience or contempt in check (“Be angry with the right person, in the right way, at the right time and for the right reason.” – Aristotle); and

■ to know when the situation needs a strong hand at the top and when to drop it.

Note to self: To what extent am I using this style and what has been the impact?

2. Affiliative Leadership: When this style and skills are used well, people feel valued and their feelings are considered. These skills are particularly needed from Level 2 upwards in Barrett’s model; the leader works at building good relationships and harmony in the team. By connecting with people, by building trust and respect, and by offering emotional support during difficult times, these leaders build tremendous loyalty. People want to feel a sense of connection, belonging and inclusion, so this style is essential at all times and required even more when a leader needs to build morale, create harmony or repair broken trust. A supportive, trusting and non-controlling relationship with a supervisor and good co-worker relations encourages engagement.

A leader cannot rely only on this approach, however; if the leader places relationships, harmony and personal popularity as the priority, results can suffer, poor performance can go uncorrected and mediocrity may become the norm. Conflict is often avoided and people don’t get the feedback they need to grow. The team may feel directionless.

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This style works well in combination with the Visionary and Pace- Setting approaches.

To use this style well, the leader needs the skills of:

■ listening; ■ empathy; ■ conflict resolution; and ■ trust building.

Note to self: To what extent am I using this style and what has been the impact?

3. Pace-setting Leadership: This style and skills allow the leader to set high standards and expect excellence (faster, cheaper, better)! The focus is on results and continuous improvement. The leader leads by example, and will do the work him/herself if necessary. Poor performers are quickly identified and more is asked of them; if they don’t rise to the occasion, the leader will take over and do it. There is an impatience with poor performers. This approach works well with competent, self-motivated and achievement-orientated people, where the challenges are big.

The down-side of pace-setting is that if it is over-used, people feel pushed too hard. Pace-setting leaders are often unclear about their requirements; people must just “know what to do”. Morale drops when people are unsure and under pressure. People often feel the leader does not care about them as people and continuing high stress and pressure can be debilitating; the

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leader gets short-term results, but in the longer term, people become disengaged and uncreative.

Pace-setting skills include an:

■ achievement drive, i.e. a personal need to achieve high standards; and

■ initiative to seize opportunities.

Pace-setting is best used in combination with the Affiliative Style, with skills such as empathy, self-management and team skills. Otherwise these leaders simply apply pressure, become impatient, criticise, never recognise, and eventually destroy morale. Use with care!

Note to self: To what extent am I using this style and what has been the impact?

4. Participative Leadership: Leaders use this style and skills to engage others in the decision-making process; they ask questions and listen, and their approach is collaborative and democratic. Their aim is to build trust, consensus and buy-in. This style works well when the team consists of highly competent individuals, the situation is complex and the leader is uncertain about what direction to take, or when the leader needs ideas from employees, e.g. how to achieve a goal or new ways of handling a situation. These leaders are facilitators and do not rely on position power.

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The skills needed by a participative leader are:

■ listening: these leaders really do want to hear what people think so they make it safe for people to speak up and be honest and open; and

■ team building skills of collaboration, consensus, engagement, conflict resolution, diversity management and influencing skills.

A leader must be careful not to overuse this style; the outcome could be endless meetings and discussions with no decisions, causing delays and confusion and maybe escalating conflict. This approach is not appropriate:

■ with employees who are not able to give meaningful input; and

■ in a crisis when quick decisions are needed.

Note to self: To what extent am I using this style and what has been the impact?

5. The Leader as Coach: The leader makes time for conversations with employees about their personal growth, aspirations and career goals, and how to accomplish these. They discuss the employees’ strengths and development needs, and they give feedback. The focus is on the person and their development and motivation; the leader tries to link daily work to the employee’s strengths and long-term goals. As a coach, the leader delegates and gives challenging assignments to help develop people.

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Coaching works best with employees who are motivated, show initiative and want development. Leaders must have the expertise and sensitivity necessary to coach, give feedback and delegate challenging assignments. Skills needed to coach include:

■ counselling; ■ creating rapport; ■ giving guidance and advice in the best interests of the

employee; and ■ developing talent.

If coaching and feedback is done badly, this can lead to apathy and fear; the delegation can look like micro-managing and a focus on short-term goals may make people feel like they are just being used to get an extra job done.

Note to self: To what extent am I using this style and what has been the impact?

6. Visionary Leadership: The leader gains people’s support by clarifying the big picture, setting standards, elucidating how their work supports the company’s direction and strategy, and explaining how they are making a difference to something important. Asking these questions is key:

■ Where are we going? ■ Why is this important in the bigger scheme of things? ■ Who benefits from our success? ■ What are our challenges?

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This creates shared goals and a sense of pride, and people understand why their jobs matter.

In an era of rapid change, vision becomes even more important as a means of providing clarity, focus and direction. The route may change but if the destination remains clear, people have some sense of stability and clarity. Vision gives us the purpose behind what we do and how we contribute to something important. This energises people as it makes work more meaningful.

Leaders of the most successful organisations have clearly articulated their vision, even though there may be massive short- term uncertainty.

This leadership skill is essential when a clear direction is needed, when a team is “drifting”, or when changes require a new vision.

Leaders are the custodians of the vision, which provides focus and reminds everyone of what is really important. These skills are crucial at Level 7 of Barrett’s model.

Research suggests that this aspect is very important in motivating people; by continually reminding people of the larger purpose of their work, the visionary leader gives meaning to people’s work. People can see they are contributing to something worthwhile, which is an important contributor to employees’ engagement.

The visionary leader must have:

■ confidence in order to create a vision that rings true; and

■ empathy to understand other’s perspectives and how they feel so they can align the vision to the values of the people they lead.

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Note to self: To what extent am I using this style and what has been the impact?

Reflection

For each of the six styles and skill sets listed above, reflect on how much of your time is spent on each (as a rough percentage), then indicate what you

believe your current skill level is and changes you want to make.

Leadership skills

Percentage of time I spend on this

My current skill level (Unskilled/ Skilled/Very Skilled)

Notes to self: actions I will take

Command

Affiliative

Pace-setting

Participative

Coach

Visionary

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Important qualities for leaders

In the Conscious Leader/Full Spectrum Leader approach to leadership, there is a strong focus on the personal qualities of the leader. To be a leader who is trusted, respected, inspiring and able to bring out the best in others, a commitment to ongoing personal development is the starting point.

Leadership greatness rests on our personal greatness; our quality of being determines our quality of doing. We cannot be a better leader than we are as a person – our character is at the core of how we lead. We want to be leaders who are trusted and able to engage and inspire our followers to commit their full energy toward the purpose of the organisation and create value and success. In that case, we need to not only reflect on what we are doing as leaders, but also on how we are showing up as people.

We must be able to manage ourselves before we are able to manage other people as leadership flows from who we are.

The following are important personal qualities we need to be trusted and inspiring leaders:

Passion

Success starts with passion for what you do. Vision also flows from passion. In every article you read about a successful person or business, the words “passion” and “vision” will come up as the starting point.

You may have a passion for your organisation’s product or service. I worked in the motor industry for years and many of the people who worked there loved the product and took immense pride in the design and quality of the cars; they would go to extraordinary lengths to build a good quality product. Similarly, I have met people in many other businesses with a great passion for their brand and products. Many leaders have a passion for people and their growth and development. Others love their field of work and have

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a real passion for activities such as developing business cases on which future strategy is decided, coming up with the most creative marketing campaigns, process improvements on the production line, or ensuring working conditions are safe.

Passion is contagious and energises people to help make it a reality.

Assertiveness

To build a climate of trust and respect, you need to consider your way of relating to the team. When you think about it, in any team you have to balance your needs, concerns and wishes with the needs, concerns and wishes of other people. Let’s look at four possible scenarios, leading to four possible styles of behaviour, using the diagram below.

My Concern for Your Needs, Concerns and Wishes

 Dominant

 Assertive

 Withdrawing

 Accommodating

M y

Co nc

er n

fo r M

y N

ee ds

, C on

ce rn

s an

d W

is he

sHigh

Low High

Figure 16: Four possible styles of behaviour

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Scenario 1: Here my concern for what I want is high, and my concern for what others want is low. This means that in any situation I will want my own way. This is dominant

or aggressive behaviour. When you are in this mode, people around you will perceive you as:

■ forceful; talks a lot; ■ pushing your ideas and not really listening to others; ■ stubborn; ■ unresponsive or insensitive to other people’s ideas or feelings; ■ argumentative; ■ arrogant; and ■ self-centred; wanting your own way.

People in this mode tend to value their independence and autonomy, and like to have power and control over others.

If this is your usual style, harmonious relationships will not be the result, and if there are a few people in the team with this style, open warfare will be the norm!

Scenario 2: Here my concern for what I want is low; possibly I have little courage to express my views, or maybe it’s just not that important to me. I am also not

really concerned about what others want. This is withdrawing behaviour. When you are in this mode, people will perceive you as:

■ passive and uninvolved; ■ backing down easily; ■ tending to avoid issues; ■ taking a back seat; ■ letting things happen; ■ reluctant to express an opinion; ■ uninvolved; ■ unresponsive to the needs or concerns of others; ■ guarded and careful what you say.

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People who are in this mode often like security and predictability.

Again, this approach will not build relationships of trust and openness, as people will not know where you stand on any issue.

Scenario 3: Here, as above, my concern for my needs and wishes is still low, but now I am highly concerned about your needs and wishes. This is accommodating behaviour

– I am happy if you are happy! In this mode, people will experience you as:

■ warm and responsive; ■ open and caring; ■ sensitive to others and their needs; ■ quick to compromise; ■ unassertive; ■ reluctant to take a stand on issues; ■ glossing over difficult issues; and ■ friendly and social.

People who adopt this style have strong needs for acceptance and want to be liked at all costs. They often have problems setting clear personal boundaries.

Again, this will not build great relationships in the long-term. If you are in this mode too much, you will soon feel that you are being taken advantage of and your resentment will build up over time. Also, your team members who have more dominant styles will tend to ride roughshod over you. If there are too many people in the team with this style, there will be little debate or challenge and decisions made will not have been thoroughly evaluated. There will be more emphasis on good relationships and not “rocking the boat”.

Scenario 4: In this scenario, you have a high concern for the views and wishes of others, but you also have a high concern for your own views, wishes and needs. This is

assertive behaviour. In this mode, people will experience you as:

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■ open and clear about your views; ■ responsive to their views; ■ willing to engage in open discussion and debate; ■ open-minded and flexible; ■ showing respect for others’ views, needs and feelings; ■ a good listener; and ■ willing to look for creative solutions everyone can support.

People who are mostly in this mode have strong needs for growth and self-development, and want to make a contribution. They realise that listening to the people around them they will broaden their understanding and that this will lead to better and more creative decisions.

This style will build a great team as you are open about your views and wishes, but also willing to listen and understand the views of others and to make decisions which all can support.

Personal styles: Your area of growth

There are two main skills you need to work on to be in the assertive style:

■ Courage to be open and to express your views clearly and constructively.

■ Respectful listening to fully understand the views of others.

What this basically means is that there must be a concern for your own benefit and well-being, as well for the benefit and well-being of others in the team. To achieve this balance, there needs to be a commitment in the team to keep the channels of communication open and to work through problems.

Time to reflect

What would you say is your dominant style? Where is your area of growth? If your most-used style is in the:

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■ dominant quadrant, then your area of growth is to consider the needs of others as well as your own. This requires a higher level of skill in Listening and Collaborating;

■ withdrawing quadrant, then you need to work on being more open with your views and feelings and to engage more with people to find out what their views and feelings are;

■ accommodating quadrant, the issue for you could be to be more assertive and to be clearer about your own boundaries in terms of what you are or are not willing to accept; or

■ assertive quadrant, acknowledge these qualities within yourself and keep on honing your skills of listening actively and of being constructively clear and candid.

Recognise that this process of looking for solutions that meet the needs of all is how you and the team will make more creative decisions.

Think of people as your teachers

Every day you have to deal with people in different quadrants and each one will present a particular challenge and a particular growth opportunity for you. Very often we wish other people would change, but this is simply a way of distracting ourselves from our own growth needs. Instead, let’s take the view that it is impossible to change another person – only they can do that. Our best strategy is to grow ourselves by developing new strategies and skills to deal with any difficulties our colleagues, customers or managers present us. This approach will reduce the amount of stress and frustration we experience when people do not behave as we think they should.

Self-empowerment

The first step in self-empowerment is to work from our Locus of Control; some things are in our power to control and some are not. For this reason, we need to do a good job of controlling the things we can control and not waste so much energy on the things we cannot. There are things we cannot control, but with some effort we

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can influence them and then there will be fewer things going wrong that we could have prevented. Then we will have more time to deal with the things we cannot control if they do go wrong.

This requires a proactive approach, where we focus on the issues we can control in order to prevent problems. For example, as a leader, if I focus on improving the work processes, developing employees’ skills, clear communication, building people’s engagement, systems to measure performance and identifying problems quickly, I will experience fewer problems and crises.

Every work process has inputs and outputs, so if I focus on the inputs and ensure a stable process and well-trained employees, less will go wrong and people will enjoy their work more.

The things that concern us

The things we can Control

The things we cannot Control o r Infl

ue nc

The things we can Infl ue nce

We must direct effort, energy and time to the things we do

have the power to influence or control

Accept what is But...

Think Possibility

Our Locus of Control

Figure 17: Our Locus of Control

Integrity, authenticity and courage109

Individuals with integrity are able to build trusting relationships with others. A culture of integrity is highly valued as it creates an environment of trust and safety. A leader with integrity and high ethical standards conveys a commitment to fairness and a confidence that both they and their employees will honour the rules of the game.

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Leaders with integrity live from a place of conviction. Even if external circumstances are chaotic or unclear, a leader with integrity is guided by their values. When you know the “why”, the “what” becomes crystal clear. They speak their truth and listen with respect to what is true for others.

As a leader, you have decision-making power. Your team and your management need to trust that you will use it well and:

■ be reliable and responsible; ■ remain true to your word and honour your commitments; ■ stick to the rules of the organisation; ■ exercise caution and take calculated risks; and ■ consistently do the right thing for the organisation.

At times, integrity may require courage to act on your values, but we have to make sure that we walk our talk if we want a reputation of integrity.

To be a person with integrity, authenticity and courage, you need to:

■ be clear on what you stand for. What are your values and beliefs? Thinking and acting with integrity arises when you understand your own values and why you do what you do; and

■ make decisions based on core values. What will be for the greater good or what will lead to the fulfilment of our vision? If you make decisions based on what will make you look good and help your career, people will question your integrity.

An authentic person lives according to their values and speaks their truth. However, this does not mean giving ourselves permission to be dogmatic. An authentic person realises their values and beliefs reflect where they are now, and these may grow as a result of new experiences or influences. They are open to learning from others and from new experiences, and are constantly learning and expanding. Authentic people also consider the impact of their views and

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behaviour on others and have a regard for others’ beliefs and values. They know they have the right to share their views but they do so carefully, realising we are all “work-in-progress”.

To be a person of integrity may also mean having to say “No” on occasions, or “Let me think about it and get back to you”. If the answer is “No”, explain the reasons so people get to know where you stand on issues.

Empathy and compassion

Empathy is an important building block in good relationships. It is the ability to understand another person’s feelings about a situation, to see the situation from their perspective, and to understand how they are experiencing it. Empathy requires that we listen without judging; we should understand the importance of the issue for the person and the impact it has on them.

Leaders with empathy can recognise the needs of clients, customers, colleagues and team members, and by using these insights they are better able to build relationships of trust and respect, a positive organisational climate, and high engagement.

Judgement and perspective

Every day as a leader you make decisions, often about complex issues. Your people want to know they can trust your judgement because you take the time to:

■ think things through; ■ check your assumptions; ■ ask for input from others and take a wider view; ■ weigh up all the input and consider the situation from all angles;

and ■ make a decision.

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Employees respect a leader with good judgement who can offer a sound perspective on issues.

Confidence and optimism110

When we believe in ourselves and our abilities, we are more likely to step forward and take actions in the direction of our vision and values. If we lack self-confidence we will most likely not take positive actions because we don’t feel good enough, clever enough or “whatever” enough. This means we will be unlikely to experience the rewards of success or learn the lessons of failure.

When we are confident in our abilities, we will put in the time and effort required and persevere when there are difficulties. When success is achieved, this feeds our confidence, meaning we take on bigger challenges. This leads to an upward spiral of success and well- being. In this way, confidence and optimism or a positive mindset come before success! We need to build our confidence in order to take the steps needed.

“The difference between people who are thriving and those who are stuck in hopelessness is that they are living in different realities.”

—Sean Achor

Optimism, i.e. a positive mindset, is often misunderstood. Optimistic and positive people do not ignore or not see problems. Rather they believe success is possible and problems can be overcome. Pessimists tend to think success is not possible. What is the lens through which we view the world?

This does not mean that we become an ‘irrational optimist’ who thinks magical things will happen without any effort on our part and we can ignore the risks or problems. We need a view on the world that is real and positive. This is what Sean Achor refers to as “Positive Genius”; someone who can see the possibilities as well as the obstacles and risks, but believes that with collective intelligence and effort, we can achieve a good outcome.

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To develop confidence and a positive outlook on life we need to tune into our self-talk or the “voice in our head” and check how it is influencing our thoughts about ourselves and our situation. If we mostly hear downward spiral messages such as: it will fail, no-one will listen to you, you are not clever enough and so on, then it is time to find a good coach who can help you reflect and re-wire, as those thoughts are usually not true and will not help you move forward. The role of positive emotions and engagement was confirmed by the “Broaden-and-Build” theory of Fredrickson.111 Positive emotions have been found to broaden people’s cognitive abilities such as attention and creativity, and build personal resources such as resilience and engagement. The broaden-and-build theory suggests an upward spiral in which positive emotions and broadened thinking lead to increases in emotional and physical well-being, i.e. a state of flourishing. According to Fredrickson, “When positive emotions are in short supply, people get stuck. But when positive emotions are in ample supply, people take off. They become generative, creative, resilient, ripe with possibility and beautifully complex”. Positive emotions, confidence and engagement seem to feed each other and lead to great outcomes in terms of success at work and a sense of well-being.

Gratitude, which can be defined as “noticing and appreciating the positive in one’s work life”, has been found to have an impact on positive emotions. In one study, people were asked to record things they were grateful for in their job at least three times a week for two weeks. They found that this gratitude intervention was associated with a significant increase in positive emotion and engagement.112

In another study of the differences between high and low performing teams, it was found that the highest-performing teams had a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative communication, while low performing teams had a 3:1 ratio of negative to positive statements.113

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Humility

Humility is an important quality for building trust, however it is not well-understood. People tend to confuse humility with a lack of confidence, low status, unassertiveness or poor self-esteem.

The opposite of humility is arrogance or ego-driven behaviour, both of which break down trust.

If a team has the belief that their leader is self-absorbed, opinionated, indifferent to other viewpoints, mainly focused on self- promotion and making decisions that are best for their personal agenda, they will find it difficult to believe that this person will do what is best for them.

No question, we must have confidence in our strengths, our decision-making abilities and in our contribution to the success of our organisations, however humility balances that as it includes an acceptance that:

■ we don’t have all the answers and we know what we don’t know; ■ we can learn from others; ■ others have contributed to our success; and ■ we too have made mistakes and judgement errors.

People with humility make fewer mistakes because they are open to the views of others and are not arrogant enough to believe they are infallible. We tend to learn humility the hard way, i.e. once we have disregarded important input and done it our way and maybe failed, or once we have alienated colleagues or team members by taking all the credit.

Humility is an important quality of the Conscious Leader. One way to show humility and open up the route to a culture where people feel free to contribute their views is by repeatedly telling the team, “I need your input in case I miss something”. If we are open, ask for upward feedback and disclose our own mistakes, failures and the

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insights we have learned from them, it will make it easier for others to do the same, which earns the leader trust and respect.

Adaptability, innovation and creativity

Adaptability means we are open to new ideas, willing to change our views or change our course of action when required, and accept that the approaches of the past may not be the route to future success.

Adaptable or agile leaders are tuned into their environment in order to pick up signals so that they are able to innovate and respond to new opportunities or challenges. We need to make an effort to understand viewpoints that differ from our own and engage with people who are not like us. Further, we must immerse ourselves in new experiences and environments in order to open our minds and see new possibilities.

“I don’t think you can solve problems unless you’re curious about them, and so much of what we do is solving problems or looking at innovations in our supply chain or working with complicated issues around partnerships or innovations, to me that’s a natural quality that you’ve got to have–about business, your colleagues, challenges– it helps you be a better leader. We need a world full of people asking deep questions or else we’re not going to have a world to live in.”– Rose Marcario (Patagonia CEO)

Resilience

The pace of change and complexity in the business world has increased dramatically, leading many people to feel overworked and overwhelmed.

When we are resilient, we are able to face challenges calmly and with a clear mind; we develop confidence in our ability to handle any situation life throws at us. Resilience is about responding with inner strength to the demands made on us on a daily basis.

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Great leaders are able to bounce back from adversity, so we need to develop qualities and behaviours that will protect us from the potential harmful effects of workplace stress and turmoil, and help us to thrive during difficult circumstances.

Resilient people face their hardships. They make a deliberate choice to do something about their difficult situation, while at the same time checking that their emotions do not become negative. They do not allow themselves to become overwhelmed by their own emotions; they manage to stay positive and optimistic, expecting that things will work out well in the end. They believe that they will be successful and overcome their difficulties.

Resilient people are also very determined; they refuse to accept failure and persevere with their efforts even when they experience some setbacks. They face and deal with the obstacles that come their way and make use of the support of their friends, colleagues and family.

You may wish to explore the HeartMath techniques to deal better with stress and be more resilient.114

Mindfulness, self-awareness and self-regulation

Being mindful means being aware of our perceptions, our emotions, the reasons for our actions, and our values and goals. We understand that we take actions based on our understanding of a situation and we ask ourselves how we came to the conclusions and decisions we did, and if we have sound reasoning for these. We need to be aware of what we are thinking, because our thoughts create our emotional state and drive our behaviour. In this way we confront reality and expand our understanding of our outer and inner worlds. We remember what is important to us and make conscious choices in line with our values and vision. We also develop an awareness of others and try to understand their deeper motivations.

When we first take on a leadership role, we tend to be very aware of how we interact with others and the impressions we are making.

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Over time, as our confidence increases, we may be less aware of the impact we are having on others. The most effective leaders have a high degree of self-awareness about the emotional states that they are experiencing and expressing, and as a consequence, creating in others around them.

As we can see from the diagram below, between an incident and our response, we have choice. For example, if a team member does not meet an important deadline, I have the choice to:

■ react, maybe expressing anger, frustration and blame; or

■ breathe, calm down, examine my assumptions and choose a response in line with my values, e.g. find out what happened, how the problem can be resolved and then decide how the employee should be handled.

My choice has consequences for my reputation, for the employee and for the team. A disempowered person who reacts will blame other people or the situation for their behaviour (he made me angry), whereas an empowered person will always take responsibility for their behaviour (I reacted without thinking).

We always have a choice. We cannot always choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we deal with what happens to us.

Incident Thoughts/

beliefs/ assumptions

My behaviour Consequences(Reality)

React or Respond

Choice

Figure 18: Exercising choice in how we respond to situations

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Leaders who are able to regulate their emotions effectively create a stable environment, whereas leaders who are stressed, frustrated or angry can create toxic work environments. People quickly pick up on signals such as tense body language, scowling and eye rolling, however a calm, stable leader will help others to experience similar states. This empowers people to think more clearly, innovate and perform at their best.

Of course we are only human – even the best leaders will have their bad days when they react badly, but with self-reflection and some humility, we will take steps to correct the situation. As leaders we need strategies that keep us calm and stable so that the people around us are not also stressed and anxious.

According to Richard Branson, “In business, know how to be a good leader and always try to bring out the best in people. It’s very simple: listen to them, trust in them, believe in them, respect them, and let them have a go!”115

Personal reflection on the individual qualities of great leaders

Reflect on the qualities listed above and identify where you are already strong.

Identify one or two qualities you wish to strengthen. List specific actions you will take to strengthen these.

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I witnessed the impact of great leadership recently when I was coaching young, top performing employees participating in a talent development programme.

Young people have a bad reputation for “job hopping”, but two of the group I was coaching had been in the same jobs for over five years and were both regarded as top performers. This normally meant that they would be mobile.

I asked them about their careers and both said they had considered changing jobs to add to their CV, but both said they did not want to leave their manager.

What they described was a Servant Leader/Conscious Leader approach which was bringing out the best in them. They both spoke about how their managers took a personal interest in them and encouraged them to take on greater responsibilities. They said they were not afraid to take on challenging new roles at work because they knew their managers who “had their backs”. Further, their managers tried to match work to their strengths and interests, and were available to them to discuss problem situations and to coach them on how to approach these.

There was plenty of encouragement, praise and public recognition. Both said they were prepared to put in long hours to get the job done and they knew their managers were flexible and trusting if they needed time off.

They also spoke about their managers’ calm temperaments and consultative approaches. Team meetings were fun and energetic, and all team members were willing to support each other if there was unusual pressure. One person mentioned that at the end of every day her manager would say, “Good-bye and thank you for everything today”, so she always left on a high and looked forward to the next day.

They both felt that if they had made mistakes, it was very easy to go to their managers, tell them about it and have a conversation about how to sort things out quickly. You would only be in trouble if you did not highlight a mistake.

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Sum mar

Leaders play an enormous role in the engagement of their people. Our role is to set a clear direction, unleash the energy and intelligence of our team, and be committed to their growth.

Yet leadership is messy and complex with no guarantee of success. We will all experience great days as well as terrible days when we doubt ourselves. We have to deal with tough conversations; make hard decisions without always being able to share the context with our team so we hope they trust us; take responsibility when things go wrong; and give others the credit when it goes right.

Knowing we don’t always have the answers, having to maintain high positive energy in the team when we don’t have it ourselves on some days, having to patiently coach someone when we think its quicker to do it ourselves, listening to people’s aspirations and knowing we cannot meet them in the short or medium term, and dealing with internal politics are all part of the job description.

The only way to succeed in the long term is to be clear about your leadership values and the reputation you want as a leader, to accept you will not always live up to it and not be so hard on yourself, to self-reflect, to renew yourself and to resolve to do better tomorrow.

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Learning and evolving is essential. Surround yourself with people who will support you, be honest with you and who want you to succeed. Stay focused on where you’re going and celebrate your successes as you go.

The rewards of leadership are great; meaningful connections, great results, seeing people grow and develop, and witnessing your own growth and confidence. Then you know you are contributing something unique and amazing to the world and it will all be worth it.

Personal reflection: Your leadership story

Take time to reflect on the information in this chapter, your own leadership journey up until now, and your leadership beliefs that will take you forward.

How has the leadership theme shown up in your life so far?

If you were to give your leadership story a name, like the title of a book or a movie, what would you call your story?

What beliefs or ideas underpin your leadership story? What has been your success formula so far?

Where did these ideas on leadership come from, i.e. what has been the greatest influence on you as a leader?

■ Who has had a positive impact on your beliefs about leading and motivating people?

■ What did you learn from these people?

■ What was the one event that helped you to become the leader you are today?

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How have these beliefs influenced the way you see yourself, your work and the people who are important to you?

Where will these beliefs take you? Is that where you want to be heading? Will there be changes to these beliefs?

What do you now believe is important for a leader?

Picture your retirement or farewell party. What do you want people to say about you?

What do you expect of your people?

What can people expect from you in a leadership role?

Rochelle and Nicholas conclude their coaching sessions

“It has been a lot to absorb”, said Rochelle. “I’ll certainly write up my intentions as a leader. I can see that leadership for high engagement is lifelong work. I’ll come back to these notes many times and reflect. Thank you for putting me on this path. I will grow as a person and as a leader, and I hope to be able to look back at the positive role I have played in developing talented people as well as my impact on the company’s success.”

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Chapter 7 Measuring employee engagement

In this chapter, we focus on using Employee Engagement surveys, how to use the survey results and examples of Employee Engagement questions.

We saw in Chapter 1 how important employee engagement is to any organisation. It is a key input into business results such as customer experience, productivity and quality, making it an important focus area for management and HR. Management often needs HR to help them connect the dots, however.

If the following business results are not looking good...

■ customer experience ■ productivity ■ quality ■ absenteeism ■ turnover among your talented employees

...then it is time to reflect on the state of employee engagement in the company as it may be a contributing factor.

Before employee engagement can be achieved, management and HR need a number of questions answered:

■ What is the current level of employee engagement? ■ Does it differ across the company? ■ What are the factors influencing employee engagement? ■ Do we know what employees appreciate as well as what

disengages them? ■ What can we do to manage those factors?

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HR will often recommend that an employee survey be carried out as the first step in managing employee engagement. Many organisations use formal, large-scale surveys to measure how employees feel about their jobs and the workplace. Increasingly, companies are supplementing these by using other forms of engagement data as well, to gain ongoing real-time data regarding employees’ views of their experience at work. The most common methods used are more frequent “pulse surveys” and real-time analytics from sources other than formal surveys. This is certainly an emerging area of competence for HR people.

Highly engaged organisations are more likely than less engaged organisations to measure engagement continuously, showing the value of the information from these surveys.

As the HR leaders providing our organisations with engagement surveys, we need to challenge ourselves. Are our engagement surveys really measuring the factors that contribute to engagement and specific drivers of performance? Or do we have a list of questions we think are important and maybe have little relation to real employee engagement issues?

Consider how the workplace has changed over the past 10 years or so… flatter organisational structures; fewer managers with wider spans of control; younger employees, possibly with different value systems and views on work; new technologies; and a workforce made up of full-time employees, contractors and remote workers. The line between work and private time has blurred with smartphones, e-mails and WhatsApp groups. All of this means that we must ask ourselves if we are still measuring what is important to employees in our engagement surveys.

The best-case scenario is that we offer our organisation a survey that asks the questions that need to be asked, and we use the results to develop action plans and strategies that make the company a really awesome place to work.

The worst-case scenario is that we offer the organisation a survey with lots of questions we think are important, but we are not really

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sure if this survey is measuring the factors that bring out the best in people and make them want to stay. Then we use the results to develop action plans and strategies, using up a lot of people’s time and company resources, that have no or little impact on engagement among our employees.

There is a huge market of employee survey providers. Deloitte claims the industry is valued at approximately $1 billion, and is staffed by industrial psychologists who have built statistical models that correlate turnover with various employment variables.116 Gallup was the pioneer in this field with the Gallup Q12, which consists of 12 questions that predict engagement and retention.117 Other vendors have developed their own models, which are mainly focused on the characteristics of leadership, management, career opportunities, and other elements of the work environment.

For an employee survey to add value, many issues need to be thought through. Below is a process flow that lists the main issues, which are relevant to an annual company-wide survey as well as to the more frequent “pulse” surveys.

■ Top management support and understanding of the reasons for doing the survey

■ Agree on survey questions and/or provider ■ When and how the survey will be carried out ■ Communications to leadership, employees and unions ■ Update organisational structures

■ Managing the daily survey logistics ■ Tracking participation rates ■ Daily communications`on progress

■ Distributing the results: company trends, divisional and team scorecards

■ Analysis of company trends: best and worst performing areas; best and worst rated questions

■ Action planning: company level strategies and actions; team results talks and action planning

■ Top management feedback to employees

Preparation for the survey

Survey phase

Results phase

Figure 19: Process flow listing main issues

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The employee engagement survey process

The preparation phase

� Top management support and understanding for the employee engagement survey

There needs to be a good understanding of what employee engagement is among top management. What does it mean and how does it support business results? Once that has been achieved, they will want to know more about employee engagement levels in the company and what is affecting them either positively or negatively. Top management also need to understand that a structured survey process will be followed to make sure the results are useful to all levels of management, and that actions must follow to address major employee concerns. These actions will take place at the company, division and team levels.

� Agree on survey questions and/or provider

An important consideration is what you will measure in the engagement survey and who will manage the survey process. You can use an external provider with well-validated questions and top- class survey infrastructure, or you can decide to formulate your own survey questions and either run the survey in-house or contract with a company to run the survey for you, using your questions.

Many companies prefer to use companies that specialise in employee engagement, as their survey questions have been rigorously tested, they have the IT infrastructure to manage a hassle-free survey, and they can provide professional scorecards to each manager.

According to Mark Murphy, survey questions usually include the following topics:118

� Leader engagement: How employees are connected to and energised by their leaders.

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� Job engagement: How involved and absorbed employees are in their work.

� Team engagement: To what degree employees are motivated and energized by their co-workers.

� Organisational engagement: How passionate employees are about the organisation as a whole.

Employees often have concerns about confidentiality and are usually reassured when told the survey is not being run by company employees and that the survey company refuses to share any individual scores, even if the CEO demands to know!

Some of the organisations that specialise in employee engagement surveys include Gallup, Towers Perrin, Deloitte, Best Place to Work, Gartner, Korn Ferry and Hay Group.

The downside is that the costs often seem very high and there is no choice regarding the questions, although some companies do offer the option to add additional company-specific questions to their standard set of questions.

Developing your own company-specific questions may be more difficult than you might think as the questions need to be very clear and unambiguous, and must measure topics that support employee engagement. Achieving buy-in from management for the questions can also be a difficult process as they often want to add in many untested questions.

The next consideration is an IT system that can capture each employee’s score, ensure employee confidentiality, and generate meaningful and user-friendly results and scorecards. Developing a system might be a long and costly process, in which case it is often a better option to contract with a survey company to administer the survey for you.

Small companies may look at using tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Chrome.

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Examples of employee engagement questions

The Gallup Q12 is based on extensive research and has been administered to more than 25 million employees in 189 countries. These questions, Gallup says, constitute, “the best predictors of employee and workgroup performance”. The first two criteria on the list address employees’ primary needs, while the others address three stages: how workers contribute to the whole and are valued, organisational fit, and development:119

1. Do you know what is expected of you at work? 2. Do you have the materials and equipment to do your work

right? 3. At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best

every day? 4. In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise

for doing good work? 5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about

you as a person? 6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development? 7. At work, do your opinions seem to count? 8. Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your

job is important? 9. Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing

quality work? 10. Do you have a best friend at work? 11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about

your progress? 12. In the last year, have you had opportunities to learn and grow?

The top nine survey questions from Gartner:120

1. Do you understand the strategic goals of the broader organisation?

2. Do you know what you should do to help the company meet its goals and objectives?

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3. Can you see a clear link between your work and the company’s goals and objectives?

4. Are you proud to be a member of your team? 5. Does your team inspire you to do your best work? 6. Does your team help you to complete your work? 7. Do you have the appropriate amount of information to make

correct decisions about your work? 8. Do you have a good understanding of the informal structures

and processes at your organisation? 9. When something unexpected comes up in your work, do you

usually know who to ask for help?

As a coach, I use the following statements with clients to establish their “mood” at work and to get a clear picture of what is affecting their engagement.

My job

1. My job gives me a sense of purpose and contribution, and the opportunity to make a difference.

2. I have a sense of achievement and success at work. 3. My job is well-aligned to my strengths and skills. 4. In my job I use my natural talents. 5. My job is well-aligned to my personal values; I am doing

something I believe is important. 6. I love the kind of work I do. 7. I am growing and developing professionally and personally in

my job. 8. My work goals and KPIs are clearly defined; I know what is

expected of me at work. 9. I receive clear and constructive feedback on how well I am doing

at work. 10. My input and ideas regarding my goals and KPIs are taken into

account. 11. I am satisfied with my work-life balance. 12. I feel that my contribution is recognised and appreciation is

shown. 13. I have the authority to make decisions in my job. 14. I am appropriately involved in decisions in my work.

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My team

1. I feel proud to be part of this team for their results, impact and contribution.

2. In this team, there is a climate of trust and respect for each other.

3. I have a sense of belonging in this team. 4. Commitment levels are high in this team. 5. In this team there is a culture of innovation and continuous

improvement; we are never satisfied with mediocrity. 6. In this team, people are highly skilled and experienced and have

what it takes to do the job well. 7. At work I am able to freely raise issues that are important to me,

e.g. ideas, problems. 8. At work my ideas and concerns are carefully considered. 9. In this team, we are clear on the team’s goals and roles. 10. Our work processes are clear. 11. Communication in this team is good; everyone ensures

that team members are well-informed and that we get the information we need when we need it.

12. We have relationships of collaboration, trust and respect with other teams in the organisation.

Leadership

1. I trust my manager/team leader. 2. I feel respected by my manager/team leader. 3. I feel supported by my manager/team leader. 4. My immediate leader is a role model in terms of company values.

Resources/Work environment

1. I have the resources to do what is expected of me. 2. My physical work environment is comfortable and functional. 3. The systems and processes in place are effective and support the

achievement of our goals. 4. My work-load is manageable.

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The company

1. I am proud to work for… 2. Employee policies and practices are fair to all. 3. I have been treated fairly at this company. 4. I feel secure in my job. 5. I support the vision of the company. 6. I totally support the company values of… 7. Leadership at this company live authentically by the values of the

company. 8. The culture and climate in the company brings out the best in

people. 9. I feel good about coming to work. 10. I would recommend [company] as a great place to work. (This is

the Employee Net Promoter Score and is a way for organisations to measure employee loyalty.)

If you are developing your own survey, one option is to test your questions on a small sample of employees before rolling them out across the organisation.

� When and how the survey will be carried out

The timing of the survey is an important topic. You want to choose a time when there is nothing happening that may skew the results, for example a restructuring or merger announcement, a bonus pay out, wage negotiations etc. When management receives the results of the survey and they are either very bad or very good, you do not want them dismissing the results by saying, “Oh yes, it’s because of…”. Ideally the survey should happen at a time when it’s “business as usual”.

You also need to decide how much time is necessary to give everyone enough time to participate. This is normally anything from two weeks to a month.

� Who is included in the survey?

The other decision is who will participate; is this a company-wide survey or are we targeting specific groups within the company? For

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example, we may find that we have a high turnover of engineers, so we may want to focus on that specific group.

If it is a company-wide survey, another consideration is if you will exclude anyone. For example, you may have people on overseas assignments who are still part of your organisation. There may be women on maternity leave. There may be employees on suspension for an extended period, or employees who have been off sick for a few months. Will you include new employees with less than three months service? What about contract employees who work side-by-side with the company’s employees? Are part-time employees included? If you do exclude any group of people, make sure there is a good rationale for the decision and that the decision is applied consistently.

� Accurate organisational structures are essential

Most engagement surveys provide individual managers with a team scorecard. To do this, the company organogram must be up-to- date so that each manager receives feedback from his or her team and not, for example, from people who moved departments some time back. The organogram must then be uploaded onto the survey system. Employees are normally issued with a password which ensures that their answers go into the correct scorecard. To protect confidentiality, teams with less than five people usually do not get a scorecard. The same applies if less than five people in a team take part in the survey.

� How to capture each person’s responses

Your next challenge in doing the survey is how you will gather each employee’s responses. Online is usually the best, but many companies have constraints if there are groups of employees who are not able to work on a computer or if it is difficult for employees to access a computer.

One big manufacturer with a large group of shop floor employees was not able to allow people to leave the moving production line to complete the engagement survey, so they issued each employee

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with a password letter and a paper copy of the survey. They stopped the production line for 30 minutes and asked these employees to complete the survey on the paper copy, only entering their password for identification. Students then collected the forms and entered their responses onto the survey system. Because only a password was used, no-one could identify whose form was whose, thereby protecting confidentiality.

� Is it a good idea to make employee engagement scores part of management’s KPIs?

My view is that it is not a good idea; the message to employees should be that it is not compulsory to do the survey, but we would like them to. Once participation becomes part of management’s objectives, some managers pressurise people to do the survey. The same with the final engagement score: some employees say they feel they are not able to be honest in their ratings for fear of upsetting their management who obviously want a good outcome.

� Communications to leadership, employees and unions

Once you have the go-ahead from top management for the survey and you have worked out how you will go about doing it, it’s then time to communicate your plan to the rest of the organisation. This can be a combination of face-to-face briefings supplemented with information via e-mail, on company notice boards or letters with employees’ pay slips. The communications must include why we are doing the survey, when it will take place, assurances around confidentiality, what we will be doing with the results and of course, the questions employees will be asked to rate as well as the rating scale. You may decide to give the survey a catchy title such as Pulse or Barometer.

True story: One of the senior managers misunderstood the rating scale: he thought 1 was the top rating. He rated his boss, one of the Directors and a good leader, Poor or Very Poor on all the questions. The Director was distraught, trying to fathom who in his team of senior managers was so unhappy. It was only during the results discussion that this person realised his mistake!

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The survey phase

� Managing the daily survey logistics

Never underestimate the amount of work required for a successful survey, so be on standby to handle questions and ensure you have a Help Desk to handle queries regarding passwords and access to the system. People lose their passwords, forget their PIN numbers, cannot access the system, are not sure how to rate, and so on.

� Tracking participation rates

Most online systems will give you a daily participation rate for the company, divisions and teams, and it is good to keep people informed of the progress as it does help to get people to do the survey. My suggestion is to use fun communications to motivate people to do the survey.

Results and action phase

� Distributing the results: Company trends, divisional and team scorecards

Once we have selected and validated our survey questions and run the survey, the key question is what to do with the results once we have them. Is it clear what actions you need to take to address low- scoring items and to maintain the high-scoring items?

Firstly, communicate to all employees once the results are available, with detailed information on how to access their scorecard. Most scorecards are easy to interpret, but it may be a good idea to include a short description of the key information on the scorecard.

� Analysis of company trends

It is now time for the analytical work: results need to be interpreted and trends identified. These might include:

■ the best and worst performing areas in the company;

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■ the best and worst rated questions;

■ any significant changes compared to previous surveys;

■ any significant differences between the various divisions in the company;

■ what the company is doing well in terms of employee engagement; and

■ the “hot topics” to be addressed.

This information needs to be shared with top management who need to agree on a way forward. Top management usually have a lot of questions about the employee engagement survey results; why is there such a difference between divisions? What are the top-scoring areas doing better than the rest? What is going on in the poorer- scoring areas?

It might be good for HR to explore a little deeper before sharing the results. Focus group sessions always yield good information, so it would probably be wise to talk to a sample of employees from the best and worst scoring areas and ask some open-ended questions, such as:

■ What may have affected the results of your division’s engagement scores?

■ What has been the biggest positive impact on your engagement at work? What makes you like your job?

■ What are the biggest frustrations at work? What makes you dislike your job?

■ What are your recommendations to top management regarding making this company a great place to work?

When you as HR report on the survey results to top management, you now have some context to the results.

Gallup’s recommendation is that you give special attention to those employees who are high performers, highly engaged and have extensive experience in the organisation, as they understand your

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business, your customers and what can and cannot be changed. In this way you are more likely to create a workplace that attracts more people like your top employees. By asking for the opinions of your top performers and taking action on their recommendations, you will help create a better organisation where talented people want to work and grow.121

Do not ‘name and shame’ the leaders with poor engagement scores: things are not always as they seem…

I came across a scorecard with a very low engagement score of around 40%. The scorecard was awash with red, i.e. Strongly Disagree. Fortunately, the leader in question agreed to me holding a workshop with the team concerned as he was devastated. I started asking for feedback from the team who soon informed me they were very engaged and loved their jobs; they also thought their leader was great. However, the artisan group received a lower salary increase than the shop floor operators which they felt was unfair, and they used the employee survey to highlight their dissatisfaction. They were shocked when I commented that a score like this could have raised serious doubts in the minds of top management about their leader’s ability to lead.

Another very poor scorecard was highlighted in a similar situation; a possible outsourcing for part of the team had been raised a few weeks before the survey and people were upset and insecure and rated most of the questions Strongly Disagree as a way of venting, even though they thought highly of their leader.

So these isolated incidents do happen; we need to first explore the reasons before concluding we have a leadership problem.

� Results talks and action planning: Company-level strategies and actions.

Once top management have the results of the survey, they are responsible for identifying and addressing company-wide engagement initiatives. This is when they often turn to HR for guidance.

HR may be tasked to develop strategies to address the problem areas highlighted in the survey. Examples of company-wide initiatives as a result of the engagement survey might include:

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■ the CEO addressing the workforce every quarter on company strategy, plans and performance;

■ a review of the talent management process to ensure people with good potential for leadership are being identified and developed;

■ the topic of employee engagement principles being included in the company’s leadership development programme;

■ the IT division being tasked to assist leadership to automate outdated manual systems;

■ cross-divisional workshops being held to strengthen collaboration and break down silos;

■ a company-wide recognition scheme being introduced;

■ the policy on part-time studies being reviewed and updated so that employees can more easily enhance their qualifications;

■ team or individual coaching being offered to leaders who request this;

■ a fresh initiative being launched to strengthen the company values and culture; and

■ the onboarding process for new employees being refreshed and updated.

Buy-in and support from top leadership is essential, so careful research needs to be undertaken to ensure the relevance and effectiveness of the proposed initiatives, as well as excellent implementation.

� Results talks and action planning

Now that individual leaders have information on their employees’ perceptions and feelings, they are usually totally confused! HR support is therefore needed to guide them through this process. Managers are responsible for addressing their team’s engagement issues. The team results talk is very important as when leaders send out an employee survey but take no action on the results, it can lead

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to lower engagement than doing no survey at all.

Senior managers need to take ownership of the outcomes of the leaders reporting to them by reviewing their scorecards with them, providing coaching and offering any other support required, such as leadership development, mentoring or any other internal support.

A set of guidelines like the ones below will help leaders through the process.

The first step leaders must take is to ensure their team members see the scorecard.

Secondly, each leader needs to analyse the scorecard and identify the following:

■ How many people participated in the survey? What does that tell me? How do I interpret a high or a low participation rate?

■ What is the overall engagement score? Is it better or worse than previous surveys? How does it compare to the overall company or divisional score? Should I be happy with this score or should I be concerned? Were there any special circumstances during the past year that may have influenced the results?

■ What are the top three and the bottom three scores? What is my understanding of the reasons for this? What may have contributed to these results?

■ If this is a regular annual survey, reflect on the actions we took after the last survey. Can I see the impact of these in this year’s results? What worked well and what did not work so well in terms of engagement?

Thirdly, good leaders listen and understand before they take action, so each leader must set up a special “results talk” session with the team. Now if the scorecard is good, it’s an easy conversation: the team explains the reasons for the good scores and makes a few suggestions to remove some small frustrations. The manager is happy.

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If the scorecard is poor, however, it’s a terrible meeting; no-one wants to talk about anything and no-one remembers scoring any item low. If a team member is not at the meeting, the team may conclude he or she gave the low rating!

This is where HR plays an important support role by providing skilled facilitators for these discussions. One option is to have the manager present with the facilitator leading the discussion, while another option is for the facilitator to meet the team without the manager and to then give them feedback after the session.

It is always good to follow an appreciative enquiry approach at these sessions: focus on what is working as well as how things could be better.

It’s complicated! The results talks are important as scorecards do not tell the full story. Recently I worked with a team where the question on the company value of ‘Integrity’ had equal ratings in the categories of Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree and Strongly Disagree. The leader was very worried, so I asked the team to define Integrity and to then explain the ratings:

Person 1 rated Strongly Agree and said integrity means sticking to agreed processes. He mentioned an incident where he was being pressured by another department to skip some steps in the sign-off of a new system and his manager had supported him by insisting the process be followed.

Person 2 rated Strongly Disagree and said Integrity means fairness. She mentioned an example of an employee who had the opportunity to take part in a special development programme and she felt it had been handled unfairly.

Person 3 also rated Strongly Disagree and said Integrity means transparency. She mentioned rumours that were denied and then later turned out to be true.

This discussion gave the leader a good insight into the issues that affected the ratings, as well as the impact of leadership behaviours on the team.

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Here is a suggested approach a leader can follow in his or her own results talk:

Suggested agenda for a team results talk

Make sure you as the leader ask open questions to explore the issues highlighted in the scorecard and listen well.

■ Welcome everyone.

■ Review the purpose of the meeting:

□ Review our scorecard.

□ Identify what is working well and what we need to address to make work more fulfilling for us all.

□ Agree on two to three action plans.

■ Display the scorecard and highlight key trends and information: participation rate, engagement index, best and worst scoring items, and any significant changes since the last survey.

■ Ask the team to share their overall impressions of the results: what stands out for you? Which question is of most concern to you?

■ Focus on the top scoring items: ask the team what contributed to the good score, i.e. what is working well so we know to maintain that?

■ Focus on the items of top concern: what contributed to the low scores and what do we need to do about it?

■ Agree an action plan with the team. The action plan should consist of:

□ a description of the current situation;

□ a description of the desired situation, i.e. what will success look like?

□ the action steps required to move from the current to the desired situation; and

□ who is responsible for each action step. Try to share the workload among the team as it is important that team members also feel responsible for contributing to high engagement.

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■ Agree on how you will review progress; one suggestion is that the engagement action plans are reviewed as part of your weekly/ monthly team meetings. Once the action plans are completed, you can ask the team what else you can all do to make this a great place to work. In this way, the focus on engagement and shared responsibility for engagement is maintained on an ongoing basis.

■ Remember to give recognition as progress is made.

If the team is not talking openly, or if one or two people dominate, then do this exercise:

■ Split the team into pairs and ask them to write on Post-it notes:

□ what is helping me to be engaged at work and do a good job; and

□ requests or suggestions to make this a really great place to work.

■ Ask each pair to put up their Post-it notes on a wall or on a flip chart.

■ Cluster the Post-it notes into similar themes.

■ Work through the items: ask the pair who put up the item to explain more fully what they meant by it. As the leader, listen and ask questions to clarify.

■ Thank the team for their feedback. Make the point that we must ensure we continue to do the things that are already working and not neglect these.

■ Ask the team to identify the high priority issues from the requests and suggestions list. The team can vote or discuss until they reach consensus.

Maintain the momentum between surveys

Imagine standing on the scale and you note that you are 5 kgs overweight. Then, without doing anything different, you stand on the scale a week later and you are upset because you are still 5 kgs overweight. This is how some companies approach engagement surveys: we run them annually, we look at the results, it is business as usual, and then in a year’s time everyone is frustrated because there is no improvement. There are also managers who think once the results talk is over, they can tick off employee engagement as completed!

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As HR leaders, we need to maintain a focus on employee engagement activities. For example, regular communication to employees about progress on the company-wide initiatives, as well as quarterly or half-year follow ups with senior managers to review progress on engagement action plans in their divisions. The message needs to be clear that employee engagement is part of the leadership role. HR can also offer shorter pulse-type surveys to see if there is any improvement in the poorer scoring teams, as well as facilitated team workshops where the team can work on team climate and improve work processes.

If employees have the perception that nothing has happened despite their participation in the survey, they start to question if it adds any value and participation rates go down.

New directions in employee engagement surveys

Listening to the voice of employees is an important part of an HR strategy.

Some companies feel that feedback gathered from traditional engagement surveys every year is not frequent enough to provide a complete and current perspective. Many companies now complement their main engagement survey with pulse surveys or short topic-specific surveys, which help them to react faster to the insights gained.

The main problem with this approach is survey “fatigue”; people generally do not want to be bothered with too many surveys asking the same questions. It is also difficult to manage the results talk and action planning process if the surveys are coming around too fast. As a way to deal with the challenge of survey fatigue, an option is to run engagement surveys on a monthly basis but with different groups of employees. In this way each employee is only asked to do the survey once per year, but the organisation is able to keep its finger on the pulse.

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If we use a pulse-type survey is for a smaller sample or sub-set of employees, we also need to be careful about how we react to a sudden downward or upward trend which may be temporary and specific to that group only. In these instances, the results talks become very important to explore underlying issues.

HR can use other approaches to “listening” to employees that will help them understand employee experience and help them be able to predict retention, performance and engagement. New technologies make employee analytics a lot easier. Companies are now starting to track trends from many sources, such as:

■ attendance; ■ sick leave; ■ length of service; ■ training and development received; ■ performance ratings; ■ job changes within the company; ■ information from exit interviews as well as stay interviews; ■ focus groups; ■ social analytics on data from platforms such as Glassdoor,

LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter; ■ the company recognition programme; and ■ innovation management.

For the time being, the annual employee survey is still the norm in companies that do surveys, but a new wave of technology is opening up many other options. New pulse-type survey tools are flooding the market. SurveyMonkey is well known, but look on Google and you will see apps such as:

■ SurveyPlanet; ■ LimeSurvey; ■ QuickTapSurvey; ■ YesInsights; ■ Survey Anyplace;

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■ SmartSurvey; and ■ Client Heartbeat.

However, even if it is a quick pulse-type survey, the same considerations apply: ask the right questions, produce useful scorecards and do something about the outcomes.

Views against employee engagement surveys

Not everyone is a fan of engagement surveys. Some criticisms are listed below:

■ If your employer or leader wants to know how you feel about your job, they shouldn’t give you surveys to fill out, they should just ask you!

■ Employee engagement surveys are the worst way to take the pulse of your organisation. People believe that if they criticise the boss in their survey feedback, they will feel the repercussions for that offence. What will really happen if the whole team told the truth about a poor leader?

■ Surveys are point-in-time exercises. Things keep changing so any snapshot of how people are feeling will have very limited value.

■ People try to generalise their comments in order to avoid being identified as the feedback-provider, so their input can become meaningless.

■ If a company has to promise confidentiality to get its employees to complete a survey, then you already know you have a lack of trust.

■ These surveys are costly to administer and take significant manager time to follow up.

■ Surveys produce quantitative (“what” employees think) but not qualitative results (“why” employees think as they do).

All of these are fair comments and mainly point to good leadership and trust. In a perfect working world with only great leaders, we may not need a survey to know how people feel about work.

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Currently the annual/biannual survey is a robust tool for measuring employee engagement. The employee survey does allow for year- over-year comparison and can help identify the causes of highs and lows in engagement. We do need to work around these objections raised, however, mainly by educating the leadership on how to work with the process.

Sum mar

Measuring employee engagement provides HR and leadership in the company a clear picture of how people feel about working at the organisation, and gives guidance on the actions required to improve the company’s culture and peoples’ experiences at work.

Employee feedback collected through engagement surveys will help HR teams and line leaders to understand more fully what the talent they employ expects and values. It also flags problem areas before they get out of control and helps you see what is engaging people to put in discretionary effort and want to stay at your company.

Collecting employee feedback, listening to your people, sharing with them what you’ve learned and how the results will be addressed are all important parts of what it means to be a great employer.

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