Employee Engagement

Thoughts, views and opinions on employee engagement from The Survey Initiative

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How technology can undermine employee engagement.

Much has been made over the past 12 months on how technology can improve employee engagement in the workplace. Social media has become the latest trend with Yammer offering something quite unique to the world of internal communications. Gamification has also been heralded as the latest technique to improve data collection. New technologies can help spur on growth and development, but what are the effects on employee engagement when technology is being used in increasing measures to report on an individual’s behaviour?

Society has long bemoaned the fear of living under ‘Big Brother’, but for some workers this has become a reality, and is often undermining years of good work put in place by HR professionals to increase levels of employee engagement.

So what’s going on?

The majority of these problems do not stem from organisations going out of their way to be ‘Big Brother’; it’s more of a bi-product from the introduction of new technologies.

I recently heard about an organisation that had fitted new tagging equipment into their field based vehicles. The employer wanted to ensure they knew where their employees were in case they broke down, or to view their location if another job came up nearby – which, in itself, seems sensible. As the new technology was rolled out, employees were informed of the changes and why they were being implemented – again, the right thing to do.

However, as the technology evolved it provided the operations team with new services and tools, enabling them to alert each driver if they had been too heavy on the brakes or had driven too fast. The operations team thought that this would be a great way to help save the company money and to help reduce accidents on the road, so there were very strong commercial and responsible reasons for doing this, but all of the drivers with this new technology have become incredibly angry as they felt someone is - ‘checking up on me all the time’. None of the team was informed why the company had made the switch; and to be told by text message that they had driven too fast, or slammed on their brakes had really begun to annoy them.

Many other employees from a vast range of industries have also complained that their smartphones or iPads have geo-location added as standard, and again feel that they’re not trusted to go about their daily business without someone wondering if they had popped to the shops, or picked the kids up when they should have been at a client meeting.

These are just a couple of examples of how technology can erode good levels of employee engagement in weeks. As ever, happy employees are ones that feel respected and trusted to do their jobs well. With the onset of more technology being available to companies to help them reduce costs and increase productivity, departments are going to have to work together much more closely to analyse the impact on how new technologies will be accepted by their employees.

My advice is simple: put yourself in the shoes of your people. How would you feel if you received a text message from your employer telling you that your brakes had been used too fiercely? Is that likely to endear your people to your organisation or frustrate, de-motivate and disengage them?

When it comes to employee engagement ‘trust’ is paramount; technology, even when implemented with the best will in the world, can very quickly erode trust that took years to build. Technology can certainly help businesses, but if the process of implementation is not fully thought out, or if it morphs into something more ‘Big Brother’ as the capability of the technology is improved, then you run the risk of greatly undermining employee engagement.

Take time to review the use of technology within your own organisation and consider your staff’s skillset and needs before making major shifts. Listen to what your employees have to say, is technology being used in the way it was intended, or are you in or moving towards a situation where technology is undermining the relationship you have with your people?

Article written by Gary Cattermole of The Survey Initiative

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A focus on an individuals objectives, development and opinions are the three most common traits of an engaging manager, according to business executives.

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The latest findings from the recent CIPD Winter 12/13 Employee Outlook report do not make great reading for employee engagement levels within the UK.

Read more in our latest blog that also includes simple practical steps to help you raise engagement within your organisation.

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20,000 highly engaged individuals show what can happen when people work together - employee engagement!

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Challenge your employee survey to meet business demands

The emphasis on how HR uses information has become much more strategic and in this economic climate the use of information may form the distinction between the organisational winners and losers. Does your employee survey stack up?

Data should provide insight not just information

Nick Kemsley in Personnel Today discusses how it has become more important for HR to use data to provide insight rather than just information, how it needs to relate to business impact rather than process and how HR must become more comfortable using less precise macro-level or trend data. The competitive advantage to those organisations embracing this shift in mindset should surely leave them better placed to weather the changing economy.

Feedback from employees, and in particular outputs from feedback tools such as employee surveys, needs to be incorporated into the business strategy and the information used to inform and drive it.

Does your employee survey deliver?

In light of this you need to ask yourself if your employee survey is delivering for your organisation. When considering your survey activities look at how your survey measures up in three main areas: survey design, output and action planning.

Critically, under review does your current survey output match anecdotal feedback or data from other sources (staff turnover or absence levels) – if not what is the survey failing to pick up and how can the questionnaire be designed to capture this information in the future?

Does the survey analysis and output deliver on the initial survey requirement? If your survey is designed to address employee engagement, does the reporting identify items that drive levels of high engagement for your organisation? Looking at their survey results Barclays were able to identify that wellbeing underpins employee engagement in their organisation.

Does the feedback differ across the organisation?  It is often the case that different business areas or even teams will have different issues and areas of good performance. You need to ensure that you tailor your action plans to specific units and locations to allow these local issues to be addressed. Often there may be areas of best practice within the organisation that others can learn from are you able to identify these from your survey feedback?

By tackling a review of each area of your employee survey separately through from design, output and action planning you can challenge your staff survey to meet your organisations needs.

If you’d like a fresh pair of eyes for your employee survey, why not contact us?

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Putting wellbeing at the heart of employee engagement

These days, organisations are keener than ever to measure employees’ wellbeing as well as their employee engagement. The two are inextricably linked, of course. But as wellbeing specialists like Dr Bridget Juniper point out:

…emerging research suggests that organisations that focus only on those areas associated with conventional engagement indicators, such as commitment and effort, are missing the point where enhancing performance is the overriding goal.

The problem, according to Juniper, is that ‘the scope given to workforce engagement is too restrictive’.

She’s certainly right when it comes to traditional models of measuring employee engagement.

For example, many organisations still use on employee engagement questionnaires that rely on one-size-fits-all questions to measure staff engagement.

The problem with this approach is that it can create a distorted picture of an organisation’s workforce. In extreme cases, off-the-peg questionnaires can generate a picture of a largely engaged workforce, but fail to pick up on warning signs about staff wellbeing.

The solution is to make tailor your employee engagement research to fit the shape and needs of your own organisation.

It’s essential because employee engagement can’t be measured in the same way in different organisations. Employees will always face different challenges, be part of different hierarchies and relationship networks and be subjected to different pressures.

That’s why it’s important to work with both management and staff to create a research process that gives consideration to both engagement and wellbeing.

For example, while a traditional employee engagement survey might pick up that staff are highly motivated by their work, it may not discover that they are beginning to feel stretched or under pressure, or that they feel their work/life balance is out of kilter.

The advantage of taking wellbeing into account in the employee engagement process is that it allows your organisation to spot problems like these at an early stage — issues which would otherwise have a negative impact on engagement in the longer term.

It also allows you to take steps to address those issues as soon as possible. Your can do this via workshops and focus groups — ensuring that concerns are passed confidentially to management via an independent third party.

So, if you’re looking to measure employee engagement in your organisation, be sure to ask yourself one question before you begin: “Will this process give us an insight into staff wellbeing as well?”

Because if it doesn’t, you may unwittingly be storing up problems for the future.

Learn more about approach.

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In the end, engaging employees to give their best starts with top bosses sharing the game plan, followed by managers ensuring great two-way communication. After that, empower associates to partner in solving business challenges, then demonstrate sincere appreciation and stay on track through continuous measurement and improvement.

Linda Dulye

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Why employee survey response rates are so important

Today we are closing an employee survey on behalf of one of longest standing clients. I thought I would share with you that, working alongside our client, we have achieved a response rate in excess of 80% (for the sixth year running).  As you can imagine our client is very happy that their survey has consistently provided an excellent response rate. We have worked closely with them from the outset detailing the processes of maximising response rates but I just wanted to touch on ‘why’ getting as high a response rate as possible to your employee survey is so important.

Validity

From our perspective as an independent employee research organisation the very first thing a high response rate illustrates is that we have developed the survey correctly.  When large numbers of employees take part in the survey it shows that the survey has been well received and that employees feel and believe that the questions are relevant and that their views will be heard and acted upon.  Effectively the balance between covering the areas/ topics that are important to employees and also those leading the organisation is correct. Secondly and most importantly of all, a good response rate will provide valid, representative and actionable data.  Where response rates are in the 80’s and 90’s (be it at organisation or local level) it provides an excellent level of confidence that data is representative and that the work you undertake as a result of you survey is based on valid data.  As you can imagine, this is very important!

So, what sort of response rate should I be aiming for?

This is a question we are often asked.  Our average response rate for an employee survey sits in the mid 80’s and we are very proud of this.  The industry average sits nearer the mid 60 mark. With the right pre-survey communication strategy, a survey that is designed correctly for the organisation its employees and leaders and solid, positive action as a result of the feedback, there should be no reason why you cannot obtain response rates in the 80’s and 90’s. Some of our recent work has been with organisations that traditionally had  low response rates to their employee surveys.  We worked with an organisation, for example, to take their response rate up 25% points from 44% to 69%.  This is part of a long-term survey strategy that should see their 2012 survey response rate between 75% and 80%.

If you would like to learn more about how to get the highest possible response rate from your employee survey, then drop me a line.

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The propensity to overcomplicate employee engagement

Whilst reading some recent articles around employee engagement, I came across a paragraph from Linda Dulye, who has written an article on Fox Business.

“In the end, engaging employees to give their best starts with top bosses sharing the game plan, followed by managers ensuring great two-way communication. After that, empower associates to partner in solving business challenges, then demonstrate sincere appreciation and stay on track through continuous measurement and improvement.”

I think this paragraph wonderfully captures the simple essence of employee engagement.

Now, I know there will be many people who think/ voice the fact that employee engagement is complicated, that there are many factors that will affect someone’s likelihood of being an engaged employee. Indeed, this is somewhat the case – although in actuality many of those factors are outside the control and scope of an organisation.

The fact remains however, that if you look at the many different views, opinions and research on employee engagement a lot appear to over complicate, what is, in reality, a simple and straightforward premise.

Human nature…

It is our nature to over complicate and the challenge for those working in the area of employee engagement to is avoid this, as much as possible. When working on your employee engagement strategy or project and even when you are researching levels of engagement within your organisation, remember – the concept of employee engagement is simple. Try, where possible, to keep your actions as simple, clear and concise as the premise itself.

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