At The Core Group we have nearly 2 decades of working in the field of employee engagement and leadership effectiveness and we would like to share with you through this newsletter the things that managers and organisations are doing that are motivating and engaging their employees, and some of the things they are doing that have the opposite effect. This way we can share best practice and reduce the ineffective behaviours of managers that have a detrimental impact on morale, motivation and performance. We would also like you to share with us what your company is doing in their efforts to engage you.
When we speak to most senior managers about how they determine how motivated and engaged their employees are, they proudly tell us that the feedback from the latest employee satisfaction survey.
Whilst these surveys (and those that conduct them) have the best of intentions, recently organisations have begun to question if they are really a good indicator of how productive and effective employees are likely to be.
And it appears that they are not. There seem to be two major drawbacks if you are tracking employee satisfaction. Firstly, the way that most businesses are structured means that universal employee satisfaction is impossible. Secondly, it turns out that I can be very satisfied in my job, but not willing to put in the kind of effort that my employer needs in these difficult times.
Let’s take the first issue – its just not possible. Imagine that you have a vacancy in your department and as an employee centered organisation you would like to offer the role internally before going to the open market. You have 5 qualified internal candidates that apply. The very nature of the process means that 4 of them will be dissatisfied (as they don’t get the job) and 1 (the successful candidate) will be satisfied. Does this mean that you work for a bad organisation? Does this mean that the productivity of the unsuccessful candidates will drop? Will the winning candidate be more productive as a result of the promotion (and the higher levels of satisfaction associated with it)? The answer in all these cases is almost certainly no.
The workplace is designed in such a way that universal employee satisfaction – whilst a noble objective – is just not possible. Therefore what is the value in trying to measure something that we can never achieve?
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it would seem that there is no proven link between levels of employee satisfaction and how effective or productive an employee is likely to be.
Many studies have looked to try and establish a correlation between employee satisfaction and either customer satisfaction or productivity and as yet, none have been able to do so. When we stop and think about this for a while, it makes perfect sense. I can have a nice comfortable job, get a reasonable amount of pay, sit in a big flashy office, have a secure parking space and access to the executive bathroom – all issues that lead to my high satisfaction scores – but does that mean I am going to put in the extra effort required to ensure success in these difficult times?
Not necessarily. In our experience what we need to track is NOT employee satisfaction but employee ENGAGEMENT. Whilst satisfaction scores have low or no correlation to individual and company performance, engagement scores are seen as a major driver of commitment, loyalty and productivity.
One survey from the US recently stated that an engaged employee is likely to be up to 39% more productive than one who is disengaged! As we know from our engagement surveys, only 27% of employees are generally engaged, think about all that extra potential productivity just waiting to be activated.
So how do we differentiate between employee satisfaction and employee engagement? How do we drive engagement and measure it? That’s what we will be discussing in this newsletter over the coming months.
It has always been the goal of senior management to develop high performance work teams and there is no end of advice or guidance on how to do this. But what is becoming increasingly important, is learning how to make sure that this performance has some durability to it – many companies have short bursts of high performance that seem to self destruct. Two years into a global recession the last thing we need from our employees is average performance. Exceptional performance is needed to ensure survival. But as the old saying goes, if you want better than average performance then you had better provide better than average employment. So just how do you build long-term sustainable performance. A new research project by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) in the UK, is beginning to find out.