Employee engagement is a hot topic in virtually every company, industry and internal communications department, especially now with resignations and remote workforces more prevalent than ever before.
The long-standing belief about employee engagement is that survey scores are an accurate reflection of employee satisfaction and business success. The reality is far from this. Very, very far, to be honest.
“Having been a critic of the focus on ‘employee engagement,’ I’ve been looking at different ways to challenge readers to look at the role of employee engagement and why it should not be seen as an objective in itself.
The pursuit of employee engagement for its own sake has been a tragedy in many ways. Maybe, just maybe, a hint of comedy and drama is required to turn the tables.”
- Mike Klein
Senior Strategic Advisor, Sparrow Connected
To exemplify this, here is an interesting hypothetical conversation between a CEO, Ole Schule, and an Internal Comms Chief, Bea Ravely, both of the “Pullag” Corporation, that you, as an internal communications professional, may be able to relate to all too well.
CEO: Good morning, Bea. I’m sorry I’m bringing you in to give you a bit of bad news. Our employee engagement is down for the first year ever,
BEA: I was meaning to talk with you about this. But I’m curious, what do you think it means?
CEO: It’s obviously a bad thing. Employee engagement is a good, important, critical thing, and when it goes down, it’s a bad thing. So, I’m worried and that’s why I need you to get on this.
BEA: I’m always on this. I’m not surprised by the results. I’m not surprised by your level of concern – in fact I was expecting to hear from you. But are you willing to have an open and honest conversation, even one where it may appear that I am asking stupid or impertinent questions?
CEO: Well, when you put it like that, how can I refuse?
BEA: Thank you. Right off the bat: what do you mean by “Employee Engagement is down?” Do you mean that employees are working less hard, saying nastier things about the company on Glassdoor, leaving to work for competitors, or stealing more sweetener packets in the canteen?
CEO: Bea, you know we do an annual employee engagement survey, which you run after all. You know what’s in it – all 238 questions – which add up to the engagement score we measure and track from year to year.
But I hear a fair point in what you are asking – what are the tangible things that changed and moved in the last year, and what difference do they make to our actual performance?
BEA: Thanks for that – that’s generous of you and appreciated. And indeed, it’s the point you make – that we have 238 questions factoring into one score, that brings up the nuttiness of using a score like this at all.
Twenty years ago, when employee engagement surveys became popular, it was harder to measure business specifics, especially when they were cultural, attitudinal, service oriented. But business analytics have become much sharper, and IC people have learned to ask better questions.
Nevertheless, we keep measuring employee engagement – which may be the least specific thing we measure.
CEO: So, what do you want to do?
BEA: We’ll schedule that workshop in a bit. But let me take another tack. In parallel, let's create a new score called “Business Engagement?”
CEO: What?
BEA: “Business Engagement.” And let’s combine the 238 other factors that are most important to the business. Actually, let’s try, say 12 examples because you’ll get the idea quicker.
Let’s start with sales.
Then revenue.
Then the percentage annual change in each of those.
Then we add the Net Promoter Score.
Add recruitment numbers. Recruitment costs.
Numbers of customers.
Amount of paper we recycle.
Hits on our external website.
Hours our sales team spends with customers.
Airline miles flown by staff.
And average time of response to customer service inquiries.
Then, we factor these all into one number: “The Business Engagement Index” or “business engagement” for short.
CEO: That number would be totally meaningless. I can only imagine what it would be like to use a number like that to run the business.
BEA: Thanks for the candor. Welcome to my world.
CEO: So you are saying “employee engagement” is meaningless?
BEA: As a catch-all measure of employee contribution to the well-being of the business, “absolutely.” Also, do I need to remind you of the year we have had?
CEO: Sales did grow 3%.
BEA: One fourth of our employees were in France and couldn’t get to work because of transit strikes. There was a shortage of our main ingredient in Russia and we couldn’t get supplies in for a month because of the sanctions.
CEO: Shhhh...
BEA: We also swapped out canteen providers worldwide who, after the contract was enacted, decided to make Monday, Tuesday and Thursday Raw Food Vegan Day. Boy, that went down well in Germany and Texas.
CEO: Do you think that must have had something to with the Employee Engagement score?
BEA: I think that goes without saying. But do you know what’s most important about this? We don’t actually know how any or all of this had an impact.
CEO: Tell me what you’re really thinking
BEA: Rather than trying to get better at improving employee engagement – a big, aggregate, non-specific beast--we need to get better at measuring what matters: for our business, or customers, and for our people. Specific things. Measurable things. Things that will help us choose where we can make a big difference, with big changes, or with relatively small investments.
CEO: Do we have time for all that?
BEA: It takes a bit to get the numbers together, but it will make the way we lead faster and more strategic once we nail it.
CEO: Point made. Make it so. Make it so.
BEA: Aye, aye!
Interested in reading more about the pitfalls of measuring employee engagement? This conversation between Ole and Bea is an excerpt from our e-book, Employee Engagement or BUSINESS IMPACT? It's Time to Choose authored by Mike Klein. The book looks critically at the concept of employee engagement and suggests more actionable and impactful ways to measure internal communications outcomes.
Download the e-book here.
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