Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.

Peter Drucker

Employee Engagement has proven its worth to leading organisations around the world for over 10 years. We have selected it as the most effective tool for improving the People Aspect of Organisational Performance. We use it together with Lean Six Sigma for Process Improvement.

We find it more practical to clarify some of the key steps and the management focus involved in realising the benefits.

First one needs to agree on the End Goal of Employee Engagement. We agree with many others on this definition:

"...channelling the discretionary effort of employees in a direction that is good for the company”.

This definition is somewhat simplistic but reminds us that there are two aspects to the work involved.

The first is building the discretionary effort, that will be willingly and happily offered by employees. It needs to be aligned with their natural talents, so that it creates personal fulfilment and is sustainable.

The second is to channel the effort toward things that matter to the company. A prerquisite for this is ensuring that employees have a clear “line of sight” to the objectives of the business.

This combination of discretionary effort and line of sight results in an engaged employee who willingly works hard to deliver against your company's strategic objectives. If you are looking for a number, even the most conservative published studies point to overall workforce productivity improvements of 20-40%.

Indirect Benefits

Numerous service providers offer Employee Engagement Surveys aimed at organisations of different sizes. One of the best known is the Gallup Q12 Survey used each year by hundreds of companies with millions of employees. After 10 years, numerous independent benchmarks have shown that:

• "Engaged employees will stay with the company, be advocates of the company and its products and services, and contribute to bottom-line business success.
• They will normally perform better and be more motivated.
• There is a significant link between employee engagement and profitability.
• Engaged employees form an emotional connection with the company. This impacts their attitude towards the company’s clients, thereby improving customer satisfaction, service levels and retention.”

Other studies describe employee engagement as…

• building passion, commitment and alignment with the organization’s strategies and goals
• increasing employees’ trust in the organization
• creating a sense of loyalty in a competitive environment
• providing a high-energy working environment
• boosting business growth by making employees brand ambassadors for the company