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An Engagement Layer Cake: How to have your cake and eat it too

High employee engagement drives discretionary effort, innovation, customer loyalty, quality, profitability, productivity and retention of top talent. Yet BlessingWhite's latest global study revealed that
only one in three North American employees is fully engaged
. If you lead an organization in India or Australia or New Zealand, you benefit from slightly higher engagement levels; if you're in Europe, Southeast Asia, or China, you may lead a workforce where fewer than one in four are fully engaged.

A personal recipe

While organizations are keen to maximize the contribution of each individual toward corporate imperatives and metrics, individual employees need to find purpose and satisfaction in their work. What makes one person tick can make another person despair. Engagement, however, is not job satisfaction alone. Full engagement is a recipe that blends
maximum job satisfaction
("I like my work and do it well") with
maximum job contribution
("I help achieve the goals of my organization"). Engaged employees are not just committed. They are not just passionate or proud. They have a line-of-sight on their own future and on the organization's mission and goals. They are
enthused
and
in gear
, using their talents and discretionary effort to make a difference in their employer's quest for sustainable business success.

A leadership challenge

While paramount, engagement is a complex equation to solve. Many factors that influence engagement may feel out of your control as a leader. Your impact may feel increasingly diffused as your span of control grows.

If you lead a fast-growing start-up, for example, how do you maintain contact with all employees as the workforce expands from 12 to 120 to 1,200? Too often the strong culture that propelled your success gets diluted or the innovative projects that created meaningful work are supplanted by maintenance activities and a routine of office bureaucracy.

In larger organizations, employee engagement often becomes a formal initiative. Surveys are run. Metrics are benchmarked. Task forces are established. If, like many organizations, the initiative stops there, you may actually end up doing more harm than good. Our research indicates that North American employees reporting that their company ran a survey but took no visible action are 3 percentage points less engaged than employees at companies that appeared to do nothing at all about engagement.

A multi-layered solution

To create a high-engagement organization, your workforce needs to understand three specific roles and responsibilities: individual, manager, and executive.

Individuals: clarity and action

Individuals must own their engagement. They come to work with unique motivators, interests, talents and goals. They cannot expect your organization to provide a formula tailored to fit their unique definition of meaningful, satisfying work. Employees need to be clear on their core values and goals. If they do not know what's most important to them, they will not find it in your workplace (or potentially any other).

And they must take action. Employees cannot wait for a tap on the shoulder to signal their next career move or an exciting project. They need to take initiative to build their skill sets, articulate their interests and find opportunities to apply their unique talents to achieve your organization's goals.

Managers: coaching and relationships

Managers can't make employees engaged. They can act as coaches to facilitate their team members' engagement journeys. Our research reveals that, across the board, the top driver of job satisfaction is opportunities to use talents. The top drivers of contribution include regular, specific performance feedback and clarity of what the organization needs and why. So managers need to first understand each team member's unique interests, talents, and aspirations. They then need to align individuals' passion and proficiencies with organizational priorities and projects. And finally, managers have to keep the dialogue going, providing feedback and course corrections to ensure high performance.

Our research also uncovered a high correlation between engagement and solid manager-employee relationships. The more employees feel they know their managers as people, the more engaged they're likely to be. In some regions of the world, this factor is even more important than effectiveness of coaching and management skills. So managers must drop the veil of their position or title and become known to employees. That doesn't necessarily mean being their best friend. It does mean sharing personal motivation for work, challenges, appropriate weaknesses, the reasons they came to your organization and why they stay.

An important caution: disengaged managers cannot help employees become more engaged in the same way that a dead battery cannot jump start another or a lost captain cannot guide the crew on course. Therefore, managers must first fulfill the responsibilities of individual employees described above. They need to monitor and take control of their engagement every day.

Executives: trust and communication

Executives must set the direction that your workforce aligns to, communicate that direction to ensure a clear line of sight throughout your organization, and create a culture that fuels engagement and business results. They must also fulfill the roles of manager and individual described above. It's a tall order, one hampered by workforce distrust. In 2010, 52% of employees in North America trust senior leaders (compared to 72% who trust their immediate managers). The recommendations that follow will help you be more effective in driving engagement through your leadership.

Leadership tactics

Set a clear direction
. Engaged employees align their interests with organizational goals. That can't happen if the organization's direction and definition of success are not defined. The recession forced many organizations to re-evaluate strategy to survive; if yours did not, don't delay any longer. A clearly communicated strategy also builds workforce confidence in your personal competence — which reinforces your trustworthiness as a leader.

Inspire commitment
. Engaged employees not only understand what needs to be done but also care enough to apply discretionary effort. Your communications need to cover the 'what' and 'why' of decisions. In the same way you had to 'show the math' of your answers in algebra class, you need to share your business rationale and personal motivation for critical business decisions. Your actions, too, need to demonstrate visible personal commitment to the success of your organization as a business leader and thriving workplace.

Pay attention to culture
. Culture has been likened to the tide: As the tide rises, so do all the boats. The collective words and actions of you and the leaders around you shape your culture. Hold yourself and your colleagues accountable for living the organization's values and for doing what you say you will do. Hold all employees accountable for results and engagement. Weed out business practices (e.g., rewards and recognition, vendor agreements, personnel policies) that undermine a culture of high performance and engagement.

Coach your direct reports
. It is tempting to take the engagement of senior leaders for granted. After all, if they're willing to put in the hard work and dedication required to get that high in your organization they must be engaged, right? Wrong. Our research revealed that only half of vice presidents or above in North America are fully engaged. Plus consider the message you send, as keeper of the culture, if you expect managers to coach their people and you don't. Focus your coaching on contribution (clear priorities, removing challenges, providing resources) and satisfaction (leveraging talents, understanding interests and goals).

Talk about engagement with passion
. Educate your workforce on the roles they need to play in building and sustaining engagement. Manage their expectations when they assume engagement is something that organizations do to employees. Help them redefine unrealistic or out-dated notions of career success to encompass lateral moves, skill development, stretch assignments and special projects — not just promotions or advancement. Encourage them to reach high. Talk about business results and engagement in the same breath.

Commit or quit
. Size up your own engagement every week. Be clear on what drives it. If you're not sure how you got to the place you're at — or you realize you don't like the work that you do — make some changes. Genuine engagement is contagious; faked engagement erodes credibility and trust.

A daily priority

Don't rely on task forces and special action plans. Don't separate engagement as something to address in addition to the work that must be done. If you lead with results and engagement top of mind every day, you'll succeed in creating a more engaged workforce. If you educate your managers and employees on their roles and responsibilities, engagement becomes part of their daily priorities as well. Then you can have your cake and eat it too.

The findings referenced in this article are based on the results of BlessingWhite's latest employee engagement study, which compares more than 10,000 Global post-recession survey results with pre-recession data. The full global report and interviews with senior leaders is available here
.

For more information on how BlessingWhite can help your organization reach the next level, call 1.800.222.1349 or email info@blessingwhite.com.

"Sage of the skies" from Piece of Cake mini-series