| One of the things that continues to
surprise me is that when times are bad organizations still spend money on employee
engagement surveys. A general look around the office or factory and tea room discussions
would make it obvious to all that wanted to see it that employees are not so much engaged
as they are worried about their jobs. This leads us to two major issues to consider during
tough times, the first is how we inspire confidence and innovation in an organization that
appears to be in freeze mode. The second is what you should measure as an indicator of
employee engagement.
Let's deal with inspiring confidence and innovation in
your organization. Well this boils down to a change management strategy that focuses on
getting employees actively involved at all levels in understanding the business and how
their ideas can have a positive impact. Here's an example of what you could do.
1. Take real business data and share it with groups of
employees at all levels that deal with customers in specific sectors.
2. Ask employees for ideas on improving or innovating just one aspect of your service
offering or product line and test in a specific market segment on a small scale, say a
sales territory or state.
3. Then after testing those ideas for a six week period ask employees to examine the
business results.
4. Take those ideas that have shown a substantial improvement in sales and implement
either state wide or nationally depending on your organization.
5. Design a reward and recognition program around the impact of these ideas on the
business outcomes and start to energize your workforce.
It really is that simple, treat employees with respect,
stop telling them what to do instead listen to what they have to say, put some rigor
around the framework for ideas and reward outstanding results. This is how innovation
happens and how you can energize an organization to respond quickly to changing market
conditions.
Another key is to ensure that whatever change management
strategy you design it has specific activities and responsibilities for management. Often
we forget that managers are just as concerned during tough times about their job security,
but their team members are looking at them for direction and support. So when we design
change strategies ensure that there are key responsibilities and clearly defined
activities for all levels of the organization. So practically what does this mean with our
example above? Well you would design specific activities such as;
1. Managers would identify the real business data and share
it with their teams
2. Managers would be responsible for selecting which ideas would be selected for testing
in a specific market and they would decide which test market
3. Managers would obtain the business results at the end of the six week test period and
organize briefings with their teams
4. The hierarchy of managers would then decide which tests produced the best result and
decide which to implement and project plan that implementation
5. Together with human resources the management team would decide on a reward and
recognition program and share it with their teams.
So what about employee engagement surveys? I say save your
organization the tens of thousands of dollars they cost and invest your time in a well
thought out change management strategy like that outlined above. This will ensure a
climate where communication is open, ideas are valued and actions are implemented. All
these steps are indicative of a workforce that is focussed, has purpose and feels a
greater level of confidence about the future of their organization and therefore their
role because they are actively involved in designing the future, not being told what do
and when to do it. If you just change the paradigm from budget cuts, budget cuts and
budget cuts to opportunities, growth and involvement your organization's business results
will be your barometer of employee engagement, no survey required. |
