Engagement Surveys - Symptioms and Causes

Engagement surveys ask highly-validated questions, with an excellent correlation of high scores to better performance.

BUT Do they focus on symptoms not causes?

Consider this: I go to the doctor with a rash.


I’m not interested in benchmarking it against the last bloke’s. I don’t want to know how to cover it up, or just stop itching. I want to know how to get rid of it.

And, ideally, restore my skin to peachy-softness.

Surveys – or at least the response – often address the itch. Results are usually numeric and one-dimensional, they don’t look for reasons why or make the right connections.

So, if asked if you’ve had a performance review lately, expect one of two things to happen: having one soon after a poor score, or for proactive managers, one just prior to the survey.

Itch scratched. Score increased.

But nothing on quality of conversation, nothing about whether that was even a priority for you, your team or organisation.

Surveys, including for #employeeengagement, are hugely useful. I’ve done nowt else for about a fortnight. But they aren’t the last word in diagnosis, there’s far more at your disposal.

Have deeper, broader conversations with your people. Find out what makes what makes them tick and what ticks them off.

Don’t just scratch itches, get to the real causes.

Employee Engagement: Raise the stakes to achieve more

Too much engagement starts at “let’s DO something” … without consultation about what that is. I read a piece with advice to Collect, Understand, Act. That makes so much sense.

But, that collection often relies on an engagement survey, with stock questions based on – credible – research about engagement drivers. BUT questions that limit insight, that set sights low.

Recognition, understanding the vision, development, etc are intrinsic to engagement. They can be useful to measure. They contribute to how people feel, to commitment levels.

But are you looking at symptoms, not cause?

Are you doling out a paracetamol for the headache, or getting at the problem?

Elevate what you collect. E.g. Understanding vision is one thing. Working towards it, another. Being inspired by it, that’s another thing again.

Your people are smart. They know best what works and what needs fixing. They’re capable of balancing their interests, the organisation’s and the customers’.

Ask them wide-open questions about how you can function better, because ultimately, that’s what allows engagement.

You’ll understand, you can act. You’ve raised the stakes – now you can raise performance.

Variety makes you a better specialist

 I’ve been thinking about variety and specialism. Right now, I have mixed bag of work on the slate, including:
• Developing the concept for an L&D offering - what IS the USP, why should people get involved?
• Understanding and defining what leadership looks like, specific to the context of one organisation
• Creating a social enterprise's visions and values by listening to employee experiences
• Running a 360 appraisal for how well managers are living behaviours
• Understanding why new starters chose to join their new employer

They all sound very disparate, but they all call on those key insight skills of understanding data and sentiment, and bringing ideas together until they become simpler, more accessible and more usable. 

But more importantly, the experience of working on one develops the capability for working on the next. It's that kind of variety that keeps work interesting and fresh. One idea leads to another, one method or thought process is applied to the next work. It makes synapses connect. It makes you a better specialist.

How do you bring variety into your work? And what benefit could you take from getting more?

No one wants to be engaged

There was a great article about employee engagement last week

https://hrmagazine.co.uk/article-details/is-engagement-fact-or-fiction

I took away: If you are talking – to your people or leaders - about improving engagement, then you’re on the wrong track. Because:

• ·        for your people – no-one wants you to make them more “engaged”
  What your people DO want is the conditions, communications and culture that allows them to be engaged. To understand what they need to do, to commit to delivering, and what they get in return
  They’re not bothered if you measure engagement are either, they just want you to understand how to improve

• ·         for your leaders – by itself, they don’t give a monkey’s how engaged your people are
  They DO care about how your people treat customers, if they give a consistent experience, if they pull together to perform better
  That’s what you need to be measuring; those are the links you should be trying to make.

It’s a simple process. 1) Work out what will make the most difference to your employees’ ability to belong, commit, perform. 2) Do that. 3) Then measure how much that improves your organisation. 4) Repeat.

The rest is distraction. If you’re talking in terms of “building” or “creating” or “measuring” engagement, then you ought to reassess your priorities.

Internal Comms Fails

What’s your favourite example of an internal comms fail?

I heard a good one the other week, and it’s really stuck with me.

It was in a manufacturing environment, with all the difficulties there are in getting the sustained attention of the workforce.

With an important announcement to be made, all staff were taken to an event at a local hotel. Those who had been there remembered exactly where it was, and a real range of detail, down to the plastic glasses that they thought rather cheap.

And they certainly didn’t forget the giveaway to support the event – a frisbee. Some even still had it.

But what no-one had retained was the purpose of the event.

Even allowing for the bravado, and the naughty-schoolboyness, that this kind of environment tends to bring – I really don’t think any of them had taken much of use away.

So, there was very little chance of changing their perception or behaviour. I’m guessing they came back to work and carried on exactly as before. Just with the promise of a game of frisbee at the end of the day.

It’s such a waste of time and resources. You don’t get many of these opportunities and this one was totally missed.

You got any good / bad examples?