Employee Engagement Chronicle #4

David Zinger’s Employee Engagement Chronicle is your primary source for current news, views, reviews, and research on employee engagement. Each entry includes a link to an article or post with a short verbatim tidbit from the article. If you are intrigued, click on the author or source name at the start of each summary to study the full article.

Get the Point

• Take a measured approach to employee engagement.
• Make friends with employee engagement.
• Communication is becoming an employee engagement conversation.
• Improve service through heightened levels of employee engagement.
• Connect emotionally, socially, and spiritually with the organization’s mission, vision and purpose plus ROI on employee engagement.
• Human Sigma is a fresh perspective on the employee/employer relationship and the impact this has on employee engagement.
• Bank on the new social media tools having a strong influence and impact on employee engagement.

Infohrm released a 2007 study of European HR Leaders on The New Frontier of Human Capital Measurement. If you are involved in HR management and measurement, I encourage you to read the study. Employee engagement is one of the three areas with much potential to improve measurement effectiveness: HR Leaders Seek to “Slice and Dice” Employee Engagement Scores to Create Leading Indicators of Workforce Turnover.

Mary Lynn Fayoumi wrote about having friends at work and the impact on employee engagement in the Business Ledger from Chicago. Recently, a new book on the topic reports that those with a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged on the job. And it is not just employees in a certain age group who feel that friends in the workplace boost their productivity…Experts on both sides of the aisle agree that feeling comfortable in the workplace is critical to job satisfaction and employee engagement. However, friendships tend to have ups and downs, both on and off the job. The prudent person would proceed with caution, at least initially.

Richard Denisson linked employee engagement and social media within an organization. Our internal communications consultants have had to accept that in some cases they will have to relinquish control of messages which become subject to community ownership and community editorial control. They are also increasingly having to conduct their business in channels they don’t own and cannot control, such as employee blogs. Communications is becoming a ‘conversation’ rather than a managed activity which requires a different type of engagement by those traditionally responsible for communications activity.

Zealise (Bay Jordan?) had an article – Do you offer “Killer’ Service”? He makes the connection between service and employee engagement: This lack of employee engagement is so pervasive that it is actually protecting business from its consequences. It was Warren Harding who said, “Service is the supreme commitment of life.” While he was most likely referring to public service, there is an underlying truth to the statement which gives it a wider application and makes it relevant to all service. This means it is impossible to expect service standards to improve unless a way can be found to secure employee engagement: to make people more involved and committed.

Skip Reardon wrote about the 4 dimensions of engagement on the Be Excellent blog. The answer is employee engagement or the ability to capture the heads, hearts, and souls of your employees to instill an intrinsic desire and passion for excellence. Engaged employees want their organization to succeed because they feel connected emotionally, socially, and even spiritually to its mission, vision, and purpose. (Bonus: read Skip’s short post on ROIin employee engagement. Engagement does not mean motivational posters and a simple pat on the back. Successful engagement programs must be embraced company-wide, supported by senior executives, and executed strategically.

Helene Blowers wrote about Gallup’s book on Human Sigma. So how do we manage people for success and high levels of productivity in the new economy? Too many organizations build management models on the assumption that managers and leaders have the power in the company/employee relationship, but that’s no longer always the case. The answer is employee engagement or the ability to capture the heads, hearts, and souls of your employees to instill an intrinsic desire and passion for excellence.

James Gardner wrote a powerful post on the new divide and the connection between the new media and employee engagement. The tools we have are changing the way we engage and our engaged by our workplaces: My inability to communicate the concepts inherent in social media are symptomatic of the fact that there are those who are simply not ready to embrace these new ways of working. These are people who cling to the old command-and-control centric style of organisations. And they just can’t see, today, how these new baby steps into social media have the potential to change their workplace in the future.