APGAR: Birthing A Playful New Employee Engagement Gage
Time for a new gage? In my last post: Is Your Employee Engagement Gage Working I was critical of the over-reliance on surveys as our employee engagement gage. I recently presented at a woman and child healthcare conference and I decided to get playful with the participants and create an employee engagement gage they could relate to. I created an employee engagement APGAR test.
The Apgar Score was devised in 1952 by Dr. Virginia Apgar as a simple and repeatable method to quickly and summarily assess the health of newborn children immediately after birth. It looks at activity, pulse, grimace, appearance, and respiration. The test is generally done at one and five minutes after birth, and may be repeated later if the score is low. Scores 3 and below are generally regarded as critically low, 4 to 6 fairly low, and 7 to 10 generally normal.
Newborns and the APGAR score. The APGAR is our first assessment at birth. We start getting measured early in life. I vividly remember my oldest son’s birth and the APGAR assessment within moments of his birth. His score was low but action was taken immediately and he is doing very well as an adult. It sure would be nice to have that kind of response around employee engagement or employee disengagement — quick assessment leading to immediate intervention.
Shorter assessments – quicker action. Perhaps we don’t need elaborate surveys — just a 5-item assessment of how we are “birthing” employee engagement leading to immediate action. As I examined the actual assessment it seemed to me that the key APGAR terms translate nicely to engagement:
- Activity: Getting Resuts
- Pulse: Caring for Your Work
- Grimace: Happiness at Work
- Appearance: Fully Engaged at Work
- Respiration: Work Inspiration
Playful pulse. Please note the quick assessment below was given to participants at the conference to have some fun and make a link between their jargon and the jargon used in employee engagement. This is not used as an actual assessment but I believe we should be striving for assessments of this length.
An engaging survey. In addition I found because of the humor participants found the quick survey very engaging as opposed to the dread of the annual 45 minute 100-item organizational employee engagement survey. Does anyone actually believe employees find these annual lengthy surveys engaging?
Click the image above for a larger view of this playful assessment.
Still breathing? This was a playful assessment. I don’t intend for you to actually put this exact assessment into practice but perhaps you can create a short assessment that relates strongly with the work of your organization, have some fun, make your measurement engaging, and take engaging actions immediately.
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David Zinger, M.Ed., is an employee engagement writer, educator, speaker, coach, and consultant. David founded and moderates the 2400+ member Employee Engagement Network. His personal website offers 1000 posts/articles relating to employee engagement and reached over 1,000,000 page views in under 4 months in 2010. David is involved in the application of Enterprise 2.0 approaches to engagement and the precursor, creating engaging approaches to communication, collaboration, and community within Enterprise 2.0.
Connect with David Zinger today for education, speaking, and coaching on engagement.
Email: dzinger@shaw.ca Phone 204 254 2130 Website: www.davidzinger.com
Nice fun idea which can so easily be played around with in work, like it. And about the 100 questions…in my experience the only person who wants that many questions in the survey, is the person who commissioned it! Less, is definitely more. Think small.
Doug:
I like to think small or even not at all.
David
Hi David & Doug,
I couldn’t agree more!
The challenge now is getting the strategic corporate comm. leadership within organisations to consider alternative methods to their extensive audits and self-assessments – and more importantly understand that through the measurement exercises they could in fact make their employees feel like they do matter, rather than feeling like they’re just helping management feel better about themselves!
As my lecturer once said to me K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple – Silly)!
Itumeleng
It is a challenge to move to alternatives even when what we are doing is not fully working. Well said Itumeleng.
David
I really like this idea. I could see this as a fun way for managers/supervisors to open up a staff meeting. I knew a manager who used a similar concept based on Ken Blanchard’s description of ducks and eagles. He had a magnetic board made up with a 5-bird scale ranging from “ducks” on the bottom, “geese” in the middle, and “eagles” at the top, with descriptions of each. At every weekly staff meeting, people would take their name magnet and place it on the appropriate bird and give a 60 second explanation. Team members would celebrate with people feeling like an eagle, and reach out to and support people feeling like ducks during the week. It was very effective in building team cohesion.
Really entertaining…and so true. I think companies would get 100x the information from your Employee Engagement APGAR test than they do from the convoluted ones they do each year. That’s really what they need to know — grin or grim.
Thanks for the smile…and the good thinking behind it.
Frank:
I like how the APGAR starts small, moment of birth.
Take care and keep grinning.
David