It's Time to Transform Employee Engagement

This is not to suggest that without the Warm Line service offered to employees and the interventions that resulted, that 9,000 of these issues would have resulted in employees voluntarily leaving the company. That’s not the point.

The bigger issues facing employers are not knowing where negative employee sentiment resides, what the negative sentiment even is, or what to do about it.

Imagine the widespread and/or institutional damage or distraction that just a single disgruntled, disengaged, or demoralized employee can have on co-workers, customers, or other key stakeholders. Much like the potential danger associated with an iceberg remains largely unseen at the surface level, the real risk to an organization often lurks levels below the executive suite hidden in the sentiment of its workforce.

What might the cost to the business be in terms of lost employee engagement, productivity, customer relationships, or product quality if there is hidden toxicity in the organization’s culture? How well does the workforce perform if a significant portion does not feel safe or valued at work due to the words or actions of those they work with or for?

At high-performance organizations, employee engagement is viewed as a means to achieve a greater purpose such as better productivity, customer satisfaction, or retention of top talent; it is not pursued as an end in and of itself. To boost engagement, I encourage you to pursue the following four strategies:

Create an act on an enterprise listening strategy. The IT function should partner with Human Resources, People Analytics, Diversity and Inclusion, and Marketing to develop and implement this strategy. Focus on proactively and regularly (e.g., daily or weekly) collecting and analyzing employee and candidate sentiment and feedback, converting it into actionable insights, and communicating it back to the relevant stakeholders.

Focus on engagement from day one. A company’s ability to engage employees begins before employment. Recruiting, interviewing, and onboarding all play roles in familiarizing individuals with the culture of the organization and helping them establish critical network connections. Microsoft, for example has adopted a straightforward approach to finding out what new hires need to succeed: They ask them. And then they ask again.

The company has created a survey that new employees receive at the end of their first week on the job. They complete a similar survey at the 90-day mark. The intent is to help the organization understand how new hires perceive the Microsoft employee experience. The data is used to glean what’s important to new employees as they learn their jobs. In turn, the organization strives to provide them with what will make them happy and productive—and want to stay and continue thriving with Microsoft.

Identify, and then understand and energize your top talent before it’s too late. Does your organization know who its top talent is? Does it know which of its employees have the greatest influence? If not, conduct an organizational network analysis to identify the flows of information requests (i.e., who people turn to for what?). Then, don’t wait until a valued employee regrettably leaves to ask them ‘why?’. Instead of exit interviews, conduct stay interviews. Find out what motivates and engages your top and most influential talent before it’s too late. Enlist and energize this talent to refer others and become brand ambassadors who advocate on behalf of the company.

Provide personalized and diverse development opportunities. The frequent movement of talent across and enterprise is a hallmark of high-performance organizations. Establish robust internal mobility programs—across functions, teams, units, geographies, and even with key external stakeholder groups—and provide high-visibility assignments that help raise the profiles and strengthen the personal networks of your top (and up and coming) talent.

Whether your organization is focused on enabling more and better employee performance feedback, desires to ensure a consistently better candidate-to-new hire experience, or simply seeks to understand how what is being communicated is actually being heard by its key stakeholders, an employee listening strategy can pay huge dividends.

In an environment where disruption is happening all around us, agility and transformation are the name of the game. And the way organizations measure, monitor, and drive employee engagement must transform with it. What role can IT at your organization play in its employee engagement equation?