Here are five keys for improving employee engagement, based on research into what effective leaders actually do:
=> Really know the people who work for you – understand their experiences, motivations and interests
=> Have an interest in helping people learn to do new things in new and better ways (this isn’t about formal training, it’s about a coaching mindset and encouragement)
=> Inspire people; not through slogans and posters on the wall, but in practical ways that provide a sense of purpose (e.g. customer interaction and feedback)
=> Involve people through building line of sight and business literacy, and by providing access to fresh information (transparency)
=> Recognising people’s contribution: a “Sincere Well-Informed Timely Thank You” is a powerful thing (but many managers struggle with this).
The list comes from the book “Closing the Engagement Gap: How Great Companies Unlock Employee Potential for Superior Results” by Julie Gebauer and Don Lowman.
When I do manager training, it’s depressing to see how many team leaders fall down on “Know people”. I start easy, like, “What are the names of people in your team?” You’d be amazed. This step is really about empathy – or maybe simply caring a bit.
The best managers in my experience, do all these five things and more. What would you add to the list?
How can you understand different kinds of conversation in the workplace? => This is still a useful framework for thinking about types of employee voice. It’s based on Bill Gorden’s two-spectrum model.
** To what extent is voice is active? (e.g., given openly)
** And is it constructive? (e.g., an exchange)
You can identify 4 quadrants:
=> Active constructive, e.g., “principled dissent” and “dialogue”
=> Passive constructive, e.g., “attentive listening” and “quiet non-verbal support”
=> Passive destructive, e.g., “I just work here”-type responses and “calculative silence”
=> Active destructive, e.g., “duplicity” and “badmouthing”
The model is from 1988 and you can see the links to early work on psychological safety.
You can read more here: https://buff.ly/42a2lMi
What can you do with this framework? Well, there is also a lot written about “Active Constructive Responding” in coaching, for example, which I associate with the work of Shelly Gable (and others).
This is a classic approach to Employee Engagement – that it’s about the “head, heart, and hands”.
The roots for this kind of approach lie in work on organizational commitment (link below).
If you measure engagement like this, you can segment the workforce in different ways, e.g.:
– People who “get it” but are still only “loosely connected”
– People who are “emotionally invested” but “not aligned to your vision”
– People who are “going the extra mile” but maybe in a way that’s “ineffective”
– People who are high on all 3 elements and are real “champions”
– People who are low on all 3 elements and you perhaps hope are thinking about moving on
– etc.
In analytics terms:
=> You can do clustering to identify prominent employee “types” and then identify hot spots
=> You can examine the key drivers of engagement for different groups
=> You can look at the link to retention (and performance)
=> You can build personas by brining in other data
=> You can make connections to your DE&I strategy.
If you’re interested, one of the classic papers on org. commitment is by John Meyer and Natalie Allen from 1991: “A three-component conceptualization of organisational commitment.” Human Resource Management Review 1: 61–89.
William Kahn, who is usually credited with providing the first formal definition of engagement said that “in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally.”
The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, which has been widely deployed in academic circles, also measures three aspects: vigor, dedication, and absorption.
Conscious accountability is about “expanding awareness to create deliberate intentions, take informed actions, and be responsible for our impact.”
The idea comes froom the book by David Tate, Marianne Pantalon and Daryn David.
Conscious accountability depends on:
– Creating clarity
– Opening up engagement
– Nailing it (do what you say)
– Noticing
– Exchanging feedback
– Claiming it (taking ownership for failures as well as successes)
– Trying again
They touch on this in the article (there is more about it in the book): By considering two outcomes, Relationships and Results, they identify four personas:
1. Harmonizers
2. Hard Drivers
3. Neutralizers
4. Conscious Performers
“Conscious performers are the people who can balance and include a focus on both task performance and relationship quality.” What do these people do:
=> They notice a team’s energy
=> They uncover root causes when there are challenges
=> They appreciate divergent opinions
It’s an interesting read and building accountability is something that I know lots of organisations struggle with. I like the focus here on energy and inclusion.
This got a lot of attention when it first came out, but I’ve enjoyed looking at it again. It’s the report from the Office of the Surgeon General in the US on the condition of mental health and wellbeing at work. It talks about making workplaces “engines of wellbeing” through, e.g.:
Protection from Harm:
Prioritizing physical and psychological safety
Enabling rest and supporting mental health
Work-Life Harmony:
Providing more autonomy over how work is done
Flexible and predictable schedules
Mattering at Work:
Involving people in workplace decisions
Providing purpose and meaning in jobs
Connection & Community:
Ensuring inclusion and belonging
Fostering collaboration and teamwork
Opportunity for Growth:
Building pathways for career advancement
Ensuring relevant, reciprocal feedback
“Harmony” is an interesting choice of word.
There’s lots of new & interesting research on the importance of psychological safety.
I wrote in a previous post about really liking this focus on “mattering”.
Employees’ sense of connection is falling and leaders are worried about it.
Growth is an area that our own research shows is really key for a high-performance EX.
If you’re like me, you probably get invited to follow a lot of newsletters. It can be a bit overwhelming. So I thought I’d share a list of those that I (very happily) follow:
– If you’re interested in psychological safety, then Tom Geraghty’s newsletter has the mission of “making the world of work a better, safer, more inclusive and equitable place.” https://psychsafety.co.uk/newsletter/
– Anyone following my posts will know that trust is a central theme. Hence, I find “Rethink” with Rachel Botsman a great read. The weekly newsletter is free and the aim is to share “an idea that will make you think differently”. https://rachelbotsman.substack.com/about
– Abhishek Mittal has a great newsletter called “HRHeadStart”. He says it’s aimed at “young HR professionals and students” but I learn an awful lot from it too. https://www.hrheadstart.xyz/
– Rita McGrath, author and professor at Columbia Business School, uses her “Thought Sparks” newsletter on Substack to share her ideas on strategy, innovation, and growth. https://thoughtsparks.substack.com/
– “Make Work Better” by Bruce Daisley combines humour and insight and reflects his mission “to help us enjoy work again “. https://www.makeworkbetter.info/
– “Directionally Correct” is the Substack of Cole Napper & Scott Hines. It’s full of stories and advice on how to get value from people analytics. https://directionallycorrectnews.substack.com/
– “Frontline BeSci” from Colin Strong draws on social science and philosophy to consider how we can grapple some of the profound challenges facing us today. https://www.frontlinebesci.com/
** Of course, I also have my own newsletter!! (“EX Leadership”). It’s quarterly and I share the very best 3-4 EX articles I’ve come across in the last few months. You can sign up here: https://nicklynnphd.substack.com/
I hope you enjoy some / all of these. Which others would be on your list? I’d love to know what I’m missing out on!
Design thinking – Leadership love – Belonging – Get Stuff Done
It’s hot out there.** So I recommend grabbing a cool drink and reading these articles while you sit in the shade; they’re the ones I’ve enjoyed the most over the last few months and that have got me thinking. I hope you find them useful too.
** With apologies to friends in the UK where the weather is actually pretty rubbish.
First up is this great piece on design thinking by Hal Wuertz. I really like the way she combines design thinking with scientific approaches to solving problems.
Then there’s this interview with Gianpiero Petriglieri on humanising leadership. He talks about leadership as a love story – one that moves you and that moves others too.
Belonging is a topic I’m hearing more and more about (and I’m enjoying reading Geoff Cohen’s book on the science of belonging). I missed this article by Marissa Afton when it first came out, but I really like its focus on “the four pillars of belonging” all of which resonate with me.
That’s it. The promise I made when I started this newsletter was that I would only share 3-4 great articles each time and I’ve noticed myself struggling to keep to that limit recently. Not this time though!
It’s Spring in the UK, which means the bluebells are out and that 2023 is flying by. Here’s my latest newsletter. As always, it contains the best EX articles I’ve come across over the last few months. Let me know if you find them interesting too.
First up, I found this report by Marc Effron very useful. It’s full of detail about trends in performance management, which is such a key topic. I worked with Marc when I was in New York. He’s a great person to follow on LinkedIn for all things talent and performance.
This is a thoughtful paper by Jared Peterson on the importance of understanding context. In essence, he argues that when behaviour change solutions don’t create an impact, it’s really because we haven’t understood the context in which people operate (so don’t rush to blame the “solution” itself). There’s a lot to think about here. Save this one for when you have a big mug of tea to hand.
I enjoyed this article by Hanadi El Sayyed on sustainability and employee experience. She looks at the link to purpose, wellbeing, and innovation. It’s an area I’m really interested in, as are lots of my clients, and it’s only going to increase in importance over time. Tapping into the energy of your workforce is really key for climate action.
Another person I recommend you follow on LinkedIn is Sarah McLellan. Her series on “culture cracks” is a brilliant read as is this short article on what you need to measure in the new world of work. She highlights things like employee vitality, culture health, and purpose & impact. It’s a terrific list.
I thought this was an interesting analysis of what CEOs talk about on LinkedIn. I’ve not really come across this information before. UK CEOs – and their social media teams – apparently take a relatively personal approach in their posts, including one-to-one interactions with employees and sharing personal career stories.
This is an interesting paper looking at the manager behaviours that keep people from speaking up and testing some potential (simple and low-cost) interventions. It’s based on work done by Novartis. What it really highlights is the importance of team and individual dialogue.
I’m behind on my own writing, but if you’re interested, I have a draft article on “Engagement & Retention” on Medium. If you take a look, let me know what you think.
I also did a video to mark the 4th anniversary of my book being published. I briefly talk about what’s changed in the world of EX since then. The main thing is that it was a very windy day in London when I did the video.
Yes. Almost 1 in 5 companies see this pattern. So what can you do if you’re one of them?
Source: WTW
Finding engagement
Employee engagement is something that many organisations measure and track, often through surveys. There are good reasons for doing this. Monitoring engagement is seen as good governance. There’s also evidence that high-perfoming companies build a virtuous circle of engaged teams with strong business results.
“Engagement” has a variety of definitions, but there is broad agreement on what it’s trying to get at, i.e. things like:
Sense of belonging and connection
Pride and advocacy
Willingness to invest discretionary effort
William Kahn is usually credited with providing the first formal definition of engagement. He talked about:
“The harnessing of organisation members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally.”
The degree to which employees find engagement is the result of both individual characteristics and factors that are related to their experience at work.
Employee experience (EX) factors include day-to-day elements, such as the job itself, and how you interact with your manager and your team. Some of these stand out as being especially important, such as feeling recognised by your manager and having a sense of psychological safety.
Engagement drivers also include broader organisational factors. For example, the ability to grow a career and your confidence in leadership. In my experience, there are systemic capabilities that can provide an engagement lift if you get them right, such as performance enablement and effective communications.
When the CIPD developed an umbrella approach to employee engagement a few years back, it identified the following useful framework:
Source: CIPD
The key point here is that engagement is typically seen as a condition in its own right. In the CIPD’s words, engagement relates to a “state of being”. It’s common to view engagement through the lens of self-determination theory. Another perspective on engagement is to consider it as something akin to “flow”. It’s one reason why engagement has been linked to improved performance outcomes (safety, productivity, sales, etc.)
Engagement is not retention
While you can expect that engagement is related to retention, it’s also different. Retention refers to employees’ intention to stay with their current employer. (Note that I’m using plain language here and avoiding more technical terms like retention rates.) The opposite of retention is turnover — and here I’m mainly thinking about people leaving voluntarily for another job in a different company.
When employees make a decision to leave in this way, it’s the result of a complicated equation that reflects a wide range of considerations.
Some of those are external to your experience at work.
One very obvious external factor is the economy. Is unemployment low? Is your sector growing? Are your skills in demand?
In the last 18 months, another factor has been people simply wanting to make a change after the slog of the pandemic and lockdowns.
In addition, there has been high inflation. If you look at the data behind the “Great Resignation” you see that lots of people have made sideways moves. This may be due to people looking for even a small pay increase during a cost-of-living crisis.
As well as these external factors, turnover is a result of individual characteristics (e.g. risk appetite) and, of course, employees’ experience at their current place of work. Do you have an idiot for a boss? Do you feel your pay is unfair? Is your team short staffed? Are you feeling overwhelmed and even burnt out?
There is lots of research into these EX retention drivers, some of which is summarised below (these data come from the WTW Global Attitudes Survey):
Source: WTW
What’s noticeable is the prevalence of total rewards in retention drivers. That’s not the case for engagement. Engagement is driven by more relational factors. In fact, if you think about employee experience in terms of both “connection” and “contribution” (as I sometimes do — shown below) then engagement is more strongly related to connection (to the people you work with and the sense of purpose you get from work) and retention is more strongly related to contribution (the opportunity to have an impact through your work and the recognition you receive for your efforts).
Source: WTW
Linking engagement, performance and retention
In summary then, engagement is different to retention, but both are impacted — to some degree — by your experience at work. In many scenarios, therefore, you can expect engagement and retention to track one another.
A recent piece of research into employee experience “value drivers” by my colleagues Angela Paul and Steve Young looked in detail at exactly this linkage.
They segmented 350 organisations according to both the level of employee engagement and the level of retention, comparing each to their respective industry average.
They found four segments as shown here:
Source: WTW
The good news is that 37% of companies have highly engaged employees who are looking to stay. Engagement and retention go hand-in-hand here.
These “value drive” companies also have a performance advantage, delivering the best profits and growth, as shown below:
Source: WTW
At the other end of the spectrum are 30% of organisations that have disengaged employees who are looking to leave (“value drag”). Of course, engagement and retention (and performance) are linked here too.
There’s a rump of 15% of companies, which suffer from low engagement, but where employees are not looking for the exit (“value potential”). You can imagine reasons why people might be “stuck” like this. Perhaps these organisations are older corporates with relatively high numbers of long-tenured employees, for example.
What interests me most is the 18% of companies that have the pattern I described at the top of this piece — high engagement, but also high turnover (“value risk”).
It’s worth saying that some leaders I’ve worked with don’t think this pattern is a big problem. They feel it shows they’re doing a great job of developing ambitious people. They might even expect their most-engaged talent to be on the lookout for opportunities— it’s a sign of success.
Moreover, if folks are walking out of the door engaged, then you are building a fantastic pool of potential re-hires. There’s research that shows re-hires can be among the most productive of employees. In some industries, it’s not uncommon for people to move around a lot (and you can argue that this is going to become more common in the future of work).
There’s some truth in this. But there is a cost to turnover and it’s significant. The real total cost of losing someone includes the cost of hiring, onboarding and training a replacement. You also need to account for the loss in productivity and the impact on those who remain (in terms of morale and climate, for example). This can easily end up to a multiple of the leaver’s salary.
You can see from the above analysis that these “value risk” organisations are not as profitable or as fast-growing as their “value drive” peers. There is an overall performance disadvantage. It’s likely that these companies are facing too-high a retention risk; they’ve crossed what might be considered a healthy (or “optimal”) level of turnover.
Three key steps for taking action
To return to the second question I posed at the start of this article, what can you do if “value risk” is a pattern that you see at your company?
There are three key steps you can follow, which I will go on to summarise at a very high level: Understand — Prioritise — Spark Change.
1. Understand
According to the research, there are some areas where the employee experience differs for these “value risk” organisations. For example, employees:
Are less likely to believe their voice matters
Perceive less equity when it comes to advancement opportunities
Feel their organisation doesn’t really match rewards to performance
Source: WTW
This is the general case. You need to understand your own workforce dynamics by analysing people data to build your own picture.
Here is an outline of some of the ways you can do that:
i. What did people who left tell you before they departed?
This is a simple analysis, but powerful. Tag leavers in your prior engagement survey, and review the results for those who were engaged but left vs. those who stayed. Are there specific topics where there are big gaps?
ii. Segment
You can segment engaged leavers and stayers by function, role, and critical talent group. You should also segment by length of service. When in the employee lifecycle do gaps emerge and on what topics?
iii. Analyse
You can model retention by treating the decision to leave as an outcome. Are there experiences and opinions that can be linked to the decision of engaged employees to exit? In this phase, it’s key to integrate and triangulate — to add-in demographic and other data. This might include individual variables such as time since last promotion and pay rate compared to co-workers, and so on. It might also include data on fitness for the job at the point of hire. You can also connect insights from exit surveys, such as reasons for leaving.
iv. Add colour and richness
One way to add colour is by looking at employees’ stated intention to stay or leave (for example, in an engagement survey) and their actual stay/leave decision. If you do that, you can identify people who intended to stay and did, and folks who intended to leave and did, but far more interestingly people who you might call “surprise leavers” and “surprise stayers”. Looking at these “surprise groups” in detail can provide a lot of insights.
If you have multiple surveys, the data becomes even more colourful. For example, you can identify people who have changed their mind (about whether to leave or stay) and isolate the factors that led them to reconsider.
You can also review qualitative data (e.g. survey comments), performance feedback, and exit interview data to add richness.
v. Engage and involve (and validate)
It’s important to validate your analysis with people. We sometimes use virtual focus groups (chat-based discussions at scale). You can engage with Employee Resource Groups and other communities. You can co-create solutions by using ideation/crowdsourcing tools and platforms.
Obviously, I’ve run through all of the above in super-quick fashion, but I hope you get a sense for some of the options available. (Feel free to ask me about them if you would like more detail. The screen shots shown above are from WTW’s Engage software.)
2. Prioritise
The second step is to translate insights into actions. Are there people priorities that need to be accelerated? Are there programme changes you should make? Are there particular EX moments you should focus on?
When we did research into “Transformative EX” organisations, for example, we identified a number of breakthrough moments:
Making flexible work work
Modernising total rewards and enabling performance
Equipping managers to lead through change with empathy
Investing in employee wellbeing
Encouraging inclusion and psychological safety
When it comes to “value risk” organisations, we know from our research, that one key area relates to fair pay:
A second focus area relates to career experiences and career architecture. In all organisations, careers are evolving:
Source: WTW
As a result, many organisations are shifting from traditional approaches to more of a career ecosystem:
Source: WTW
These are example priority areas to focus on in order to optimise turnover, particularly if you have identified a pattern of “value risk” in your employee experience through the kind of analysis described in Step 1.
3. Spark behaviour change
The third step is to translate actions into impact. When it comes to activating career experiences, for example, most organisations combine tools for employees and managers with consumer-grade technology that personalises communication.
Source: WTW
We recently worked with a global pharma company, for example, to develop a careers platform called “Navigator”. The platform integrates their existing development content with a new role framework — bringing career development to life for employees.
On Navigator employees can:
Explore all role families and role profiles across the organisation
Identify areas of interest and the skills required for different paths
View their current role and suggested upward and lateral moves, making their Navigator experience personal to them
Create a career development plan.
You can deploy similar technology to communicate total rewards and to tackle issues related to fair pay.
Source: WTW
I’m skimming the surface here, but you can read lots about this on our website.
Recap — “Value risk” can be minimised
Employee engagement has been a leadership focus for more than a decade. Since the pandemic, and especially in areas where key skills are in short supply, retention has also become a top priority. In many cases, the two go hand-in-hand, but in around 20% of companies it’s possible to see a pattern of high engagement and high turnover risk.
If this is something you see in your organisation, you need to analyse the people data you have to really understand the drivers of retention for engaged leavers. Based on our research, these are likely to be related to “contribution” elements of EX (such as total rewards and careers).
Once you’ve done the kind of analyses shown here to really understand the key factors for your workforce, you can then prioritise programmes and changes that will help to optimise turnover.
In areas like total rewards and career experiences, organisations are increasingly using digital technologies to spark behaviour change and to create lasting impact. I’ve touched on that very lightly here, but for sure it’s something I will write a lot more about in the near future.
NOTE: This is a draft I’m working on. Ping me a message with your thoughts; I’d love to hear what you think — Nick
Welcome to 2023 and my January newsletter (a short collection of the most interesting EX articles I’ve come across over the last months). As always, let me know what you make of them!
Actually, there’s a bit of a theme to this edition. That’s because the first two articles are both about systems thinking (something I’m very interested in):
In this HBR article Ludmila Praslova identifies the problem of trying to fix issues like burnout or bullying by focusing on individual behaviours and not context. I like the discussion of super-biases and mental shortcuts.
Alec Levenson has written a two-part series on systems diagnosis tools and techniques. I like his coaching guidelines such as: “Focus on perennial problems”; “Check for unintended consequences”; and “Look for root causes.”
Next up, I just really like this article by Zach Mercurio on “mattering”. His definition is “the belief that we’re significant to the world around us.” Zach explains why it’s important for your experience at work and how you can foster it. Here’s the link.
Shopify made a big noise when it announced it was going meeting-less. I really don’t like meetings (this will surprise no-one), so I was interested to learn what’s involved. The truth is more interesting and complex than the headline suggests. Click here for a great write up by Becky Kane.
I thought this was a good article by Ben Zweig, analysing the attrition risk at 3- and 12-months. Getting to your first anniversary really matters. I’m working with several companies at the moment to understand why that sometimes doesn’t happen often enough.
In December and January my LI feed is full of long lists of “new year trends and priorities”. I appreciated the simplicity of this list by Lynda Gratton as she identifies only two: 1) Check your assumptions about different generations in the workplace so you can bring people together; 2) Improve your understanding of how human skills and new technologies intersect.
The final article is a WTW one, summarising our new research into change leadership in high-performance companies. It answers the question: “What sets these Change Masters apart when it comes to employee experience?” The link is to a download form; if that’s too much faff, let me know and I will email you the report. 🙂
I assume you’re grateful that I haven’t mentioned Chat GPT even once. 🙂 (Of course, this edition could have been written by a bot; how would you tell?)
