Employee Engagement - Part 2
Earlier in April, I posted a blog that began listing business reasons and statistics as to why your organization should focus on employee engagement. The stats are based on Stan Phelps’ article, “Ten statistics reveal why employee engagement is more important than ever.” In the last blog, we focused on the first five reasons and this blog we will wrap up with the remaining five.
The first (or sixth if you’ve read the previous blog) reason to focus on employee engagement is from Accenture. According to this source, less than half of chief financial officers appear to understand the return on their investment in human capital. If your organization’s Human Resources department is not currently measuring return on engagement, I encourage you to challenge them to do so. At Allegacy, we measure the employee and the member experience as we believe that culture drives results. In order to demonstrate this hypothesis to the financial and executive team, as well as the board, we have to keep up with a number of human capital stats that demonstrates the return on the sizeable investment we placed on culture.
The second stat is based on a study by Chris Zook. According to Zook, only 40% of the workforce knows about their organization’s goals, strategies, and tactics. At Allegacy, we focus on internal communication. We have an internal corporate communication plan that is based on what we need to ensure we communicate and reinforce in messaging on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual basis. We make great efforts to ensure we align our communication with our annual operating plan goals and focus as well as our long range plan.
The third stat is focused on recognition. 43% of highly engaged employees receive feedback at least once a week compared to only 18% of employees with low engagement. Recognition matters to our organization. In fact, we have created a Recognition Team that ensures we keep employee recognition at the forefront of what we do. Through a formalized process, employees can submit recognition on themselves as well as their peers. We hope the recognition program is in addition to the managers providing spot awards and recognition when they ‘catch their employees doing it right.’
The fourth stat is that the earning per share growth of 89 organizations found that the growth rate of organizations with engagement scores in the top quartile was 2.6 times that of organizations with below-average engagement scores. Once again, if you buy into the notion that ‘culture drives success’ and are measuring your human capital, you can support the numerous business reasons to investment in your people and focus on their engagement.
The final stat and, according to Phelps, the number one reason to focus on employee engagement is trust. Towers Watson completed a study and out of 75 possible drivers of engagement the one driver that was rated as important was the extent to which employees believe their senior leaders had a sincere interest in their well-being. What a powerful reminder of how important it is for leaders to be mindful and intentional of every interaction, communication, and business decision in terms of the impact each will have on employees and members! A boss once told me that words are like a ‘tube of toothpaste’…once you have said them, they are ‘out of the tube’ and you can’t put them back in.
On this note, I want to thank you for following my blogs over the last several months. I hope you’ve found them valuable and relevant to your organization’s focus on the employee and member experience. I wish you and your organizations all the best.
Ashley
