You may have heard this week the professional services business KPMG is dumping 'traditional' employee engagement surveys and instead creating a new approach to measurement.
The announcement has been widely shared on social networks and a linkedin article by Sean Trainor inspired me to write this one.
Robert Bolton, their HR transformation lead (and pretty good at PR by all accounts) has implied that we've all been doing it wrong and we need to do it differently.
Their document, subtitled 'New thinking on employee engagement surveys' Bolton states;
"the traditional method of gauging employee engagement is to performa people survey, on a sample of the organisation. This quantitative analysis gives the company numbers and statistics to determine the extent of employee engagement, and put in place specific interventions to raise morale and commitment."
Perhaps there are lots of organisations that still believe this is how to shift the needle on engagement. But it's certainly not the approach I've been taking for the last seven years.
It's important to remember an engagement survey is a moment in time. A snapshot. It gives an organisation an indication of how people feel about working in the organisation, and whether that has an impact on discretionary effort.
But that's all it is.
It's not an easy solution to 'fixing' employee engagement in organisations. Because there is no easy fix. And that's the real point here.
The reasons we work and the reasons we care about work are varied and complex. And none of this happens in a vacuum; societal changes in the last ten years mean trust is at an all-time low and the psychological contract is broken.
I've been saying for a number of years that it is not measurement of employee engagement that delivers results, it is the subsequent conversations that make the real difference. Because it's there we learn why people feel the way they do.
As the saying goes, you don't make a pig fat by weighing it.
Some people have said that this is bad news for Engage for Success, but I disagree. E4S is a movement dedicated to improving employee engagement in UK PLC, not wedded to a particular survey methodology.
But I do agree that the Engage for Success '4 enablers' are as much about internal communications as they are human resources. As someone whose raison d'etre is about improving employee engagement, it's no accident that I work in both the HR and IC space;
- Visible, empowering leadership providing a strong strategic narrative about the organisation, where it’s come from and where it’s going.
- Engaging managers who focus their people and give them scope, treat their people as individuals and coach and stretch their people
- There is employee voice throughout the organisation, for reinforcing and challenging views, between functions and externally, employees are seen as central to the solution.
- There is organisational integrity – the values on the wall are reflected in day to day behaviours. There is no ‘say –do’ gap
Once you really understand why people responded the way they did to an employee engagement survey, and understand how they feel about work, then you can begin to identify the aspects of work you can change.
That means an approach that takes the best of human resources and internal communications.
Which is something we can all agree on.
At andpartnership, we've developed a methodology that takes the outputs of any engagement survey, and uses that as a basis for organisational conversations that help identify the causal factors, and most importantly, what you need to do differently as a result.
If you'd like to know more about how we can help you shift the needle on employee engagement, please get in touch.
Rich Baker is communications & engagement director at andpartnership, an innovative consultancy that merges strategic HR and IC to help leaders and organisations connect people with purpose.
