Employee engagement seems to be the latest buzz phrase in business.  According to a Society for Human Resources Study conducted in Spring of 2013, Forty-seven percent (47%) of companies surveyed stated that employee engagement was their MOST important HR challenge.  And it's good that organizations are recognizing this because a recent Gallop poll noted that as employee engagement increases, company profits do too.

So what is engagement?  It's when an employee is fully focused, involved in, and enthusiastic about his or her work.  If an employee is engaged, they act in the best interest of the company and work to further the organization's interests.

How To Increase Employee Engagement
Weaving engagement into a company culture takes effort...and it is not a do-it-and-you're-done endeavor.  It requires sustained effort.  The folks at Gallop state that integration takes a focus on four main areas:  1)  Strategy and leadership philosophy; 2) Accountability and performance; 3) Communication and knowledge management; 4) Development and ongoing learning opportunities.  Yikes, sounds like a lot of work!

In building the strategy and leadership philosophy, a few key points stand out:

• Every action that the leadership of a company sets in motion has an emotional undercurrent for employees.  Being methodical and thoughtful about the approach to business and how employees are treated is an important part of the journey. 
  
• Involvement of the leadership team is critical to the success of an engagement process.  This means they have a voice in the development AND deployment of the messages.
  

In building accountability and performance, it is critical to establish a work environment where everyone is held accountable for their work product and effort.  This starts at the top and cascades through every level of the organization.

Once the structure of an engagement process is developed, the deployment of an actual communication plan needs to take place so that engagement permeates every conversation and becomes a part of the culture. 

The sustainability of any engagement process will involve development and learning opportunities.  The is one way to directly invest in employees so they are able to perform the work tasks necessary and it gives them a positive feeling (and heightens engagement) about the organization.

One final note from our friends at Gallop - only about 1/3 of  a typical organization's employees are engaged.  Think of the opportunities that could present themselves if you doubled that...

Recently HP's CEO, Meg Whitman announced a management shakeup.  The key focus on her "turnaround strategy" is making sure the right people are doing the right jobs...it turns out getting the right people on the bus is not enough.  In fact to quote Ms. Whitman, "Who the right person is can greatly depend on the moment.  Someone who has performed an exemplary job leading one leg of that journey may not be ideally suited for the next."  She further drew out her point by saying, "As a company grows quickly, a manager who is good at running a business at one scale and revenue level may suddenly find themselves overwhelmed when the business quickly surpasses a certain point.   The tendency is to think that the manager is failing. In fact, the business has simply grown beyond the manager’s skills. They need help."   BRAVO! 

It is easy for companies to get "stuck" with their current organizational structure and lose sight of whether growth of the business translates to growth IN THE SAME WAY by the leaders holding key positions.   Business leaders owe it to themselves (and the success of their business) to constantly re-evaluate the competencies of their employees and make sure they are optimized.   At times, this may require a simple training/coaching initiative to bring the employee's capabilities to the level that is needed.  But another approach, as Ms. Whitman illustrated with her "management shakeup", is moving folks to different assignments so certain skill sets can be better utilized.  

According to a recent study of 300 CEOs by the folks at Kapta Systems…

• 82% feel their team isn't acting with enough urgency - impacting the company's ability to get work done;

• 78% said they don't have confidence that their employees "get it".  They fear employees are working on unproductive or misdirected activities that are unrelated to the company's strategy;
• 64% said they didn't feel full control over their company's direction;
• 45% were not satisfied with the executive team's performance;
• 38% said they have been blind-sided by a negative surprise in the last 90 days.  

Common to each of these issues is people management.  With the proper alignment of people, processes and technology, CEOs can sleep easy with dreams of a highly profitable business filled with inspired employees!