Employee Engagement: What A Difference a Decade Makes – Or Does it?

As the old saying goes “what a difference a decade makes” holds true for so many things. So we decided to look back on how Employee Engagement has evolved over the past decade. You may feel a little deflated by what we found.

In the case of Employee Engagement – a decade of focusing on the employee hasn’t made the leaps forward that we would have hoped to have seen.

In 1997, the Gallup Organization formulated the Q12 – which measured employee engagement on a five-point scale. The analyses of the survey results showed that those companies with high Q12 scores experience lower turnover, higher sales growth, better productivity, better customer loyalty and other manifestations of superior performance. With the Q12 came a focus on the employee and the development of programs aimed at enhancing their engagement levels.

In 2001, Gallup research demonstrated that 24.7 million workers or 19% were “actively disengaged” (those fundamentally disconnected from their jobs). And they went on to say that these disengaged employees cost the U.S. economy between $292 billion and $355 billion a year.

This caused consultants, HR Executives and companies to jump on the engagement bandwagon. Imagine, the impact, if they could increase the number of engaged employees?

How hard could it be? After all, Gallup clearly laid out Q12 – didn’t everyone just need to create programs around these questions and “voila” everyone would be engaged – and would “stay with their company; say great things about their company; and strive to go the extra mile”?

It appears that fostering Engagement is much more difficult than dreamed.

Certainly after a decade, we would have seen some movement, right?

Gallup’s 2008 semi-annual Employee Engagement Index puts the current percentage of truly “engaged” employees at 29 percent. A majority of workers, 54 percent, fall into the “not engaged” category, while 17 percent are STILL “actively disen­gaged.” Additionally, Gallup estimated that the lower productivity of actively disengaged workers still costs the U.S. economy about $382 billion annually.

While we recognize countless other consulting companies (examples: Hewitt, Towers Perrin, ISR, DDI) have put their own spin on Employee Engagement and the drivers associated with moving the needle – what we are asking ourselves is – if everyone has been working on it, for at least a decade, then why are we no better off?

Here are some tips we would give those leading Engagement who may be starting to question why it is not moving faster:

1. Be careful of short-term promises. Employee Engagement is a long-term strategy. It is not something that can be done overnight…so be careful of leading short-term initiatives or projects aimed at enhancing Engagement levels. By now you should know that Engagement doesn’t change overnight – or even in a decade for that matter!
2. Beware of the latest buzzwords or Engagement trends. Every company has its own unique culture and unique drivers which will impact Engagement levels either negatively or positively. Simply following a generic list of Engagement drivers won’t make the difference you are looking for.
3. Engage your leaders in the process. Without your leaders – there is NO Engagement. Even small rumblings at the top of the house around the value of focusing on Employee Engagement should cause concern. Leaders must be engaged and must drive engagement to move engagement levels.
4. Segment, segment, segment. Yes, Employee Engagement isn’t something generic that can be aimed at all of your employees in a brochure or fancy launch event. Rather, Engagement varies across a number of dimensions and unless you understand what the segments within your company are then achieving higher levels of Engagement will be difficult, if not impossible.
5. It’s a journey. We haven’t come that far in a decade. But, a continued focus on Engagement can only enhance the human connection.
6. There is a silver lining. While the decade hasn’t made great strides forward, let’s not forget we have managed to push Employee Engagement to the forefront of an Executives’ agenda. So maybe, we should look at the previous decade as the period in which we moved a focus on the employee into the Executive Suite! Let’s make the next decade about moving the needle on engagement!

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