Destination: Success | The Black Hole of Employee Engagement Initiatives
Does this sound familiar?
Company and organizational employee engagement surveys are conducted with the results tabulated by functional area and scores distributed to senior leadership, HR, and then to the functional leaders throughout the organization.
From the survey results, employee engagement priorities are established and company-wide employee engagement teams are often formed to provide senior leaders and managers insight and recommendations to close the identified gap of engagement. These engagement teams meet a couple times over a 30-60 day period to formulate recommendations, deliver those recommendations to management and senior leadership and then…..the sound of silence. The entire process seems to fall into the “black hole” of employee engagement. Another year of improved employee engagement missed.
1. The organization must enable an engagement performance environment with active senior leadership sponsorship and reinforcement. This level of sponsorship and ongoing visibility and commitment is critical.
2. Once the organization makes engagement a priority, then mid- and entry-level management must enable that environment of engagement. Each leader devotes time, energy, and coaching that supports a performance environment that is employee-led and actively engaged. Leaders must shift their actions and behaviors. We can't ask for employee feedback and recommendations if we don’t support and enable individual and team engagement.
3. And finally, engagement is all-day, every day, culture-instilled, and continually enabled. Employee engagement is not an event or project with time deadlines and milestones to be completed. It becomes what everyone walks into work and experiences.
Want better employee engagement? Then continually engage the employee!
And employee engagement doesn't just start and stop at the organization level. Come back the next couple weeks as we discuss, in finer detail, the importance of both team and individual engagement.
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
