Disengagement: The Black Hole of Employee Engagement Surveys
Listen to the Destination: Success Podcast.
Stop Doing This for Better Employee Engagement:
The Annual or Bi-annual Cycle of Disengagement – The Black Hole of Employee Engagement Surveys
Coming up soon, for most organizations, is the annual or bi-annual employee engagement survey. It’s the time of the year where we have the opportunity to provide feedback to our respective organizations on everything from senior leadership effectiveness and the connection to our managers to workplace engagement items like job satisfaction, compensation, benefits, etc.
So, if your organization is like most we encounter the survey process goes something like this: An all-employee announcement goes out informing us it is engagement survey time and they would like everyones participation so they can become a better place to work. An anonymous link goes to all employees and you have 2-3 weeks to link in and complete the survey questions. You go in, complete the survey questions, and provide a number of written comments on how you think the organization can be a better place to work.
Then what usually happens? The sound of crickets. The sound is a result of a long lag time before anything is heard (if ever) regarding the results of the survey. Now, there are a few exceptions to this, but believe us, not many! That is right, we provide feedback and then it falls into the “Black Hole of Employee Engagement Surveys.”
On top of this, if any action is taken it is usually either short lived, not organizationally enabled or leader supported, or rarely provides any meaningful impact to employee engagement. And then, before you know it, the announcement comes out that it’s employee engagement survey time once again. Sigh.
It is a cycle that, rather than engaging people, it often produces apathy and indifference leading to disengagement and the employee attitude that ends with something like this, “Why should I provide feedback when nothing ever comes from it?”. One way to at least keep from adding to disengagement is to stop conducting surveys that get sucked into the vortex of the engagement survey black hole.
However, we have found that if you spend the time, people and financial resources to survey, then spend the time, people and financial resources on all-employee engagement training and in forming cross-functional “survey and feedback performance teams” that provide insights and recommendations for enhancing employee engagement based on the results, you can start to truly move the needle on organizational employee engagement. Rather than relegating the survey follow-up to HR (which is already swamped), or mid-level managers who “Have a business to run,” our saying is “If you want better employee engagement, you better engage your employees”. Profound we know, but sometimes the answer to the most difficult opportunities is standing right before us. Increasing employee engagement can be as simple as engaging your employees in the survey and results process.
So stop the annual survey cycle of disengagement. Your organization will thank you!
We have consistently shown in working with our clients double digit increases in year over year employee engagement scores. We simply start by taking their annual survey feedback and partner with them to turn that feedback into meaningful, year over year sustainable employee engagement by engaging their employees. If you want to know more about increasing employee engagement, contact us here.
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
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.
Disengagement: Activities You Only Thought Were Engaging
Listen to the Destination: Success Podcast.
Want better employee engagement? Stop these disengaging employee activities!
Often to enhance or improve is as simple as to stop doing certain things. In this 3-part series we will highlight activities that, if an organization will stop doing or at least begin to address, will significantly enhance overall employee engagement.
Over the next three weeks we will share our experiences in working with clients where certain legacy actions and activities have shown to actively disengage employees. We will then provide insights on what you and your organization can do to stop these activities and replace them with actions that actively engage a workforce.
Blog Topics –
The black hole of employee engagement surveys.
A widely known cause of disengagement – The annual performance review.
Performance environment vs culture – the great divide that disengages.
If you will invest 5 minutes each week to learn what to stop and how to start again and commit to change, your employee engagement in 2019 will significantly improve. Our clients’ success proves it.
Don’t believe it….just engage and see, what do you have to lose?
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
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.
Teaming Up: Where is the Support?
Listen to the Destination: Success Podcast.
An engagement team’s level of success and the ultimate impact of that success is often determined by the level of organizational support it receives throughout the team engagement.
Does the overall organization embrace and enable employee engagement by sponsoring and supporting individual and team engagement training? Are senior organizational leaders actively participating by allocating time for engagement activities, and by showing interest in and implementing many of the various engagement team and individual recommendations? Lastly, do our front-line leaders encourage greater engagement by inspiring and enabling people and teams, not directing or controlling their activities?
A team can have a clearly defined and communicated purpose, exhibit all the positive team behaviors during the teaming process and all members be completely committed, but if they do not have organizational support to listen and act then it marginalizes, if not destroys, all future employee engagement activities.
Our experience enabling employee engagement points to a simple, but effective success model for team and individual engagement. Purpose, behavior, commitment and support. If you and or your organization would like to know more about enhancing employee engagement, please contact us here.
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
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.
Teaming Up: Are You Committed?
Listen to the Destination: Success Podcast.
Your team needs you!
We are in our third week of exploring what the most successful engagement teams do consistently to achieve team success and deliver on their defined purpose.
A team can define its purpose, exhibit all the right team behaviors and have complete organizational support, but if any one or more of the team members are not fully committed to contributing to the team’s efforts it is this lack of commitment that is a major contributing factor for teams not achieving team the goals and success they have defined.
In working with engagement teams over the last 4-5 years we have found a number of key areas where individual and team commitment enables and accelerates team success.
Each team member must be committed to:
Consistently attending scheduled meetings and events.
Preparing for each team meeting.
Commit to and deliver on all agreed upon next step actions.
Providing thoughts and ideas and challenging the status quo.
Learning and developing both as an individual and as a team (engagement team training).
Encouraging peers and those in their sphere of influence to actively engage.
Coach and mentor other newly formed engagement teams.
Staying committed to engagement team success is difficult. Each year we work with dozens of engagement teams from their initiation to completion and with each one of them team and individual commitment is tested in some way. Day to day functional job pressures and the pace of change in business adds pressure and challenges that commitment. But, stay the course and, if necessary, reach out to the engagement team sponsor to assist in prioritizing both the importance to the organization and the time commitment required of you and your team to deliver on your team purpose.
Stay committed, your team and organization need you.
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
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.
Teaming Up: Exemplifying the Right Behaviors
Listen to the Destination: Success Podcast.
As we continue our efforts to leverage our experience in enabling engagement team success we want to turn our attention to establishing the right team environment by identifying and exemplifying the right team behaviors.
The team can have a clear team purpose, each team member can be committed, and the team can have all the organizational support it can garner, but if the team doesn’t define and consistently show the behaviors that will enable success, as well as identify and acknowledge behaviors that, if shown, will derail the teams efforts, the team stands a chance of not reaching the its full potential and not delivering on its stated purpose and team charter.
A critical team best practice is in the initial phase of team formation: Openly brainstorming and documenting team behaviors that will enable success and those that could potential derail the team. Here are a few behaviors from other engagement teams brainstorming lists to jump start the discussion if you need them.
Enabling behaviors for success:
Active engagement by ALL members.
Model personal and team leadership.
Provide insight, NOT barriers.
Use influence, NOT power.
Act with urgency.
Disruptive thinking, NOT disruptive actions.
Always seek clarity and alignment.
Reward and recognize milestones.
Dis-enabling behaviors to avoid:
Inflexibility
Dominate the team discussion.
Settling for status quo.
Blame and justification
Failing to show, both physically and mentally.
Defaulting to “No” or “Can’t be done.”
Being self-centered or self-serving.
Lack of individual and team preparation.
Once the enabling and dis-enabling lists are agreed upon by all team members, it is an engagement team best practice to review the lists periodically at the start of team meetings just to reinforce how important the focus on exhibiting the right team behaviors are to achieving team success.
The results an engagement team delivers are important, but how those results are achieved along the way are equally as important. Don’t assume good team behavior, cultivate it!
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
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.
Teaming Up: What's Your Purpose?
Listen to the Destination: Success Podcast.
In our last blog, the future of organizational performance are in these “network of teams” working seamlessly, promoting enhanced employee engagement, real-time communication, rapid information flow, and agile collaboration.
Our experience over the last 5 years cultivating and enabling these teams has shown it takes more than just getting people together and calling them an “engagement team.” There is a time-tested formula that sets the right foundation for team success.
Let’s focus on purpose. The foundation for any engagement team is establishing a clear purpose that every team member is aligned to. Sounds easy, but it isn’t. Every team struggles with this, and often, most teams skip over this important step and go right to resources and activities.
This step is NOT just creating a purpose statement, this is a defining action in the formation of the team that provides:
An anchor point for the team.
The “what” for the team.
A definition of both success for the team and the desired impact of the team.
The answer to “why” this team and its work are important.
A team can have all the right behaviors with all team members committed and tremendous organizational support but without a clearly defined and aligned purpose, the team will have little to no direction and rarely achieve its full potential and desired outcomes.
So, what’s your purpose?
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
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.