| Management: The Passion Principle |
| Departments | |
| Written by G. Jeffrey MacDonald | |
| Tuesday, 01 April 2008 | |
 Caring about your employees, listening to their concerns, and cultivating their development are crucial to creating a more engaged and productive workforce. “Engaged” employees are defined as those who go the extra mile for a project or a co-worker. They apply extra effort when no one’s watching because they take pride in their work and their organization. On the level of heart and soul, they feel a sense of purpose on the job. Profitability depends to a large degree on a workforce’s level of engagement, according to the 2007 Towers Perrin “Global Workforce Study,” which examined financial results alongside engagement levels at 40 global companies. Firms with the highest percentage of engaged employees collectively increased operating income 19% and earnings per share 28% year to year. Companies with the lowest percentage of engaged employees showed year-to-year declines of 33% in operating income and 11% in earnings per share. What’s more, actively disengaged employees who act out their unhappiness at work often sabotage results. A 2006 Gallup Management Journal study estimated that 15% of the American workforce was actively disengaged in the second quarter of 2006, and this translated into $328 billion in lost productivity. For executives who know their workers could be more engaged, research also offers hope. The Towers Perrin study questioned nearly 90,000 workers in 18 countries and found that engagement is far from an innate trait and can be cultivated. “Personal values and work experience factors have less of an impact on engagement than what the company does, particularly the extent to which employees believe senior management is sincerely interested in their well-being,” said Julie Gebauer, who heads up Towers Perrin’s workforce effectiveness consulting practice. “This was the number one element driving engagement on a global basis and also in the US.” Unfortunately, executives often don’t rise to the challenge of maximizing engagement. Reasons for this failure vary from one industry to the next, but rules of thumb for addressing the issue tend to apply across the board. In a nutshell, executives who learn to hear what they need to hear and engage in actions that back up their words can expect to see results in the form of bigger margins. Hear their fears Leaders who understand engagement recognize it has everything to do with how employees feel. That’s according to management consultant Judith Bardwick, author of One Foot Out the Door: How to Combat the Psychological Recession That’s Alienating Employees and Hurting American Business (American Management Association, 2008). She goes so far as to say that someone who’s tone deaf to the feelings of employees isn’t qualified to be a manager on any level. Those who have some aptitude in this area can hone their skills, she says, starting with acknowledgement that today’s workers are scared. “Feelings of fear and anxiety are becoming widespread because most forms of security are either disappearing or seem to be disappearing,” Bardwick said. Pensions, health insurance and other benefits, and job security seem to be at risk, she said, and that creates tensions that executives must address. Understanding begins with listening, but many executives don’t do it very well, according to Ed Boswell, CEO of Forum Corp., a Boston-based consulting firm. The best executives make a point to spend time in the field, chatting informally with workers on lower levels and maintaining a humble disposition of learning rather than judging or evaluating. “It helps engagement if a workforce believes senior management is very curious and wants to understand the world as employees see it,” Boswell said. He recommends asking lots of questions and reflecting back insights to show apprehension of nuance. “That goes a long way toward letting people know that you are there to learn from them,” he said. Bardwick added that senior executives can learn much from mid-level managers who tend to have closer relationships with rank-and-file employees. That can be part of an engagement analysis that she says managers must prioritize. “Do a down-and-dirty quick assessment so you have data to support the idea that we need to get off our butts and institute important changes,” Bardwick said. “This is the only way we will succeed—by gaining the engagement and commitment of our employees.” Help you, help me Listening and caring about employee well-being are a good start for an executive who wants to boost engagement, but those steps matter little if employees aren’t aware of them. Max Caldwell, managing principal for workforce effectiveness at Towers Perrin, said executives need to communicate their interests in concrete ways, such as by instituting specific policies that allow employees to reduce stress and attend to important family matters. “I’ve worked with senior leaders who are passionate about the well-being of the workforce, stress at work, work-life balance, and safety,” Caldwell said. “But to what degree are they translating that degree of caring into something people actually perceive?” Engagement also flourishes when employees learn what they want to know. For instance, Caldwell notes that a company might have a ladder for career advancement, but it’s possible that no one has ever explained the possible pathways to an individual employee, who’s apt to get frustrated and quit for greener pastures. He says one Towers Perrin client came up with an effective solution: a Web-based tool that allows individuals to enter information and see the possible career pathways unfold on the screen in front of them. Although executives do well to apply a common set of techniques, they need to remember there’s no pat formula for developing an engaged workforce. That’s because what engages employees in one industry or geographic location may not work as a motivator in another setting, according to Frank Mulhern, academic director for the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement at Northwestern University. This problem of particularity poses especially sharp challenges, Mulhern said, for executives who have worked in multiple locations and/or industries and who aren’t interacting with ground-level workers on a daily basis. They’re the ones who often must work the hardest to overcome employee impressions that management sees workers as costs to be tolerated, rather than as assets to be valued and protected. Challenges aside, executives shouldn’t underestimate the power of explaining to employees how their daily duties impact the organization’s health and consequently their own long-term job prospects. In the fourth quarter of 2007, for instance, Boswell informed all 150 Forum Corp. employees that the company was on track to miss its profit target for the first time in five years. He challenged everyone to find a way to cut costs by $3,500 or increase sales by $5,000 over the year’s final three months. He framed it as a matter of pride, and people responded. When the company finished the year 10% ahead of its target, Boswell chalked it up to the power of story. “It’s part of human nature to want to be part of something greater than yourself,” Boswell said. “We were creating a narrative.” G. Jeffrey MacDonald is a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. Based in Newburyport, Mass., he can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |
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American Executive is a RedCoat Publishing publication.
American Executive is a RedCoat Publishing publication.
