The correlation between business with a highly engaged workforce and those with superior financial performance is well document and the case reasonably solid but is it the foundation of a successful business or a dangerous distraction?
Employee engagement is both a lag and a lead indicator. If engagement scores are low, it’s a lead indicator that future business performance will be poor but as a lag indicator, the business probably has a whole bunch of performance challenges already. So, what’s the answer? Well there are other indicators that fall into two groups: those that measure the symptoms of poor engagement; high employee turnover, high absenteeism, low productivity etc, and there are those may shine light on the causes but are harder to measure and provide the foundations for success: employees understanding of the strategy and how they contribute to it, appropriate skills in the workforce, the right IT tools etc. Whilst the first group are also lag indicators, they are easy to measure and should give useful early insights into how engaged the workforce is. Initiatives to improve these important challenges will be the ones that are likely to target the causes of the poor engagement and may well involve the foundations in the second list. So, engagement is important and should be kept in the mind, but it is an outcome that is both an indicator of future performance and a lag indicator of business challenges. Business leaders should focus on the lag indicators that are the symptoms of poor engagement, address those through initiative that ensure the real foundations are in place and employee engagement will be on the up.
1 Comment
The overwhelming majority of people want to do a good job. They want to be successful; they want to support their colleagues, they want to feel that they have achieved something during their working day, they want to be recognised and rewarded as a good employee. It doesn’t always feel that way and managers get frustrated with people in their teams who appear to have an approach that is at odds with this statement, but how many of the people you know well really think differently? I certainly don’t know anyone who is happy with not being successful at work.
So, where does the desire to do well and actual performance diverge? This is a key question for managers and leaders to ask when considering peoples performance and if they come at it from a perspective of ‘This person wants to be successful: what is stopping them?’, the way they approach conversations may be very different. What are the obstacles to success today? Is it skills, lack of understanding of what is required or organisational issues? Are there things happening at home that are causing problems? These are just a few of the things that interfere with good performance. Conversations that enable honest and open discussion about these challenges and how they can be overcome are the important ones to have. They are the conversations that will lead individuals and through them, the business, to be successful. So leaders, start with believing that your team wants to be successful, then all you have to do is work out how to enable that success. Great people say some really great things, things which inspire, which lift our spirits. You don’t have to spend too much time on LinkedIn to find a quote or two. Richard Branson, Colin Powell, Steve Jobs and Henry Ford, bright inspiring people, are among the good sources.
The quotes that focus on the importance of valuing employees seem to get the most likes and comments, probably because we feel they are reinforcing the fact that we all, rightly, feel our companies should value us. What’s not to like about these quotes? Well, nothing really. It’s the comments that I worry about and what people may be taking away from them. For sure, people are at the heart of a great business and they deserve good leadership and a bit of inspiration, but that isn’t enough. The boring stuff is important too. Culture does trump strategy, but without a realistic strategy that everyone can buy into, success will be achieved by chance. Management plans and meetings are uninteresting, but without them how do we manage activity well? Spending time on how the business is organised can be a bit dull too, but how much friction do we endure when organisations are bad? If we only take away from these quotes the bit that really connects with us but conclude they justify not taking the less inspiring stuff seriously, the risk is that we miss just how important it is. Being inspiring and focusing on the people that make a business great is important, but please don’t neglect the other stuff. Both elements are needed to have a really successful business. What are your thoughts? Does one element trump the other? Have you had an inspiring leader who has been a less capable manager? |
What?Our thoughts about helping your people Archives
October 2022
Categories |