Employee Engagement – What the Survey Says

Gallup recently released their latest employee engagement survey results.  Gallup has been doing this survey for several years, and is able to show some interesting trends around engagement and its impact on the workplace. While I’m primarily a qualitative researcher, I see survey tools as powerful for showing trends, understanding macro level movement, and providing areas of focus or concern for employers who want to create higher engagement among employees.  I can certainly appreciate the logitudinal quality of the survey work being done on engagement, and how it contributes to our overall understanding of this phenomena.

This latest set of data illustrates the importance of employee engagement in the overall success of the business.  It also brings to light the importance of langauge and meaning over process and measurements when it comes to engagement.  Carefully defining ‘engagement’ and what it means to the organization writ large and to individuals is critically important. This can be done in terms of attributes or characteristics that have meaning to employees (for whom ‘engagement’ is ambigious and hard to enact when directed). Then, weaving those attributes into the day to day conversations around the organization becomes and actionable step for leaders, managers, independent contributors, and employees at large.

How you get to those attributes and characteristics for your own organization may require going beyond the survey. Practical experience tells me that they are highly localized even within companies, and how engagement is defined at a local level is critically important.  Asking quesitons about why engagement is important, what lack of engagement is doing, and what improvement would look like to you is a first step.  In parallel, understanding what people mean

 

1 thought on “Employee Engagement – What the Survey Says

  1. Pingback: Think your employees are engaged? You are probably wrong. And likely you aren’t very engaged yourself. | What Happens Then?

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