Debunking Employee Engagement Myths
There is a great deal of focus these days on employee engagement (and rightly so). There are two big problems, however, in the way that most organizations are measuring - and therefore managing - employee engagement.
The first problem is that drivers of employee engagement differ dramatically from one organization to the next, even when those organizations are in the very same business. We recently completed some research on this question - and the differences in specific drivers of engagement across similar organizations are striking. A summary of our research is available on our website.
The second problem is that employee engagement should not be maximized; it should instead be optimized within the context of other factors that also contribute to organizational results.
Both of these problems have a similar underlying source: not seeking to identify the specific and unique elements of employee engagement that are driving each organization's business results. Many organizations simply accept on blind faith generic research findings on the average drivers of engagement or the average relationship between engagement and business results.
Unless your organization happens to be the "average organization" in every way, however, then applying any simple one-size-fits-all finding to your organization is not just irrelevant, it's actually quite likely to point you in the wrong direction. |
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We discussed the second problem (the need to optimize - not maximize - employee engagement) in an earlier newsletter, reprinted here.
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