Beyond Employee Engagement
In last month's newsletter, we took the provocative position (at least among many HR professionals) that employee engagement is the wrong thing to be measuring, maximizing, and generally obsessing on. It is a construct that psychologists have created to measure what motivates people. In most cases, it is indeed necessary for getting work done and producing business results - but it is by no means sufficient.

Unfortunately, due partly to clever marketing by some self-interested firms, engagement has become almost synonymous with business results in the minds of many HR professionals. By continuing to focus on engagement - rather than a broader set of human drivers of business results - the HR profession marginalizes itself. More importantly, this focus also gets in the way of finding better solutions to vexing business problems.

So what should you be measuring and monitoring on the people side of your business in order to drive your people strategy and resource allocation? Our People Index® was designed to fill that void. It is an intensively researched methodology for identifying and helping organizations to optimize the human drivers of their specific business results. It goes beyond one-size-fits-all benchmarking approaches (which are never going to help you improve your unique source of competitive advantage), replacing them with a disciplined, rigorous approach to creating a credible, fact-based foundation for HR strategy.

In addition to helping improve an organization's performance, this approach has two beneficial by-products. It helps HR professionals truly earn the proverbial "seat at the table," and also provides a natural and authentic way for HR professionals to document their impact on their businesses.

It is designed for senior executives who have the courage to break old habits and ways of thinking - like an excessive focus on employee engagement - that keep them locked in the past.