By Cara Whedbee, Ph.D. | Business Writer, HRTools.com
“Employee engagement” is definitely the new buzz word in Human Resources (HR) circles right now. The reason for this buzz is obvious—how do you keep your layoff survivors engaged after a downsizing, and how do you keep any employee engaged in a down economy with everything there is for them to worry about?
And more importantly: How do you know whether or not your employees are engaged?
What are Employee Engagement Assessments?
To answer this question, I interviewed the President of PeopleClues, Julie Moreland. Moreland is responsible for leading the company she co-founded in January 2004 that focuses on providing cutting-edge behavioral assessments for business use. These assessments are incorporated into an easy-to-use online platform specifically designed for the commercial market to help companies around the world hire, train and promote the right people for the right jobs.
HRT: Thanks, Julie, for talking with me today.
JM: No problem, Cara. It’s my pleasure.
HRT: With all the buzz about employee engagement assessments in the HR world right now, Julie, I first want to know: What is employee engagement?
JM: Employee engagement is a positive emotional connection between an employee and his or her job. Engaged employees are inspired to go above and beyond their job description to help meet business goals. They are loyal to their employers and see their jobs as a source of pride and enjoyment. Highly engaged employees freely give their work extra effort on an ongoing basis.
HRT: OK, so in this economy, how important is employee engagement?
JM: In a down economy, the companies that survive determine how to get the most out of every resource they have. Financial staffs go through every budget line item with a fine-tooth comb and cut everything they can that they ‘think’ is not essential. Sales managers run through every scenario they can think of, and turn over every rock, to find revenue—even if it’s slightly outside of the business model—in order to bring in cash to support the overhead of the business.
Given this reality, businesses can truly not afford to have employees who are not fully engaged! When times are good, they can get away with having underperforming employees, but when the economy is down, there just isn’t any room for low performance and inefficiencies. Human resources is usually the most costly overhead a company has, so in a down economy, having employees engaged is more important than ever.
HRT: That makes a lot of sense. So what is an employee engagement assessment?
JM: An employee engagement assessment, with the definition I just gave of employee engagement in mind, is a set of validated questions that will measure the level of engagement for each individual employee. A great assessment will actually provide tips on how to increase the level of engagement.
HRT: OK, so why would a company want to use an employee engagement assessment?
JM: In a 2003 Towers Perrin Talent Report, which was a large-scale study of over 300 businesses, it was found that only 17 percent of all employees reported themselves to be “highly engaged,” while19 percent were “disengaged,” and 64 percent—the “massive middle”—were neither highly engaged nor disengaged.
With few exceptions, the published research clearly shows that businesses with more highly engaged employees have higher profits, higher sales volume, less absenteeism, less shrinkage of inventory and better customer feedback than businesses with fewer highly engaged employees. These differences are also found on the business unit level in complex, multi-unit structures. There is little question that having highly engaged employees is an essential ingredient of business success.
Given the relatively small percentage of employees in the highly engaged group, it is clear that moving even a small percentage of employees from the massive middle to the highly engaged, and eliminating some of the disengaged group, would have strong positive outcomes for any business. Making such changes would be a function of both improving the employee selection process to focus on employees who will be highly engaged and, secondly, working to improve those working conditions that preclude engagement.
HRT: Wow! You convinced me! What steps should a company take to choose an employee engagement assessment for their employees?
JM: There are a couple of key steps in choosing an assessment to measure employee engagement. One is the amount of time you are asking an employee to take an assessment. While we know statistically that the more questions in an assessment, the greater the chances we can increase the reliability and validity of the assessment, it is also important that we ‘balance’ the need for efficiency with time in the assessment process and still attain valid and reliable information. In other words, we need to make sure the assessment process is as short as possible while still accomplishing validity and reliability.
Secondly, we want to be sure that the outcome of the assessment provides clear and concise information to the company personnel who can understand and ‘act’ on the information to make changes to increase the engagement of the employees. If the information has to be ‘interpreted’ somehow by a consultant or expert, then you have taken the power away from the company management to act on the information expediently and efficiently to increase engagement of their employees.
HRT: Good points! Finally, can you give an example of a time you advised a company on the use of an employee engagement assessment and what was the result?
JM: Sure. We are in the process of creating an employee engagement assessment to initially be used by a major manufacturing staffing company in the Midwest, and then rolled out internationally. The staffing company has several high-profile clients who are experiencing production/efficiency issues due to a lack of engagement from employees. There are at least three elements we are incorporating into this employee engagement assessment.
One is a positive view of one’s employer, especially its management. A second is a high degree of work motivation. The third is providing a safe work environment. Each of these elements can be tapped by appropriately worded questions that yield a quantitatively-based profile. Such profiles can be used for selection, and for measuring the degree to which an organization’s employees are engaged, as well as indicating areas in which improvement is necessary.
HRT: Wonderful! Thanks for talking to our readers about this new concept of employee engagement assessments.
JM: Again, it was my pleasure.
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