| New Approaches in Employee Engagement Surveys |
| Invention Development Advice - Market Research | |||
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Employee surveys, more recently known as Employee Engagement Surveys, have now been a mainstream business activity for over 10 years. They survived the dotcom bust and 9/11 mini-recession, and have grown steadily in appeal and relevance right up until the current time.
Employee surveys, more recently known as Employee Engagement Surveys, have now been a mainstream business activity for over 10 years. They survived the dotcom bust and 9/11 mini-recession, and have grown steadily in appeal and relevance right up until the current time. The experience in our business over the last two years, and despite the current recession, is that organisations are continuing to invest to improve their understanding of the views, attitudes and work behaviours of their people. There are probably a number of reasons for this, including the relatively low costs of running such surveys compared to other business activities, but a core dynamic seems to be more to do with a real strategic shift in how organisations are measuring the way that they can best compete in todays markets. The recently published MacLeod Review, commissioned by the Department of Business, took an in-depth look at employee engagement and its potential benefits for organisations and employees. The Review includes many examples of companies and organisations where performance and profitability have been transformed by employee engagement; and in their work the review team claim to have met numerous employees who explained how their working lives had been transformed. The Review also makes reference to studies that show a clear correlation between engagement and performance " and, most importantly, between the improving of employee engagement and improving levels of business performance. The response to the Review has been staggering, and the list of captains of industry that have signed up to the subsequent Sponsor Group is very high profile. So what does this mean for the future of employee engagement surveys and measurement of employee engagement itself? The first implication is that the measurement and diagnostic work around employee engagement levels is likely to increase in importance " in boardrooms, within industries, and across business and regional divisions. Secondly, and because of this, employee engagement measures will have to be seen as even more robust and credible, than some of the Employee Engagement Index products that have been promoted by suppliers over the past 3 years. Third, in time companies will want to know much more about the profiles and make-up of engaged employees. The answers that workers give in surveys is one dimension of this, but other key aspects include demographics, lifestage, personality preferences, career motivations, and so on. These factors are important to understand as they will affect recruitment strategies, and the development of the employer brand Fourthly, there will be a trend to more regular employee survey measures, as well as more immediate results and reporting back to line managers. These managers in turn will be expected to produce action plans to improve employee engagement, and such action plans will be more high profile than in the past. This requires good IT and deployment of web-enabled tools for the pro-active management of employee engagement. Finally, what of the specialist companies that currently provide services in employee engagement and talent management surveys and software? We believe that they will need evolve from pure survey providers to more holistic support partners. They will need to offer complete end-to-end employee engagement programmes consisting of the survey process and its communication, database management over time, reporting and IT systems, plus interactive web development, deployment and management. Some of us are already doing this, others are still pursuing the methods of the past. More information: Miles Couchman is Managing Director of Survey Solutions, a specialist company working in employee engagement measurement and talent management. Survey Solutions works for well over 100 clients a year across a wide range of business and industrial sectors.
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