A survey conducted by Mercer with over 160 members of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found that 78% believe employee engagement is important or extremely important to their organization in the current economic and business climate. However, only 45% of respondents report that their organization is actually attempting to measure it. The most common forms of measurement are surveys (85%), focus groups (42%) and management interviews (25%). Researchers say businesses that don't research employee engagement often make the wrong choices concerning benefits and HR policy, and that it's essential that leaders take employee engagement seriously. Download key findings at: @@http://www.mercer.com/summary.htm?idContent=1375790
The Enterprise Engagement Alliance will hold its first annual EEA Networking Expo at the Doral Arrowwood Hotel Conference Center in Rye Brook, NY, June 3-5, 2010. The event is designed to help organizations profit from engaging their key audiences and engineer new ways to use rewards and recognition to drive performance. A slate of interactive education sessions will enable attendees to share the latest and most effective policies, procedures, strategies and tactics in the field of engagement, offering unique, actionable ideas and information they can use to boost performance and profitability, and build relationships with all key audiences. Exhibitors representing the top products, programs and performance-improvement companies will be available during eight hours of dedicated exhibit time, as well as at other networking events and activities during the EEA Networking Expo, to share their extensive expertise with attendees. The Doral Arrowwood is convenient to all major metropolitan areas in the Boston/NYC/Philadelphia/Washington, DC corridor, located only 10 minutes from Westchester Country Airport and 40 minutes from New York's LaGuardia airport. For more information about the Enterprise Engagement Alliance Networking Expo, go to @@http://www.eeaexpo.com
Is there a payoff to a company's employee engagement efforts? Can companies expect a return on their investment in efforts to engage employees in their work, with their companies, and with their company's mission? There is and they can. A recent webinar sponsored by the Human Capital Institute and the Enterprise Engagement Alliance provided a close look at both the cost to companies of workers who are disengaged, and the return on value they can earn by engaging their work force. The event featured Rodger Stotz, chief research officer of the Incentive Research Foundation, and Jim Dittman, president of Dittman Incentive Marketing. Their topic: "Return on Value by Engaging Talent: What Leaders Can Do." The webcast focused on the economic reasons to engage talent and goes beyond leaders who believe in ROI, to what leaders can do to create value from talent engagement. The speakers offered examples of leaders and organizations that excel at engagement and insight into achieving high levels of engagement in your own organization. Specifically, Stotz and Dittman say, organizational leaders can support their company's engagement efforts and boost their bottom lines, by:
Interested in learning more? Click here to visit the Human Capital Institute Incentives and Engagement Practice Area website. Or click here to download a recording of the "Return on Value by Engaging Talent" webinar.
According to the latest Ouch Point survey from Opinion Research Corporation (ORC), employers may face an exodus of workers once the job market improves if they don't ramp up their employee engagement efforts. As many as 80% of those respondents who are currently employed would consider leaving their current job if presented with other opportunities. Fully one quarter of respondents (25%) said they have plans to leave their present employer once the job market stabilizes. Employees in the 18-34 age bracket were found likeliest to change jobs (36%). "Given the high percentage of respondents who would consider leaving their present positions to pursue other opportunities, many employers may find themselves faced with serious turnover issues when the job market opens up," says Lisa Wojtkowiak, of ORC's Employee Engagement practice. "To prevent this, employers will need to focus on increasing their employees' level of engagement." Wojtkowiak says that even if they don't intend to leave, disengaged employees can undermine the success of an organization by wreaking havoc in two significant ways. First, they're not strongly committed to achieving a company's goals and objectives and may not be motivated to act in accordance with its mission and values. Second, they tend to create a less than favorable impression of their company as a potential employer in the marketplace. ORC's Ouch Point series examines the tolerance thresholds of Americans in common scenarios they face daily in both their professional and personal lives. For more information, visit @@http://www.orc-ouchpoint.com
The following is a guest post on the EEA blog from Steven Green, President of PollStream, a Toronto-based company that develops and delivers engagement and community-building solutions to help leaders tap into Social Capital:
"Recognition improves as the people giving recognition improve." I like this kind of wisdom – it forces me to swirl the words around my mouth a few times before the full flavor and meaning become clear. Roy believes that giving good recognition takes practice – it is not simply a matter of saying good job or telling a person they have received a raise. Yes, these are great moments, but there are ways to finesse the moment to make it last longer and burn brighter. One concrete example that Roy provided had to do with communicating a promotion. His idea is to present a letter to the employee detailing why the person has been promoted – outlining the characteristics, behaviours and achievements that resulted in the promotion. If I had received such a letter from my managers at the time of my past promotions, I can assure you that the letter would have been AS impactful as the promotion itself. Getting the job is great for sure, but we all know that someone has to fill it. But… by sharing your thoughts about why you believe I am the person for the job is a deeper and far more special form of recognition.
To read more blog postings on Engagement, go to: @@http://www.enterpriseengagement.org/blog/
The June/July issue of Engagement Strategies Magazine will be mailing in a few weeks. Here's a preview of what you'll find inside:
A pair of articles examines this critical building block of engagement from two different perspectives. The first, Internal Collaboration: Why Partnering Works, by Rodd Wagner and Gale Muller, Ph.D., notes that great partnerships don't just happen. Whether your joint mission is to build a great company, coach a team, improve the government, do something spectacular for a charity, or any other worthy goal, all successful partnerships share the same crucial ingredients. The second article, External Collaboration: When You Can't Do It All, looks at some of the companies in the engagement marketplace that have successfully used collaboration to expand their reach through alliances and partnerships. To make sure you get your copy of Engagement Strategies Magazine, go to @@http://www.enterpriseengagement.org/account/login/ and update your subscription today!
Sue Gordon has been with American Airlines for over 20 years. As a result of her vast and varied experience, she not only knows American Airlines and the American Way very well, she also understands very clearly how the company's internal communications and branding efforts work to promote employee engagement and employee retention, while at the same time contributing to a more positive customer experience. In other words, she's seen it all – what works and what doesn't. "From 2001 to today, our industry has essentially been in turmoil," she says. "But we found the most traction by involving employees in the business. This is where we've seen the greatest process improvements and the greatest cost savings. It's where we get our best ideas and the greatest amount of buy-in, by involving our employees from soup to nuts in the process." Read more in the next issue of Engagement Strategies Magazine – coming in May.
One of the greatest opportunities to increase corporate profits – and subsequently boost the economy – lies in motivating workforces to improve performance, drive greater customer engagement and ultimately increase revenue, according to a new report from the Enterprise Engagement Alliance (EEA) and the Human Capital Institute (HCI). The Enterprise Engagement Alliance is a coalition of companies and associations dedicated to promoting the importance of engagement, founded last year by the Human Capital Institute, Peppers & Rogers Group, 1to1® Media and Selling Communications, Inc. Entitled The Economics of Engagement, the report provides a comprehensive analysis of research in the field of Enterprise Engagement and offers how-to information on benchmarking tools that can quantitatively measure the benefits of employee and customer engagement. These measurement tools are critical to demonstrate the bottom-line impact of enterprise engagement, both to corporations and to the economy as a whole, using financial language that senior executives, investors and economists are accustomed to. "One of the most encouraging findings of this report is the revelation that vast reserves of overall performance potential are essentially hiding in plain sight," says Bruce Bolger of the Enterprise Engagement Alliance. "Engaging the people that companies deal with on a day-to-day basis – both internally and externally – in a comprehensive, compelling and connected way will create a result that is more than just the sum of its parts. Naturally, as with any such investment, the return needs to be demonstrated to decision makers, and there's a growing body of evidence in the engagement arena that does just that." Get your copy of the report >>
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