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EEA White Paper Links Engagement with Profitability

“Economics of Engagement” report discusses how to define and quantitatively measure the benefits of employee and customer engagement.

According to a new report from the Enterprise Engagement Alliance (EEA), motivating workforces to improve performance can increase corporate profits – and boost the economy.  Entitled “The Economics of Engagement,” the report, written by Allen Schweyer of the Human Capital Institute, provides a comprehensive analysis of research in the emerging field of “Enterprise Engagement” and offers how-to information on recently developed 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. Among other things, the report looks at:

• The cost of employee disengagement (i.e., the $350 billion lost annually in  productivity, accidents, theft and turnover);
• Evidence of the link between employee engagement and better performance, citing studies from Gallup, Towers Perrin, Sirota Consulting, and Watson Wyatt;
• Proof that the financial performance of companies improves when employee engagement is a priority;
• Case studies of companies such as IBM, Sears, and Costco which have benefited demonstrably from enterprise engagement.

“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 the EEA’s Bruce Bolger. “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. 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.”

For a downloadable copy of the EEA’s white paper on “The Economics of Engagement,” click here.

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Engagement Strategies Magazine Offers Enterprise Engagement Industry Report

Engagement Strategies Magazine has put together a comprehensive “State of the Industry” report on the emerging business of “enterprise engagement.”

Motivation Strategies magazine was recently relaunched as Engagement Strategies Magazine to focus on the emerging field of Enterprise Engagement. The rechristened publication will cover engagement in all its various forms and functions, from research, leadership, motivation and technology to products, programs, destinations, and communications – a comprehensive approach focused on maximizing performance and profits through people.

“Enterprise Engagement offers a powerful means by which organizations of all sizes can improve financial results by identifying and building relationships with all of the people that are critical to their success, both internally and externally,” says Jim Kilmetis of Selling Communications Inc., publisher of Engagement Strategies Magazine.

As part of its educational effort, Selling Communications also offers a special “e-book” on “The State of the Industry” to provide a look at what key players in the Engagement industry have to say about this key corporate strategic philosophy that has the power to transform the relationship between companies, employees, channel partners, and customers, ushering in a new era of productivity and profitability.

To take a look at the Engagement e-book entitled “The State of the Industry, click here. For more information on Engagement Strategies Magazine, go to its website at www.engagementstrategiesonline.com.

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Use R&R Programs to Drive Engagement for Economic Recovery

The Recognition Council of the Incentive Marketing Association is offering a new white paper on employee engagement. Titled “2010 Recognition Rx: Engaging Employees for Economic Recovery.” It argues that a recognition and rewards program directly addresses the urgent need to drive performance and ensure that everyone is working to meet the right goals.

Budgets have been reduced, plans have changed, and compensation and reward programs are being re-examined. In light of these changes, evolving recognition and reward budgets raise major questions:

• What budget is appropriate and/or necessary in the new economy?
• What are the program goals and how should they affect budget allocation?
• How should programs and budgets be constructed for maximum impact?

The white paper provides direction on how to put together a business-focused reward and recognition strategy that ties directly into a corporation’s business objectives, mission, and values, and can be seen as an investment rather than as an expense. It also looks at low-cost engagement strategies that will keep budget costs down.

For more information on the IMA’s Recognition Council, visit its website at www.recognitioncouncil.org. To download a copy of the “Engaging Employees” white paper, click here.

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Forum Research Study Looks at People-First Leadership

A recent study from the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement (Forum) takes a close look at issues of leadership from a people perspective. It asserts that the most important part of leadership embodies the primacy of people, particularly employees. In contrast to an industrial-era approach to leadership, a people-first framework best fits into the emerging information and service economy.

Titled Leadership and the Importance of People in Organizations: Enriching Employees and Connecting People, the study draws on a constituent-based approach to leadership that balances the needs of multiple constituents – employees, consumers, shareholders, and the community at large – to ensure that the needs of each constituency are met. It also uses the more traditional framing of leadership with respect to organizational vision and the alignment of competing interests.

At the heart of the study is a focus on employee enrichment, and advancing the overall quality of employees’ lives. It also provides recommendations for implementing people-centered leadership, including the need for employee insight, empowerment, connectivity, people-based organizational structures, and the measurement of employee well-being.

For more information on the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement, visit its website at www.performanceforum.org. For a look at the Forum’s Leadership study, click here.

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Managers Need To Get Educated on the Causes of Disengagement

Engagement doesn’t just happen, and in most organizations frontline management has a lot to do with the success – or failure – of an organization’s engagement efforts. Recent research from the Gallup organization on employee disengagement in Germany, for instance, suggests that highly motivated people can become disengaged when their supervisors don’t ask for their opinions, don’t offer feedback, show little interest in them as human beings, and ask them to do jobs that are not suited to them. “Quitting is almost always a statement against the immediate supervisor,” says Gallup strategic consultant Marco Nink. For a more extensive interview with Nink on the supervisor’s impact, click here.

Another error that frontline managers sometimes make is to focus their performance improvement efforts on employees’ weaknesses, rather than focus on their strengths. But Gallup research shows that the worst thing managers can do is to ignore their employees. According to Gallup researchers Brian Brim and Jim Asplund, “If your manager focuses on your strengths, your chances of being actively disengaged at work are only 1 in 100. If your manager ignores you, however, you are twice as likely to be actively disengaged than if your manager focuses on your weaknesses. Being overlooked, it seems, is more harmful to employees’ engagement than having to discuss their weaknesses with their manager.” For more on Brim and Asplund’s research and conclusions, click here.

To be successful in the evolving world marketplace, and even in their own workplace, leaders and managers must begin to understand their constituents’ state of mind, says Gallup’s chairman and CEO Jim Clifton. Human decision making is more emotional than rational, the research suggests, and “State of mind is everything that matters to leadership: talent, innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity, optimism, determination, and all of the other things that create economic growth,” Clifton says. Successful leaders, he adds, will be those who can quantify those states of mind to better understand the emotions that cause behavior. “If you are making decisions without understanding what your constituency is thinking, you are making bad decisions,” he says. For more of Clifton’ comments on “The Next Generation of Leadership,” click here.

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