Is the search for employee engagement a failed experiment or a promise yet to be realized? Join this webinar to learn more.​ http://www.humancapitalgrowth.com/employee-engagement-surveys-driver-or-a-waste-of-time.html

1. Employee Engagement Surveys
Driver or a Waste of Time?

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Global Human Capital Trends 2016
Source: Deloitte University Press

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CEO Concerns about Employee Engagement (EE)
Source: KPMG (2016) Now or Never. 2016 Global CEO Outlook.

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Agenda
• What is employee engagement (EE)?
• What do EE surveys measure?
• What does EE predict?
• Scientific view on employee engagement
• Recommendations

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Concerns with EE Surveys
HR-Management
Stagnant engagement
levels
Employees
No change as a result of
the survey
“Personally, I am sick to death of surveys to
“check how our employees are feeling about
things”. They are a waste of my time, minor
changes are intoduced to grab a headline
and the big issues get pushed to the back
through a “requiring more analysis”
approach which kicks it into the long grass.”
I know our leaders are concerned with our
employee engagement scores…not sure
they match realities on the ground. I am
concerned about getting side tracked when
there are other bigger issues that need to
be dealt with…
Lack of accurate insights Lack of actionable insights

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“Hard evidence is mounting that contrary to popular belief, engagement doesn't
drive performance. In fact, the inverse is true. Performance drives
engagement.”
"There is a massive industry behind the belief that if a company drives up
engagement productivity will increase.
Inability to drive value
Organizational Concerns

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$$$$$
Total Addressable market of employee surveys:
$35 to $75 Billion
Company spend: $50,000- $1,000,000
Source: http://blog.thestarrconspiracy.com/employee-engagement-and-market-share-the-74-billion-question

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Value of EE Surveys
Insightful Actionable Drive value

10. Are Employee Engagement
Surveys worth it?
?

11. Employee Engagement Trends

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United States: Employee engagement 2002 to 2012
Source: Gallup; ID 261240
18% 19% 19% 18%
20% 20%
15% 15%
17% 17% 17%
52% 52% 53% 54%
51% 50%
55%
59%
54% 55%
53%
30% 29% 28% 28% 29% 30% 30%
26%
29% 28%
30%
0.0%
10.0%
20.0%
30.0%
40.0%
50.0%
60.0%
70.0%
2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002
Shareofrespondents
Actively disengaged Not engaged Engaged

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2015 Employee Engagement Landscape Study

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Conflicting story on the state of
employee engagement at work

17. How is Employee Engagement
Defined?

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Definition (Vendor)
PWC: The extent to which employees are motivated to contribute to business success and are
willing to apply discretionary effort to accomplish tasks important to the achievement of business
goals.
Deloitte: An employee’s job satisfaction, loyalty, and inclination to expend discretionary effort toward
organizational goals. It predicts individual performance and drives business outcomes.
Aon Hewitt: The psychological state and behavioral outcomes that lead to better performance…[it
includes] affective and continuance commitment, motivation, and organizational citizenship
behaviors…required for optimal performance and productivity.
Gallup: …employees care about the future of the company and are willing to invest the
discretionary effort to see that the organization succeeds.

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Models of Engagement (Vendor)
Motivation
Discretionary
effort/OCB
Commitment
Goal achievement
Performance
Productivity
Business
Performance
Customer
SatisfactionLoyalty
Job Satisfaction
DRIVERS
OUTCOMES
Safety
Turnover
Engagement
Psychological State Value

20. The Outcomes of Employee
Engagement

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PRODUCTIVITY

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http://www.theacsi.org/national-economic-indicator/us-overall-customer-satisfaction
Customer Satisfaction

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http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/osh.pdf
Safety

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Turnover
https://www.bls.gov/web/jolts/jlt_labstatgraphs.pdf

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Companies with top quartile engagement levels (72% or above) have 50% higher total shareholder
return (TSR) than the average company
Companies with bottom quartile engagement levels (50% or lower) have 50% lower TSR than the
average company.
Disengaged Moderately Engaged Highly Engaged
Did not meet
sales targets
Exceeded sales
targets
Are they
disengaged
or poor performers
or both?
Engagement and Total Share Holder Return
Engagement and Sales Performance

27. Lack of Clarity

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Questions
• Are those who are disengaged, poor performers?
• Does engagement lead to performance or does
performance lead to engagement?
• What is the lead/lag time between engagement and
performance?

29. Science-based Perspective on
Engagement

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Engagement (Psychological)
William Kahn introduced the concept of
engagement in 1990
Engagement is the extent to which employees are
psychologically present or absent from work. This
influences performance and extent to which
employees are content with their role.

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Science-based perspective
Employee Well-being
ENGAGEMENT BURNOUT
Leads to
health
impairments
Leads to
motivation

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Engagement
Psychological presence
or absence from work
Think (Absorbed)
Feel (Excited)
Act (energetic)
ENGAGEMENT
Job Performance
(job duties and
helping)
EXPERIENCE EFECTIVENESS

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Burnout
Energized,
fulfilled, and
meaningful
Exhausted, cynical,
and detachedJob Demands
ENGAGEMENT BURNOUT
1. Employees who are engaged and performing at one point in time, can experience burnout because
of the job conditions.
2. A person can go from engagement to burnout, and back to being engaged as things improve
3. If you can control job demand, you can prevent burnout

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PRODUCTIVITY

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Surprises
VENDOR MODELS
Performance Employee well-being and
performance
SCIENCE-BASED MODELS
Focus

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Surprises
VENDOR MODELS
Engagement and disengagement
measured on the same scale
Engagement and burnout measured
using different scale
SCIENCE-BASED MODELS
Measure

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Surprises
VENDOR MODELS
Dashboard
Move/exit disengaged employees
Diagnose
Intervene before
engagement turns into
burnout
SCIENCE-BASED MODELS
Actions

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Recommendation
VALUE (Driving outcomes)
• Move from explaining the past to predicting the future
INSIGHTS (what you measure)
• Move from measuring engagement only to measuring
engagement and burnout
• Move from measuring snap shots to trends over shorter
periods of time
ACTIONS (What you do with the data)
• Move from dashboarding to detecting and preventing

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EMPLOYE ENGAGEMENT SURVEYS
Promise delivered or failed experiment?
Promise yet to be delivered

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40
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For a free one hour consultation email us at info@humancapitalgrowth.com

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Thank you!
Izabela Widlak, M.S.
Izabela_Widlak@humancapitalgrowth.com
Shreya Sarkar-Barney, Ph.D.
Shreya@humancapitalgrowth.com