Many CEOs are taking engagement scores seriously and are actively mandating these measurements on an annual basis and then pore over the results to check out:
1. If the scores have improved because this can substantiate and provide hard evidence to support some of their strategies
2. Which business units are fairing the best and which are dragging down the overall score
3. How they have faired against the best practice industry benchmarks.
Now all of these actions are highly admirable and can bring about a persistent focus on the engagement of people.
In my experience there is one message that seems to slip through without enough attention – if we have a 60% engagement rate, which many business leaders consider a good rating; then this means 40% of our salary expenditure is going to people who are just “turning up”. These people are NOT engaged and are not giving of their best and by definition are the “weakest links” in their teams and in the organisation; and remember a team can only ever be as good as its weakest link!
There does not seem to be enough direct accountability on shifting these people who are just turning up into team members who feel significant and want to give of their best – and thereby are engaged.
What if these same CEOs took a look at the amount of money currently being spent on people who are just turning up and decided to invest a certain percentage of this into the development of their leaders with the high priority task of dramatically improving this level of engagement? So using the example above they would take 40% of the annual salaries and wages expenditure and understand this is an even bigger burden on the bottom line because the productivity and potential is missing from this expenditure – it is a true “dead cost”.
Use this number explicitly to make leaders accountable for capturing the hearts and souls of their people so they come to work feeling engaged and inspired to deliver while being an integral part of a high performing team and organisation. Inspire these leaders to drive leverage from this 40% – people not engaged – with the aim of creating active leverage from them – higher productivity, higher levels of activity, relationships that produce better outcomes.
We do not see this direct link being made with enough accountability and rigour. Please share examples of where you ARE seeing it – would love to hear of your positive examples.
