Why managers are crucial to increasing engagement: Identifying steps managers can take to engage their workforce
| Pages | 24-27 |
| Published date | 01 January 2006 |
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14754390680000863 |
| Author | Ray Baumruk |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
24 Volume 5 Issue 2 January/February 2006
NGAGEMENT IS A WAY to increase the
productivity of your talent pool. Managers need
to create the environment where employees feel
more passionate about their work and exhibit
the behaviors that organizations need to drive better
results, not only for the organizations, but also for
employees as individuals.
Bob Gorman, principal of Robert E. Gorman
Communication, speaks to Ray Baumruk of Hewitt
Associates, a global HR outsourcing and consulting firm,
about Hewitt’s experiences working with thousands of
organizations worldwide. The focus: to gauge the key
areas in which HR should work on improvements to
help the function and the business operate more
effectively. Traditionally, employee research has
concentrated primarily on gauging employee satisfaction.
But over the past decade or so, the focus has changed to
measuring employee engagement.
Bob Gorman: Why the switch from employee
satisfaction to engagement?
Ray Baumruk: We reviewed data from the late 80s and
early 90s and discovered that, in many cases, employee
satisfaction was really a measure of “how people like it
here” as opposed to measuring behaviors that will help
organizations become more successful for employees,
shareholders and customers. So, we turned to
identifying the types of behavior that would actually
have an impact on results. This was the genesis of our
work on engagement.
BG: What does your research show about the effects
of engagement on an organization’s results?
RRBB::Hewitt has worked with nearly 2,000 companies
representing about four million employees and has
established that companies with higher engagement
scores have higher total shareholder returns. For
example, companies in which 60 percent (or more) of
the workforce is engaged have average five-year total
returns to shareholders (TSR) of more than 20 percent.
That compares to companies where only 40 to 60
percent of the employees are engaged, which have an
average TSR of about six percent (see Figure 1, right).
Organizations with higher engagement levels also tend
to have lower employee turnover.
BG: What kind of employee behaviors improve results?
RB: Engaged employees consistently demonstrate three
general behaviors.
1. Say: the employee advocates for the organization to
co-workers, and refers potential employees and
customers.
2. Stay: the employee has an intense desire to be a
member of the organization despite opportunities
to work elsewhere.
3. Strive: the employee exerts extra time, effort and
initiative to contribute to the success of the business.
Why managers
are crucial to
increasing
engagement
Identifying steps managers can take to
engage their workforce
Working with organizations around the world to
calculate the top drivers of employee engagement,
Hewitt’s Ray Baumruk knows how businesses can
harness such knowledge to become more successful.
Here, he explains to Bob Gorman why the manager is
critical to increasing engagement and improving
performance and profitability.
Ray Baumruk, Hewitt Associates
An interview by Bob Gorman Jr., Robert E. Gorman
Communication E
To continue reading
Request your trial