Raise Your Team's Employee Engagement Score

Raise Your Teams Employee Engagement Score, by Richard P. Finnegan, Amacom 2018

What are the signs of lagging employee engagement?  Finnegan notes that while surveys measuring employee engagement may be administered very infrequently, leaders lose touch with key trigger points.  But his key question, "How much money is engagement worth?" makes this topic even more timely.  

It turns out that according to Gallup data, organizations that scored in the top 25 percent and the bottom 25 percent of employee engagement show big operating differences.  The more engaged organizations showed these improvements:

*  22 percent in profitability

*  21 percent in productivity

*  10 percent in customer ratings

*  41 percent in quality defects

*  48 percent in safety incidents

*  41 percent in patient safety incidents

*  37 percent in absenteeism

*  28 percent in shrinkage

Turnover was lower by 65 percent  in low-turnover organizations, and by 25 percent in high-turnover organizations.  Very persuasive.

As if these stats weren't convincing enough, Finnegan offers additional examples of language and trust issues that become organization turning points in engagement dynamics that turn out to be not all that fuzzy.  Finally, the author offers advice to managers and supervisors who want to slowly improve employee engagement, starting with:

*  identify and recruit new hires likely to stay engaged, with the help of referrals from current, satisfied employees and social media

*  deelop a unique employee value proposition, stating their own leadership style and objectives

*  hire employees who self-engage and interview for core engagement competencies, including resiliency

*  embed the promise of engagement into a job offer

*  leverage the trust-building power of stay interviews that ask employees, among other vital questions:  What are you learning here?  What do you want to learn?

*  uncover barriers to engagement, such as "too much work," and implement smart, one-on-one solutions

*  give regular, honest feedback on employee performance

*  apply better metrics, measure progress, forecast future engagement.

Mill Girl verdict:  in a short 116 pages Finnegan manages to cover the language of engagement and disengagement, along with simple, powerful solutions to turn things around, or at least clarify the weak spots.  Good quick read.