Engaging your people for 2009 business performance

ENGAGING YOUR PEOPLE FOR

BUSINESS PERFORMANCE

Engaging your People for maximizing business performance.

As 2009 seems to become a question mark in our minds and in our business

reports, there is one question every executive I have spoken with does: How

can we deal with next year’s market challenges? But at the same time,

everybody wants the same: maximize the organization's business

performance. Cutting costs has been the traditional driver and it seems to

have a very short-term effect. When you are cutting marketing investments,

people's direct costs or just fringe benefits, you are actually cutting the

employees’ value proposition you have promised. They are your front-line

weapon against this “crisis” and you are actually sparing on your munitions.

Employee engagement has never been more important than at this moment.

And maybe the question the executives should be doing is: can we afford not

to spend time on people engagement right now? It was never more

imperative to increase the productivity and capabilities of your teams; to look

for more effective, more innovative, more sustainable ways of doing things; to

exceed customers expectations and to have your people fully motivated and

engaged with their work.

Engaging Your People For Business Performance2

“We know what has to be done, but we

just can’t carry out our plans. Our employees aren’t

getting the job done. How can we engage people for

business goals?


ARE YOUR EMPLOYEES ENGAGED TO YOUR

ORGANIZATION’S GOALS?

Executing a strategy can be far more difficult than defining a

strategy. To align these two steps, engagement represents a

critical factor.

People that feel Inspired, committed, moved, passionate,

energetic and proactive at work are normally engaged to the

company and its business goals. Nowadays’ organizations

need employees that work vigorously motivated to support

its goals. They become proactively present solutions, they do

the “extra mile” just because they feel part of a special

mission or a “community”, they are enthusiastic about their

challenges.

These and other characteristics are vital to any organization

that wish to be successful in the next years. This new values

and behaviors “crisis” will not forgive companies where

people are disengaged from their work and companies.

Jason Associates defines engagement as the way which

employees apply themselves to work with their intellect,

their intelligence and with their passion.

Employees who are engaged through their intelligence take

an active interest in the organization and its activities. They

reflect about their work experiences and shape their own

beliefs about the organization’s employee’s value

proposition. Employees that are engaged through their

intellect are willing to invest their time and efforts in order

to help the organization reach its objectives. Employees that

are engaged through their passion are emotionally involved

with the organization’s goals, people and mission. They will

do more, better and faster than other engaged employees,

as their behaviors are driven by their beliefs.

59% UNDECIDED EMPLOYEES

The Undecided are the dangerous ones.

They are neither engaged nor disengaged.

They do their work, they fit the normal

company’s cultural behaviors, but, they

will never give you the extra effort you need to

ensure co-working, customer and organizational

effectiveness and business performance. The big

problem is that normally half of the employees are

Undecided. You need to pass them to the engaged

area.

8% DISENGAGED EMPLOYEES

Disengaged employees are also easy

to identify, despite their attempts to

cover their disengagement. They will

never do the extra mile and will show no

excitement about colleague, company or even

costumer achievements.

33% ENGAGED EMPLOYEES

Engaged employees are the ones

who turn up to work each day

looking forward to the day’s activities

willing to help out whenever needed.


You know what to do with engaged and

disengaged employees. But you just can’t allow

your company to have undecided people. They

have to make choices as they represent more

than half of your workforce.

NORMAL ENGAGEMENT DISTRIBUTION

Based upon statistical analysis of the survey responses of

more than 20,000 employees from over 200 organizations.

Survey by JRA Institute

STEP 1Employees Engagement & Corporate Context analysis

STEP 2

Engagement Initiatives Corporate DNASense of

CommunityPeople

Development

STEP 3Measure Employee Reaction

Engagement

STEP 4Measure & adjustEmployee Performance Indicators

Intention to stay

Customer Satisfaction

Productivity Innovation

STEP 5Measure & adjustBusiness Performance Indicators

Lower Turnover

Less Absenteeism

Lower costs with hiring

Profit per employeeNew products, methodologies, processes, etc.

STEP 6Measure Return on Engagement Investment

Higher Profit

Employee Engagement level & drivers

Employee Engagement Key success factors

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT DRIVES YOUR ORGANIZATION TO BETTER PERFORMANCE

Its obvious that engaged employees drive organizations to better business performance. But is it possible to

measure impact of engagement initiatives? The answer is YES. Not only measure but also link these initiatives to

business performance (ex: sales per employee, staff turnover, employee productivity, etc).


Although most executives believe that employee engagement have impact in their business performance, they

simply don’t do anything about it. Executives often believe that they already do an excellent job engaging people or

simply they don’t know how to do it well. We suggest you perform a belief audit, a simple survey throughout the

organization to review the engagement drivers and compare top executives’ opinion with the other employees’

opinion. You might have a surprise.

Organizations must understand what drives

engagement. Not only in an individual level but also the

key success factors of the organizational context. These

steps help you analyze which are the drivers that really

impacts employee engagement and the current

performance of each driver. This way, you can address

your efforts on those with higher probability to improve

and impact your business profit.

The organization must be prepared for an engagement

project. The top management team must support the

initiatives and energize their teams through a constant

and clear communication on the vision and values of the

organization. The organizational culture must be aligned

with the project’s goals (ex: if you promote competition

between team members you will not succeed in trying

to implement co-working initiatives). The organizational

culture should encourage employees to work for the

company’s objectives. An engagement project should be

implemented in cascade, which means that engaging

the top management first will simplify the task of

engaging managers and the rest of the employees.

Finally, Human Resources systems should be in place or

at least be started. Recognition plans, career

development and other basic policies are extremely

relevant for employees’ engagement.

STEP 1EMPLOYEES ENGAGEMENT & CORPORATE CONTEXT ANALYSIS


Find out what are the key drivers of engagement that

are low performing and have a potentially larger impact

in your employees’ engagement. These are the ones

you should start with. They are the quick-wins. You will

deliver results and that will bring great motivation to

continue.

Low Performance

High Impact

Low Performance

Low Impact

High Performance

High Impact

High Performance

Low Impact

PERFORMANCE

IMP

AC

T

Low High

Hig

hLo

w

Some of the Key Engagement Drivers you should

pay attention to:

Enjoyable work that provides a sense of personal

achievement;

Friendly, supportive colleagues;

Work that makes full use of employees’

knowledge and skills

Relation with line manager and key-relations

Good work/life balance

Varied work

Trust in the top level organization members

Career and personal development opportunities

Personal sense of Belonging to the organization

Belief that the company is doing something

worthwhile

Feeling that what we do makes a difference

Being part of a successful team

Recognition for our achievements

Job meets employee’s needs and expectations

Fun in the workplace

“only if the Top

Management of the

organization is

committed you will

have success…”

STEP 2

ENGAGEMENT INITIATIVES - THE THREE LAYERS OF ENGAGEMENT

There are innumerous initiatives that can be put in placed. However, organizations should understand what

are the critical drivers that should be addressed first and then act through all the following engagement layers

in order to achieve a major impact.


Engagement Layer 1 - CORPORATE DNA

A vision and values that clearly define the

organization's purpose, provides employees a real

sense of the ‘big picture’ and the part they play in it.

(ex: regular communication of the values and vision,

align strategy and behaviors to vision and values,

etc). Corporate DNA is also the expected behaviors,

traditions and processes that drive the company to

success. (ex: celebration of successes, internal

communication workflow, recognizing and

rewarding, inspiring performance culture, etc.)

When Corporate DNA is in place, employees trust

and understand the organizational goals and how

they can impact the result; stimulate employees

through direction, recognition and rewarding, and

creates an environment of success.

Engagement Layer 2 - SENSE OF COMMUNITY

Organizational environments where people can feel a

strong sense of belonging, respect, support,

confidence, care, etc. are normally more successful

as they promote an atmosphere for innovation, co-

working and speed on decision making. Usually,

employers adopt a variety of strategies to make the

workplace a fun and enjoyable environment.

Any of these strategies are aimed directly to bring

people together and improve the quality of social

relationships within the organization. (ex: teams that

trust each other are normally more creative in their

approaches as they are not afraid of taking risks in their

small “family”).

Engagement Layer 3 - PEOPLE DEVELOPMENT

By developing not only necessary technical skills for the

role but also interpersonal skills that can impact

employees’ life, you are in fact providing tools that

encourage people to be better human beings. This

means that they will explore their full potential and can

create more value for your organization.

Successful organizations make all their efforts to ensure

that employees’ skills are fully applied in the

organization. Knowledge is shared amongst people and

this knowledge is retained through the creation of

opportunities in the organization. Coaching and

Mentoring programs, job skills training, career

development programs, key talent development

programs, annual reviews adapted to the person and

job’s nature, job sculpting, and many other solutions

should be considered as part of the engagement

equation.

“Engagement strategies help

your organization becoming a

best place to work”

STEP 3 TO 6

MEASURE AND ADJUST PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

– AND RETURN ON ENGAGEMENT

As you put into action the engagement initiatives you

have to create a measuring system that helps you to

collect and analyze all data related with the

engagement and the impact on business and

employee performance.

Some companies already have tools that can be used

for this purpose. Annual employee reviews, 360º

feedback evaluations, employee surveys, etc. But to

guarantee that you are able not only to measure but

also to identify which KPI’s you should adjust, we

suggest you to create a specific measuring system. It

will help you understand the engagement return on

investment faster. Identifying key-employees, key

processes, key customers, key practices, etc. that

should be spread through all the organization. By

providing relevant information to the company’s

leaders you are helping them to take better decisions

and drive their people for success.


Did you know?

Different studies present us the

following results on employee

engagement:

•Engagement Strategies can

increase sales per employee up

to 28% in the first year?

•Engagement Strategies can

reduce employee rotation up

to 32%?

What do these numbers say to you

in your organizational context?

HOW CAN JASON ASSOCIATES HELP YOU

Independently of which are your final objectives, engagement is always an excellent solution for business

growth. It supports your organization’s sustainability, innovation and productivity.


Either you are already developing engagement

strategies or not, Jason Associates can help

organizations in the following engagement projects:

Develop End-to-end engagement strategies;

Perform engagement surveys that helps you

understand the current engagement status of your

organization;

Design and implement engagement initiatives

measuring systems;

Facilitate workshops for engagement initiatives

definition;

Perform engagement corporate talks for top

management;

Support organizations implementing specific, tailor-

made engagement initiatives in one of the three

engagement layers (Corporate DNA, Sense of

Community or People Development)

Independently if your are developing engagement

strategies or not, we suggest you to take the following

key-success factors into consideration:

Guarantee that Top Management is totally committed;

Involve employees in action plan;

Focus your time and resources in the key-drivers;

Always measure your progress;

Create sustainable engagement mechanisms;

JASON ASSOCIATES

Jason Associates is a Strategic Talent Management

consulting firm that combines deep knowledge of

people’s behaviors with expertise in talent attraction,

talent development, talent retention and

organizational transformation. Jason Associates work

closely with organization key-people of the

organization to participate in the challenges of building

and managing talent, and accelerating organizational

performance.


For further information, please contact Jason

Associates at:

[email protected]

www.jasonassociates.com

T: +351 213182930

Av. Liberdade, nº299 – 4º

1250-142 Lisbon

Portugal

www.jasonassociates.com

Engaging your people for 2009 business performance

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