ENGAGING YOUR PEOPLE FOR BUSINESS PERFORMANCE
Mar 06, 2016
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?
Engaging Your People For Business Performance3
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.
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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).
Engaging Your People For Business Performance5
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
Engaging Your People For Business Performance6
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.
Engaging Your People For Business Performance7
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.
Engaging Your People For Business Performance8
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.
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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.
Engaging Your People For Business Performance10
For further information, please contact Jason
Associates at:
www.jasonassociates.com
T: +351 213182930
Av. Liberdade, nº299 – 4º
1250-142 Lisbon
Portugal
www.jasonassociates.com