People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1 - 27

A Note on Employee
Engagement
There is no doubt that employee
engagement-an outcome that has
been variously defined-is an important asset for any organization.
Many of our clients tell us that, after
measuring and trying to influence
employee engagement directly for
some time, progress is disappointing-either on engagement or the business results they had hoped would
improve as a consequence.
Our research tells us that where motivation is low, many other things are
broken. And where we see high motivation, the opposite is true.
This leads us to two distinct views:

The hallmark of the first, or leader-driven,
recipe is the presence, at all of an organization's levels, of talented, high-potential leaders who are set free to figure out how to
deliver results and are held accountable for
doing so. This open, trusting culture is typical
of highly decentralized organizations or of
new businesses, where the resolve of strong
leaders, effectively multiplied by their peers
across the organization, is essential to create
something from nothing.
While most organizations use career opportunities to motivate employees, companies in
this cluster use career opportunities as a
leadership-development practice. Role modeling and real experience are more important
than passing along sage lessons.
Organizations following the second, or
market-focused, recipe tend to have a strong
external orientation toward not only customers but also competitors, business partners,
regulators, and the community.
These companies strive to be product innovators, shape market trends, and build a portfolio of solid, innovative brands to stay ahead
of the competition. The best ones both

respond to demand and develop products that
help shape it (a strong recent example would
be Apple as it reshaped several consumertechnology markets). They have a shared
vision and the strategic clarity to ensure that
employees explore the right market opportunities, as well as strong financial management
to provide individual accountability and to
ensure that responses to market trends are in
fact profitable.
The third recipe, which we call execution
edge, includes companies that stress continuous improvement on the front line, allowing
them to raise quality and productivity constantly while eliminating waste and inefficiency. These companies place a heavy
emphasis on sharing knowledge across
employees and sites-not just as a way to
foster innovation, but, paradoxically, also as
the primary way to drive standardization.
Knowledge sharing helps to manage the frequent trade-offs between the top-down need
for network-wide consistency and bottom-up
encouragement of employees; without it, the
best ideas might not get disseminated across
different units of an organization. Such companies are unlike market-focused ones, which
push alignment and consistency more

* First, employee engagement
results from getting a number of
other things right. Over a decade of
research tells us that a simultaneous focus on direction, accountability, coordination and control,
external environment, leadership,
innovation, learning, capabilities,
and climate need to accompany a
focus on motivation to achieve top
health.
* Second, companies that attempt to
influence engagement alone may
be working on the symptom rather
than the cause. Consequently,
working on employee engagement
in isolation invites the disappointment of failure.

VOLUME 38/ISSUE 1 - 2015

People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1