This is the conclusion ofa study by IPSOS (free study but registration required). Studies are certainly coming thick and fast at the start of this year. This one puts an end to a well-established idea (even I believed it): there’s no point in having happy employees, it has no impact on the company’s business.
The assumption has always been that an employee who is satisfied with his working environment works better, serves the customer better, and so all this has a positive impact on the company’s results. In the end, we realised that there was no correlation between the company’s results and employee satisfaction. In fact, the reasoning is a little provocative, because it’s really playing with words.
A satisfied employee may well do nothing all day, be uninvolved and unproductive. On the other hand, a ‘ engaged employee’ will work hard for the company. If I dig a little deeper, I’d say that we’re dealing with very similar concepts, but the first is assessed by the individual’s vision of his situation, and the second by the vision he has of his relationship with his employer. Satisfaction is not an end in itself, it is the consequence of commitment.
Beyond these theoretical digressions, let’s look at what this means in practice.
First of all, here is a definition of ‘employee engagement’. In a nutshell, it’s the employee who’s happy to be there, who ‘puts in the work’ and who believes deeply in what he’s doing. In the end, I like it. All that remains is for the company to change its focus and turn satisfied employees into committed employees. The report gives us 24 levers to achieve this.
- Understanding the company’s goals and objectives
- An understanding of their work and their contribution to the company’s objectives
- A clear message about goals, expectations and instructions
- Job definition
- Adaptation to the job
- Tools and support
- Independence and innovation
- Relations with line management, direct reporting.
- Clear feedback on results
- Recognition
- Honest’, “fair” remuneration
- Opportunities to learn and develop
- Opportunities for advancement
- Leadership practices
- Trust in senior leadership
- Pride in the company and the service/product delivered
- Employee contribution
- Involvement of employees in decision-making
- Work-life balance
- Company culture/ethics
- Team spirit, relations between colleagues
- Involvement
- Safety / well-being
- Fair HR practices
What do I think?
I see a number of key areas:
– an end to the top-down culture
– valuing and taking into account the individual
– transparency
– meaning-based management
– trust in the individual
This necessary change of focus will not be achieved without deeper reflection. Satisfaction was influenced by the broad outlines of the company’s policy and, in the end, we didn’t touch the heart of the company: the logic of decision-making, power, organisation… and the individual was only the subject of the focus.
This new focus will require us to work on sensitive issues and to give greater legitimacy and autonomy to the individual: in short, to trust him or her and recognise him or her as such and not as part of a process.
Rethinking management? Adopting the right tools? Inevitable.
I learned from an IPSOS study that’s focusing on employee’s satisfaction is unuseful, and that we’d better focus on their engagement instead. I won’t comment the whole document since you can find a good analysis here, but let me tell you a few conclusions I made.
I see some main topics :
– top-down culture is dead (or have to been killed 😉 )
– you have to valorize and give consideration to employees, and take them into account.
– need for transparency
– sense-driven management (sensemaking)
– trust in indivuduals
This change in focus will suppose deeper reflexions. Satisfaction depends on “global organization politics”, and while focusing on it we didn’t impact on its core : decision making, power, organization. Indivuals were only a subject.
This new focus implies we work on sensible topics and give more consideration and autonomy to employees : that’s to say to trust them and take them into account as individuals and not anymore as parts of a process.
Rethink management ? Adopt suitable tools ? Unavoidable.
