Employee engagement isn't as clear cut as you think. Lee Witcher and Rhonda Boyle walk you through the realities of employee engagement and strategies of driving productivity and happy employees at work.

1. The Reality of Engagement:
Why I Can’t Get My
Employees to Care

2. Gallup Research - The Promise

3. Gallup Engagement
● Customer loyalty
● Profitability
● Productivity
● Turnover
● Safety incidents
● Shrinkage (theft)
● Absenteeism
● Quality (defects)

4. Top vs Bottom Quartile
● 10% higher customer loyalty
● 21% higher productivity
● 22% higher profitability
● 65% lower employee turnover
>>> How can we get more engagement?

5. ● Picnic
● Night on the Town
● Bring Your Kid to Work Day
● Employee Day at the Zoo
Company Events

6. Community / Charity
● Park Clean-up Day
● Christmas Toy Drives
● Pay-it-Forward Credits

7. ● In the Trenches
● Public Recognition Or Personal Milestones
● Suggestion Box / Questions to Upper Management
● Focus Groups
Communication Initiatives

8. Bribes
● Extra Vacation Days
● Tuition Refund
● Gym / Club Membership

9. Silliness
● Build a Sandwich Competition
● Scavenger Hunt
● 7th Inning Stretch with Fight Song

10. Spending On Employee Engagement
● $720 million/year and growing (Bersin 2012)
● $46 billion/year on employee incentives
(Incentive Marketing Association)

11. Have We Moved Engagement?

12. Engagement By Group In 2014
● Overall: 31.5%
● Managers: 38.4%
By Generation:
● Traditionalists: 42.2%
● Baby Boomers: 32.7%
● Generation X: 32.2%
● Millennials: 28.9%

13. Business Fads To Drive Growth
● TQM
● MBO
● Process Re-Engineering
● Matrix Management
● Core Competency
● Employee Engagement (?)

14. Productivity Growth Is Slowing

15. Technology Driving Productivity
● The use of robots within manufacturing accounted for
10 percent of total GDP growth and 16 percent of labor
productivity growth while accounting for just 2.25
percent of the total assets. (Brookings Institute, 1993-
2007 study)
● The impact of IT is estimated to be twice that of
robotics.

16. Why Engagement Is So Important?
● Competition is global.
● Across the globe companies are getting
productivity gains due to automation.
● We are recognizing that getting more from
human capital is the last great frontier.

17. Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends
Deloitte’s 2015 report is one of the largest
longitudinal studies of talent, leadership, and
HR challenges and readiness around the world.
The research involved surveys and interviews
with more than 3,300 business and HR leaders
from 106 countries.

18. Current Model
Bad Resources
+
Great Environment
=
Disengagement

19. Deloitte Study: A People Problem!
1. Culture and engagement
2. Leadership (building great leaders)
4. Reinventing HR
5. Workforce on demand
6. Performance management
7. HR Analytics
8. Simplification of work
10. People data everywhere

20. Big Question
What if employees
are NOT the problem?

21. What Creates Engagement? (Kahn)
1. Psychological meaningfulness: a sense that
work is worthwhile and makes a difference
2. Psychological safety: a feeling they were
valued, accepted, and respected and able to
perform in a positive work environment
3. Availability: willingness to do the work

22. Safe Meaningful Work Environment?
● Picnics and company events
● Community or charity interaction
● Communication Initiatives
● Bribes
● Silliness

23. Big Idea!
Great Resources
+
Oppressive Environment
=
Disengagement

24. Where Is The Leverage?
“One implication is that changes in
management practices that increase employee
satisfaction may increase business-unit
outcomes, including profit.”
- JK Harter, Chief Scientist Workplace & Well-Being, Gallup Organization

25. More Gallup Analysis
Gallup estimates that the manager accounts for
at least 70% of the variance in employee
engagement scores across business units.

26. Still More Gallup Analysis
“Organizations fail to choose the candidate with
the right talent for the manager job a whopping
82% of the time. Virtually all companies try to
fix bad managers with training. Nothing fixes a
bad manager.”
*Gallup’s State of the American Manager Report - Analytics and Advice for Leaders

27. Engagement Tied to ROI
Employee engagement has an enormous ROI.
There is tremendous potential for upward
movement in engagement and financial
performance in most corporations.

28. How do we fix the problem?
1. Fix the environment
2. THEN implement training for the employees.

29. Four Major Contribution Killers
● Judgment and non-acceptance
● Lack of transparency
● Unclear job performance expectations
● Micromanagement

30. What if….
What would happen if EVERYONE in your
company was working to improve your
business?

31. Strengths Associates Process Overview
Process for Fixing Environment
Diagnostic Surveys
Strengths Assessment
Culture Change
Process for Training Employees
Coaching
Ideation Process to produce quantifiable result
Generate ROI from Engagement

32. From Training Cost To Profit Center
● Eliminate contribution killers
● Management coaching
● Common language
● Replicable business building ideas
Culture + Contribution
=
Everyone Improving THIS Business

33. When will your engagement rise?
Strengths Associates, LLC
Rhonda Boyle 770-317-6408
Lee Witcher 405-720-1036

34. Resources
● Employee Engagement Drives Growth (Gallup)
● State Of The American Workplace 2012 (Gallup)
● State Of The American Manager 2015 (Gallup)
● Psychological Conditions Of Personal Engagement And Disengagement At
Work (Kahn, 2000)
● Building A Culture: The Importance Of Senior Leadership (Dale Carnegie
Institute)
● Global Human Capital Trends 2015 (Deloitte University Press)
● Business-Unit-Level Relationship Between Employee Satisfaction,
Employee Engagement, and Business Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis
(Journal of Applied Psychology)