Employee Engagement Practices at Intuit

© Intuit Inc. All rights reserved.
Employee Engagement at Intuit
By Craig Ramsay
With Martha Finney

© Intuit Inc. All rights reserved. 2
Employee Engagement at Intuit
By Craig S. Ramsay
With Martha I. Finney
Index
Introduction 3
The Case for Employee Engagement 7
The Engagement Journey at Intuit 13
The Foundation for Intuit’s Employee Engagement Culture and Practices 18
Making Employee Engagement Meaningful and Real 30
Steps for Establishing an Employee Engagement Culture in Your Company 41
About Intuit and the Authors 49
Appendix 50
© 2008 Intuit Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be duplicated or
republished without prior written permission from Intuit Inc.

Introduction
In 2000, at a time when the technology sector was experiencing
significant transformation, Intuit was also undergoing vital changes.
A new CEO Steve Bennett, who joined Intuit from G.E. in January
2000, brought with him an enthusiasm for helping to grow the
company by building on the legendary innovation and customer-
driven expertise that founder Scott Cook has instituted at Intuit.
Steve focused his initial efforts on the business with Six Sigma
process excellence practices, and on Intuit’s organizational
capability through leadership development and talent management
practices.
Because Steve shared the Intuit philosophy about “It’s the people…”
which clearly states the prominent role employees play in the
success of the company, it’s not surprising that his initial
stakeholder focus was not solely on customers and shareholders…
but also on our employees! In fact, Steve’s first hire was the senior
head of Human Resources, Sherry Whiteley, to collaborate with him
every step of the way in creating a high performance organization
and a great place to work.
One of his first mandates to leadership was to identify those culture
characteristics, values, behaviors and leadership qualities that
make Intuit great -- not just for our customers but also for our
employees -- and he wanted them to be measurable. The task was
to understand the attributes that make the company a place where
our employees would be excited to come every day, do their very
best work, choose to stay despite tempting offers to go elsewhere,
and treat one another with dignity and respect.
Of course, the idea of developing a motivating and rewarding
workplace environment wasn’t exactly new. The Fortune 100 Best
Companies to Work For list, for instance, had already been well-
established and recognized for many years by that time. But Steve’s
mandate would take Intuit deeper into this field of inquiry, and
through a rigorous journey of self-discovery, establish us as one of
the model practitioners for what would soon be called employee
engagement. This conversation has since gone far beyond any
discussion of employee training, incentives, benefits, and programs,
and has required Intuit to dig deeply into the employee relationship
to examine more complex questions about real passion, inspiration,
dedication, and commitment. We have had to understand how our
people actually think, feel and act when they are “engaged.”

Others have begun to notice what we’re doing to engage our
employees. We’ve been approached by consultants, academics, and
our colleagues in corporate leadership with requests for information
on our particular approach to building an extraordinary workplace
that attracts top talent and keeps people who want to do their best
work. And so, we have decided to create this document that
describes our essential point of view, approaches and the results
we’ve experienced so far.
This is not an exact science. Employee engagement should be an
ever-evolving, developing and improving approach to making a
workplace the best it can be for a company’s valued talent, who will,
in turn, invest their own passion, innovation and dedication to
making the company best in class. With that said, we’re offering a
description of our own approach, which you might be able to borrow
from to build an engagement framework for your company that can
be measured and gets results.
Before we get into the details of Intuit’s employee engagement
practices, let’s set some expectations about employee engagement.
You probably already know that helping employees to be highly
engaged has been proven to benefit essential business interests
such as productivity, customer satisfaction, innovation, quality,
attraction and retention of the best talent available. (We’ll get into
more specific evidence in the next section.) But we’d also like to
invite you to consider what employee engagement is not:
Employee engagement is not a nice thing to do. Skeptics (or at
least people experienced enough to have watched leadership trends
come and go) may be tempted to dismiss employee engagement as
another one of those “soft and fuzzy,” “feel-good” approaches to
people management. To the contrary, focusing on employee
engagement is a commitment to creating a winning workplace
environment -- a commitment that requires staying consistent to the
philosophy, even -- and especially -- in tough economic or industry
times. A commitment to fully engaged workforce will, at times, force
management to make some very tough, painful decisions.
Throughout the company, employees will hold their leaders
accountable for decisions that are made on their behalf, and such
accountability must be monitored. And to some extent this
accountability needs to be made public. And leadership will be
expected to commit itself again and again to the core, driving
principles of its engagement philosophy. If you’re going to do this,
you better be ready for the ride.
Employee engagement is not the sole purview of Human Resources.
Your company should not have anyone whose title is “VP of
“We approach every
discussion and interaction
through a filter of
authenticity and integrity
without compromise. As a
leader, I am always asking
myself, ‘Are people growing
and developing? Is
everyone being heard? Am
I drawing out the best in
every individual? At the end
of the day, have I shown up
as the best I can possibly
be?’”
(Vice President of
Procurement & Real Estate
Services)

Employee Engagement”. Even though employee engagement is
people-oriented, its only chance for true success is absolute
commitment from the top. In fact, the success of an engagement
focus is contingent on the extent to which it is aligned with the
values of the company and is driven by all the top leaders.
Regardless of the various “people” practices, processes and
programs that can be implemented, engaging employees starts with
examining the core values held by the company to understand what
they really mean when they talk about the importance and value of
people to the company. Even more importantly, the mindset and
behavior of leaders must reflect their belief in the importance of
employees. Ask yourself: Do your leaders truly believe that
company success is significantly dependent on consistently meeting
the needs of your people over time. Do their actions and decisions
demonstrate a genuine concern for employee well-being? Can they
sincerely articulate their own point of view about the value
employees bring to the company? “Yes” is the only answer that will
give employee engagement a chance for success in your
organization.
Employee engagement is not about free food or balloons or five-year
tenure plaques. Of course, various benefits, incentives, and other
amenities may be part of your company’s unique motivation and
appreciation culture, but true employee engagement cannot be
“bought.” Most employees’ sense of real engagement is affected by
their total experience of the company, their job, their coworkers and
the work environment over a sustained period, not by the perks that
they receive.
Employee engagement is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. There
may be an employee who enjoys balloons and new coffee mugs. In
that same department you will have another employee who would
prefer to take a few hours off in the afternoon to watch a child’s
soccer game. Some employees cherish their work because they see
how the company serves its customers in a deep and profound way
– or they truly enjoy the people they work with. Others value their
jobs because their steady paychecks enable them to send the first
generation of their family to college. While there are common
expectations of the workplace that apply to most employees, every
individual has their own unique set of needs…and even those needs
can change for the individual over time. So, a wise employee
engagement practice remembers that every individual has a
different set of values and imperatives in life, and as life changes,
so too do those needs. Valuing and honoring these individual
differences is the only way to help each employee be the best they
can be throughout their career journey with the company.

Employee engagement doesn’t require perfection to get started. You
can initiate a focus on employee engagement no matter what kind
of business you’re in or where your company is along its journey.
You don’t have to have a particularly enticing consumer product.
You don’t have to have top-of-the-line furnishings or interior design
in your workplace. You just have to be willing to look unblinkingly at
your company’s current condition and see how you actually value
employees – how well the current experience of your employees
aligns with whatever employee value proposition your leaders have
decided to stand by. And you have to be committed to taking not
only the first step but also stay the course for as long as your
company stands for those values.
Abraham Maslow once said, "What is necessary to change a person
is to change his awareness of himself." While he was originally
talking about individual self-actualization, the same can be said for
the adventure of initiating employee engagement in your company
and the growth and change that comes with making such a
commitment. As you will see in the Intuit story, employee
engagement starts with an exercise in thorough self-discovery. It is
this process that will launch you down the path toward best
practices in employee engagement, and you will return to it
repeatedly in the years to come. Again, you don’t have to be perfect.
But you must be willing to look. And see. And then take action.
So, knowing all of this, the question before us is: Is this an endeavor
you really want to undertake? You don’t have to. Employee
engagement isn’t for every company. But there are a few facts we
will all face in the next few years: A workforce shortage is in your
near future, if it’s not squarely in your lap already. People (especially
top employees) are going to have more choices in the work they do
and the companies they do it for. Consequently, we are going to see
a desperate attempt to attract and keep top talent among
companies across all industries and geographic regions. There are
organizations that will not recognize the importance of regarding
employees as key stakeholders in the success of the enterprise. And
there are firms that will not choose to inspire their people to perform
at their highest levels. And there are workplaces that will not decide
to address the one-at-a-time needs of each employee to feel like a
unique, contributing member of the organization.
The best employees will find companies that will.

The Case for Employee Engagement
Recently, workplace trends watchers have seized upon the notion
that employee engagement is the “new loyalty.” The idea is that the
“old loyalty” died with the passing of the old cradle-to-grave
employment contract, and that in the past, people were “loyal” to
companies because, in return, they had employment for life. With
the vast layoffs, downsizings and corporate reengineering of the
80’s and early 90’s, employees got the message: “You own your
own career. The company will not watch out for you.” Today’s
employees are looking out for Number One. This new, self-
determining frame of reference (which is really just smart career
consumerism) has created a transactional relationship between
workers and their companies. In this new reciprocal version of
loyalty, people will only invest their time and energy with a company
that is committed to satisfying their expectations.
Companies foster this new loyalty when they provide new and
challenging growth opportunities, promote the flexibility for
employees to work hard and have a life, help employees build
community with coworkers and make employees feel proud about
what the company does for customers and the community. In
summary, people will be loyal to a company that is loyal to them.
Engagement can flourish in a company where loyalty flows in both
directions, where both employers and employees are free and
equipped to make independent employment decisions, and where
both employers and employees willingly agree to engage each
other in a shared mission of thriving economically and serving their
ultimate vision, mission and purpose – according to a mutually
agreed-upon set of values and expectations.
Where the old loyalty put the burden of performance and
“measuring up” squarely on the shoulders of the employees, the
mutuality implied in employee engagement shifts some of the load
to the employer. And for leaders not already signed on to the
principles of employee engagement, it’s natural for them to wonder
if the results are worth the extra effort and trouble – especially if
the trade-off (balancing employee and employer needs) is
perceived as a loss of managerial power.
Engagement Research
Over recent years, many academic, consulting and workplace
research firms have studied employee engagement and tracked
the results. And they generally agree that companies willing to

undertake the sustained system-wide overhaul of their
employer/employee relationships have shown measurable return
on their investment and positive changes in their culture and
external competitiveness.
Academic researchers, consulting firms and employers have not yet
reached consensus on an accepted definition or construct that
measures employee engagement. Many concepts are offered as
elements of engagement: Satisfaction, job involvement, intrinsic
motivation, attachment, loyalty, affective commitment, intention to
stay, organizational citizenship behavior and discretionary effort.
A few consulting firms have created models and assessments
based on the established research and have used them to
measure engagement across thousands of employees. In its 2004
Employee Engagement Survey report, the Corporate Leadership
Council, for example, describes engagement as “the extent to
which employees commit to something or someone in their
organization and how hard they work and how long they stay as a
result of that commitment.”
Towers Perrin uses the expression “discretionary effort,” describing
it as the “extra time, brain power, and energy…employees’
willingness and ability to contribute to company success.” In its
2003 Talent Report, Towers Perrin expresses confidence in the
power of engagement: “…Engagement remains the ultimate prize
for employers…at a time when virtually every organization is
struggling with cutbacks and financial pressure -- trying to improve
performance with fewer people and dollars – having a critical mass
of employees who freely give that effort is of tremendous value.”
The report goes on to capture the absolutely essential multi-
dimensional aspect of employee engagement: “Think of it as
human power driving the financial and operational engine. The
greater the power, the better the engine performs on multiple
levels.”
Hewitt Associates does it in three words: Say, stay, strive. In other
words: Engaged employees are more likely to say good things about
their employers to friends, families, and potential customers; they
are more likely to stay with their current companies; and they are
more likely to throw in all the necessary additional effort to help
their companies achieve their shared goals.
How do these characteristics show up in the ways engaged
employees talk about their workplace experience? Generally
speaking, the research supports the following attitudes almost
universally shared by employees who work for companies
“I absolutely love change.
I love to be different. I love
to be Number 1. And my
teams know it. They have
become so creative!”
(Director of Service
Delivery)

committed to the principles of employee engagement,
consequently considering themselves active participants in
achieving their company’s prosperity and their own:
§ I am personally motivated to help my company succeed.
§ I can see the connection between my work and the company’s
overall success.
§ The company uses clear and regular communications to keep me
current on everything I need to know to be successful in my job.
§ My company is committed to equity and fairness.
§ My company’s values align with my personal values.
§ I believe in the future of my company.
§ There is clarity throughout the organization about roles and
responsibilities.
§ I willingly do work above and beyond the call of duty.
§ I respect, trust and admire the people I work with.
§ There is both formal and informal recognition of work well done.
§ I know that my company can quickly adapt to shifts in the economy
or our market.
§ My company cares about customer service and I have what I need
to serve my customers to their satisfaction.
§ I trust and understand the words and actions of senior management
and my direct supervisors.
§ If I’m offered a similar job at a different company, I would choose to
stay where I am.
On the face of it, how can anyone say no to the prospects and
promises of employees who feel this way about their jobs? But as
this report shows, implementing an employee engagement culture
requires total commitment from the very top of the organization, all
the way down to the individual contributors themselves. As multi-
faceted as the benefits may be, the efforts must also be taken in a
multi-dimensional way requiring determination, significant expense,
unblinking self-awareness, courage and patience. So it helps to be
very clear as to the many ways employee engagement provides a
compelling return on investment.
Benefits of Employee Engagement
Performance. Almost every research organization studying the
performance impacts of employee engagement has been able to
prove that the business units with engaged employees generally
have higher levels of productivity, profit and customer satisfaction
than the ones who don’t – even where those business units belong
to the same company. The Corporate Leadership Council, for
instance, found that engaged employees perform 20% better than
their non-engaged counterparts.
Likewise, ISR found that companies that scored high in employee
engagement – even during the tough economic period between

1999 and 2001 – saw a 3.74% increase in operating margins and
a 2.06% increase in net profit margins. However, companies in the
low engagement groups underperformed, realizing negative results
in both operating and net profit margins. In a later study, ISR found
in 2004 that high-scoring companies surpassed their industry
average performance in net income growth by 6%. Companies with
low engagement scores underperformed in their industry by 9%.
Employee engagement benefits also show up in the stock market. A
study by Hewitt Associates of its own Best Employers list
(companies with 60% to 100% engaged employees) showed an
average of total shareholder return of 20.2%. Conversely,
companies with fewer than 40% engaged employees saw a
negative return (-9.6%). Companies that fell in between these two
groups in terms of percentage of engaged employees experienced
only a total shareholder return of 5.6%.
Talent Attraction and Retention. There was a time in the early
2000’s when the war for talent subsided somewhat as the
economy faltered. That time is over and the war for talent resumes.
The consulting firm Accenture reports that 41% of its surveyed
firms anticipate that their war for talent will be “significant to
severe” in upcoming years. Likewise, back in 2003, the Society for
Human Resource Job Recovery survey found that 64% of
employees were planning to look for new jobs, citing better
compensation, dissatisfaction with current career development,
poor management, boredom and conflict with their organization’s
values and mission as reasons for their decision to seek alternative
jobs.
If you are the only company in your industry known to have a high
engagement culture, you are most likely to attract and keep the
highest quality talent – thereby creating a virtuous cycle of industry
stars attracting one another and combining their passion and
talents to promote their company’s continued success. Conversely,
if your company is the only employer among your competitors that
isn’t implementing an employee engagement culture, you may end
up with lower-quality talent – those people who are still available
for employment because the higher-quality engagers have passed
them by.
Companies committed to employee engagement are also most
likely to keep the valuable talent they have brought onboard.
According to the Corporate Leadership Council, engaged employees
are not only higher performers, they are also 87% less likely to
leave their companies. (The Corporate Leadership Council
estimates that replacing front-line employees costs about 40% of

their salary, and other studies show employee replacement costs
amounting to as much as 200% of their salaries).
Leadership Development. Great leadership and high employee
engagement go hand in hand. Across the board, companies with
high engagement scores find that the best get better. Because
there is such a high emphasis on self-awareness and personal
accountability for all levels of leadership at these companies, a
manager’s ability to engage employees keeps getting better. The
net effect for employees is both a positive job experience of and
better relationships with their bosses.
The 2006 Gallup Employee Engagement Index found that “happy
and engaged employees are much more likely to have a positive
relationship with their boss, are better equipped to handle new
challenges and changes, feel they are more valued by their
employers, handle stress more effectively, and are much more
satisfied with their lives….77% of engaged employees say their
supervisor focuses on strengths and positive characteristics….”
Physical Health and Personal Well-being. In the days of the old
loyalty, an employee’s physical condition and frame of mind may
have been considered extraneous to company concerns. However,
rising health care costs and the need to reduce expensive,
regrettable attrition have made employee well-being an essential
consideration for organizations that want to operate at peak
performance.
The 2006 Gallup Employee Engagement Index reported that 45%
of engaged workers reported a “great deal of overall happiness
from their work life,” and 53% said that they experienced “general
life fulfillment.” Conversely, this survey showed that 54% of
disengaged workers reported that job-related stress caused them
to behave poorly with family and friends.
A year earlier, the Gallup index reported that 62% of engaged
employees felt that their worklife positively affected their physical
health. And 54% of actively disengaged (the other extreme of the
engagement spectrum, where employees are so disaffected with
their jobs that they may sabotage their company’s efforts or
contaminate the culture for engaged employees) said their jobs
had a negative affect on their physical health. That same year 78%
of engaged workers reported that their work lives benefited them
psychologically, while 51% of actively disengaged employees felt
their work lives were having a negative impact on their mental well-
being.

The High Cost of Disengagement
Just as employee engagement has an active set of benefits for
employers who want to leverage their employees’ talents,
intelligence, energy and knowledge to create a mutually beneficial
future, employee disengagement can actively destroy a company’s
prospects for prosperity. Disengaged employees may speak
disparagingly about their company to their friends, family and
potential customers and employees. They will be unlikely to go the
extra mile in the service of customer satisfaction. They’ll indulge in
expensive, unnecessary absenteeism. And, perhaps worst of all,
they’ll spoil things for the moderately or extremely engaged
employees, who could, as a result, lose their own grip on their
loyalty to the company.
Not only would employers not want to have actively disengaged
employees on their rolls, companies also cannot afford to have
them in their employ. According to Gallup statistics, about 22.5
million workers in the United States are actively disengaged,
amounting to a loss of $350 billion in lost productivity.
With the presence of actively disengaged employees, many of those
wonderful advantages that engaged employees bring to the
workplace go to waste. In addition to the lost productivity
mentioned above, disengaged employees threaten a company’s
reputation in its community and industry; they present a risk of
sabotage of either the company’s products or the internal culture,
causing valued employees to leave in search of a healthier, more
productive workplace environment. The presence and effects of
actively disengaged employees threaten to destroy every
company’s most solid competitive advantage – the dedication and
commitment of its most valuable employees.
Conclusion
If employee engagement is indeed a “new loyalty”, this two-way
transference of energy and commitment to realizing a prosperous
future is a self-evident argument to make. Every year new surveys
and new statistics prove out the fundamental principle that high-
quality employees deeply desire to benefit their companies and go
the extra mile to support their companies’ objectives and to provide
superior customer service. The case for employee engagement is
an obvious one to make: It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s also
simply good business.

The Engagement Journey at Intuit
At Intuit, the fundamental principles of our employee engagement
philosophy can be traced back more than 20 years to our earliest
values. So we can’t exactly call it new because our employees have
always been very important to Intuit. Employee engagement
captures an all-pervading modus operandi of mutual respect,
authenticity, innovation, community, leadership, accountability,
growth and trust cast in a sustainable culture of service and regard
for all stakeholders.
We strive for “Best We Can Be” results for three stakeholders
(customers, shareholders and our people) in everything we do at
Intuit. We know that we will achieve great business results if we
have talented and engaged employees delivering for our
customers. So there is a great deal of accountability at all levels of
leadership for creating the kind of working environment that
inspires Intuit’s employees to do their best work every day. We’re
not perfect all the time – but perfection isn’t our objective so much
as is continuous improvement over time. And not all of our three
stakeholder groups prevail with every choice or decision we make.
But, again, over time, our stakeholders
(especially our employees) know that
everyone’s values, needs and interests are
sincerely honored and respected as part of
the company’s operating culture. And so, in
this sustainable solution, employee
engagement grows as we live out the
philosophy and people principles that were
evident even from Intuit’s very beginnings.
This is Intuit’s employee engagement story
and our continuous journey toward
creating a high-performance workplace
where our people feel liberated, confident
and inspired to do their best work,
regularly going above and beyond the call
of duty in the service of Intuit’s customers.
During the years of Intuit’s first decade,
the people-oriented values of its founder
Scott Cook were an essential part of the
company’s daily operating culture. While it
wasn’t formalized during those years, the
values for innovation, diversity and focus
on the customer were equally matched by

the pervading value of respecting and valuing individual human
dignity and the contributions Intuit’s people brought to the
enterprise.
By Intuit’s 10th year in 1993, Cook wisely recognized the
importance of codifying Intuit’s values and formally establishing a
permanent philosophical map. Instead of unilaterally undertaking
this exercise himself, he put his people value into action by shutting
down for a one-day offsite, where the entire community of
employees could create and agree upon that set of operating
values.
Intuit continued to thrive over the next seven
years after the writing of those operating
values. But as the company grew and
matured some of its “familial” cultural norms,
like consensus driven decision making, were
holding Intuit back. In 2000, when Steve
Bennett was brought on board, he seriously
considered and then embraced all the
employee-written operating values (asking
permission to change only one word,
transforming the original Think Fast, Move
Fast to Think Smart, Move Fast).
Bennett shared the company’s belief that its
people were its primary source of competitive
advantage, especially in the software
industry. Knowing this, he got down to
business looking for a way to translate these
operating values into a set of rigorous,
measurable and accountable expectations of
the company and its leaders. Intuit already
had mechanisms for measuring satisfaction
from the customers’ standpoint, so now he
wanted to develop the same comprehensive
understanding of how the employees were
experiencing Intuit against its stated values.
Along with the newly hired senior vice president of HR, Sherry
Whiteley, Intuit’s leaders began asking themselves two driving
questions: “Our operating values state that employees are
important, but what are we really committing to the employees?”
and “What can we point to that says ‘this is what working at Intuit
should feel like according to employees’?”
Competitive Advantage = The People
As a software company, most of Intuit’s
competitive advantage is not derived from
production costs (low-cost manufacturing,
defect-free product is a market requirement,
not a competitive advantage), but from a
customer focus through employees:
· Innovation: Employees use a customer-
driven approach to understand and
innovate to address customers’ unmet
needs,
· Product Experience: The intellectual
capital of Intuit’s designers and coders
drives product usefulness, and
· Customer Service: The ability and drive
of Intuit’s 2,500 customer service
representatives creates a superior
service experience for our customers.
Talented employees who are engaged in
solving for Intuit’s customers create the only
source of truly sustainable competitive
advantage.

Our senior leaders traveled to all sites in the
company asking employee groups: “What would
it take for us to ensure that this is a great place
to work and a high-performing organization?
What would that look like to you?” Because of
the high-touch, pro-people culture already
established inside Intuit, people could trust that
the leaders were sincere in seeking out the
answers. And so they started talking. Out of
those conversations emerged Intuit’s Employee
Value Proposition (EVP), which captured the
expectations employees had of the company,
and its leaders, about what they needed in
order to be their absolute best in a high-
performing organization.
The EVP was more than just a mandate. It was
a bargain struck between Intuit’s employees
and the company’s future. In return for
investing a focused effort in making Intuit an
even better place to work, employees would be
expected to turn in an even higher level of
performance. And, Intuit’s executive team
would be expected to support practices that
would encourage and reward higher employee
performance (e.g., installing a rigorous
compensation plan, and a formal pay-for-
performance program).
Consequently, this cycle of higher expectations raised the levels of
accountability throughout the entire organization. Leaders expected
more from the entire employee population. And, now that
employees had been invited to be overt about their own
expectations, they, in turn, naturally expected to see actions taken
and measurable results as well. And so this turn of the
evolutionary crank caused another transformation: The old
‘employee satisfaction’ survey would be jettisoned in favor of a
carefully articulated and engineered survey designed to specifically
measure employee engagement levels against the expectations set
by the employee value proposition itself.
In 2001, Intuit retained Purchase, NY, research consulting firm,
Sirota Survey Intelligence, to help us redesign our employee survey
to measure engagement. Sirota brought more than just survey
expertise – they have been a strategic thinking partner in helping
Intuit drive important changes through our survey process. Our
survey which has seen annual refinements since 2001 has become

a popularly anticipated event – we get close to 95% participation
every year - and an essential tool for driving improvements
throughout the year.
The survey process itself has been a significant catalyst for driving
an understanding of engagement and a set of engagement
practices into our culture over the past few years. It has given our
employees a means to honestly express their needs with the
confidence that action will be taken. And it has facilitated the
development of natural leader behaviors that help them focus on
and respond to employee needs.
Today
While a lot of attention is still paid to the annual survey results, it is
the day-to-day experiences employees have that make engagement
come alive in the context of our culture today. Much of the
responsibility for manifesting our values as behaviors and choices
lands squarely on the heads of all the people who lead, manage
and supervise Intuit employees. While we don’t expect absolute
perfection at all supervisory levels throughout the year, we look for
continuing progress. And, frankly, some managers – actually, some
stars in other aspects of their work – have lost their jobs because
year to year they showed no signs of adopting the engagement
mindset by integrating the values behind our EVP into their own
leadership styles. But the principles of employee engagement must
prevail over time. Otherwise it loses its resonance and meaning to
employees - it becomes just another program, another flavor of the
month.
At this writing, our employee engagement culture has been in place
for over five years, and with every passing day it evolves,
transforms, improves to more accurately reflect and serve what is
most important to all our employees. In the past two years, we
have expanded our engagement focus to include all points along
the ‘employment lifecycle.’ This longitudinal look at the ‘total
people experience’ allows us to understand what is most important
from the time people first become aware of Intuit as an employer,
through their experiences as a candidate and a new hire, to the
various phases of their tenure as an Intuit employee, to the
experiences they have in their last days and after they leave.
By understanding the end-to-end employee experience, we have
the insights, skills, tools and resources we need to continuously
improve the way we deliver an engaging experience to Intuit’s
people throughout their journey with the organization. We want

every employee to feel inspired to be their very best while delivering
for customers and fueling company growth, and all the while, be
having such a great experience with Intuit that they can’t imagine
having a better experience anywhere else. To this end (as you will
see later in this report), our programs, processes and practices
cover as many aspects of our employees’ lives as we can
anticipate, and then even more as employees bring their needs,
desires and ambitions to our attention.
Yes, we continue to measure the way these efforts are experienced
in an annual employee survey. But it is the day-to-day interaction in
the hallways; it’s the casual conversations in employees’ cubicles;
it’s the celebrations of new marriages and new babies; it’s our
presence in our communities through company-sponsored
volunteerism and giving; it’s the transparency of our plans,
approaches, even our executives’ own personal plans for
improvement; it’s the way we help our employees solve for their
customers’ needs while we help their supervisors solve for their
employees’ needs; it’s the way we learn from our mistakes and use
those lessons to build new knowledge, technique and processes;
it’s the way we help our people put their own families first; it’s the
way we build our own road to the future by helping our employees
build a visible future for themselves – it’s all those things that
make our employee engagement come alive.
A Steve Bennett mantra that is still with us is “talented and
engaged employees delivering for customers.” His mandate to the
entire company: Get great at what you do. Do the best job you can.
Tell us how we can do it better. Listen to and solve for your
customers. And everything else will follow.
And the ongoing story is that we continue to do the right things to
institutionalize that mandate and make it accessible to everyone.

The Foundation for Intuit’s Employee
Engagement Culture and Practices
Establishing employee engagement as a natural part of our
company culture required that Intuit commit itself to a mindset
and management practices for continually gathering feedback and
taking visible actions to meet employee needs. In this section, we
describe the fundamental frameworks and processes that have
helped us define employee engagement and measure
engagement levels at Intuit.
The ideal engagement measurement system should show:
§ How the company is performing against its Employee Value Proposition,
§ How engaged employees actually are at various key points in their
journey with the company,
§ What sorts of environmental factors are driving engagement levels, and
§ What impact engagement levels might have on important employee
outcomes.
Our process clearly assesses each employee’s experience of the
company and his or her work, and shows how this experience is
affecting her or his level of motivation. When examined across all
our employees, we can determine the relationship between
engagement and other important indicators such as turnover,
performance and customer satisfaction.
Definition of “Employee Engagement”
To establish a framework for measuring engagement at Intuit, we
had to start by developing our own clear definition of employee
engagement. When we first started using this phrase in the early
2000’s it may have well been completely interchangeable with
employee “satisfaction,” “commitment,” or “motivation” in our
conversations. So, over the first couple of years, we began to
research the engagement concept to discover for ourselves what
makes it different and what it means to Intuit. We talked to our
leaders and employees to gather their knowledge and points of
view; benchmarked with other research groups; spoke with
consulting firms; and we read an extensive amount of academic
literature – and if anything, we learned that we were not the only
ones trying to understand the subject of employee engagement.
As of this writing, we are not aware of any construct for defining
and measuring employee engagement that is universally accepted
by management theorists, practitioners or academicians.

The “OutsideIn” View
According to our review of available research, the concept of
engagement has been described by most organizational
psychology experts as having both psychological and behavioral
aspects. Many take a multi-dimensional view and define
engagement as a work-related mindset that is influenced by
individual traits, cognitive and emotional states, and/or
characterized by highly motivated behaviors. Some find that it is
a more persistent motivational state - not affected by any
particular event – but determined by characteristics of the
workplace environment experienced over time. Others have
suggested that it is the opposite of job burnout.
Our closest collaborator in Intuit’s employee engagement research
work has been our survey partner, Sirota Survey Intelligence.
Founder David Sirota summarized what the company has learned
through 40 years of work researching employee satisfaction and
motivation in his book, The Enthusiastic Employee. Sirota, and his
co-authors, described a state of motivation reached when
employees feel their needs are being met: “…the result isn’t just
satisfied employees but enthusiastic employees” where
“…employee enthusiasm results in enormous competitive
advantage.” Sirota’s Three Factor Theory of Human Motivation in
the Workplace states that employees seek to satisfy three needs:
Equity, Achievement and Camaraderie. Intuit’s engagement model
(presented later in this section) is also based on needs
satisfaction and is closely aligned with this theory.
We also worked with the Corporate Leadership Council as a case
study for their 2004 Series on Employee Engagement. We learned
from CLC’s engagement model which describes two types of
commitment: Rational and Emotional. Rational commitment is
contingent on employees judging whether their basic needs can
be effectively met with their current employer. This primarily drives
an employee’s intent to stay. Emotional commitment is based on
the sense of pride, inspiration and enjoyment employees get from
their job and organization. Emotional commitment primarily drives
an employee’s discretionary effort (the motivation to perform
“above and beyond the call of duty”).
Additional research with a number of other organizations and
consulting firms including reviews of engagement studies revealed
various other definitions, models and constructs. We learned that
one of the strongest psychological aspects of employee
engagement is the notion of affective and/or attitudinal

investment in one’s work. These feelings of commitment, value
and involvement have several key components:
§ The sense of value and worth the individual feels as part of the
organization,
§ The feelings of pride for, and satisfaction with the organization,
§ The sense of personal investment in, dedication to, and attachment to
the job or organization,
§ The feelings of connection and community within the organization, and
§ The inspiration and motivation to grow and contribute to make things
better.
Although we did not find a common construct for engagement, the
external research did help shape our thinking. To develop our own
definition and model, we rationalized these external viewpoints
with our own culture by interviewing 100’s of employees,
managers and executive leaders. Our employee survey team
hosted focus groups to understand from employees what most
energizes and motivates them. We heard employees tell us that
an “engaged employee” at Intuit is passionate about delivering
high performance because this is the place where they feel they
get to do their best work. They also said they care a great deal
about our customers, and the success of the company, as well as
their own fulfillment and achievement. In addition, a cross-
functional team of Intuit’s senior managers (part of Intuit’s Action
Learning Program) talked to each one of our executive staff to
elicit their definition of employee engagement and best practices
for building engagement in their organizations. This team also
interviewed 100’s of employees to determine, from the employee
perspective, what management behaviors had the biggest impact
on their engagement. (See the appendix for a complete list of
these behaviors.)
Based on this research we developed a definition of employee
engagement that works for Intuit. We believe that employee
engagement is the emotional and intellectual state -- or mindset --
our employees have about Intuit and their work experience. But it
is not just a feeling or an attitude; it is a motivated state of being,
compelling our employees into action. We define employee
engagement as “how an Intuit employee thinks and feels about,
and acts towards his or her job, the work experience and Intuit.”
The fact that we could not find a widely-accepted construct that
measures engagement has not stopped Intuit from developing our
own. Through the very process of developing a definition and
measurement practice that works within the context of our culture,
we have established a meaning of engagement that works for us.
This is probably more powerful than had we adopted a “standard.”

Building a Model
Because our model is founded in needs satisfaction, our research
efforts also included identifying the motivational factors that might
influence an employee’s level of engagement. We started with a
review of the various theories on basic human motivation itself --
‘Need (Content) Theories of Motivation’ -- such as Maslow’s
Hierarchy, Aldelfer’s Existence, Relatedness, Growth (ERG) Theory,
McClelland’s Motivational Needs Theory, Herzberg’s Hygiene and
Motivation Theory and a number of others. A couple of basic
concepts about human motivation were common across the
studies:
§ Most people have basic innate needs which start with material and
physiological well-being, then satisfying interpersonal relationships
and personal achievement, and finally self-fulfillment,
§ Most people are free to act upon their higher order needs as long
as lower, more basic needs are substantially met.
More recent works discuss a transcendent state which seeks to
find meaning and identify with something greater than
achievement and power: In the highest state of human motivation,
people have an almost spiritual yearning to connect to something
beyond their own ego to make a real difference in the world.
We translated these concepts to the workplace setting and
constructed a four-level model we believe best characterizes
engagement at Intuit: The Intuit Employee Engagement Model.
The Intuit Employee Engagement Model
The Intuit model captures the attitudinal and motivational state
that results from common experiences of our work environment
that fulfill an employee’s needs in four areas. Loosely based on
preceding models of motivation, engagement becomes stronger
as more of an employee’s needs are met in these four needs
areas - each building on the others in terms of power to motivate
employees to the highest levels of engagement.

The Intuit Employee Engagement Model
à Identity & Meaning
“I see how our work makes
my world a better place”
à Relationship & Belonging
“I am challenged and capable of doing my
work well, and feel appreciated for my efforts”
“I believe the company cares for my well-being by providing for the basic
physical, economic and psychological workplace needs of employees”
à Security & Justice ©2008 Intuit Inc.
Inspiration
Needs
Worth Needs
Connection Needs
Basic Needs
“I am a trusted, integral member of a
community of people I like and respect”
à Accomplishment & Esteem

The following are brief descriptions of the four needs areas of
Intuit’s Employee Engagement Model:
Meeting “Basic Needs” ensures a sense of security and justice: It
is achieved with employees feeling that the company cares about
their well-being – that basic (and primarily self-serving) physical,
economic and psychological needs are met by Intuit. These needs
include: Feeling safe, being paid equitably, feeling secured with
benefits, feeling included, and being treated with dignity and
respect. Employees determine a sense of equity and justice by
comparing their own situation and experiences at Intuit with
internal and external market place referents. Perceived inequity
occurs when employees feel that the rewards they receive for their
contributions compare unfavorably to the rewards other
employees appear to be receiving for their work. This extends to
feelings of treatment and respect. Employees form perceptions of
what constitutes a fair trade between their energy and efforts and
work outcomes, and whether Intuit has a practice of bringing
justice to inequities. Because these are vital human needs,
meeting or exceeding them will not necessarily inspire higher
performance, but can significantly increase one’s commitment to
stay at the company.
Meeting “Worth Needs” provides for a sense of accomplishment
and esteem. People want to feel empowered and capable of
making a difference, and that their skills and contributions are
valued by the organization. Challenging and satisfying work is key
to a sense of worth and personal fulfillment. A clear understanding
of how one’s job supports the organization’s goals affects a
person’s sense of purpose, and feelings of value as derived from
his or her work experience. Being truly appreciated for one’s
contributions and achievements helps employees feel valued for
their accomplishments. Feeling supported in learning new skills
and developing one’s career are also factors that greatly increase
a commitment to stay and a willingness to invest discretionary
effort.
Meeting “Connection Needs” promotes relationship and belonging
through a person’s association with and attachment to his or her
leadership, direct manager and coworkers. This sense of affiliation
comes when employees feel real camaraderie with members of
their team, and cared for and supported by their bosses as well as
the company’s senior leaders. Meeting these social needs shapes
the employee’s sense of allegiance to their immediate manager,
and affiliation with a broader community of people at work. When
employees genuinely like their coworkers and feel like an integral
part of the team they experience a deeper connection and
“I come here every day and
give 110% because I enjoy my
work. I appreciate and value
the people I work with. We
really feel that we’re family.
Job offers from other
companies come along all the
time. But they’re not that
important to me. What’s
important to me is who I work
with and the experiences that
we have every day.”
(Applications Administrator)

commitment to the organization, which can significantly increase
their willingness to stay and to go ‘above and beyond’ for the
team.
Meeting “Inspiration Needs” establishes identity and meaning,
which is experienced as the sense of affirmation a person gets
from being part of a winning company with a compelling vision and
purpose. When employees can identify with and commit to the
company’s mission, and align with the values of the company, they
are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to help it succeed. A
strong identity with the company is greatly shaped by how the
company treats its customers, the environment and serves the
community.
Helping employees clearly see how the company makes the world
a better place for its customers and stakeholders can turn
employees into strong advocates for the company, significantly
increase their commitment to stay, and instill a real passion for
producing outstanding results.
The next step in our model development was to identify the key
organizational processes and practices that most shape the Intuit
employee experience in each of the four engagement model needs
areas. We call these practice areas Dimensions. In the chart below
each of the 15 Dimensions with descriptions of the feelings and
attitudes that best exemplify high employee engagement in that
dimension are detailed:
Inspiration Dimensions:
Vision, Values
and Meaning
§ Belief that the work of the company is meaningful - that it fulfills a higher order human/social
need for its constituents
§ Feeing that the company’s values align with one’s own
§ A clear sense of purpose, direction and positive feelings about the future of the company
§ Confidence that the company demonstrates that it is socially, environmentally, and fiscally
responsible
§ Feeling personally motivated to help the company succeed
Leadership
§ Belief that leaders truly care for and act with compassion and interest in employee wellbeing
§ Credence that leaders are ethical and demonstrate integrity (walk the talk) in everything they
do
§ Confidence that leaders are competent and will lead the business to success
Customer Focus
§ Belief that the company understands the needs of its customers, is committed to the highest
quality products and services, and has a culture that truly embraces its customers, winning
them over in everything that it does
§ Feeling fully trusted, resourced and enabled to satisfy customers, both internal and external
“At Intuit, we
embrace not only
the work that we do
but humanity. And
that’s inspiring to
me.”
(Call Center Rep.)

Connection Dimensions:
Teamwork &
Collaboration
§ A sense of trust, respect, admiration and compassion for coworkers
§ A feeling of social connection and community
§ Commitment to the team and others across the organization, strong desire to cooperate to
achieve higher goals
Communication
§ A trust that ideas and feelings can be shared openly – that honest, straightforward
communication & dialogue is encouraged and preferred
Worth Dimensions:
Basic Needs Dimensions:
Treatment &
Inclusion
§ Feeling valued and respected, a sense of dignity, and belief that there is organizational justice
§ Feeling validated for who one is, for the unique person and ideas one brings to the organization
§ Feeling fully acknowledged and included, able to share openly, even when views are unpopular,
without retribution
Quality Work-Life
§ Feeling supported for a life outside work, feeling trusted to manage time and work location to
deliver results
Physical Space/
Safety/ Security
§ Feeling physically safe, workspace is designed to provide comfort and efficiency, to inspire
employees to perform, to provide effective interaction/execution of work;
§ Confidence that physical and intellectual assets are protected
Compensation &
Benefits
§ Sense of economic security - judgment that one’s pay is fair, and commensurate with one’s
efforts and contributions
§ Comfort that the basic financial, health and wellness provisions for one’s family are met
Job Satisfaction
§ A feeling that one’s job fully utilizes one’s talents, skills and energy, challenges one to be one’s
best, and gives one a sense of value and worth
§ A sense of empowerment and control over the decisions and outcomes of the job - the ability to
influence conditions of the work environment, the ability to take risks and be creative on one’s
job
§ A sense of deep personal fulfillment and achievement from their work
Performance
Management
§ A clear understanding of goals and roles, and how one’s job fits within the organization -- line-of-
sight from tasks to company success
§ Feeling encouraged and enabled to succeed: An understanding of one’s current performance
and impact, and support with the coaching and feedback needed to do one’s best work
Training & Career
Development
§ Experiencing the opportunity to continuously improve and learn new skills, try new and/or
progressively more challenging roles
§ A sense of career opportunity - seeing a future with the company
Resources & Work
Processes
§ Confidence that the company provides the information and knowledge to be current on
everything needed to perform the job and be successful
§ Understanding of clear steps required to perform one’s core job functions
§ Having access to tools, materials, equipment, technologies, enabling infrastructure that enable
successful planning & execution of one’s work
Recognition
§ Feeling acknowledged and appreciated for one’s performance, a sense of recognition for
achievement and success
Decision-Making
§ Confidence that the organization has an effective process for reaching agreement, for making
quality decisions in a timely manner, with appropriate stakeholder input and involvement

Engagement Outcomes
Once we had defined employee engagement for Intuit and
developed a model to understand what might impact engagement
levels we stopped to ask: Now, how do we know if an employee
actually has this motivated state of being? How does one spot an
“engaged” employee? And if they are indeed engaged, what sort of
behaviors can we observe and results can we expect?
As outlined in the prior section, research has certainly shown that
highly engaged employees demonstrate some predictable
behavioral outcomes, including: Higher customer satisfaction
ratings, better performance, higher sales, lower regrettable attrition
and superior productivity. It became imperative for us to derive a
valid engagement measurement system so that we could
proactively take action that would affect these important outcomes.
Measuring Employee Engagement at Intuit
At Intuit, we want people not only to understand Intuit and what we
stand for, but based on their actual experiences with the company,
to connect with, feel great about, and promote Intuit. To this end
we strive to create great people experiences. Understanding what
drives engagement at each step in the ‘employment lifecycle’
(whether as a candidate, employee, or alumnus) helps us identify
the opportunities for continuously improving the overall people
experience as well as what matters most at different points in a
person’s journey with the company.
To create an employee engagement measurement system, we
enhanced our annual employee survey process from a rudimentary
satisfaction survey to a deep and broad inquiry into true
engagement at Intuit. And we began to administer an ‘engagement
check’ not just with the annual survey, but also at other ‘listening
posts’ along the employment lifecycle (e.g., new employee survey,
exit survey, etc.) Our belief was that employees, if asked the right
questions at key points along their journey with Intuit, would
willingly and truthfully tell us how they “think and feel about, and
act toward their job, the work experience and Intuit.”
To determine how companies in a similar industry might be defining
and measuring employee engagement, we conducted formal
benchmarking with the 20-member companies in the Information
Technology Survey Group (ITSG). We also reviewed available
research for any engagement survey questions that had been

proven as valid indicators of engagement or predictors of the
employee outcomes we desired.
Intuit’s survey research partner Sirota Survey Intelligence was a
tremendous support in helping us to identify the right questions
and find normative items. We selected five questions that we
included on our 2004 survey, and have been using since. The first
two are measures of affective commitment, and the last three are
measures of behavioral intent:
§ I am proud to work for Intuit.
§ Overall, I am satisfied with Intuit.
§ I would recommend Intuit as a great place to work.
§ I would not leave Intuit even if I were offered a comparable
position with similar pay & benefits at another company.
§ At Intuit, I am motivated to go 'above and beyond' what is
expected of me in my job.
By taking the average percent favorable score of these five items,
we have our “Employee Engagement Index.” These five questions
are most predictive of the desired behaviors of an engaged
employee: Higher customer satisfaction ratings, better performance
and productivity, and lower regrettable attrition.
The Annual Employee Survey
Our annual employee survey is still the most comprehensive
measure we have of engagement at Intuit. It is designed to
measure how Intuit is performing to the expectations of Intuit’s
Employee Value Proposition. In preparation for the design of the
survey, we conduct annual employee focus groups to understand if
there is anything new in the current employee experience that is
impacting engagement that we need to account for. We make
appropriate tweaks to our engagement model dimensions, and to
the EVP commitment statements, and then we redesign the survey
to measure the new EVP. The resulting instrument is approximately
65 questions: Three to five ‘independent variable’ questions for
each of the 15 dimensions in our Employee Engagement Model,
and the five-item index of engagement as an outcome (dependent)
variable.
In order to make certain we have the proper groupings of items that
will maximize the variance when loading against the engagement
index, we use various tests (SEM and Confirmatory Factor Analysis)
of our items and dimensions, ensuring that each item contributes
additional insight and that the dimension constructs hold together
well. Wherever possible, we use normative items (questions that
“I’ve seen my small business
customers grow from a
shoebox to being a midmarket
company where they have
more than 20 employees and
are successful. And now they
have to leave us. And it’s
okay! We’ve helped them.
Small businesses are the
backbone of America. To
know that we’re helping the
backbone of America, it’s
great!”
(Sales Supervisor)

can be compared to others in our industry), and we try not to make
so many changes to the items that we loose the ability to show year
over year comparisons. In fact, applying this survey design process
rigor, we have not had to change more than a few items each year.
Our survey is administered for three weeks by Sirota Survey
intelligence through a web interface. Every unit in the company
(with five or more responses on the survey) receives survey results.
This includes the employee engagement index score, scores for all
survey items plus dimension scores. Our manager reports include
comparisons to higher and lower levels of management. Our
managers hold feedback sessions with their teams and use their
survey results to establish shared vision on what’s working well and
what needs improvement. Hosting these sessions is not optional in
our culture, nor is taking visible action optional. (For more specific
information on how we do this, see the following chapter, “Making
Employee Engagement Meaningful and Real”).
For executives, we provide score comparisons year over year and a
detailed engagement breakdown for their organizations showing
demographic analyses, dimension scores, and the top 8 – 12 “Key
Driver” items (those survey questions that have the strongest
correlation with the unit’s employee engagement index). We also
publish the employee engagement index scores for every manager
in their unit so it is explicitly clear to executives where there are
engaged and disengaged teams in their organizations. This allows
for clear decisions and actions to be taken to provide support and
make improvements.
As an example, Sales and Customer Service employees (making up
40% of Intuit’s workforce and handling most of the contact with our
customers) had some of the lowest engagement scores in the
company on the 2004 survey. Analysis of the dimensions clearly
showed where there were roadblocks and de-motivators. So, with a
sustained focus over the past two years on the dimensions that
mattered most for high engagement of this group, we have seen
their engagement shoot up 16%. It is now higher than the
company average, which is already near best in class (top 10% in
our industry).
Empirical Results
By comparing survey responses to actual employee behaviors, we
have shown that the extent to which Intuit employees feel engaged
has a significant impact on their retention and performance. Using
multivariate regression and correlation analyses we found that our

most engaged employees truly value, enjoy and believe in what
they do. They exhibit the following predictable behaviors:
§ They expend extra effort with customers and coworkers. Our most
engaged employees are indeed 130% more likely to be higher
performing,
§ They are two and a half times more likely to feel encouraged to be
innovative,
§ They are six times more likely to feel valued (their inputs used to
improve products/services),
§ They identify with and stay with the company. Our most engaged
employees are five times more likely to say they will stay at Intuit,
even if offered a comparable position elsewhere!
And over time, we have seen predictable outcomes for our
customers: Customer satisfaction ratings have a strong correlation
with engagement among our Call Center (Customer Service)
employees. In a 2005 study, we found that frontline units with the
highest engagement index scores had significantly higher call
resolution scores as rated by their customers.
With our most recent 2006 survey, our overall Intuit engagement
index score again moved up (seven points to 83%), placing us in
the top 10% in our industry for employee engagement. We believe
that highly engaged employees deliver truly better customer
experiences, and over time this translates to better business
results.
Because Intuit has posted better than expected earnings and
enjoyed a 40% increase in stock price (more than double the S & P
500) during the past two years, we wondered, as many companies
do, whether this “winning company” climate affected employee
attitudes and engagement levels. We commissioned Sirota Survey
Intelligence to examine the relationship between Intuit’s
engagement scores and the stock price activity, stock option
ownership, and employee stock participation by individual
employees over the past four survey cycles. They found that only
1/10th of one percent of the variation in Intuit’s engagement scores
could be attributed to movement in stock price, or any other
financial metrics; and that leadership practices and organizational
factors (see Dimensions above) accounted for almost all of the
variance in engagement scores. This gives us great confidence in
our engagement model and supporting measurement process; and
that these tools have helped us foster an engagement culture that
we actually do have the ability to influence.

Making Employee Engagement
Meaningful and Real
Building a company culture that places an authentic and natural
focus on engaging employees is an evolutionary process in four
phases: Creating Awareness, Building Understanding, Gaining
Commitment and Taking Action. A company can accelerate this
evolution by purposefully encouraging the right management
mindset and intentionally re-architecting organizational practices
so that nearly anything that affects the employee experience is
explicitly directed at fostering employee engagement.
In this section, you will learn how Intuit has leveraged its leadership
and organizational practices to establish a culture for engagement.
Creating Awareness of Employee Engagement
The Awareness Phase starts with an unflinching self-examination by
the company’s management to determine just how important
engaging its employees is to the company. A sustained focus on
engagement is usually possible if two attitudes are present among
the company’s top leaders:
1. Right Thing To Do: They sincerely believe it is the right thing to do
for employees. They know that in the company’s espoused value
system, treating employees right by addressing their engagement
needs is something they should support in good times and bad.
2. Good For Business: They believe it will be good for business.
Engaging employees will produce tangible benefits for all other
stakeholders: Customers, shareholders, and the community. So a
sustained focus on employee needs will help the company be
successful and grow.
At Intuit, the journey started in 2001 with this same “gut-check”
and business rationalization. Our strong beliefs about the role that
employees play in the success of the company were already made
clear by our Operating Values. Our Employee Value Proposition
established unquestionably the specific expectations of the
company and management for creating an optimal engagement
environment (see both in the “Engagement Journey at Intuit”).
The external research on employee engagement was full of
conclusive studies showing the links among high engagement and
reduced turnover, increased performance and improved customer
satisfaction. At the time we did not have any evidence that this
was true for Intuit, other than it made intuitive sense.

The value of employees is clear to Intuit’s executives. One of the
mantras you will hear often at Intuit clearly places the importance
of employees right up there with Intuit’s customers and
shareholders by making this simple statement:
“What we need is talented and engaged employees
delivering for customers…business results will follow.”
So through a process of self-discovery, we knew that establishing
an employee engagement culture was the right thing to do for
Intuit, as well as a key component to our success as a company.
Understanding How Engaged Employees Really Are
Sensing how the company is doing to engage employees must start
with listening to employees. They know what their needs are and if
those needs are being met sufficiently. In 2002, Intuit identified
and began actively promoting the formal and informal practices
that focused on listening to and understanding what’s important to
our employees. We called these “Voice of Employee” (VOE)
processes.
Since then, we have expended our focus. We have designed and
implemented several confidential opinion surveys and other
‘listening posts’ to gather inputs and measure salient points at
every stage of the Intuit employee experience. Some examples are:
§ The Annual Employee Survey to gain a census view of the entire
company,
§ Pulse Surveys to check in on selected units,
§ Exit Surveys to listen to those who are leaving the company,
§ Training feedback to understand how well training is working, and
§ The New Employee Survey to see how assimilation experiences are
engaging employees.
More recently, we introduced feedback opportunities through
Employee Suggestion Programs. All these “self-reporting” VOE
processes have helped us to understand what is engaging and
disengaging to employees along all points in the “employee
lifecycle.”
Because we do not report survey results for fewer than five
responses, the opinion surveys work well for determining how
engagement is going at the team level, but not for individuals.
Each employee is motivated by different things and has different
needs at any point in their tenure at Intuit. It is a manager’s job to

be aware of this and to actively stay in tune real-time with each his
or her employees.
We have come to realize that the best source of VOE is face-o-face:
§ Informal hallway chats where leaders stop and talk to
employees at every level,
§ One-on-one meetings between the employee and manager,
§ Focus groups where employees are free and safe to talk about
their concerns and
§ Skip-level meetings between employees and their boss’ boss.
In addition, managers are encouraged to look for signs of
engagement and disengagement as they work together with their
employees. These personal observations and interactions allow
managers to check in on how things are going and find out directly
what is most engaging or disengaging to each employee.
We can also get a sense for engagement levels by paying attention
to information collected about our employees’ behaviors: Retention
rates, absentee rates, participation in company programs (training
classes, etc.), number and type of employee relations escalations,
percentage of employee referrals, customer satisfaction ratings,
internal job transfers and promotion rates, and recognition program
utilization. These aggregate views are the least useful sources for
gauging engagement, because they are often lagging indicators.
Even though employee outcome data can be useful for trying to
identify the causes of engagement and disengagement, any actions
taken based on this type of VOE is reactive at best.
Intuit’s managers use a wide range of methods for gathering and
understanding VOE. Some still depend on Intuit’s formal “listening
posts” (e.g., survey data). But many have internalized Intuit’s
expectations of staying current with what’s going on with their
employees, and they do it naturally as part of their ongoing routine.
They believe listening to and responding to employees is what good
Intuit leaders do. And they know that more frequent informal check-
ins will give them the insight early enough to actually make a
difference.
Committing to Focus on Employee Engagement
Engagement happens one employee at a time. And the greatest
advantage a company has for building an engagement culture is
their leaders. Intuit managers are expected to show their
commitment by taking time to understand and respond to
engagement not only at the team level but also for each member of
“Everyone who comes to
work has their own life when
they go home. They have
their own reasons why they
come to work.
Understanding their beliefs
helps you understand how to
motivate someone and how
to encourage them to be the
best that they can be.”
“Every conversation,
every interaction I have
with each and every one
of my employees has to
benefit them to a high
level so they feel good
about the time they
spend with each other.”

the team. Being committed to helping each employee feel highly
engaged requires managers to maintain a personal relationship
with each of their employees.
Another important tool for building an engagement culture is its
work environment. This does not mean creating a bunch of new
“engagement processes, programs and checklists” that may seem
attractive but have no real significance in the context of the culture
we are trying to achieve. Instead, we look at the existing
organizational processes and management practices and ask how
they can be reframed to focus on engaging employees. Intuit has
spent the last few years re-architecting these processes and
programs to focus on engagement at all four levels of our
engagement model: Basic Needs, Worth Needs, Connection Needs
and Inspiration Needs.
This is not an exhaustive list, but the programs and processes at
Intuit that most influence our employees’ engagement at each level
in the Intuit Employee Engagement Model are detailed below.
Addressing Basic Needs. To help employees feel a sense of safety
and respect, Intuit provides a safe and secure workplace. This
includes workspaces that are efficiently laid out, aesthetically
pleasing and comfortable, furniture that is ergonomically designed,
convenient services to make it easier to get work done, procedures
to handle medical and other emergencies, and a security staff to
protect employees and company assets. We also have various
amenities that promote health and wellness, such as onsite
exercise classes and recreational activities. Some of our office
locations provide additional amenities onsite to help employees
access services conveniently, such as a cafeteria, gym and workout
facilities, a mobile dentist, and other services.
Intuit’s competitive base pay and benefits are designed to help
employees feel that they are fairly compensated for their work as
well as provided with the financial security to take good care of
their families. Every employee owns stock so they can share in the
success of the company. We also trust and support employees to
manage their time between their work and home life by providing
flexibility in where and how they work. Approximately 60% of Intuit
employees can telecommute, and 91% of employees reported on
our last survey that they feel their manager supports their efforts to
balance their work and personal life. In fact, the customer reps in
one of our online product groups work exclusively from home. And
they have some of the highest engagement scores and customer
satisfaction ratings in the company!

Intuit’s value of ‘Dignity and Respect’ epitomizes how we treat each
other. By promoting a culture where individuals get to feel heard
and validated for who they are, we help each employee to share
her or his unique ideas and contributions. Our culture promotes
diversity and honors these values, helping employees feel included
and freeing them to bring their whole selves to their work and to
share their best ideas when problem solving. According to our last
employee survey here’s what employees had to say about how they
are treated at Intuit (these scores are in the top 10% in our
industry): 92% felt they were treated with dignity and respect, 88%
agreed that their manager fosters an environment where diversity
is valued, and 87% said their manager responds to their ideas and
suggestions.
Taken together these values, norms and basic provisions help free
our employees from economic, physical and psychological concerns
and roadblocks that may inhibit them from applying their full
passion, energy and creativity to their work.
Addressing Worth Needs. We start by matching people with great
work that they can enjoy. We do this by finding a good job fit
between what the business needs and the employee’s desires,
aspirations, skills and abilities. We then supply quality job
resources – the information, tools, technology, work processes and
other infrastructures - that enable employees to do their jobs well.
Intuit’s performance management processes are strongly
centralized requiring each manager to set clear goals, give ongoing
feedback and coaching, and have mid-year and annual
performance discussions to ensure that every employee is
performing at her or his best.
Our employee education and leadership development offerings
enable skills building through classroom and online courses, tuition
reimbursement, job rotation programs, and executive Action
Learning Programs. Through our Learn-Teach-Learn process, we
share our knowledge and help others grow by teaching each other
what we are learning. All these processes help employees develop
capability, feel challenged and grow. We also have fast track
development programs for high potential employees. On our last
survey 77% of employees reported to have meaningful
development conversations with their managers.
We support career development by identifying a growth and
mobility path inside Intuit that helps each employee get on-the-job
training for future positions, find stimulating new assignments, and
take on challenging “stretch” roles. These programs and processes
“You have to recognize the
value that someone is
bringing to the job. When
they perform well,
recognize the good job
they do. When they under
perform, coach them in a
safe environment. It’s
always about getting
better.”
(Group Manager,
Customer Care)

help Intuit employees develop their skills, and enable the company
and employee to build a future together.
Intuit’s rewards programs, which pay according to performance
through bonuses, stock and other recognition (non-cash awards)
help the employee feel appreciated and valued for their
accomplishments. According to the survey, 80% of employees are
satisfied with Intuit's total rewards package (salary, incentives,
benefits, stock ownership, etc.) and 76% feel their
accomplishments are recognized (top 10% in our industry).
We empower employees to take ownership of their jobs and
encourage them to enjoy their work. Our customer-driven
innovation culture encourages employees to be creative when
solving for current customers and our technology-driven innovation
culture encourages employees to find new customers and new
ways of doing things. These processes help our employees feel a
sense of job satisfaction and value. According to our annual survey,
95% believe they are making a significant contribution to the
success of their workgroup, and 88% say they like the kind of work
they do.
Addressing Connection Needs. Helping employees build
relationships starts on Day One. Our assimilation process includes
a buddy assignment for each employee so they have someone they
can go to in addition to their boss to accelerate their onboarding
experience. The General Managers of some of our groups take their
new employees out to lunch the first week to help them quickly feel
welcomed and like a part of the team. Many employees describe
their Intuit coworkers as “like family.” In fact, an average of 89% of
our employees reported on our most recent employee survey that
“We care about each other as individuals.”
Intuit’s strong Operating Value “Teams Work” sets the stage for
employees working well together to reach for common goals within
and across organizations. On the same survey, 92% of employees
report that their work team cooperates with other work teams to
achieve objectives, and 85% report that their work team works well
together. These scores put Intuit in the top 3% of our industry when
it comes to our employees’ opinions about collaboration.
The company sponsors Employee Networks to help employees
connect with others with similar interests. These affinity groups
(such as the Intuit Women’s Network, the Indian Network, the
Latino Network, and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender
Network) not only honor the diversity at Intuit, and help employees
“I’ve learned a lot from
each of you and I’m a
better person and
professional for having
known each of you I
thank you for that. I
feel that I am not just
leaving a company, but
my family.”
(Letter to coworkers
from a departing
employee)
“Everyone works as a
team. If we have an issue
that we can’t resolve we
can look to each other to
find the answer.”
(Technical Services Rep.)

feel a deeper sense of inclusion, but also establish a sense of
community though new connections that benefit the business.
We also know how to have fun! Our celebrations are legendary!
We celebrate almost anything – a successful product launch, a
coworker who just had a baby, or even for a project that failed (so
participants can learn from it). We like to take time to acknowledge
the milestones that mark our hard work as well as important events
in employee’s lives. In this way we share our values and learn to
relate with each other on a more personal level.
All these programs help Intuit employees build a social bond and a
sense of community with their coworkers, satisfying the need for
connection at work.
Addressing Inspirational Needs. Our CEO Brad Smith shares
Intuit’s mission and vision through state-of-the company addresses
to all employees, quarterly online CEO chats, and personal “town
hall” meetings during site visits. The Executive Leaders of each unit
share the goals and strategy of Intuit and their organization at
monthly or quarterly “All-hands” meetings. These meetings all help
employees understand Intuit’s purpose and direction, and the
impact the company is having in the world.
Each individual manager continues to share, or “cascade,”
company news and unit-level information so that employees can
draw a “line of sight” between their jobs and the goals of their unit
and the company. Our last employee survey revealed that 88% of
employees report that they understand Intuit’s overall goals and
direction, 90% say their direct manager shares business unit
strategy with them, and 88% say they see a clear link between their
work and Intuit's goals.
Employee communications are designed to not only provide
relevant information; but in doing so, help Intuit employees become
more engaged in the company. Intranet articles are published daily
covering a wide range of business topics, interviews with
customers, new product launches, employees sharing success
stories, and executives talking about the business. Where possible,
these articles frame messages through the eyes of our employees
themselves, so employees recognize their own voice. They almost
always feature Intuit as a winning company by clearly showing how
the company is delivering for the three stakeholders and making
the world a better place. 95% of Intuit employees reported on our
survey that ‘Intuit’s products and services solve important
problems for our customers.’
Intuit’s Mission:
Revolutionize
People’s Lives by
Solving Important
Problems.
“When you have
alignment between your
team’s goals and their
customers, whether they
are other teams or our
paying customers,
working toward a
common theme you can
really get great
performance.”
(Call Center Manager)

Our We Care and Give Back program is a great example of how
Intuit takes social responsibility and supports employee
involvement in the community. It provides 32 hours per year paid
time off for employees to donate their time, and donation matching
where the company will match charitable donations made by the
employee.
Our communications practices help employees establish real
meaning for their work and give them the opportunity to develop a
strong sense of identity with the purpose and direction of the
company. When employees perceive true alignment between their
values and vision and that of the company, the resulting
inspirational engagement is compelling.
Taking Visible Actions
The final phase in establishing a successful employee engagement
culture is fostering an open environment where employees clearly
see that their needs are being actively addressed. Once the
company’s managers have internalized the importance of
engagement, and have taken steps to listen to and understand the
VOE (voice of their employees), the real test of commitment will be
in how they show visible actions in response to employee needs.
The single biggest roadblock to building an engagement culture is
failing to “walk the talk.”
If employees are asked for their opinions, feelings, thoughts, ideas
and feedback, and must then stand by while management does
nothing with the information they will lose trust in the process.
Taking action doesn’t mean that every employee will get all that
they need all the time, but each one should feel heard,
acknowledged and dignified with some sort of response. To help
foster this trust, Intuit’s managers at all levels are expected to:
§ Role model Intuit’s Operating Values,
§ Be transparent in communications, share thoughts and feelings about
what is real,
§ Be humble and demonstrate the ability to listen and learn,
§ Involve and include employees,
§ Show genuine interest and care for each employee as an individual,
§ Be accountable, take action on behalf of employees, show a good
“say/do” ratio.
The mindset and actions of leaders supported by strong
organizational practices are what currently drive the culture for
engagement at Intuit. Getting Intuit’s managers to the point where
they are now - self-motivated to improve employee engagement –

has been an evolutionary process in our culture over the past few
years.
When we first introduced a new employee survey in 2001, we had
few managers who paid as much attention to employee needs as
they did to customer concerns or getting business results. When
we gave each manager their survey results, our CEO issued a
mandate that each one had to host feedback sessions with their
team to develop a shared understanding about what’s working and
what’s not, and create written survey action plans which were
posted publicly on our intranet for all employees to see. Today, we
still deliver survey results to all managers; however, we no longer
require formal action plans to be written or posted. Two things have
changed to eliminate the need to mandate action planning:
1. Most Managers have adopted the “engagement mindset:” They believe
it is the job of Intuit leaders to engage each employee, and are inclined
to take actions because it is now a requisite responsibility of being a
good leader at the company.
2. Managers are held accountable for improving engagement on their
teams. Part of the performance assessment for each manager is how
well they attend to their employee’s engagement needs as reported by
employee’s, and taking visible action is the only real way to make
sustainable improvement.
Our managers are held accountable because their team’s survey
results are so visible to our company leaders. We report employee
survey results to our CEO and all division heads showing
engagement scores down to the individual manager level
throughout the entire Intuit organization. This enables our leaders
to clearly identify best practice units where engagement is
flourishing and pockets where support or corrective action is
needed.
The change in mindset can be seen in the chart below by looking at
the four levels of ‘Engagement Mindset’ of leaders at Intuit. Again,
when we started the survey process most managers were simply
following the prescribed steps for gathering survey feedback, and
complying with the action planning mandate. As more and more
managers began to understand and internalize the value of
engaging their employees, they began to monitor engagement
levels independent of any survey, and make a concerted effort to
address issues real-time. Today, we have a few managers who are
still in the “Unconscious” stage; however these managers will not
be allowed to stay in that mindset. Most of Intuit’s managers have
integrated an engagement focus into how they run their
organization using ongoing dialogue and feedback with employees
to understand their engagement, and taking visible actions to
address and improve engagement.

Four Levels of Manager Engagement Mindset at Intuit
Institutionalizing the Engagement Culture
Once the company begins to realize the competitive advantages of
an engaged workforce, and sees signs of tangible progress, it must
look for ways to further embed the new engagement mindset and
behaviors so they become part of the culture of the company.
In 2005, Intuit launched an employee-focused initiative called
“Prospect-to-Retire.” The purpose of this cross-functional group of
executives and work teams is to optimize the engagement
experience at all points in an individual’s journey with Intuit. This
process begins when a person becomes aware of Intuit as a
possible company to work for, through the recruiting, interviewing,
onboarding and assimilation period, through every experience as
Level “Unconscious ” “Aware” “Conscientious” “Masterful”
Manager’s
Engagement
Mindset
“I’ve heard of it,
but engagement
is not something I
think about
regularly or that I
am actively
solving for.”
“I understand the
importance of
engaging my
employees – but
not sure exactly
what to do”
“I take time to
actively check-in
with my employees
to understand
what’s engaging
them.”
“As a function of how I
naturally interact with my
employees every day, I
hear what each one needs,
and have developed a
deep understanding of
what is motivating and
demotivating for each
individual person.”
How they view
gathering
feedback and
understanding
the Voice Of
Employee
“I think about how
engaged my
employees are
only when I get
my annual
employee survey
results.”
“I value the
annual survey as
a key input to
determining what
is important for
engaging my
team.”
“I value the many
opportunities I
have for both
formal and informal
feedback in
determining what is
engaging to the
team.”
“Since I am already
naturally in tune with what
is engaging for each of my
employees…I find the
annual survey results just
serve to validate what I
already knew.”
How they view
taking actions
to improve
“I follow the
required process
for doing a
feedback session
and action
planning.”
“I am not always
sure where else
to look and
exactly how to
make a
difference in my
team’s
engagement.”
”I set aside
considerable time
and attention to
develop action
plans and make a
visible difference to
my team.”
“In the normal course of
running my business, I am
taking actions all the time
to keep engagement levels
high for each employee.”

an employee, and finally through retirement or leaving the
company. According to our last annual survey, employees at Intuit
less than three months report a 93% average engagement level
and this drops to 86% average for employees reaching their first
anniversary. Something happens to them during their first year that
changes their perceptions and expectations, and the Prospect-to-
Retire team is committed to finding out how we can sustain initial
engagement levels.
We have also redesigned our most important annual business
planning and review processes so that engagement levels display
prominently in the dialogue and decision making. For example, our
annual High Performance Organization Review is where our
functional groups and business units assess changes needed to
their organizational capability to better execute on strategy. This
process heavily leverages the Annual Employee Survey results as
one of the key inputs for not only assessing issues that may be
potentially holding back an organization’s performance, but also for
evaluating each leader within an organization for how well they are
doing to role model engaging behaviors and teach others their best
practices.
The rewards system should also place the right emphasis on
leaders demonstrating the right mindset and behaviors to engage
employees. At Intuit leaders are truly evaluated as much on how
they got the job done as on what they delivered.
We have found that success with our engagement practices starts
with the resolute belief that employees matter, and that diligently
attending to their needs is not only the right thing to do from our
values perspective, but simply good business. The resulting
“engagement mindset” helps our managers take the time to
understand each employee’s needs and take visible action as a
natural part of their ongoing leadership duties.
Reinforcing the engagement culture at Intuit has also been
advanced by the careful (re)design of business and management
practices so that solving for the needs of employees and improving
their experience is an explicit part of every planning process.
Nothing is more compelling than the results themselves. We have
seen Intuit’s sustained focus on engagement pay off with solid
improvements in customer ratings, market share and business
results over the last four years.

Steps for Establishing an Employee
Engagement Culture in Your Company
One of the driving reasons why we created this report on Intuit’s
employee engagement culture is that executives from other
companies have increasingly reached out to us seeking advice on
how they can increase the chance for engagement success in their
own organizations. So, for that specific purpose, we decided to
dedicate the last portion of this report as a self-help guide to
improving the engagement culture in other enterprises.
However, it’s important to reiterate that improving your own
company’s engagement culture is not a simple proposition.
Establishing a practice of employee engagement requires a
tremendous amount of leadership, patience and tenacity. Even if
you already have some or all of the necessary basic elements in
place, they must work together in order to be successful. As you
move through the various steps, transitions and decision-making
points, remember they are all interrelated. And, like a complex
pattern of yarns and colors on an oriental carpet, these elements
will quickly fall apart unless they’re interwoven on a solid backing of
executive support and complete commitment to the principles and
outcomes of employee engagement, come what may: Discouraging
survey returns; industry or market downturns; internal crises;
changes in leadership, etc.
Culture change is never easy. However, the time and effort to
create an employee engagement culture will probably be well worth
it for you – especially in comparison to the high cost of
disengagement. This is your go/no-go starting point. And so, in this
final chapter, we will take you through the key decision points to
help you move your company toward a true practice of employee
engagement.
Your first goal is to establish and promote a leadership mindset
that integrates all the necessary behaviors, beliefs and attitudes
that foster engagement every day – not by relying on expensive
surveys or unnecessarily elaborate communications and incentive
schemes. Managers with the engagement mindset simply take
every opportunity, every day, to show their employees that they
care about each one as an individual. They ask each employee
how they are doing, what they might need to do their work better,
and check to make sure each one feels like a they are a valued
member of a team that is helping the company achieve its
objectives.
“The atmosphere
keeps me engaged all
the time. Everyone
seems to want to do
really well for the
company. The happy
atmosphere keeps
everyone working very
hard.”
(Call Center Rep.)

Employee Engagement Practices at Intuit

Employee Engagement Practices at Intuit

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