This is a slightly modified version (includes text of speaker notes) of the presentation that our CEO, Brennan, delivered at the CHRO Summit in Toronto. It focuses on why leaders need to focus on employee engagement more, why they don't currently and how to fix that.

1. Employee Engagement – Getting Leaders to Care
Brennan McEachran
CEO & Co-founder
@i_am_brennan soapboxhq.com

2. Agenda:
• Lots of context (but important because it’s a complex problem)
• Why leaders don’t care
• How you can get them to care
Brennan McEachran
CEO & Co-founder
@i_am_brennan soapboxhq.com

3. This is the SoapBox Family.
We’ve more than doubled in size this year to 35 employees (or SoapBoxers
as we like to call ourselves).
At Soapbox, everyone gets their own SoapBox Avatar
(me)

4. SoapBoxers now have a bigger impact on the success of SoapBox
than I do, which has me spending more time thinking about people
and high performance.

5. I look around the office and worry if they understand the vision and
strategy.
✓ Are they focused on the right things?
✓ Are they doing things in an optimal way?
✓ Are they as (or nearly as) excited about this company as I am?

6. However, despite our rapid growth (and my worries), employee
engagement was NOT something I focused on.

7. And I’m guessing that this
made me similar to many
leaders at many organizations,
big and small.

8. “Employee engagement is important, BUT it’s not clear how it helps me manage
my business*. I don’t know how or why it’s helping us hit our objectives. So I’m
going to focus on the things I know drive success.”
*For more on why employee engagement surveys fail, check out this post.

9. So why do leaders need saving?
And why now?

10. Because with the current rate of
disruption, only the most engaged
organizations will survive.
Let me show you...

11. This blue line is the
average lifespan of a
large company. It’s
dropped precipitously
from 75 years to just
15 today! It’s
predicted to drop to 6
years by 2020!

12. Why? Because
disruption is the
norm and it’s hard
for big companies to
change.
(Check out this blog post
which provides further
explanation on disruption
and why it’s hard for large
organizations to change)

13. The red line is the
growth in the number
of unicorns over the
last few years.
A unicorn is a private
company with a
valuation over $1B.
Most of these are
venture-backed
startups.

14. The punchline is how
fast disruptive
companies can grow
today.
The time it takes to
go from an idea to a
$1B company is
shrinking.
So not only are
disruptive technologies
and business models
on the rise, but the
pace is faster too.

15. Which means that to survive, every organization needs to
become more agile.
Is it possible to be big and still be innovative and agile? The
short answer is yes.

16. Some successful “startups” like Google, Facebook, Air BnB and Uber have
turned into big companies, but have managed to stay agile and innovative
with highly engaged workforces.
Let’s look at some of the key factors that successful startups do to
accomplish this.

17. First, successful startups create a strong sense of
purpose and set audacious goals that are meaningful
for each individual in the organization as well.
(Or as Google made popular, moonshots).

18. Purpose and big goals attract and motivate people.
For example – the top rocket scientists go work for
Elon Musk at SpaceX. Why? Because he’s set an
audacious vision for getting to Mars. If you’re a top
rocket scientist that’s what you want to work on.

19. The second thing is that successful startups are good at innovating
and rapidly iterating HOW they will reach their goals. It’s about great
execution and getting stuff done in the most efficient and effective way
possible.
What’s getting in the way of achieving goals? What opportunities exist to
help reach goals?

20. When you think big, you have to think differently about how you’re going to
get things done. You’re out of your comfort zone. You’re doing something
you’ve never done before.

21. It turns out empowering employees to figure out better ways to get things
done also drives engagement.
When people see their ideas come to life – it feels pretty amazing. We’ve
seen this with our NPS surveys that we do with our clients.

22. Third, successful startups do a great job of
getting employees engaged in helping the
organization reach its big goals.

23. Big goals and empowering employees to solve
problems are good for driving engagement, but
studies also tell us that one of the most important
elements of the engaged (or disengaged)
employee is leadership and management*.
*For more on a look at factors that effect employee engagement, have a look at this post.

24. Which brings me back to not caring
about employee engagement.
Let me tell you why.

25. We recently did an employee NPS
survey. It was 80.
Great!
But what do I do with that?

26. I could work to improve it.
I could move it from 80 to 90.

27. Or I could dig into
individual responses to fix
specific issues.

28. In our case, “Would you
recommend SoapBox as a
place to work for you friends?”
was what held us back.
Digging deeper, employees
didn’t score SoapBox with 8’s,
9’s and 10’s here because they
didn’t feel all their friends were
good enough to work here.

29. So I’m not sure in this case I
want to “fix” this. But let’s say I
did. And let’s say I had a plan
that I was confident would
address the issue.
What would that do for the
success of SoapBox?

30. Would we hit our goals faster?
Using employee engagement
metrics, it would be almost
impossible to answer that
question. So I don’t see it as very
helpful in managing a successful
business.

31. Which is why I, and many other
leaders, don’t focus more on
employee engagement.

32. So what’s the antidote?
If employee engagement is a metric I don’t care about, let’s look
at metrics I do care about.

33. Core Objectives
Core objectives are the things that
matter most. This is your P&L,
market share objectives etc.
I care about core objectives a lot.
How We’re
Doing

34. Core Objectives KPIs
How We Did
How We’re
Going to Do
But to manage the
business, I need
metrics that help me
understand how we’re
tracking against core
objectives. These are
called Key
performance indicators
(KPIs).
KPIs have strong links
to core objectives.
Sales pipeline is very
useful for forecasting
revenue.
I care about those
metrics a lot too.

35. Core Objectives KPIs
Other Metrics
How We Did
How We’re
Going to Do
Good to
know
Then there are other
metrics. They are
interesting and they’re
good to know. But they
don’t help me run my
business.
I only care about these
metrics a tiny bit.
Employee
engagement is one of
those metrics.

36. Core Objectives KPIs
Other Metrics
Good to
know
To get me (or other leaders) to care more, you
could try to make employee engagement a core
metric by tying pay and performance to it.

37. Core Objectives KPIs
Other Metrics
Good to
know
But that’s the wrong way to do it.
You miss the opportunity to understand how it truly
impacts results. And worse, you may have some
managers trying to improve scores vs. improve
engagement.

38. Apparently trying to influence scores isn’t all that uncommon.
We just participated for the first time in Great Places to Work Canada.
The last question in the survey was “Have you been in any way
influenced by management to answer in a particular way?”

39. If that’s happening at some organizations – that’s a huge waste of time and
resources. They think they’re improving engagement, but they’re not really.

40. Core Objectives KPIs
Other Metrics
Good to
know
There’s a better way.
You make employee engagement a metric
leaders actually care about. You make it a real
leading indicator of core objectives*.
*For more on aligning engagment goals to core objectives, take a look at our ”Goal Setting Guide” Ebook.

41. Let’s look at a real world
example from one of our
clients. A leading global
resources company.

42. They wanted to get their
employees engaged in cutting
costs because of falling resource
prices.
More importantly they wanted to
embed this focus on efficiency
and productivity as part of their
culture.

43. Cost Efficiency
Productivity
Health and Safety
Great Place to Work
What you see here
are the categories
that this client
wanted to get
ideas from
employees on.

44. Cost Efficiency
Productivity
Health and Safety
Great Place to Work
15%
15%
20%
50%
Half the ideas were
focused on things that
would improve the
workplace experience,
but not necessarily help
drive core objectives.
Results captured shortly after launch
What you see
are the
percentage of
ideas coming
in. These
numbers are
what the client
saw shortly
after launching
SoapBox.

45. 20%
35%
40%
5%
Results captured at six months
Cost Efficiency
Productivity
Health and Safety
Great Place to Work
15%
15%
20%
50%
95% of the top
ideas trending
help drive core
objectives.
• 2,000 users
logged in
• Submitting 1,700
ideas
• Providing 2,000
comments
• Voting 32,000
times
As the result
of focused
communicatio
ns, things look
very different 6
months later.
Now over 95%
of ideas are
aligned to core
objectives.

46. 20%
35%
40%
5%
Cost Efficiency
Productivity
Health and Safety
Great Place to Work
15%
15%
20%
50%
Now 95% of the
top ideas
trending help
drive core
objectives.
• 2,000 users
logged in
• Submitting 1,700
ideas
• Providing 2,000
comments
• Voting 32,000
times
Results captured at six months
What employees
are engaging on?
How engaged are
employees?
These results
show leaders at
this
organization
both:
• how
engaged
employees
are and
• what things
they’re
engaging
on.

47. 20%
35%
40%
5%
Cost Efficiency
Productivity
Health and Safety
Great Place to Work
15%
15%
20%
50%
Results captured at six months
If too few ideas are submitted
on cost cutting, it’s a good
leading indicator that long-
term they may struggle to hit
that objective.
Importantly, you can also act
on that to try and solicit more
ideas. And you can see if
your efforts result in more
ideas.

48. We now use the metrics that comes from SoapBox as a KPI (that I
really care about) for our core objectives:
 Offer a world class product
 Create efficient and scalable operations
 Grow and retain revenue
 Make SoapBox the best place to work

49. I can use these metrics to help manage long-term success for my core
objectives by ensuring we tap into the insights of all SoapBoxers.

50. And using these metrics to drive the
right type of engagement is not only
something SoapBox can do, or
startups can do.
Everyone can do this.

51. Every leader wants this.
You just need to show them how to
measure employee engagement in a
way that fits into their goals.

52. Brennan McEachran
: @i_am_brennan
: @belikeastartup soapboxhq.com