In an earlier post I offered my defintion of employee engagement. Researchers at Hewitt have arrived at a similar conclusion. Findings reported in Business Standard indicate they see three behaviors:
Engaged employees stay — they have an intense desire to be a member of the organisation; say — they are passionate advocates for their workplace and speak positively about the organisation to co-workers, potential employees and customers; and strive — they go beyond what is minimally required to produce extraordinary service and results for customers and colleagues.
Look at this example of how P&G employees act like an owner of the company, treating the company’s assets as their own. During a period of heavy rain which had caused severe flooding, the government declared a holiday for all its offices, but a lot of P&G material was awaiting clearance at the customs office. The plant engineer had valid reasons to wait for a day, but he took the initiative: He braved the rains to pick up a customs official from his house and took him to his office to authorise its clearance. He then made sure that all the raw materials were delivered to the plant on the same day. As a result, the production lines didn’t have to stop.
Would your employees go to such lengths to help your business achieve its goals? If the answer is yes, you have done your job as an employer. If not, take the Kelly survey seriously before it’s too late.
I think we’re getting some consensus around this idea of employee engagement– that’s good. More importantly, we’re hearing examples, such the one cited above, of specific behavior we can clearly observe that shows us when employees are engaged. Would love to hear your stories of engagement and disengagement.
Graphic courtesy www.lumaxart.com
Mark Hirschfeld 