It is probably fair to say that we all talk about employee engagement and most modern businesses will no doubt have some way of measuring it. But is it really at the core of what you do or is it something you've been told you should measure, and therefore you do, but actually you aren't that committed to it? Unfortunately, if this is true then it is likely your staff will soon find you out!
This fascinating article in the Harvard Business Review details the areas every modern business should be focussing on and explores how engagement should be fostered in a modern organisation.
Organizations are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on employee engagement programs, yet their scores on engagement surveys remain abysmally low. How is that possible? Because most initiatives amount to an adrenaline shot. A perk is introduced to boost scores, but over time the effect wears off and scores go back down. Another perk is introduced, and scores go back up — and then they fall again. The more this cycle repeats itself, the more it feels like manipulation. People begin to recognize the short-term fixes for what they are.
When organizations make real gains, it’s because they’re thinking longer-term. They’re going beyond what engagement scores are telling them to do in the moment and redesigning employee experience, creating a place where people want, not just need, to work each day.
https://hbr.org/2017/03/why-the-millions-we-spend-on-employee-engagement-buy-us-so-little
