According to a recent HR survey¹ 66% of UK organisations are now measuring employee engagement. According to another survey² only 20% of employees are engaged. Does that mean that people are measuring the wrong things or they’re failing to act on their research?

In our experience it’s usually the latter. Many companies do, indeed, commit time, effort and money to conducting surveys and measuring engagement but only a small proportion demonstrates the same commitment to acting on the results. Time and again we see companies endorse our recommendations, drill into the detail and ultimately do nothing. It’s as though measurement is an end in itself.

What separates the few from the many?The few have gathered hard evidence that links employee engagement to customer satisfaction and profit. And that evidence provides a compelling case for action which convinces their managers who then ensure that actions are implemented with vigour. The many, on the other hand, either don’t have that evidence or they’re not persuaded by the evidence of other companies. So they don’t have a compelling business case for engagement, their managers remain unconvinced, and there’s no imperative for action.

So what do the many need to do to join the ranks of the few? Start thinking beyond measurement and focusing on action. They need to start linking engagement to other key performance metrics and developing a structured action programme. We know from experience that the results can be transformational: a compelling business case, unprecedented management buy-in, rising engagement and better business performance. But don’t take our word for it – start learning from the few.

An outstanding example is provided by that bastion of the High Street, Marks & Spencer. At a recent presentation HR Director, Tanith Dodge, acknowledged that one of the biggest challenges is “convincing managers that there’s a need for staff engagement activities at all”. She went on to explain that she does it by providing them with hard factual evidence that they work: by comparing engagement metrics with other performance metrics such as ‘sales against plan’, ‘absence against plan’ and mystery shopper scores at stores with the most and least engaged personnel.

As a result of those analyses she knows that if the 25% of M&S stores with the lowest engagement scores in staff surveys performed as well in sales terms as the top 25%, M&S would increase its sales by £104m a year. A useful metric to have, she added “next time I’m stuck in the lift with a manager who doubts the value of employee engagement.”

And there are other good examples such as Mitchells & Butlers, the UK’s leading operator of restaurants and pubs (watch Corporate HR Director, Dulcie Shepherd, describe how M&B turns insight into action at more than 1,400 businesses in the video below).

The challenge for the many is to learn from these examples, change their
mind-sets and move from measurement to action. Rising engagement will follow.

This blog draws on the following:

¹ The State of Human Resources – A survey by Kings College London and Speechly  Bircham
²Towers Watson’s 2010 Global Workforce Study
CIPD 2011: M&S shares its predictors of employee engagement – People Management 10 November 2011.
Performance 2011 Conference: M&S’ Tanith Dodge on boosting customer service via staff engagement – HR Zone 7 November 2011.