Employee Engagement: An HR Resource Center

 

Definitions: What is employee engagement?

David Zinger, “Employee engagement is the art and science of engaging people in authentic and recognized connections to strategy, roles, performance, organization, community, relationship, customers, development, energy, and well-being as we leverage, sustain, and transform our work connections into results.”

SHRM,“Employee engagement refers to the connection and commitment employees exhibit toward an organization, leading to higher levels of productive work behaviors.”

Gallup, “… engaged employees as those who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace.”

Wikipedia,” Employee engagement is a workplace approach resulting in the right conditions for all members of an organization to give of their best each day, committed to their organization’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organizational success, with an enhanced sense of their own well-being.”

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Models & Guides

Custom Insight,“Employee engagement is the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs, are committed to the organization, and put discretionary effort into their work.”

Kevin Kruse, “Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals. This emotional commitment means engaged employees actually care about their work and their company. They don’t work just for a paycheck, or just for the next promotion, but work on behalf of the organization’s goals. When employees care—when they are engaged—they use discretionary effort.”

  • The ‘X’ model of employee engagement: Maximum Satisfaction meets Maximum Contribution – Consulting firm Blessing White defines employee engagement as the intersection of the employer’s goal of achieving maximum contribution and the employee’s goal of achieving maximum contribution meet.
  •  Becoming irresistible: A new model for employee engagement
    Josh Bersin at Deloitte Insights: “The employee-work contract has changed, compelling business leaders to build organizations that engage employees as sensitive, passionate, creative contributors. Two years of research and discussions with hundreds of clients suggest five major elements and underlying strategies that work together to make organizations “irresistible.” Further thoughts in 2017: The employee experience: Culture, engagement, and beyond
  • The Zinger Model is built on a pyramid with building blocks for success. For a more detailed guide on this pyramid, you can download a 50-page PDF: The Power of Employee Engagement – How to Ignite and Sustain Employee Engagement.
  • The TINYpulse Ultimate Guide to Employee Engagement
    An excellent guide from an excellent company. The guide cites leading research and theories and offers two goals: 1 – to get you thinking about employee engagement, and 2 – to motivate you to work with your team to follow the steps in the guide.
  • The 2018 Ultimate Guide to Employee Engagement
    We love this comprehensive, user-friendly guide that SnackNation put together for their own employees and then shared for the companies they work with, too. They say: “It’s also why we’ve put together this guide – to help you transform your organization and create an environment where your employees can be their best selves every single day … We’ve compiled ideas and data from the leading researchers in employee engagement, as well as case studies and action steps that show what these ideas look like in the real world.”
    The guide is quite good and covers 9 topics: Discover Your Purpose • Communication • Health & Wellness • Ideal Workspace • Well-Defined Roles •Foster Friendships • Recognition • Amazing Managers • Personal Growth • Bring It Together
  • Your Guide to Engaging a Multi-generational Workforce
    Excellent 24-page PDF from Cornerstone: “So, how do you collectively engage employees spanning more than 60 years in age? In this guidebook, you’ll learn how to both understand and meet the needs of each generation. With six articles on everything from offering cross-generational mentorship to integrating flextime at work, our featured experts will help you create an environment in which people with a variety of perspectives will not only thrive but collaborate for greater success.”

 

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Resources, Articles & Tools
    • Gallup News: Employee Engagement
      This is a major resource and starting point on the topic: Gallup monitors and conducts research regularly on employee engagement, publishing frequent articles on attitudes and workplace best practices, all backed by surveys and research.
    • Five Ways to Increase Employee Engagement
      Gallup: “Managers and leaders should know their people — who they are, not just what they do. Every interaction with an employee has the potential to influence his or her engagement and inspire discretionary effort. How leaders manage their employees can substantially affect engagement levels in the workplace, in turn influencing the company’s bottom line. Here are five strategies organizations can use to help build their constituency of engaged employees.”
    • Why Great Managers Are So Rare Companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time, Gallup finds. Management talent exists in every company. It’s often hiding in plain sight.
    • The No. 1 Employee Benefit That No One’s Talking About 
      Gallup: People who possess high talent to manage: 1 in 10. People leave managers, not companies.
    • Research Shows the Best Way to Motivate Others
      Joseph Folkman and David Zenger conducted research showing that the highest level of engagement is achieved when leaders are high on both push and pull. They define push as “drive for results,” and pull as ability to “inspires and motivates others.” But their research also shows that in measuring the ability to pull compared to 16 other competencies, it comes in as the lowest, least effective competency.
    • The Key to Employee Engagement: Your Net Promoter Score
      HR Bartender offers a guest post from Workify, which offers a method for measuring engagement using the Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS), an index that measures the likelihood that an employee would refer candidates or customers to the company.

 

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Multimedia: Videos

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Multimedia: Infographics

Trust, Leadership & Employee Engagement from GPS Strategies / BlessingWhite

 

Your Formula for Employee Engagement: Kronos Workforce Institute offers an excellent infographic: The Periodic Table of Elements for a Highly Engaging Workplace Culture. (below). For more detail, click the above link.

The National Business Research Institute offers an infographic on The Importance of Employee Engagement, below.

Infographic: The Importance of Employee Engagement

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