{"id":5512,"date":"2016-01-22T12:58:08","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T12:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glocalthinking.com\/engagement-management-for-creating-innovative-cultures\/"},"modified":"2021-08-31T10:39:42","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T10:39:42","slug":"engagement-management-for-creating-innovative-cultures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glocalthinking.com\/en\/engagement-management-for-creating-innovative-cultures\/","title":{"rendered":"Engagement Management for Creating Innovative Cultures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Managing employee engagement<\/a> is one of those topics on the agenda of leaders, and particularly HR professionals, in any company. Nevertheless this concept poses several drawbacks. First of all is the difficulty in defining it.<\/p>\n

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Instead of trying to find an abstract and vague definition, perhaps it is easier to understand the concept by describing the consequences, brought about by a lack or loss of commitment from the people who are part of the company, as well as explaining some of the main reasons leading to such a scenario.<\/p>\n

Thus my attempt to explain the concept is to say that when employees do not feel well treated or informed, or heard, or invited to participate in aspects defining the future of the organization, the problem is not that they dump their jobs and walk out. The problem is people dump their jobs and stay on. Hence they still remain on the payroll, but are disaffected and guided by the principle of minimal effort.<\/p>\n

Assuming it is so, ostensibly the lack of commitment can have dire consequences for companies. Once this is accepted as a critical factor for securing long term success in organizations, it expedient to stress that it is difficult to find out the real impact of engagement on company performance.<\/p>\n

For example, if you decide to use a metric like NPS (Net Promoter Score), and an improvement of ten points is achieved, it would be hard to predict how this increase in engagement would impact revenue, customer retention, or market share. Even improvement in some of the business metrics cannot be predicted with complete confidence.<\/p>\n

Another way to measure engagement might be through individual interviews. Assuming the interviewer is objective, this may be valuable for its qualitative element but it still does not shed light on how engagement may influence performance and results.<\/p>\n

By this I\u2019m not suggesting that you shouldn\u2019t measure the level of employee engagement. On the contrary, I think it\u2019s important to use both quantitative and qualitative methods, and it\u2019s right to do so constantly over time and not a just as a simple annual practice.<\/p>\n

From some of these measurement results, we know that engagement levels are currently very low. This is what studies show, like the one carried out by Gallup in 2012 which indicated that in the United States, less than 26% of workers were actively engaged within their companies. In another study undertaken globally in 2013 the results are even less encouraging.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to clarify that my interest in engagement is that as an innovation consultant, it\u2019s very apparent to me that it\u2019s impossible to build innovative cultures without high levels of engagement. If you wish, the term innovation can be swapped for change.<\/p>\n

In fact the implications of change\u2014or innovation<\/a>\u2014and engagement are far more interrelated than it would seem. It isn\u2019t possible to achieve changes without commitment or engagement, yet change is a huge opportunity for greater engagement. This requires change to be designed by all, and not imposed by just a few.<\/p>\n

Organizations that seek to adapt to a future, where collaboration and empowerment will be gaining traction, cannot impose change. This should be co-created with all those who are part of the organization.<\/p>\n

Precisely that\u2019s why when dealing with a deep change, for example a change that involves creating an innovative culture, I use a series of steps that contribute towards achieving greater engagement among those people who will be affected by these changes:<\/p>\n