ad managers see engagement surveys as a personal reading; they take the scores personally. Therefore, they see it as their “responsibility” to create an action plan to remedy any low scores. This is the antithesis of what should be done. It stifles conversation and ensures lower engagement over time. If engagement scores were about making the manager look good, it would undermine the whole premise of engagement!
When the manager believes that employee engagement ratings reflect how well they manage, and begin to take the scores personally, it’s basically a sign of being really bad manager.
Employee engagement scores are certainly influenced by the direct manager, but it’s most importantly the vehicle that empowers employees to create that kind of working environment that leads to engagement. The results enable individuals and teams to review what’s working and what isn’t, and in turn, create processes, systems, and initiatives that solve problems and lead to a better future.
Great managers see that having an engaged team is largely about the team creating an engaging environment.
Employees are engaged when the work is interesting, meaningful, and has impact. Managers are instrumental in making that a reality. Employee engagement ratings are a tool to determine what could be improved to increase engagement, not a personal measure of the manager’s worth as a human being.
Great managers understand that they can provide a forum to allow the team to enhance engagement. They know they can create an engaging environment by having open dialogue about what works and what doesn’t.
I worked with a leader whose team scored very low on employee engagement tests. She was furious. Even though she thought she was nice and fair, her scores were low. She was embarrassed. In the meeting about the results, her discontent was palpable. She demanded that her managers get to the bottom of the low scores.
Her desire to find out why the scores were low became a barrier to actually fixing the issues identified by the survey. One of the areas that people felt disengaged about was being able to have open dialogue and fix processes that were broken.
Her reaction to the survey results solidified their belief that expressing their views and sharing their feedback was a CLM (Career Limiting Move).
Imagine if she had reacted like this instead:
The employees would have reacted much more favorably.
The objective isn’t to focus on what’s not working, or get rationale for why someone scored the way they did. The focus is moving forward on the solutions.
Work on making improvements. When people see that their input is being used to make things better, they will become MORE ENGAGED.
Don’t be a bad manager. Employee engagement scores are not a measure of being likable; they’re a gauge of where to take action.
Anil Saxena is the President of Cube 2.14, an organizational development consulting firm that works with clients to increase both customer and employee engagement while decreasing turnover, improving customer retention, and increasing profitability within organizations.
Saxena is a certified High Impact coach and trainer and a Joint Application Design facilitator. He is also certified by both Rush Systems and IBM as a focus group facilitator. He is an inaugural member of Northwestern University’s Learning and Organizational Change program, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
