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Employee engagement surveys collect feedback to improve the workplace. The information collected must be analyzed and interpreted with care to prevent exaggerated or misleading claims based on limited evidence.
A midsized company making environmental monitoring devices is experiencing steady growth and profitability. While not setting sales records, the company is coming out of the recession largely unscathed and with a solid organization and dedicated workforce.
The executive leadership team attributes much of this to the human resources (HR) group and their employee engagement program. The program is built around the annual employee engagement survey of 18 critical engagement drivers (the EE18 Model), statistically validated, using a consultancy database of more than 2,000 comparative organizations, as leading to increased employee engagement, corporate growth, profitability, and customer satisfaction.
At the enterprise level, low-scoring drivers are targeted for improvement. This focused approach is paying off. Three years ago, the EE18 score was below the median of comparative companies; now it stands firmly in the upper quartile. The company won an award as "one of the 100 best companies to work for" this year.
Improvement activities go deeper. Senior and midlevel managers receive departmental engagement reports highlighting year-to-year results and comparisons with competitive benchmarks and corporate targets. Quality assurance is provided through rigorous statistical tests defining significant strength and weakness areas. Managers are accountable for results, and bonuses are affected by how well departmental engagement scores stack up against targets.
This sounds good, but what if the survey has it all wrong? Worse, what if the model is selling statistical fairy tales for hard reality? If this were the case then:
* The engagement score would be meaningless and lead executives into a delusion of improving engagement even as everyone else sees obvious deterioration.
* The 18 drivers of engagement wouldn't drive anything, yielding employee bewilderment as to why the organization is fixing things that don't matter, while ignoring things that do, allowing them to fester.
* The "best companies to work for" award becomes an inside joke as employees see a self-promoting leadership out of touch with reality.
* Line managers develop engagement action plans knowing they are irrelevant to increasing workplace tensions and declining productivity.
* People are held accountable for year-to-year variation in results that...