Thursday, June 20, 2013

Performance Imperatives of Staff Engagement


Staff engagement offers one of the most compelling efforts an organization can initiate and sustain.  Engaged staff are those who are visibly and genuinely keen to do their job.  They understand what is most important to the organization, and they do their utmost to support it.  They 'go the extra mile,' when it comes to tough assignments or deadlines.

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Writing for Gallup Business Journal, Susan Sorenson noted in her article - How Employee Engagement Drives Growth - a refrain that Gallup has researched and emphasized for several years:
Concentrating on employee engagement can help companies withstand, and possibly even thrive, in tough economic times.
She presented the following graphic as well.  The positive results of staff engagement are consistent not only across these nine business indicators, but also over time from one meta-analysis after another.

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"Measurement is one thing, what you measure is another," says Jim Harter, Ph.D., Gallup's chief scientist of employee engagement and well-being.
To elaborate on Harter's point:  An organization ought to clarify, first, what it's trying to accomplish and how engagement will help accomplish that aim.  Second, the organization has to make sure that whatever it measures actually speaks to engagement vis-a-vis its aim.  Finally, it must have the proper tools to measure precisely this, that is, tools that have construct and criterion validity.

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Staff engagement may be deemed one of those soft (i.e., people) initiatives, but unquestionably it has hard impact on business (i.e., results).

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