What engaged employees want and how to find out if they're getting it - from a report by Roffey Park

A three-part model

Roffey Park research suggests that there are three key components to employee engagement: my job, my organization, my value. Their report ‘The human voice of employee engagement: understanding what lies beneath the surveys’ gives a full and readable account of the factors that make a difference. A key finding is that pride is at the heart of employee engagement.

People want:

• To be treated as individuals

• To be consulted and informed about things which affect them

• To feel valued for themselves and what they do

• To be supported with work issues

• To have clear and fair process for performance evaluation and development

 They want their leaders to be:

• Strategic

• Visible

• Communicative

• Trustworthy

They want a good relationship with their manager. Effectively they want to be able to feel pride in themselves, their work, and their organization. When they do, they are highly likely to be engaged employees.

Finding out what lies behind the survey data

One way to help explore employee engagement survey data is to assemble focus groups of organisational members and to ask them to record on post-its the immediate feelings they experience when someone asks them the questions

 ‘Where do you work?’

 ‘Who do you work for?’

‘ What do you do?’

These post-its are then organized, by question, under red, amber and green headings (traffic lights), and a discussion takes place.

The beauty of this process is that this raw data can be presented to the senior decision makers not able to be present at the focus group. It allows them to get a real feel for the sentiments, practicalities, and personalities behind the bland statistics of the engagement survey results: what they should treasure, what they should notice, and what they need to change.

This article is based on information shared by Roffey Park at the ABP conference 2011