This is a recorded presentation with Britni Eisenmann, MAIO CEO & Lead Strategist at GenElevate, with her topic, How Employee Engagement Pays You.
Here’s the transcript for this video:
Ryan: So now I would like to introduce our speaker today, who this is her second time presenting to our group, and her last presentation, Britni provided a lot of great insight in how to communicate with people in different generations because we all think and our life experiences are different.
Ryan: So, as we get to Business Image Improvement Month, I wanted to think of speakers that we could invite that would be able to help us by introducing information and things to think about, in the lines of how your company is perceived really as part of your business image and that is, how you treat your employees as well.
Ryan: So, what better way to invite Britni Eisenmann to talk about how engaging your employees pays you, so Britni you have the ability to share your screen, and you have the floor.
Britni: Thank you, Ryan. I appreciate that, share my slides here.
Britni: I think you know, some of us are probably small enough that we don’t have a lot of employees, even just having this information to better serve your own clients can really go far and help deepen what you offer to them and how you understand them really.
Britni: OK, so today, we are talking about how employee engagement serves you. There are multiple widely accepted definitions of employee engagement and while this is useful, in that companies can pick and choose what that means to them and pursue it to that end, there’s a problem in the variety of definitions.
Britni: Also creates a validity challenge in the research. It’s difficult to interpret and then use the results and findings that are accumulated across organizations.
Britni: But one thing holds true and I think you’ll agree with me here that any definitions that companies can build a system from to appropriately attend more to their employees is fundamentally practical and useful.
Britni: My favorite definition, the one I build a lot of my offerings and programs from is off of the Willis Towers Watson definition.
Britni: I find it useful because it talks about how employee engagement is the will, kindness, and the ability of the employees to pull forward the company’s mission.
Britni: I like this definition because it pulls out responsibility not just on one group. It pulls out willingness, which is the employees’ responsibility and organization can do very little to move the needle on employees’ willingness to do anything, but we also have ability, that’s where the employer ‘s words and actions make a difference by removing barriers to the employees’ ability to engage in the company’s mission.
Britni: So, for example, an IBM study 2017 showed that 80% of employees feel more engaged when their work is consistent with the core values of the organization.
Britni: An employer can help here by indicating how the employees’ job is aligned with the values of the organization in the job description through the performance review process and when it’s time for a raise or promotion.
Britni: By removing that barrier of not knowing how their work contributes to the company, the employer allows the employee to more fully engage.
Britni: Before we dive into how employee engagement pays you, I want to talk about disengagement. The ugly side of this.
Britni: Conservative estimates by the US Department of Labor put the cost of replacing an employee at about 30% of their annual salary. Conservative estimates by Gallup of total cost of turnover, so replacement costs, plus all the other costs that are accrued is about 150% of the employee’s salary.
Britni: So, this means, if we do the math, if you have an organization of 100 employees and let’s say you have 15% turnover rate among your employees, that are in the $45,000.00 a year range, then you are already throwing $200,000.00 into the wind in replacement costs alone, before other costs, like onboarding, training, productivity lag, loss of knowledge, and benefits as well.
Britni: Disengaged employees are less likely to work hard, feel motivated, or meet expectations in their roles. And they cause 60% more errors and defects in their work performance.
Britni: You also have negative customer experiences. Employee experiences scores and customer experience scores are correlated, so these 2 stakeholders: employees and customers.
Britni: 79% of employers report high employee experience scores at companies that also boasts above average customer experience ratings, so you can expect that if your employee engagement scores, when you poll your employees, are pretty high, that your customer experience scores are also, going to be above average.
Britni: Now there is a negative relationship between culture and disengagement, and morale and disengagement. So, as disengagement in your workforce increases, culture and morale will both decrease.
Britni: And, 73% of actively disengaged employees are on the lookout for new jobs or opportunities. And, if you don’t know what percentage of your employee workforce is disengaged, this should be a really scary statistic, because that means you have employees with tribal knowledge and experience, who maybe really would prefer to stay.
Britni: But, if they are actively disengaged, there is a high chance that they are looking for something else outside of your company.
Britni: And then finally I want to touch on absenteeism. Disengaged employees are more likely to call off, arrive late, and leave early, or even give you very short notice on their PTO compared to their engaged peers. This can actually be a great signal that supervisors can be trained to look for.
Britni: If there are changes in your employee and how they treat their PTO or how much heads up you get, that could indicate that something is going on with their engagement and there could be something you need to attend to or at least ask them questions and let them know that you’re there to support them.
Britni: Alright, employee engagement.
Britni: The first way it will pay you back is just through retention. Highly engaged organizational teams, according to Gallup, have a 41% lower absenteeism than teams with disengaged employees.
Britni: So, when you have an ava- a team that the average person is more engaged than not, the entire team as a whole is less likely to have people that are coming in late, taking tons of PTO, or leaving early, or just disappearing and not going in at all.
Britni: Thus, the more embedded employees are in an organization, the more likely they are to stay.
Britni: Here’s the evidence for why retention and embeddedness are connected. Studies have suggested that employees become embedded in their jobs and their communities as they participate. In the professional life, they developed this web of connections and relationships both on and off the job.
Britni: Leaving a job would require severing and rearranging these social value networks.
Britni: I know that right now, we’re becoming accustomed to people just kind of skipping out and leaving their job or giving very little notice, even professionals that, historically in this field, people didn’t leave their jobs.
Britni: We’re seeing that in the pandemic. But it still holds true that when people are connected to each other at work and in communities where they live. They’re less likely to want to leave and they’re more likely to be able to handle some months of disengaged networks and months of not being perfectly happy at work because leaving would mean sacrificing so many of those relationships and their social connections.
Britni: Employee engagement scores are also correlated with the profitability of the company.
Britni: 21% greater profitability can be expected for an organization, including a 20% sales improvement, according to a Gallup study in 2017, when employees are more engaged with the company’s mission.
Britni: An increase in investment in employee engagement by just 10% resulted in annual increase profit yield of 2400. dollars per employee. So, this means if you just move the needle a little bit, you don’t need to totally recreate the deal, you need to, you don’t need to have a huge retention initiative, but if you understand for your company, what kind of engagement initiatives are going to pay off the most, if you just upped the ante a bit.
Britni: You will have payoff per employee for that input, in that buying, that you put into that program.
Britni: There’s also a connection between productivity and engaged employees. Engaged employees are a prerequisite for high performance teams. Gallup research has shown that highly engaged teams exhibit a 17% higher productivity.
Britni: And the more engaged employees you have on a team, the higher the productivity of the team as a whole is lifted as the team members interact with each other and push each other. And I’m not just talking about competition here, but even just kind of, be informal, rubbing shoulders and seeing what their teammates are doing with their time can really help bring up the level of productivity for the whole team in an almost natural way.
Britni: Probably my favorite benefit of employee engagement is your customer experience and what ends up being customer retention.
Britni: Remember when I mentioned the IBM study that connected engagement with knowledge of how the employee’s job is aligned with the organization’s core values, there is another benefit of this.
Britni: When an employee sees their work as directly contributing to the company success, they are more likely to go above and beyond for your customer, because success with the customer doesn’t just benefit the organization in this case, it benefits the employee, because they feel so aligned with who the organization is.
Britni: An organization called One Reach found that the best way to improve customer service is to focus on employee experience. I wish I could get on a bullhorn and scream these from the mountains of Colorado or out on the plains of Kansas, that if you want a better customer experience, you need to work on your employees’ experience.
Britni: Because that is the key to upping anything with your customers.
Britni: Industry influencers who are interviewed named employee engagement as the number one way to improve customer experience, followed by walking in customer shoes, and reviewing the service values of the company.
Britni: A software project management company called Demand Metric, surveyed its users, employees. And so, it was kind of like a meta study almost because it went across multiple fields and many organizations. Their subsequent report concluded the organizations that have 50% employee engagement retain more than 80% of their clients.
Britni: Think about that. How much could you save in sales, if you were retaining more than 80% of your clients?
Britni: And how much could you zero in on your ideal client and make sure you’re doing the work that you’re best at, if 80% of your clients this year were all in and wanted you to work with them next year as well?
Britni: Companies with more formal employee engagement programs achieve 39% greater annual growth in revenue from new customers.
Britni: But customer experience doesn’t happen in a vacuum. They are the result of employee influence and behavior.
Britni: So, your employee’s attitudes, but also the actions your employees take when they’re with your customers and helping out your customers.
Britni: Businesses that manage their employee engagement through a formal program to align to their customer experience goals achieve far superior results according to a research report from Aberdeen.
Britni: And the bump in customer retention satisfaction doesn’t just come from engaged individual employees. According to Gallup, engaged teams are correlated with a 10% increase in customer ratings.
Britni: So, when you have a supervisor that is over a team that more than the average number of the team members are engaged, that team is going to have higher customer experience ratings than other teams around them.
Britni: Before we move on. Does anybody have questions for me related to any of these?
Carender: So, when you hear about, um, how can you explain it more.
Britni: Carender there is a buzz behind you.
Britni: I’m sorry I couldn’t hear the, what was, what you said after explain. Do you mind typing it out, what the thing is that you want me to explain, then I can answer that.
Britni: For everyone else, what was the most surprising thing of the items that I listed above, How employee engagement pays you?
Britni: OK, yes.
Ryan: Oh, Britni, Carender put his question, “Could you explain how it works with disabled people?”
Britni: Yes, when it comes to disabilities, that when we talked about the willingness and the ability at the beginning, removing barriers for them to get what they need to work in their optimal environment and be able to give back the things that they can and want within their will.
Britni: All that is the company’s responsibility, not just to do the action of removing the barriers, but asking each person what they need for optimal barriers, and not assuming that just because they know someone else with this diagnosis or because there’s another employee that has this diagnosis that they have the same needs for environment or to be able to complete their jobs.
Britni: So, when it comes to disability, really tailoring and asking questions of each person is key to the for the company to be able to remove barriers so that that person can fully engage.
Britni: And that they can, you know, work on their own willingness to do that as well, and see themselves in the context of the company’s mission and the company’s success.
Britni: What other questions can I answer for you?
Britni: I know I threw a lot of data and statistics at you, which can be a little overwhelming, but I really like to show, you know, there’s actual research behind this. There are reasons that we say, this not just because it feels good.
Ryan: Britni, may be a time sensitive or I guess current events question for you, because I see it all over the place, that both small and large businesses express a common frustration with being able to hire enough staff for their business.
Ryan: What advice would you provide to a business who is struggling to hire enough people for them?
Britni: Yeah, this has been, um, this has been my marching orders for the past couple years. It feels like people are asking like OK, both things are on fire, retention and recruitment. What do I focus on?
Britni: 1st uhm, how do I avoid setting more fires? Essentially it’s what I get asked. Different way.
Britni: But I’ll say, you know, recruitment feels the heaviest right now for most companies because they just need, you know, 30 more people in the door or 300 more people in the door. They just need to fill those seats, but if you don’t dig deep and figure out what are the controllable factors for retention for my company, and those will not be the same as the company next to you, not even your best competitor.
Britni: What are our internal factors that we can control? And you build your retention program out of that.
Britni: Then it doesn’t matter how many people you let in the door because you have so many holes in your bucket that they’re just going to leak back out, especially in our hiring environment right now or they have so many reasons to leave.
Britni: They haven’t had this many reasons before or in recent history, this, these generations that we have right now, haven’t had so much opportunity and reason to leave.
Britni: So, while recruiting can feel like the heavy thing or the thing that’s the most on fire. If you take the time, in, the work to focus on retention, and you’re not just throwing spaghetti on the wall.
Britni: With it you take distinct, narrow measures, you build out your program. Then, when your people come, they’re more likely to stay. And you’re more likely to ride out the ups and the downs of the economy in the years coming, right? What other questions can I answer?
Catherine: Britni, I was just wondering and I’m sorry if this is a little off topic. I’m just curious because the last two positions that I had, I was left out, which I didn’t mind at all. I was left completely alone as a matter of fact, on, on my own. Rather, my last boss, I never, ever met in person. Which again was not a bad thing.
Catherine: But I just, felt like, I’m so sorry about that, I just wondered how do you approach a situation in regards to having, because I didn’t know if this was a new thing, if I thought OK, well I guess, there being a lot less hands on now because that wasn’t the case before, I remember it was more like, unfortunately micromanaging so it was just so drastic of a change for me and I don’t know if you might have some type of way to approach that type of issue ’cause I thought, well, maybe this is more productive? The fact that they’re leading me on.
Catherine: I don’t know. Do I make sense? I’m sorry.
Britni: Yeah, I have a few thoughts, I don’t think I have one direct answer, but I have a few thoughts that if I was looking into this, like researching it, I think I would chase first.
Britni: Were both of these positions within the context of pandemic or not necessarily?
Catherine: No, it was prior and you know, uh, my at the moment, and I’m a one man show and I think maybe that’s for now and maybe in the future I might have to hire employees, but I’m thinking what approach should I take?
Catherine: Is that may be the one to take and that be more productive to let people be. And, obviously if something comes up again, I’m so sorry about that, if something comes up, you’re going to address the matter, no doubt, but I just really felt it was productive for me personally, you know because, what’s the say? Uhm, oh gosh, come.
Catherine: Let’s see, something having to do with, ah, oh my goodness that if there’s no, ah oh my gosh, I get the same, if it goes, you know, if there’s no noise. I’m sorry if, somebody help me fix it.
Catherine: With this it’s the same, that means you know if there’s no, if there’s no communication. Not communication necessarily, but if there’s no noise about anything then, there’s no problem. Ok.
Britni: No, it’s less is more.
Speaker 1: Pardon me?
Britni: Yeah, no news is good news, maybe.
Catherine: Pardon me. Thank you, that’s right, it’s a little too early for me, thank you.
Britni: Yeah, I think what’s probably going on with you specifically is it you probably have a really strong internal locus of control is what we call it, in that you are probably highly internally motivated, which may be why it makes sense for you to have your successful owned business.
Britni: Uhm, the willingness side of willing and able with employee engagement does often come down to personality type factors. Some employees will always be more willing to engage, even if things aren’t perfect. They really want to fully engage the company with their team with their job goals. Other employees are always going to prefer that, job stays job, and I engage with my home life and, you know, I really don’t want to have many emotions to, at work, or to feel like I identify with working.
Britni: And then you’ll have some employees that really need pulled along, some, they kind of need the fun stuff to keep them willing to stick around.
Britni: So, I would assume it worked so well for you to kind of be left alone because you are so internally motivated and structured.
Britni: I’m also curious about the age of the supervisors that were leaving you alone. Uh, so this may or may not have been your experience, but Gen X historically, which is like, I think, early 50s would be oldest right now.
Britni: Uhm they were extremely ept and independent and I think that they expect that from people around them just because it comes so natural to them, so as more of them, and even older Millennials, become manager, being hands off is a little bit, come natural to them, although they’re not gonna be so much there, no news is good news.
Britni: But if you’re independent, then they’re not really gonna step on your toes because they don’t want anybody to do that to them.
Catherine: Understood thank you so much for that.
Britni: Yeah, I don’t know if I’m correct in that, but those would be the first two things that I would chase down.
Catherine: No, I appreciate that, because you know, I’m thinking about the future and thinking well, what style should I take? But you’re right, everyone is different. So, it just depends. And we should consider the source. Thank you.
Britni: Welcome, OK, anything else?
Britni: That was a great question that, Catherine, thanks, I appreciate it.
Britni: Does anybody else have my pleasure? I don’t want to move on unless, uhm, yeah, all of your nagging questions are answered and you’d be able to toss them my way.
Britni: Alright, OK. Now that we have this information, what in the world are you supposed to do about it?
Britni: I don’t want to leave this just nebulous, throw numbers at you and run away and the training all done.
Britni: So, I want to talk about how you can move forward. The fact is that most employees are trying to stay engaged, even through this pandemic, even through the great resignation. They do want to stay engaged with your mission and your company as much as possible.
Britni: If you aim to achieve a four to one ratio of engaged employees to disengaged, you can counteract the impact of disengaged employee populations having a negative impact on your company.
Britni: So, I don’t think it would come as a surprise to any of us that disengaged employees are more likely to be exhibiting cynicism, um, um, sleeping through meetings, rolling their eyes, getting stuff turned in late and this does have some kind of impact, impact on the team members and the people around them, but it’s been found that if you stay at roughly 4 to one, that impact of your disengaged employees, which you’ll always have at least one, you’ll always have some percentage.
Britni: But that can really lessen that impact on your employees that are actively engaged or working to get engaged. There are some key activities to succeed in employee engagement that you can look at.
Britni: You can have strong visible values in the organization and I am not just talking about a poster on your wall with your values listed on it. I’m talking about acting out the values from the CEO to the person that is onboarding the newest employee.
Britni: Instead of just using words to talk about values, tie that to, this happened last week, this demonstrates X value that we hold. And, a reason that we hold X value is because, look at the benefit when we behave this way, so making your values visible to everyone, especially to employees that work in departments where maybe it’s harder to see how they connect with the mission, like your IT department.
Britni: Not everyone in this department might be able to see how clearly their work contributes to the company success. But when you tie their behaviors to the values of the company and they can better see how they align and better be able to engage.
Britni: And addressing employee expectations. You can use different lenses for this. You can use a generational lens. You can use any kind of, you know, maybe the type of role they’re in, that kind of lens, but essentially getting at what are you expecting about working or about your career path or what are you expecting from your work? What do you think we should be providing you? That we are or aren’t providing.
Britni: And then working with them to come to a common ground and find a way to get there. Career passing with tailored development programs helps employees achieve their goals, especially any younger employee that comes in, they’re gonna want to know how they get up and around and get to where eventually they want to go.
Britni: They want to be able to grow a varied amount of skills. And they really like it.
Britni: If you indicate that you can see them and this is how you can see them growing and moving up within your company, it will help your employees want to become engaged earlier in their tenure with you, if, right off the bat, you start talking about career pathing.
Britni: Not once they’ve hit six months and they’re there, but right off the bat, you’re already talking about these are some potential paths for you if you’re interested. Here’s when you can start shadowing or asking questions if you’re interested.
Britni: Great communication tools, which I think we’ve all heard.
Britni: Internal social collaboration tools for peer-to-peer learning and collaboration, knowledge transfer and helping the company expand the use of best practices so allowing them to teach their peers on the things that they’re already really good at.
Britni: So, they can see how they contribute back to the company in great reward and recognition programs.
Britni: I think one of my favorite shakeups last year was when I had a very established traditional company that was not giving out any rewards until five years. So, once you hit five years, you got your first reward, but the reason I was pulled in is because they couldn’t get anybody new for the last, past two weeks.
Britni: And I was like, hey, let’s think about a reward program. It won’t solve all your problems, but my word, if we can reward them getting to X-day, maybe that’s day 10 or day 14, then I think we can start moving the needle and then seeing that you value them earlier, especially if we can make that reward very public.
Britni: You know, doesn’t have to be a big expensive thing, but posting their picture public somewhere. So, especially in this great resignation environment, reward and recognition, it does not need to be expensive.
Britni: But if you can think about how to tailor this to help you get to your goals, for example, getting people to stay past two weeks. This can be one piece of how you move that forward. Especially in developing economies.
Britni: You’re going to have employees that are much more involved in community improvement projects and company-wide CSI programs that also increase the feel-good factor in the organization and ultimately contribute to employee engagement.
Britni: And we talked about earlier how uour employees are building and deepening social networks, not just in your company, but in their communities where they’re living. So, if you’re doing some corporate social investment things and you’re allowing your employees to give back through those. You’re even more deeply tying them to their community, and you’re showing how you care about their community as well.
Britni: OK, I’m gonna pause there, before I keep going. I want to see what you guys think about these so far, just feel like, old hat, or use some of these make you think a little bit.
Catherine: The rewarding recognition is key. I feel motivation.
Britni: OK, employee engagement doesn’t need to be expensive because the key to sustained engagement is more internal motivation, than it is external. A little bit like a talk with captain or uhm, many times when I’m talking with the company about employee engagement, they talk about the fun activities that you add to the employee experience.
Britni: So, stuff like, uh, my, my husband got a box of oranges from his company the other week as a just happy springtime box. You know, that’s like a fun perk or some companies have Food Truck Fridays or you’ll have family night out to a local baseball game or something.
Britni: All of this stuff is good, but it is not the crux of engagement and it cannot bear the load alone. You shouldn’t totally nix these fun things, but they cannot be your retention program and your employee engagement program all by themselves.
Britni: They just can’t move the needle enough no matter how much you help them.
Britni: Lower cost, but higher thought initiatives will get you much closer to where you want to go. Things like supervisors having the time and the latitude and the training to meet one on one of their employees and to get to know them personally.
Britni: And asking questions that allow the employee to disclose their unique internal motivators so if nobody else knows it higher up, at least that employee supervisor understands their internal motivators.
Britni: Building a culture of trust and open communication can start here.
Britni: Companies can also increase employee engagement by providing mentors, having mentoring programs, designing team-based projects, fostering team cohesiveness, encouraging employee referrals and providing clear socialization and communication about the company’s values and culture.
Britni: As well as, if you need to, offering financial incentives based on tenure or unique incentives that may not be common elsewhere.
Britni: Alright, that is the end of the presentation, but I am happy to answer your questions, especially if you have pushback, you think I’m wrong about something I would love to talk about that and see what your experience or perspective has been.
Ryan: Britni not a question, but a comment, pretty much everything you’ve talked about today and your presentation was absent at every actual job I ever held from like my second job in high school all the way through the last actual job I worked.
Britni: Yeah, yeah it is sad out there in some places. That’s for sure.
Britni: I think you, you know, employee engagement is so nebulous, which is a problem. It just is. I think it also sounds expensive when really, if you’re putting a lot of thought into it, the cost doesn’t have to be that high.
Britni: I know many of you offer services to small and mid-sized companies. Do you have, uh, my clients, who you see struggling with some of these things?
Kim: Hey Britni, I don’t have a question. I have a comment as well. At one of my meetings this morning before this, another speaker mentioned a book called “Big Quit Survival Guide”. OK, have you heard of it?
Britni: No.
Kim: She was quite enamored with this author, I can’t remember the author’s name. Uhm, wait a minute, might have it written down, Mary Lou Martin. Mary Lou Martin, but one of the things from that book, uhm, it was so interesting, that kind of follows this line of thinking, was that author said to conduct stay interviews versus exit interviews so you know you can poll your people.
Kim: How are you doing? What can we do better? You know, how, are you happy? Are you, with something wrong something, so on. I just thought that was interesting and a direct correlation. This one, tell you about. That author, yeah.
Britni: Yeah, I totally agree. I don’t know that I would say instead of exit interviews, but definitely in addition to interviews, yeah, so stay interviews should be done by the direct supervisor to be the most useful, but there had better be trust between the supervisor and the employee, because if you’re doing stay interviews and there’s not already a culture of product dependability, then you’re not going to get anything useful out of them, but absolutely.
Britni: Oh my word, stay interviews are so valuable. Yeah, thanks for bringing this up.
Britni: Alright, if nobody else has questions, then thank you for listening. It was great to be able to present with you today.
Ryan: Awesome, well everyone, let’s give Britni a hand for her presentation.
