This month the employee engagement survey bandwagon stumbled
when a long time proponent of employee engagement — KPMG— reported that all of
their employee engagement efforts had not resulted in increased
performance. KPMG decided to forego the
employee engagement survey.
What are employee engagement surveys? They vary. Some HR Departments retain
consultants to perform what I call the “lovey-dovey survey.” These surveys ask
questions such as “Do you like your coworkers?” and “How do you feel about your
employer? “
A different type of employee engagement survey asks
questions like “Does your manager listen to you?” The downside of this kind of
survey is that it often creates employee expectation that if managers don’t
listen, the company will take action!
Some consultants implement employee engagement by looking
at measurable results. One company successfully used employee engagement efforts through a
pilot. The test group showed a 54% increase in comparable store sales.
So
this begs the question, are companies throwing the baby out with the bath water
when they abandon employee engagement including this pilot that actually has
measurable results?
KPMG is implementing a program of in the moment performance
feedback. This is much appreciated by the experienced employees who don’t feel
traditional annual employee reviews are motivating.
But how will the Millennial react? Millennials have been
brought up with the accolade “good job” for every action they take. They
received trophies in sports just for showing up and no special reward and
feedback was given to the best players.
Experience with the “specialness” of Millennials has influenced some
companies to get rid of any comparative feedback and they’ve abolished
performance reviews all together.
Going forward, as companies like KPMG re-introduce measuring
performance instead of relying solely on measures like “Great Place to Work”
contests, HR and management will have to design motivating feedback mechanisms
for all of their diverse employee populations. Baby boomers and Millennials are
not motivated identically.
The decision making should evaluate keeping the employee
engagement methods that have proven to result in measurable performance gains
while getting rid of the surveys that focus only measure employee satisfaction
without corresponding gains in productivity.
