A friend with 25+ yrs of service, recently told me that, “The Employee Engagement surveys are ridiculous, no one looks at them, none of the submitted suggestions have been implemented, and nothing has changed in the years we have been doing these surveys. So why bother?”

As I look at various business and financial metrics of global organizations, i see that many are struggling with Revenue, Profits, and Customer Satisfaction/Experience issues. Many others are incurring reputational damages.

If you look at the feedback below from employees of varying ages and years or service, across the world, in many different organizations, you can understand why many organizations are struggling.

The starting point of any improvement project is not technology, tools, or processes, nor is it improved management and governance systems. The starting point is focusing on people’s thoughts and feelings and understanding how those thoughts and feelings affect behaviour.

As organizations embark on their annual journey to engage their employees, they must realize that the employee engagement, enablement, and empowerment process is more then a corporate check mark where an organization will send a survey, say that it collected feedback, and talk about how it implemented a new coffee maker on the floor to address the employee engagement or employee satisfaction issues.

The organization must make a genuine attempt to understand the thoughts and feelings of its employees and how those thoughts and feelings are affecting the employee behaviours. Behaviours that can have a significant impact on Revenue, Profit, and Customer Satisfaction.

While the pessimism is understandable, particularly in light of the fact that, despite repeated participation in previous employee engagement surveys/initiatives, nothing has been done. Employees must continue to focus on what is within their sphere of control AND they must contribute towards the improvement journey the organization is on. Regardless of the outcome.

My response to this friend, whose feedback echoed many others across various organizations and geographies, was that, we must have faith in the process and the journey. We must do what we can to improve what is within our sphere of control. If we continue to rely on executives to implement change, we may be waiting a very long time or we may not be satisfied with the actions they will take. If we have the ability to implement change within our teams via implementing a focus that works to improve the thoughts and feelings of our colleagues, then we will have a positive impact on their behaviours.

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