6 barriers to effective employee engagement

Employee engagement surveys have been around for years.  Often run by HR, but sometimes they’re not – and yet surely employee engagement is pivotal to all aspect of successful talent management?  Without engagement in your 360 reviews or your performance management processes, how can they possibly deliver achievement of objectives – and with little engagement with the organisation, how realistic are your succession plans?

The problem seems to be that little action is taken following the survey - which, ironically, leads to disengagement.

We see six key barriers to getting the results from employee engagement programmes put into action across the organisation.

1. Engagement is seen as a standalone activity quite separate from other key talent management areas.
2. The survey or questionnaire used is too basic and leaves you high and dry – providing only a single organisational score and no guidance as to what to do next.
3. You have to outsource the survey, the project management and the result interpretation to a consultancy so you no longer ‘own’ the process or get to analyse the results as you wish.
4. You use the areas of engagement prescribed by the survey provider – rather than get to choose key focus areas which are relevant to you.
5. There is poor visibility of the priority action areas: can you clearly see what’s important to your people and where the organisation (or a department or an employee) needs to take action?
6. It’s just a tick-box exercise and little or nothing is done with the results;  it is unclear as to what could or should be done to help drive up levels of engagement.

Now take a look at how employee engagement works in your organisation. 

Are you getting the most out of what your people tell you about how they feel and what’s important to them?

If not, perhaps it’s time to look at our Talent En-Gauge and see for yourself in a specific 1:1 demo.