WIXLIB

Bad Habit #1: The annualengagement survey.Try this: Ask employees for feedback throughoutthe year and review results in real time.The vast majority of organizations still spend asignificant amount of money each year on annualengagement surveys. Several problems existwith this concept:1. Results of the annual survey represent adisconnected snapshot in time. While resultsmay be comprehensive, they are unableto illuminate the organization’s changingdynamics throughout the year, responses toevents and trends, and urgent needs that mayarise at any time.2. Results of the annual survey also typicallytake weeks or months to make their way backto the HR team and leaders, squandering thepost-survey momentum to act and limiting therelevance of action-taking to the state of affairsat the time of the survey.3. What’s more, annual survey results are handeddown in the form of static and heavily detailedreports. Static reporting doesn’t allow leadersand analysts to explore results investigatively,understand trends and hotspots that can leadto retention or performance issues, or receiveintelligent advice on demand.In short, the annual survey often falls shorton its promise to generate focused, effective,business-relevant action at all levelsin the organization.7 Seven Habits That Are Stalling Your Employee Engagement ProgramHigh-performing organizations today rely onfrequent, regular measurement and trackingof their highly important metrics, with real-timedashboards for things like finance, marketing,and sales. Tracking metrics in real time allowsleaders to quickly identify issues and take quickaction. The way employees feel about theirwork changes throughout the year, and manyengagement drivers are far more dynamic thanthe annual engagement survey can measure.HR leaders at high-performing organizationsare taking a page from the book of theirexecutive peers and implementing real-timepeople dashboards. They gather frequent,comprehensive engagement data, so they havevisibility into current status and trends, andempower the HR team, leaders, and managersto track progress and course correct in realtime as well.

Case Study:Breaking the Habit: How More FrequentFeedback Helps Marketo GrowMarketo is a quickly-growing marketing automation company with a global footprint. In 2014, JoanBurke, the SVP of HR, recognized that because the workforce was growing and changing so quickly, theannual survey results didn’t represent up to half of the workforce by year end.Marketo moved to quarterly measurement with data that was analyzed instantly as results came in. Joanand her organization abide by the philosophy that “feedback is a gift.” Frequent employee feedbackfrom quarterly pulses allows her and her team to respond quickly to challenges that are identified in thedata, responding to employee needs in real time, rather than months later.Says Joan, “The ability to pulse frequently,so we can continuously keep a finger onthe pulse of engagement, and the datait provides, is so much more compelling.It really gives us a sense of how peopleare feeling.”8 Seven Habits That Are Stalling Your Employee Engagement Program

Bad Habit #2: Using statichigh and low scores todictate your company’sstrategy.Try this: Understand the impact of drivers to discoverwhat’s really important to your people.Organizations often place too much focus onindustry statistics and broad managementmaxims to drive their engagement strategies.Bold claims such as, “The number one reasonemployees leave is because they don’t feel valuedby their organization” are proliferated as truth.Yet, every organization is different—with a uniqueformula for what makes it successful. As such,workforce dynamics at each organization areunique, and in order to realize its unique vision forsuccess, each organization must illuminate andact on its unique DNA for engaging its people.According to Glint data, the mostimpactful drivers of engagement varywidely among organizations. Here arethree real, anonymized examples fromGlint’s database:Company A1. Culture 2. Purpose 3. CareerCompany B1. Prospects 2. Belonging 3. LeadershipCompany C1. Career 2. Growth 3. Recognition9 Seven Habits That Are Stalling Your Employee Engagement ProgramHigh or low scores are just the beginning of thestory; It’s important to understand the impact ofthose drivers on employee engagement at theindividual organization. Understanding whichdrivers affect your organization uniquely, mayhelp determine which levers to prioritize toachieve the desired outcome.Leading organizations focus action plans onareas that have low scores and a high impacton strategic objectives (e.g., engagement,retention, operational reliability, customersatisfaction). Take Company C above as anexample, where Career was a low-scoring itemacross the whole company and had a very highimpact on engagement and retention. The scoreson Recognition were similarly unfavorable onaverage but there were many teams with highscores, and Recognition’s impact on retentionwas smaller than was Career’s. Understandingthe impact of engagement drivers in additionto the level and distribution of scores allowsorganizations to make more effectivedecisions about their people strategies.

Bad Habit #3: Fixingengagement challengesfor your former employees.Try this: Harness predictive analytics to raisethe red flag before it’s too late.When you create an appointment on yourcalendar, chances are your smartphone takescharge: it automatically analyzes distance andtraffic behind the scenes, and sends you anotification to let you know when to leave andwhat route to take. That’s the power of predictivetechnology—that’s the future.For most organizations, the people “warningsystem” isn’t an alert that pops up whenproblems exist beneath the surface. It’s usuallya gut feeling. Or a candid hallway conversation.Or, more likely, a trend in exit interview data.Capturing valid reasons why people quit is hardenough when departing employees have littleincentive to be honest (and risk burning bridges).Projecting those reasons as consistent with thefeelings of your remaining employees only addsto the challenge. If our personal smartphonescan provide automatic notifications based ontraffic data and past trends, why aren’t moreorganizations being warned when their peopleare likely to leave, or underperform?According to Glint data, when engagementscores for any group trend down over two pulses,even within the span of a month, those groupswill have 50% higher attrition rates than thosewhose scores remained the same, regardless of10 Seven Habits That Are Stalling Your Employee Engagement Programabsolute score. Meanwhile, those groups whosescores trended up had 30% lower attrition rates.In other words, even your most engaged teamsmay be at risk when scores drop and meaningfulchanges to engagement, and attrition rates canactually happen within a month. Falling scoresin certain areas, like Career, also contribute tofuture turnover more aggressively than others—trends that today’s technology is capable ofidentifying and surfacing before problemsbegin. Early warning systems, like alerts andautomated insights, which identify patterns,predict outcomes, and surface key improvementareas are helping organizations keep employeeengagement problems from becoming employeeretention and performance problems.

Bad Habit #4:A one-size-fits-all strategy.Try this: Tailor action plans to each team’s unique needs.The key to efficient advertising has alwaysbeen targeting. We instinctively know thatan advertisement for high-end sleeping bagswill fare better in an adventure magazine thanon a beauty blog. Advertising dollars spenton an audience with no potential to buy arewasted resources. Just as different consumerdemographics have different tastes andaspirations, different employee groups havedifferent goals and motivations. Even within asingle organization, every business unit, location,generation, or (name your favorite employee“demographic”) may have a different mix ofdrivers and motivational factors that lead them tohigher level of engagement.Today’s high-performance organizationsrecognize that when it comes to engagingemployees, a one-size-fits-all approachtruly translates to one-size-fits-none. Theseorganizations embrace technology that allowsthem to identify what motivates each team andemployee group and take targeted action basedon each group’s data to respond to their uniquechallenges.Just like in digital advertising, where algorithmsanalyze millions of data points in real time torecommend most impactful placement of ads,engagement technologies are beginning toutilize these capabilities. Artificial Intelligenceprograms can analyze team data automatically,and provide recommendations for improvingengagement based on factors like high andlow scores, correlations of drivers with keyoutcomes, benchmark data, and past trends.These programs then use industry best practicesto recommend courses of action to improveengagement. With these systems, organizationshave the tools and the resources to have anongoing impact on the engagement andperformance of teams.Top Drivers of Engagement Can Vary Greatly By Team:Finance Unit Purpose Culture ProspectsTechnology UnitHR Unit Culture Decision-Making Prospects Culture Career Team[TOP DRIVERS OF 3 TEAMS AT COMPANY A]11 Seven Habits That Are Stalling Your Employee Engagement Program

Bad Habit #5: Engagementdata is guarded underlock and key.Try this: Empower managers with the data to takeownership and impact engagement.Moving toward a more localized approach foremployee engagement—using data to identifygroups’ unique challenges and building tailoredsolutions—means the HR team can no longer beits keeper. Devoting the time to communicating,tailoring approaches, taking action, and trackingprogress for every individual team would not onlybe a full-time job for the HR team, but would alsofail to be effective.In too many organizations, engagement data isprimarily used by HR and the C-Suite, neglectingmanagers as an integral part of the solution.Managers are employees’ strongest link betweentheir day-to-day activities and the organizationalvision. They’re the best equipped to understandthe motivations, goals, and challenges facedby their people, and to take the most effectiveaction to improve engagement. Leaving themout of the equation, or excusing them from theirresponsibility, is recipe for the status quo.High-performing organizations embrace themanager-employee relationship and givemanagers the tools—the data, the training,and the responsibility—to take ownership ofemployee engagement. They empower managersto lead action planning with their teams andtake action to improve engagement. And HR,the people development experts and the onlyteam responsible for the entire organization,becomes the champions, the coaches, and theencouragers.In too many organizations,engagement data is primarilyused by HR and the C-Suite12 Seven Habits That Are Stalling Your Employee Engagement Program

Case Study:Breaking the Habit: Empowering Managerswith Engagement Data at FICOFICO is an analytics software company that helps businesses drive higher levels of growth, profitability,and customer satisfaction. The organization embraces the philosophy that high-quality managersare the primary influence on engaged team members. As the company became more geographicallydispersed, it was ever more important to engage employees to maintain cohesiveness. But its annualengagement survey provided only static reports that didn’t equip managers with the insight andongoing support to help them respond effectively to engagement challenges.FICO re-evaluated its approach, implementing a strategy that provided managers with more granularengagement data, allowing them to explore, and better understand, the engagement dynamics ontheir teams. With on-demand access to the data, managers were empowered to drill down, filter teamresults, and ultimately take ownership of engagement on their teams. As a result, managers were reenergized around engagement.As CHRO Rich Deal put it, by equippingmanagers, “We were sending a very clearmessage [to employees]: We care abouthow you’re feeling.”13 Seven Habits That Are Stalling Your Employee Engagement Program

Bad Habit #6: Leaving theemployee out of employeeengagement.Try this: Use engagement data to create an ongoingconversation organization-wideEngagement scores, the impact of drivers, andthe tools in managers’ hands are the beginningof a great story. But without contextual, frequentconversations with employees to add color toidentified challenges, to illuminate root causesand to provide feedback on solutions, any actionstaken run the risk of missing the point or quicklybecoming irrelevant.There’s a reason 10% of Fortune 500 companieshave done away with formal annual performancereviews in favor of more frequent, informal checkins. Today’s workforce values inclusion, coaching,and ongoing feedback. Frequent conversationsabout employee engagement make employeesinclude in the process, and provide anopportunity for ongoing feedbackat all levels of the organization.Here’s how high-performing organizations makeit happen: It starts with the leadership teamand the HR team, which build enthusiasm foremployee engagement initiatives and train themost important influencers—managers—tounderstand, communicate, and take action onengagement data. Executives must be exemplarsin the process and HR’s role is trusted advisor(not administrator!). Managers are then equippedto use engagement data to create an ongoing14 Seven Habits That Are Stalling Your Employee Engagement Programdialogue about what motivates their people andhow to build the most effective team, and to workwith their teams to build action plans and trackprogress.When these conversations take place at everylevel, on a regular basis, employee engagementbecomes a part of the organization’s toolkitwhen it comes to change. Data and action plansbecome an ongoing part of planning at everylevel of the organization, an integral componentof the business strategy. Imagine a worldwhere engagement results and actions are astandard part of monthly status reports and theengagement dashboard is integrated with thefinancial dashboard in executive team meetings.Leading organizations are creating a regulardialogue about engagement to involve andpartner with employees to create an environmentwhere employees can thrive.10% of Fortune 500 companieshave done away with formal annualperformance reviews in favor ofmore frequent, informal check-ins.

Bad Habit #7: Maintainingthe organization’s mostimportant metric in a silo.Try this: Prove the linkage between employeeengagement and business performance.Many organizations accept that engagementis tied to all sorts of business outcomes,from retention and performance to customersatisfaction and profitability. Yet, in most,engagement data remains isolated. It isn’tcorrelated with other key performance indicatorsto create a linkage between them. What is thevalue to the business of an increase in employeeengagement? What’s the value of measuringand improving it?High-performing organizations recognize thatemployees drive the business through theirenergy, focus, and commitment. For theseImagine a world where engagement datais linked with business outcomes.15 Seven Habits That Are Stalling Your Employee Engagement Program

organizations, engagement scores are reliableleading indicators of success for people (e.g.,performance), teams (e.g., creative output),and business units (e.g., operating margin).Employee retention, individual and teamperformance, customer satisfaction, safety,even profitability are impacted by changes inengagement. High-performing organizationsuse technology to track engagement dataalongside their other business metrics—that’swhen engagement data becomes predictive,answering questions like: How does engagementEmployeeengagement ismuch more thana report card.16 Seven Habits That Are Stalling Your Employee Engagement Programactually impact customer satisfaction? Whatdrives improved sales performance at the endof the quarter? How many people are likely toleave in the next six months and what’s thelikely recruiting and onboarding cost to replacethem? And, most importantly, what’s the value ofmeasuring and improving employee engagementin the first place?Employee engagement is much more than areport card. HR executives recognize this, andnow they have the ability to prove it with harddata—people data, that is.

Case Study:Breaking the Habit: Pulling the Right Levers at OpowerOpower is a global software company that’s transforming the way people consume utilitiesinformation and make decisions about their energy usage. The company recognized a growingretention challenge and looked to its quarterly engagement data for the guidance to solve it.A linkage analysis identified the top five drivers that influence both employee engagement andretention at the organization. By synthesizing these drivers and their organization-level scores,the Opower people team was able to pinpoint the top three priorities to focus on in order toreduce retention: Growth, Culture, and Leadership. Using insights from employee comments andconversations, the people team was able to build a strategy to battle increasing attrition, centeredon these three most impactful drivers of retention.Just one quarter after implementing its action plan,Opower had already seen a reduction in regrettableattrition, in addition to improved engagement scores,proving that identifying and pulling the right levershas a significant impact on business outcomes.17 Seven Habits That Are Stalling Your Employee Engagement Program

We live in anew world.Employees have more options than ever—andthey’re exercising their abilities to choosetheir ideal workplace. The way we connectwith and collaborate with each other hasdramatically changed in the past decade. Butmost organizations are still falling victim to badhabits that are keeping them from realizingtheir potential.High-performing organizations recognize theimpact that retaining and inspiring top talent hason business performance. Understanding whatmotivates employees, sharing that data withthe right stakeholders (including managers andemployees), and using it strategically within thecontext of the business’s goals, has brought theseorganizations to a higher level of effectivenessthat will carry them into the future.18 Seven Habits That Are Stalling Your Employee Engagement ProgramThe changes these organizations have madearen’t new or untested ideas. These seven futureready habits of employee engagement areconcepts already being applied in other aspectsof our world, and they’ve revolutionized the waywe communicate, collaborate, and execute inboth our professional and our personal lives.They’ve made us more effective and efficientdecision-makers. The sooner you adopt theseemployee engagement habits, the sooner you’llbe on your way to impacting the business withmore integrated, collaborative, and effectiveinvestments in your people.

Glint Is An InnovativeTool That CreatesThriving OrganizationsGlint is built for high-performing organizations that want torewrite their future by measuring and improving employeeengagement and making engagement data an integralcomponent of the organization’s success. Organizations thatuse Glint automatically follow the new habits of employeeengagement by equipping HR, leaders, and managers with:1.Frequent measurement of employeeengagement—monthly, quarterly, or on yourschedule.2. Deep-dive analytics and trends over time, soyou can uncover otherwise hidden causes ofengagement challenges.3. Smart Alerts and

learn about seven bad habits of today's organizations that undermine strategy, pick up seven future-ready habits that high-performing organizations use to be more effective, more predictive, and more impactful on business results. Discover why it's time to make a change—and how you can change your habits to become a high-