Employee engagement

Do you really know your people?


Recruiting the right people is just the start of it. Retaining talent is where the real battle commences. Edgecumbe Research Ltd looks at the strategy of keeping the people that makes your business tick motivated.
By Chris Marshall (Research Director)

Are you clear about how to engage your staff? Are you winning the war for talent? Need to improve staff retention? Want to change your culture to support the aims of the organisation? Or do you wonder just how satisfied your employees are? Surveys will provide you with the information, but they can be misleading. That's why in 2006 the Edgecumbe research team merged with Edgecumbe Research to create an exciting new employee research and consulting team. With a growing portfolio of over 50 research clients, the new business combines organisational psychology with research capability to provide insightful surveys for employers of all sizes, both in the UK and overseas. Whether online or on paper Edgecumbe Research surveys deliver. Edgecumbe Research's consultants offer practical ways to explore complex issues to ensure that your survey makes a positive impact on your people and organisational performance.

Whatever the aims of your survey, we encourage you to think of a survey as a strategic management tool to help with day-to-day management as well as managing change. It therefore benefits from a systematic approach, which can be summarised as:

  • Understand the organisation's culture
  • Gain insight into employees' attitudes, perceptions and preferences
  • Compare with business/organisation needs and define goals for change
  • Clarify key messages
  • Develop change, development and communication strategies
  • Train managers and other communicators
  • Design and produce materials to deliver required messages
  • Measure and evaluate.

Employee Engagement

We all know that employees who are committed to their organisation perform better. We can help you identify, track and manage the key factors that influence engagement. Then watch commitment, discretionary effort and performance improve.

There are many definitions of employee engagement. Most agree however that an engaged employee has:

  • A belief in the organisation and a commitment to it;
  • An understanding of the organisation and its broader context;
  • A desire for the organisation to succeed;
  • Respect for colleagues
  • A willingness to 'go the extra mile'…

An examination of our own databases clearly shows that clients who work with us over time, who take on board their survey results and involve local management teams to take action on specific items that have been identified in the survey steadily and significantly improve their levels of engagement.

Benchmarking

Great workplaces don't just attract the best people, great workplaces deliver great results. That's why more and more employers are interested in comparing their workplace with others. Whatever the results of your staff survey, you will want to know how the results compare with those achieved in similar organisations.

Edgecumbe Research maintains an up- to-date database of scores on over 150 different employee survey items across a wide range of topics including:

  • Employment and working conditions
  • Training and development
  • Communication
  • Teamwork
  • Management style
  • Corporate culture and values
  • Customer service.

Post survey

Once the survey data has been analysed and fed back to the senior management team, we can help you to make sense of the data and to develop strategies to respond to the opportunities that the survey has revealed. Working alongside your management teams, we can help you with internal communication, so vital to the success of the survey process, as well as organisational and management development. Our overall aim is to create the conditions where your people and organisation thrive and to eliminate those factors that are counter productive.

By regular surveying, we are able to track progress over time. Many clients have greatly improved engagement indices by focusing management attention into key areas that will make the biggest difference, setting measurable targets and celebrating their achievement.

Working with leadership teams to build employee engagement

Leadership teams have a profound effect on engagement and performance. That's why when we look at survey results we often turn the attention on the client's leadership team or teams. Their leadership and example can inspire and enable the talent in your organisation to produce outstanding results. Or not.

Working with consultants from the Edgecumbe Group our approach to working with leadership teams at board, executive and management levels as well as cross functional teams has often helped raise engagement. Using a process called T3, we use survey data, as well as team and individual assessment to focus developmental investment. The evidence gathered at the beginning of the process through the survey provides greater clarity of what needs to be done and the assessment of the key people and their team dynamics indicates how the leadership team should best use their collective talents and energy in response.

If you examine all the research, time and time again it demonstrates that ultimately it is your people that make the difference in your organisation. Harnessing their passion, their vision, their ingenuity, their knowledge and skills into one organisation, working together, energising, inspiring and enabling them to do their best is how they thrive and so in turn does the organisation.