Planning your approach to improving employee engagement

Improving engagement requires a systematic approach and involves some key stages. 

Step 1: Set the context and develop the business case 

1. Define employee engagement in your organisational context
2. Be clear about the business case and link it to performance
3. Gain buy-in and communicate intent.

1. Define employee engagement in your organisational context

This web resource offers two definitions of employee engagement. It is important to think about what engagement means for your organisation and develop a business case that is relevant. 

 It may be helpful to consider the following questions when developing your business case:

• What would a highly-engaged workforce look like, feel like, be like? How would it be different to now? 
• What impact would this have – and how does it link to the business case?
• What experience do we have of high engagement – either in our own authority, or experienced elsewhere? What is the learning from this?
• What sort of organisation do we want to be? How do we want employees to talk about the organisation as a place to work? What might being an ‘employer of choice’ mean to us? 
• How do want the public and or our service users to think of us an organisation – both as a strategic leader and a services provider?

2. Developing the business case and links to performance

Links to performance
Employee engagement is a key ingredient in achieving high quality performance – both at the individual, team and organisational level. 

Extensive research, both in the academic and business communities, has shown clear links between highly engaged employees and the following:

• Bottom line performance
• Customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Absence
• Employee turnover
• Organisational citizenship
• Creativity and innovation.

The top scoring 'Best Councils To Work For' have all achieved 'excellent' or 'four star' comprehensive performance assessment (CPA) ratings or have moved up the ratings dramatically.

'Best council to work for' 2008 

The business case
In developing your business case you will need to address at least some of the following:

2a. What are the key drivers for focusing on employee engagement? Who do you need to sell your proposals to?

When developing a strategy to improve employee engagement, you will need to sell the business case to the leader, members, the chief executive and senior managers. Consider the current priorities or key focus areas for your audience, and focus attention on these. They will be the value drivers for your authority.

For example, a value driver for a head of service may be high levels of absenteeism. In this case, linking the business case for employee engagement to performance in relation to absenteeism is likely to give greater negotiating strength than simply focusing on engagement for the sake of it.

2b. What are you trying to achieve? Do you have an engagement problem?

You may find it helpful to focus your objectives on developing a programme of action to improve engagement. You could consider either one or a combination of three 'lenses': the organisational, employee or customer perspective. Each lens offers a different objective and motive for employee engagement and will bring with them different associated costs and benefits. As in any organisation, the whole system must be taken into account, so there is always going to be overlap regardless of the main perspective.

You may find a checklist helpful in considering the question – do we have an engagement problem?

Checklist for engagement problems

2c. How much will this cost? What is the cost-benefit analysis?

The costs and benefits associated with improving employee engagement will depend on your objectives and your focus. If you can, work out both what your proposal programme of action will cost but also the potential payback in financial terms. There are, of course, some engagement strategies, such as talking to and listening to staff, that do not need to cost anything significant. A full-scale leadership development programme will certainly have a greater cost involved, but if poor leadership is the problem, then the longer-term benefits could far outweigh the costs. 

3. Gaining buy-in and communicate intent

To be successful, your employee engagement programme of action needs buy-in and commitment from the most senior people in your authority, including members. This should not be seen as 'another HR initiative'.

Senior leaders need to publicly demonstrate their commitment to employee engagement; both through role modelling and ‘walking the talk’. High visibility and high-level messages communicated clearly and consistently are essential.

Some questions to consider:

• Does the senior management team have a shared and consistent understanding of what employee engagement is and what good engagement would look like in your organisation? What difference would it make to the organisation?
• What support or involvement do you need from councillors? How are you going to get it?
• What other stakeholders do you need to involve, for example, trade union or other workplace representatives? How will you instigate this involvement?
• You may want to develop an employee proposition. An employee proposition is a commitment or 'promise' from an organisation to an existing or potential employee. It is consistent with the organisation's values and brand, and is distinct and credible to the experiences of current employees. A proposition can not only support engagement but also create a compelling case for your organisation being an employer of choice.
• What does success look like? What performance targets can be or have been identified that will enable you to (a) set clear goals for employee engagement, and (b) measure the success of your programme of action to improve engagement.
• Where is there resistance and how will you overcome or manage resistance?
• What barriers, constraints or challenges need to be tackled? How?

Step 1: Set the context and develop the business case (as above)
Step 2: Get a handle on engagement
Step 3: Identify areas for action
Step 4: Implementation
Step 5: Evaluation

Page published June 2008.