Q & A on EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT PART 1

An Interview with Julie Gebauer on Towers Perrin’s Just
Released Global Workforce Study, Part 1

towerswatson.com

Julie Gebauer, Towers Perrin Managing Director, leads the firm's Workforce Effectiveness practice. Here, she previews a landmark study on the global workforce based on a survey of nearly 90,000 employees worldwide and a database with input from over 2 million people around the world. This is the third such study the firm has conducted since 2003, with significant enhancements each time to reflect shifts in business issues, employee attitudes, demographics and culture.

This is the first of a three-part interview about the study focused on general implications for employers. Part 2 will look at how we define engagement. Part 3 will examine leadership issues. Be sure to check back for updates and additional information on our new Global Workforce Study.

Q: What is the Global Workforce Study and what sets it apart?

A: The study, the largest of its kind, provides a comprehensive view of the workplace from employees themselves, and examines the elements of the work experience and environment that attract people to a company and a job, keep them there and most critically, engage them in their work.
Our new study draws on two rich sources of data to tell a compelling story about the impact organizations can have on their employees and how effectively they perform. The first source is a polling survey of 88,600 employees chosen at random who work full-time for mid-sized to large organizations in 18 countries across all regions. The second source is Towers Perrin-ISR's normative data — the most extensive database of employee attitudes and opinions in the world, based on two million-plus annual responses from people in over 40 countries.
Together, these sources give us a more complete picture of the workforce and what it takes to drive high performance than we've had in the past — a picture that takes into account the unique nature of the work environment across countries, cultures and industries.

Q: How do the two data sources work together?

A: The polling survey, conducted by a third-party vendor that is not connected to participants' employers, gives us an unbiased view of the world of work through the eyes of employees. The normative data base, which draws on company-specific employee data, adds another critical dimension, because it permits direct correlations between employee engagement and company performance.
These data provide yet more compelling evidence of the direct link between engagement and financial results. And that link is something more and more companies and their top teams are focusing on to drive their growth agendas and seek new sources of competitive advantage in a global economy.

Q. So what does the study show about the state of the workforce today?

A. Broadly, organizations face something we’ve labeled an "engagement gap." They are not getting the discretionary effort they need from their people to drive their performance and growth agendas, and it’s hurting both their top and bottom lines. Globally, only 21% of our sample are engaged, meaning they are freely giving their time, energy, creativity and knowledge to their work. That’s a disturbingly small number when you think about the impact people have on a business and its customers, for instance.
Worse yet, fully 38% are either wholly or partly disengaged, meaning they might not know the right things to do to add value to the company or they might be doing just the minimum to get by. Play those percentages out across a large workforce, and it’s easy to see the implications for performance, especially if large numbers of those disengaged people are in customer-facing or strategically important roles.

Q. What can companies do about this?

A. The most exciting aspect of the study results is that there is a clear path forward. First, companies have an enormous impact on engagement — far more than they think they do. The influence of the organization, especially its senior leadership, far outweighs employees’ personal traits (like ambition or learning orientation) or, say, the role of a person's manager.
What we’ve learned is that driving engagement depends on creating a corporate culture that aligns with the company’s unique strategy, and that emphasizes leadership, learning, empowerment and corporate social responsibility.
Second, employees are actually eager to invest more of themselves to help the company succeed. And they will do so — if they see the personal return on investment (ROI). While the nature of that ROI differs across countries, cultures and demographic segments, there are common elements in terms of people's desire to be challenged at work, to grow and learn, to feel pride in working for a socially responsible organization and to make a real contribution.
Bottom line: companies have a willing source of untapped power in their workforce and the ability to unleash that power for improved performance. But they’re not succeeding right now, because they’re not taking the right steps to do so, which brings us back to the engagement gap. Our study points the way toward closing that gap across countries and industries.

Q: Can companies rely on these data to make decisions and investments in people programs?

A: We believe our data are among the most current and thorough available on the subject of workforce motivation and performance. Still, there is no one “right model” for a high performance culture. There are many — each one dictated by a company's strategic priorities and business objectives. As such, our findings are a tool in the battle for employee engagement, not the final answer. The right "engagement recipe" depends on each organization’s unique challenges. Our research also shows that the drivers of engagement can differ quite a bit by country, industry and employee segment.