One of my favorite stories is from the era of Apollo 11. In 1969, during one of the press briefings in the NASA command center in Houston, Texas, the reporters were waiting for the NASA officials when they noticed a janitor with a broom. A reporter asked the janitor what his job at NASA was. The janitor replied – “I help put a man on the moon”. Could it get any better than that, to have all levels of an organization with a unified understanding and commitment to a mission?
In fact, it was President Kennedy, who set the goal of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth” by the end of 1960s, in his address to the joint sessions of congress in May 25th, 1961. “In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon – if we make this judgement affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there,” Kennedy said.
Contrast this with recent studies that reveal that, on an average, 55 percent of the employees cannot clearly state their company’s strategy as well as their role in supporting that strategy. In fact, in some cases the number is as high as 95 percent. This fosters disengagement and confusion among the employees and ultimately leads to an under performing culture.
Employee engagement has direct impact on a company’s performance. According to the Gallup organization’s Q12 model, companies with world class employee engagement have a 3.9 times higher EPS growth rate than their peers. The same study also shows that the U.S. workforce loses $300 billion dollars in productivity from disengaged employees.
Human resources organizations can and should play a strategic role in establishing an environment that leads to better employee engagement. By establishing a system that enables the clear creation and alignment of goals throughout the organization, that are cascaded down from the executive team to divisions, business units, departments, teams and individuals, companies can ensure that any changes to business strategy is effectively communicated throughout the year. With the right technology in place, organizations can ensure that employees not only clearly understands the organization’s mission and strategy but also feel like organization cares about their development. This results in increased employee engagement and subsequently better business performance.
Please join me on October 27th at 1pm ET for a webinar which will chronicle how to drive company earnings with better employee engagement.
Thank you for sharing this story! Having all employees focused on what they can do to accomplish an organization’s mission is vital to its success. There needs to be a clear line drawn from each employee’s tasks to the overall goals of the company. One way to make this clear for employees is to implement an incentive program with each group or division having its own goals and rewards for demonstrating behaviors that help reach goals and accomplish the organization’s mission. By rewarding behaviors, you can effectively show employees what activities they can do to help the company while earning incentives. To learn more about employee incentive programs, please visit http://www.awardsnetwork.com/employee-incentive-programs.
You make a good point, Amy! It is extremely critical to put the right infrastructure and enviornment in place to reward the employee actions and behaviors that help accomplish the mission effectively. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
Thank you for sharing this story. It’s a real problem in many companies. But nobody cares, because, they don’t realize what they are losing. In this replaceable world, human beings are considered like any car parts. Measurement is done more in physical term than intrinsic values. A simple example, in this electronic era, do you think a company gives equal value to a company’s mail man like any other employee in the company? Probably nobody will care for him, unless company loses business because of delayed delivery or wrong posting. But question arises, what should be the way to raise awareness for mail person to recognize his service?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Mrinal! As you rightly pointed out, by recognizing unique contribution of each individual irrespective of the role or the level of person help establish a culture of better employee engagement.