Don’t let the Engagement Score be your white whale.

The Australian economy is down 7% and 74% of Executives report that their culture needs to change significantly over the next 3-5 years*. Organisations planning for the future must ensure that their culture is consciously designed around their business strategy – ticking boxes and meeting generic external benchmarks will simply not suffice. 

Part of the problem may be an unjustified over-reliance on engagement survey data, particularly when making commercial cultural decisions. While engagement scores have long been a focus for organisations looking to develop positive, healthy and ‘feel good’ cultures, they do not necessarily translate to commercial success. In fact, only 1 in 3 HR Leaders can prove a link between engagement and their business performance*. So why are we so hung up on engagement?

The rise of engagement.

None of this is to say that engagement is bad. In fact, there are plenty of benefits to measuring and supporting your people’s engagement as there can be ‘some’ correlation between an engaged workforce and high performance. However, many organisations now seem to treat engagement scores as a shortcut to business success, rather than a small stepping stone on the journey. Dangerous, as some of those religiously chasing the ‘score’ above 90%, have experienced a reduction in business performance!

The ecosystem of success

A singular focus on engagement encourages employees to protect their relationships with each other over the interests of the business. In addition, it leaves out a complex system of interwoven performance drivers from prioritisation, to commercial acumen, to decision-making. In fact, the resulting symptoms of a purely engagement driven culture could include:

1. in-decisive leadership (consensus vs collaboration) 

2. inability to prioritise and focus 

3. reduced psychological safety and transparency 

4. limited cross-functional knowledge and IP transfer 

Which in turn can lead to negative commercial impacts on your business, including:

1. slower pace of strategy execution 

2. reduced market responsiveness and customer centricity 

3. lower quality innovation and new product / service development 

4. reduced margins and market share 

Building a Performance culture

So how do we ensure our culture strategy will drive high performance results? Here a few simple things you can start doing now:

Consider everything in context

Engagement data can still be valuable, but certainly not in a vacuum. Consider all your available data sources and how they impact each other. For instance, your existing metadata will tell you how your employees have changed their operational behaviour throughout the pandemic. (Very useful if you’re consciously designing new ways of working). Equally, think about the value of your employee surveys. Are you asking questions about the business or limiting the insights to their experience only? I would also like to highlight the importance of utilising your customer and consumer data and insights in your people & culture (P&C) decision making.

Reverse engineer

Start by using your Purpose, Vision and Customer Promise to define what the performance culture in your organisation needs to look like and work backwards. What are the key drivers that will sustain business results over time? Remember, there is no such thing as an ‘ideal’ culture. 

Turn strategy into action

Speaking of surveys, make sure your people can see how their feedback is being actioned. As we learnt from our recent guest speaker Chair & Commissioner for National Mental Health Lucinda Brogden, never ask a question if you aren’t ready to know, and act on the answer.

Get out of your own personal comfort zone

Too often the excuse of organisations who rely on engagement scores is that it’s ‘easy’ to do.

For progressive organisations seeking to establish a ‘performance culture’, it might be time to challenge those traditional beliefs and be honest about where you’re falling short. Once the commercial value of the P&C function is clearly proven, it’s been amazing to watch Executive Leadership Teams lean into an HR Director’s agenda with enthusiasm and genuine support.

Where to from here

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to organisational success, especially with such an uncertain working future. Now more than ever, a carefully tailored culture strategy is essential to drive the right results. In 2020, a successful People & Culture function will strike the right balance between ‘sustainably living purpose’ and ‘delivering consistent value’ back to stakeholders. And yes, there’s still room for engagement. Just don’t let it be your white whale.

If you would like to design a sustainable performance culture for your organisation, please connect with us to to co-explore what’s possible.

*We Are Unity and Macquarie Business School Research 2019/2020

We Are Unity CEO Ben Bars was recently interviewed for HR Daily on the danger of chasing engagement scores. You can read the original piece of thought leadership below where Ben unpacks the issues associated with a focus on engagement and explains how to re-prioritise in order to build a culture of performance.