Operationalizing Engagement via Managerial Leadership
By Michelle Malay Carter on March 10, 2008
Three of Four Employees?Would Leave if They Could?
The most recent Wall Street Journal/Society for Human Resource Management survey reports that as many as 75 percent of your employees are exploring other opportunities.
Consolidated Engagement Study Results?
In “Employee Engagement: A Review of Current Research and Its Implications,” The Conference Board consolidated 12 major studies on employee engagement, which the business research group defined as “a heightened emotional connection that employees feel for their organization that influences them to exert greater discretionary effort to their work.”
It’s About Managerial Leadership
According to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the study found eight engagement drivers.? All the studies found that…
?–the relationship with one’s manager was the strongest driver of all.
Do your systems enable and reinforce your managers’ ability to lead?
- Do you systems provide your managers with the authorities they need to lead?
- Do your systems protect the employee/manager relationship by limiting third-party influences?
- Have you clearly codified the definition of a manager?
- Have you clearly codified the qualifications for being a manager?
- Do your systems ensure employees will be provided a manager who can provide them with proper leadership (i.e. ability to provide greater context) rather than just more experience or tenure?
- Have you trained your managers in matching employees to roles and to spot underutilized employees?
- Does your organizational design reinforce managerial leadership?
- Do managers-once-removed have accountabilities to ensure proper managerial leadership and an appeal venue for employees?
- Do your performance reviews track managerial leadership?
Embedding Engagement?
If your systems undermine, thwart, or ignore managerial leadership, get working!? Effective managerial leadership is your effective means to engagement.? Note:? training is a part of this, but only a small part.
Employee engagement can only become wide-spread, consistent, and sustainable if practices that enable it are embedded within your systems.
The Right Seat at the Table for Human Resource Professionals
Rather than becoming proxy managers themselves, Human Resource Professionals should be concerned with designing systems that reinforce managerial leadership.? Note:? Of the eight engagement drivers discovered, none was found to be?”my relationship with HR”.
I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.
Do your systems enable or thwart managerial leadership?
Filed Under Accountability, Corporate Values, Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Talent Management
Comments
2 Responses to “Operationalizing Engagement via Managerial Leadership”
Subscribe in a reader
Michelle, Delighted to see that the Conference Board are on song about ‘discretionary effort’.
The world is becoming better all the time!
Hi Jack,
Ah-yes. My favorite definition of leadership. “Leaders are those who release the discretionary energy of others.” – Jack Fallow
Did I get it correct?
Michelle