Assigning Employee Engagement Accountability

Who Is Responsible for Employee Engagement Accountability?
When employee engagement is on the rise, who takes credit?  And when engagement is on the decline, who takes the blame?  Is the finger pointing at you?

Whether you are the organization’s CEO, the head of HR, a manager, or an employee, we believe YOU are responsible for employee engagement accountability.  All members of an organization carry the responsibility for employee engagement accountability; they simply fulfill different roles.

Why Employee Engagement Matters
When we assess organizational culture, the data tells us that employee engagement matters to the people and to the business.  The impact of lower employee engagement scores is pretty startling.  Companies with low levels of engagement report:

• 12% lower profits
• 19% lower operating income
• 28% lower earnings per share

While higher employee engagement scores correlate to:

• 18% greater productivity
• 12% higher customer satisfaction
• 51% less voluntary turnover

Employee Engagement Accountability by Role

• Employees
  Employees are the ones who can tell you how engaged they are at work, and what specific changes they would like to see to improve their levels of discretionary effort, advocacy, and intent to stay. Employees are the voice of engagement — the ones who determine how effective any engagement initiative is.

  Assuming your workplace culture is one where honesty is valued, you can count on employees to give you candid insight into where the employee experience needs improvement and creative solutions for making the workplace better.

• Managers
  As the link between senior leaders and employees, managers play a critical role in employee engagement. They should regularly invite employees to voice concerns and hold themselves accountable as managers for seeing that their teams have what they need to perform at their peak.
• HR
  HR is often responsible for implementing overall engagement initiatives across the organization — for identifying where the focus needs to be, for aligning programs across functions that will effectively address key issues, for keeping everyone on track, and for reporting back to management and the workforce on what progress is being made.
• Senior Leaders
  Leaders set the tone. They need to be completely behind employee engagement efforts if they are to succeed.  Their visible support and influence is crucial.  Leaders need to buy into and support engagement initiatives and lead others as they walk the talk.

  An effective way to keep leaders on track is to provide the data that shows the difference increased engagement can make in moving both people and business strategic priorities forward.  This is how HR can grab and keep the attention of leadership.

The Bottom Line
Engagement matters and is the responsibility of everyone — from top to bottom — in the organization.  No one is “off the hook.”  Employee engagement accountability is everyone’s responsibility.

If you want to learn about employee engagement accountability, download The Top 10 Most Powerful Ways to Boost Engagement