"Why did we do this?"
"How did I do it?"
"Which items are the most important?"
"What can I do to improve?"
Engagement sustainability results from continuous improvement. Organisations aim to create a world-class culture, but many struggle with how to make that a reality. According to the latest Gallup research, the most substantial increases can be explained by one factor - accountability.
Accountability's Impact
Gallup's Accountability Index research had impressive findings, which strongly suggest that when organisations emphasise action planning, the chances are greater that a culture of engagement and improvement will exist. Organisations that have examined the impact of accountability on engagement have seen outstanding results. In a review of Gallup's database, workgroups in the top quartile of Gallup's Accountability Index experienced GrandMean scores more than half a point higher on average than workgroups in the bottom quartile. This provides strong evidence for the direct impact that action planning has on engagement growth and subsequent business outcomes over time.
The Bottom Line is making progress on goals is the best predictor of engagement growth. Engagement is only a sustainable driver of performance outcomes if employees are continually striving for higher levels of emotional commitment and psychological ownership at work.
Gallup's Accountability Index is a necessity for organisations that value tracking one of the most important indicators of engagement improvement.
Setting goals*
So action planning has a direct and measurable impact on employee engagement. Now what? What does a great action plan look like?
Well, there isn't a "one-size-fits-all" model. What's important is that the action plan works well for the manager and his or her team. Because managers and employees bring their own talents and strengths to the workplace, each action planning session is unique, and that's just the way it should be. The process needs to be positive and should involve everyone on the team.
Through our research, Gallup has discovered that these six steps are crucial to making action planning an effective part of an employee engagement improvement process:
1. Introduce the action planning session and state its purpose. This will help employees understand what engagement is, why the survey was conducted and what it measures, what the survey items mean to them and to their workgroup, and why action planning is a vital step in improving employee engagement.
2. Distribute and explain the survey results.
3. Discuss what those results mean for the workgroup, item by item.
4. Select two or three key items to work on over the next 12 months.
5. Brainstorm follow-up actions and complete a plan for improvement.
6. Follow up regularly on the plan, and on how people are feeling about the team's progress toward meeting its goals.
What not to do*
Action planning boosts employee engagement partly because the process itself demonstrates that the opinions of each person on the team count. So it's important to establish ground rules of mutual respect and open dialogue for the process to work effectively. If a manager systematically dismisses suggestions or discounts individual contributions, employees are likely to give low ratings to items such as "At work, my opinions seem to count" or "My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person." That's also why action planning doesn't work when managers nominate action items and suggest that employees "fix" them. To be effective, the process of determining priorities must be fair and equitable, and it must originate with the team.
*Excerpts from Gallup Management Journal: What to Do With Employee Survey Results