Towers Perrin's Top-10 List for Employee Engagement

Another firm that chimes in about employee engagement is Towers Perrin. Like Accenture, Towers Perrin also has a top-10 list for employee engagement.

1. Senior management sincerely interested in employee well-being
2. Ability to improve skills and capabilities
3. Organization’s reputation for social responsibility
4. Employees' input into decision making
5. Quick resolution of customer concerns
6. Setting of high personal standards
7. Excellent career advancement opportunities
8. Challenging work assignments that broaden skills
9. Good relationships with supervisors
10. Organization encourages innovative thinking

Most of these ten drivers directly impact the employee (e.g., 1, 2, 7). A couple of the top-10 drivers speak to the environment of the employer (e.g., 10). The odd one here, the one I didn’t expect to see, is driver #5. Resolution of customer concerns has not appeared on any of the other employee engagement lists that I have reviewed. I suppose it is difficult to be engaged to an employer that has difficulty resolving the problems of its customers.

What is on your top-10 list for employee engagement? Has Towers Perrin captured everything on your own list?

Accenture's Top-10 List for Employee Engagement

I found that Accenture’s Human Performance service line has considered how employee engagement affects profit, productivity, and innovation. They have found a direct relationship between employee engagement and profit, productivity, and innovation. Accenture’s analyses have shown that the higher an organization scores on the ten areas below, the higher the employee engagement rating.

• Recognition and rewards must be linked to job and business performance
• Hr systems must provide managers with the information they need
• Learning opportunities for current and future positions must be available
• Provide tools for staff to find the information they need to perform their jobs
• Frequent and effective performance appraisals must be provided
• High-performance physical workplace must be created
• Significant changes in the organization must be communicated to reduce their impact on morale and performance
• Pay attention to each employee’s career planning and development
• HR policies must be fair for all staff members
• Recruit individuals with the same goals as the organization

Does this look like a complete list to you? What about trusting one’s manager? What about having a good working relationship with one’s boss? I once read that an employee always joins a company, but always leaves a boss. I think a person’s relationship with his manager carries a lot of weight. Where is that topic in the Accenture’s list?

What do you think?

Sacred PM Practices – Bottom Line

Most project managers, project management instructors, and publishers of project management material are spending much effort on management topics that are of little importance to the success of large IT projects, and little energy on those topics which are present in many of these successful large IT projects – leadership, ownership, trust.

I am not suggesting that knowing how to create a project plan, or managing project risks are not important. I have come to believe that topics like leadership, ownership, and trust are little understood. How much time do you, or your project manager, spend on creating a sense of ownership among team members? Do you spend any energy cultivating trust?

We started the discussion of the research project, Sacred Management Practices, in a posting on January 25, 2009. This summary posting represents that last planned post about the the project. We have enjoyed some great discussion around the topics presented. You can find the full presentation at SlideShare.net under Sacred PM Practices.