I've read a lot of late about employee engagement - whether it be for retention purposes or keeping the engine chugging along or both. 

One of the posts that I liked (Employee Engagement Defined by Brad Federman) came from the Employee Engagement Network.  The first 3 lines of that post really sums up the subject nicely:

Why Employee Engagement?
To increase the productivity and tenure of (key) employees in a manner that creates healthier organizations both on and off of the balance sheet.

The main reasons that the HR blogosphere has turned its attention to Employee Engagement are the negative impacts of a down economy on the employed: Some employee's may lose focus as they worry about their wealth, their jobs or their leadership, behaviours may change to compensate for changes in the organisation environment as they become more competitive, more aggressive or less cohesive and, of course motivation and morale can be affected by redundancies and restructuring.

With this kind of uncertainty in the workforce and headcount under control, organisations often revisit their approach to performance management so that clarity can be brought to individuals working lives and so that the organisation ensures that it is getting value from each employee in terms of productivity and contribution. 

Revisiting performance management at such a sensitive time can, in itself, be risky - for the bitter and some of the demoralised and disengaged its another example of the organisation ‘out to get us' and, in a way, they're right.  The chances are that, at best, the individuals in this group are already thinking about leaving when they spot a good opportunity elsewhere, at worst they'll hang-on inside your organisation for as long as they can as free-riders and saboteurs.  However for others performance management programmes represent a life raft - something to cling to, a way back and a means of demonstrating value so that they not only survive the recession, but thrive in the upturn. 

If an organisation is to remobilise its workforce then performance management is an important technique.  Of course, it's not the only one - communicating current and future plans and where the individual fits into them, backed with career and succession planning, training and development opportunities and appropriate reward and recognition programmes are also important.

A rounded approach is vital for organisations aiming to retain top talent.  Organisations may be concerned about some in this group; high performing individuals in key roles diligently going about their work that may also be falling out of love with their employer, doing their hours and no more, maybe even eyeing the opportunities on the horizon. 

Tammy Erickson's recent post over at Harvard Business Publishing on How the Recession is Changing Talent Management and subtitled ‘The Slippery Slope of This Recession' makes some interesting points. 

Keith Wiedenkeller also touches on ‘discretionary effort' on the way to describing how to improve engagement in his post Survey says...Are you measuring engagement, or only employee satisfaction?

With many people, like Peter Gold claiming that The Mother of All Talent Wars is less than a year away now seems like a good time to "increase the productivity and tenure of (key) employees in a manner that creates healthier organizations."

Tags: contribution, employee engagement, performance management, productivity, retention, talent, Talent Management

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 10:07 pm and is filed under Talent Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.