In Three To See this week: Employee engagement, satisfaction and the slow ROWE.

I enjoyed David Zinger's recent post for the Human Capital League community; Employee Engagement: Just Add Spinach.  

Zinger makes some incisive comments about Employee Engagement including this:

"Engagement is about achieving results that matter to all. Ensure that everyone benefits from engagement and ensure employees fully realise engagement is not a management term for ‘sucking out more discretionary effort’ from employees."

And:

"Ensure managers realise that engagement is not an extra on top of far-too-many demands. Help managers and leaders realise engagement is how we manage and lead in this decade. We engage through co-created results, conversation, collaboration, community and high quality connections."

I wonder what he'd make of the strip below from Dilbert creator, Scott Adams?

OK, so employee satisfaction and employee engagement is not the same thing - although rating satisfaction may provide a means of engaging with employees and assessing likely levels of motivation, loyalty, morale etc - I just hope that this gag doesn't resonate in your workplace.

Lance Haun's post to the TLNT blog is my final pick this week. 5 Good Reasons Why ROWE Hasn't Quite Caught On Yet:

1. It doesn't work everywhere
2. The economy hasn't helped
3. Reversing decades of management practice
4. Employees love it for the wrong reasons
5. Ironically enough, the results just aren't there yet

Haun's post is a valuable contribution to the discussion on the "Results Only Work Environment" which I mentioned in previous posts in the summer of 09 and earlier this year.

In this week's Three To See - a new tool for employers to assess the effectiveness of their Performance Management practices, a post on the future make-up of the workforce and more from Dan Pink.

My first pick this week is StepStone's Performance Management business impact tool which is a free resource in the same vein as the Talent Strategy Assessment released in 2009.

I completed the Performance Management Assessment in under 5 minutes and was immediately presented with a traffic-light scorecard based on my response (pictured) showing the areas that are good (Green), those that are intermediate (Amber) and those that require urgent attention (Red).  I also received an email with recommended actions tailored to my organisation and a report on Performance Management drawn from a wide range of research providing a wealth of information and interesting stats such as:

• On average organisations with cascading goals experienced a 39% increase in productivity
• Of 22 talent management processes, cascading goals are the 6th most powerful
• Employee engagement levels amongst high performers dropped 25% in 2009
• 40% of people that rated their managers performance as poor will look for another job
• A 5% increase in retention can lead to 25-85% increase in profitability

Sharlyn Lauby, the hr bartender, is responsible for my second pick: Optimizing talent in the new worforce.  In the post Lauby asks a great question on talent strategy:

"If the new workforce is a hybrid composed of employees and contractors, then do companies still need to focus on hiring A-level players? "

She goes on to offer two options:

• "Companies could focus on recruiting and retaining B-level (or C-level) talent and then bring in the A team only for projects that require it.
• Or should companies still focus on hiring A-level talent and, when they need an extra set of hands, then the contractor doesn’t necessarily have to be top notch?"

I'm particularly interested in how organisations would manage the performance of both types of employee in either context and how this would impact the capability and culture of the business.  Lauby makes another good point here:

"if an organization employs B and C level players, this could impact customers and the front line delivery of products and services.  If external consultants are brought in to create programs and/or processes, they would need to realize the capabilities of the staff they’re working with."

My final pick for this week, we know next, was produced by the Society for Human Resource Management and features controversial commentator and author Daniel Pink sharing his thoughts in 4 video clips titled:

1. the new bargain
2. talent wins
3. row, row, ROWE
4. what's next

I thought that the comments were interesting, especially in the fourth clip where Pink shares his observations of the "T-shaped employee" - those individuals with a depth of skills, knowledge and experience in a particular subject combined with the ability to connect their specialty to what is happening in the organisation, industry and the wider world.