Many companies have engagement measures. They assess how effective their communications are. Or they measure levels of employee engagement and what drives it. However, relatively few (we estimate only around 15%) are linking levels of engagement to harder business outcomes such as:

• Talent retention

• Customer satisfaction

• Profitability

IC and HR need to stop measuring employee engagement in a vacuum. Measuring and managing engagement is not an end in itself.

Discovering how to raise engagement needs to be attached to a purpose such as:

• Improving brand promise delivery

• Enhancing the customer experience

• Delivering on a growth strategy

So how can RoE be proven? Engage Group believes there are a few simple steps:

1. Measure the right things:

• Many organisations are not measuring the engagement factors which will drive the hard organisational outcomes that matter

• For example, the factors which drive engagement with you as an employer (line management, reward etc.) are often not the same factors that drive harder outcomes such as retention of your best people, heightened customer loyalty or unit-level profitability: the drivers here often issues such as leadership, communications and recognition.

• Equally, organisations need to stop trying to “boil the ocean” when they measure engagement. They need to ask “engagement with what?” Smarter companies are now measuring more specific issues such as: engagement with customer service delivery; engagement with our brand values, engagement with our strive for growth.

• To achieve this, organisations need to focus more strategically on what they are trying to measure: are you measuring what makes employees “happy” or “satisfied”? OR are you trying t measure what will drive their productivity, delivery and performance.

2. Conduct smart analytics:

• We believe there are too many bar-charts in the world. Too much employee engagement research is fed back using endless reams of descriptive data. While these “scores on the doors” are helpful in telling you where you are now (“how engaged are our people”?), they do not tell you how to improve engagement levels for the future (“what drives engagement here”?)

• Organisations need to use smarter analytical techniques to get a more strategic view from their engagement research. Examples include:

a. Strategic priority analysis: what are the big areas of engagement we need to focus on to improve talent retention, customer satisfaction or profitability?

b. Key driver analysis: at a more tactical level, what behaviours do we need to get line managers focused on to optimise engagement levels?

c. Segmentation analysis: do different segments of our workforce require different engagement stimuli to optimise their performance? (For example, call centre worker productivity and the retention of high potential graduate trainees are likely to be driven by a different set of engagement factors)

• However, many IC and HR functions do not have the internal capabilities around numeracy, statistical modelling and analytics to be able to deliver such insights: this is where external expertise can be of help.

3. Link your data:

• Finally, you need to start linking your engagement survey data to harder business metrics

• At present, IC often own the engagement survey data; HR own the metrics around labour churn, sickness and absence and productivity; Marketing own the data around customer satisfaction; and the Finance function hold the data around corporate performance. However, what frustrates CEOs is that they can rarely get all of this data knitted together.

• Organisations need to go through three basic steps to help the CEO get a “helicopter” view of which people drivers are driving performance and profitability:

a. Build an integrated dataset: tefuse the engagement, HR, Marketing and Finance metrics into one, single place for analysis (the units of analysis will be stores, branches, geographies, business areas, divisions etc.)

b. Conduct integrated analysis of the data: use smart analytics to assess which engagement drivers most impact on the key outcomes (talent retention, customer satisfaction, profitability)

c. Share the results and learn from them: use the analytics to help senior leaders and managers within the business learn about which “people levers” to pull to optimise performance within the organisation

For the Homes and Communities Academy we designed, shot and produced a series of innovative video case studies and for Chance UK - our CSR partners - the studio produced a beautiful new annual report. We ran an analytics master class for Melcrum and delivered a presentation on the measurement of comms effectiveness (you can hear Dr Andy Brown talk about it on ipadio.com). We’re running two more analytics master classes in November and December, contact Martin Smith to find out more.

We’ve been helping ITV News embark on their journey into the social media space.  An interesting challenge for the out-and-out broadcaster, now looking to get involved in the conversation.  So far we’ve got a Twitter strategy, a Facebook page and a YouTube channel (TBC).  Don’t forget to follow / friend / fan them..!

Another big launch was a large online consultation for the Mayor’s Transportation Strategy for TfL.  With tight timeframes and multiple stakeholders it’s been fun.  If you travel in London you should have your say.

And finally, we also discovered this month that one of our climate change campaigns - Everybody’s Talking, created for the Local Authority’s Energy Partnership - has been selected by ID&eA as an example of best practice in the field; see the whole story.

Chris Copland, CEO said ‘the business will be restructured around three key delivery areas which will now guide our approach to solving client needs:

Think – strategic advice based on an intelligent understanding of communications channels and audience needs
Create –integrated, user-centred communications aligned to innovative creative delivery
Measure – analysis & measurement to provide insight and test effectiveness

Nigel Pearcy, Chairman said ‘discussions with leading organisations in the private and public sectors show significant interest for a broader and more integrated approach to communications, linked to clearer measurement of engagement effectiveness, particularly in these difficult economic times.

A wider offer enables us to connect our clients’ employees with their customers and communities and ensure every pound of communications spend is maximised. ‘

If you have any immediate questions or would like find out more, please contact:
nigel.pearcy@engagegroup.co.uk
chris.copland@engagegroup.co.uk

Please give as much as you can to help see us through those itchy stages. Go to our Just Giving page to donate

More updates will follow to show you how we are getting on.

Engage Group, the creative engagement specialist, has been retained by the Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC) as its sole agency for the provision of design and communications support following the NMC’s rebranding last year.

The three-year commission was awarded to Engage Group after a competitive tender and subsequent seven-way pitch.  The brief centres on bringing quality and consistency to the brand, and helping the NMC initiate a fresh dialogue with nurses and midwives to increase understanding of the role of the NMC.  It covers communication strategy support, brand development, design, photography and multi-channel content, with a growing emphasis on social media.

The Nursing & Midwifery Council exists to safeguard the health and wellbeing of the public.  It was established by Parliament in 2002 to regulate the nursing and midwifery professions, ensuring that nurses and midwives are professionally qualified and deliver the highest possible standards of care.

Commenting on Engage Group’s appointment, Andy Jaeger, marketing manager of the NMC, said: “We’re looking forward to building a strong partnership with Engage Group who have, throughout the tender process and in the early stages of working with them, displayed a strong understanding of the NMC and our challenges in communicating with our large and diverse audience. Their experience and expertise in using innovative and insightful design and communications channels will help us develop more effective ways to communicate and engage with nurses, midwives and the public.”

Helena Backhouse, account director at Engage Group, added, “We feel privileged to be working with an organisation which plays such a pivotal role in the health and wellbeing of our country.  I doubt that there’s a single member of the population whose life is not touched at some point by a midwife or a nurse on the NMC register, which is why it’s so important that their skills and knowledge are kept up to date and that they feel fully engaged in and supported by the NMC’s efforts to maintain the highest standards of its professional code.

“This is a particularly fascinating assignment for Engage Group, because it embraces such a varied range of on- and offline communication channels and events.  We look forward to working with the NMC over the next three years to ensure that its communications with its 670,000 members are as effective and responsive as possible.”