Employee engagement is a win win component of CSR

I spend a great deal of time researching and reporting on the myriad of CSR (corporate social responsibility) programs at different companies, I may on occasion get a little lost in the minutia of detail concerning recycling or energy conservation. One key area that CSR benefits extremely clearly is employee engagement, an area which companies overlook at their peril when you consider the intangible benefits that heightened engagement can result in. The benefits to the recipients of what your company does are apparent and clear but what’s more many of the internal benefits can be measured and are tangible if the employees are surveyed in the manner of a recent Gallup poll which I wanted to write about today. I spent more than a decade with a large international company (here’s a clue, they have a card that you are not supposed to leave home without) and my background was in accounting and budgeting while managing a team of differing sizes. One specific thing I can readily recall from my employees at the time was they often felt disengaged with the company, whether it was because of the size of the company or the hundreds of locations in which they operated, many staff would lament that ‘all they did was work’ or that ‘I just don’t feel engaged with the companies best practices’.

In reality the company did and still does a huge amount within the community and for numerous nonprofits, often including employees in these programs. However the emphasis on the day-to-day tasks being completed meant that many employees were not afforded time away from the key duties that their jobs entailed. It’s the same in many companies trying to find a balance that allows core business to be completed on time while still engaging employees in many of the programs that the company does believe in. Not only do I think many corporations are finding a way to redress that balance, but I also recall that the employee who felt most engaged was often the most dedicated and committed amongst any given team. Perhaps the most interesting part of the Gallup poll is it answers the question of should the company allow the time to promote employee engagement with various community or fundraising tasks or internal improvements? The  answer is a resounding yes – absolutely.

The poll initially divided employees by the level of engagement they felt were the company where they work. Based on those results the employees were grouped into subsections that portrayed their overall level of engagement versus their colleagues. Then the overall performance in a number of fields was compared between the highest 25% and the lowest 25% in terms of their engagement score. I’m sure you’d expect there to be a gap in the results, but the overall difference in performance and other measurable factors is more like a chasm. It even extends company-wide when similar companies are compared with differing engagement scores. Highly engaged groups of workers display quite remarkable results, results that truly help the company’s bottom line but also focuses on the people that make the company. Productivity increased 18%, profitability up by 12% and more than double the earnings per-share growth rate compared with the same types of companies with much lower engagement results. It doesn’t stop there however, huge reductions are also noticed in absenteeism and turnover rates, shrinkage and safety incidents. Each of these a great factor in improving the profitability of a company if they can be measured and managed downward. Benefits also extends to the customer side where client satisfaction results are more than 12% higher when services are provided by ‘engaged’ employees.

When you really dig into the numbers it’s not really a question of whether you can afford to engage your staff more often but whether you could afford not to, I think the survey portrays the answer in a stunningly clear fashion.