Evidence-Based Approach to Employee Engagement

AN EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACH TO EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

Rob B Briner 1

Preamble u

This is not specifically about – you or your career or your organization (nor mine) – do not take it personally – your opinion or experiences (nor mine) – being optimistic or pessimistic or kind or harsh – being an academic or practitioner

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This is specifically about – objectively/neutrally assessing the quality and quantity of evidence for employee engagement – thinking critically about what this means for practice – taking employee engagement seriously 2

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Outline u

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What is an evidence-based approach to anything?

Five key evidence-based challenges for employee engagement Why isn’t employee engagement more evidence-based?

What can we do about it?

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Key challenges for engagement 1. Defining engagement 2. Measuring engagement 3. Engagement is nothing new or different 4. There is almost no good quality evidence with which to answer the most important questions about engagement 5. Over-claiming and mis-claiming the importance and role of engagement.

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1. Defining engagement u u

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No agreed definition Definitions highly inconsistent (behaviour, attitudes, feelings, work conditions, various combinations, causal combinations) Creates serious practical problems as we literally do not know what

we are talking about

– contributes to a deep misconception of the complexities around the concept – engagement just becomes an umbrella term for whatever one wants it to be – adding this term to our vocabulary…has done more to confuse than to clarify u

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Without precision in language we cannot think clearly or critically or take focused and meaningful action If engagement is important why don’t we take definition and meaning seriously?

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2. Measuring engagement u

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If definitions are poor and confused measures are likely to be the same Correlate very highly with traditional attitudes (e.g., Gallup Q12 correlates .9 with job satisfaction and .8 with commitment) Analysis shows many engagement items exactly the same to items in traditional attitude measures Only one published study found engagement scores to be associated with (not cause) performance over and above traditional attitudes – added value?

No studies showing engagement has predictive validity If engagement is important why don’t we take measurement seriously? (Don’t get me started on engaged/neutral/disengaged categorization) 6

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3. Engagement is nothing new or different u

If it is not new it adds no value – The…concept does not constitute new content – does not necessarily add conceptual or phenomenological clarity – nothing new with respect to how attitudes and performance are related...puts old wine in new bottles – Failure to make distinctions and define and measure engagement in terms of older constructs is likely to muddy the engagement water even more

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There appears to be nothing new about engagement so it therefore adds no value 7

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3. Engagement is nothing new or different u

Only two possibilities – Engagement is not a new and different idea: If so the term and idea should be abandoned because using a new term to describe existing concepts is confusing and unhelpful.

– Engagement is a new and different idea: If so then we need to define and measure engagement in ways that are demonstrably different from existing concepts

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If engagement is important, why don’t we take working out if it’s something new seriously?

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4. Almost no good quality evidence u

There are only two fundamental questions – Do increases in engagement cause increases in performance? Does engagement do anything? – Do engagement interventions cause increases levels of engagement and subsequent increases in performance? Can you do anything about

engagement?

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If we cannot answer these questions using a reasonable quantity of good quality evidence then claims about engagement are speculative at best or just plain wrong 9

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4. Almost no good quality evidence u

The fundamental questions are causal – X > Y, covariation of X and Y, no other plausible explanations

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How many published studies of engagement can establish cause and effect?

What else do we mean by quality of evidence?

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4. Almost no good quality evidence

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4. Almost no good quality evidence – this is now but it may change None None (3 x-sectional) None None Around 10 Quite a lot Lots and lots 12

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5. Over-claiming and mis-claiming the importance and role of engagement u

Huge number of claims made which – Exaggerate given the quality of evidence – Mis-claim given nature of evidence

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Claims made by Engage for Success, some academics, some practitioners, some consultants These claims just cannot be trusted and simply should not be believed unless better quality evidence is provided to support them 13

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5. Over-claiming and mis-claiming the importance and role of engagement (E4S) u

Survey after survey indicates that only around one third of UK workers say they are engaged

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UK productivity was 20 percentage points lower than the rest of the G7 in 2011

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We believe these two factors are related

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As the Evidence paper demonstrates, there is a firm correlation between employee engagement and high organisational productivity Employee disengagement is therefore clearly contributing to our disappointing productivity figures 14

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Claim from Nailing The Evidence: Engagement precedes performance u u

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11 studies cited in The Evidence Not ONE of these studies was both longitudinal and actually measured employee engagement The seven longitudinal studies included do not measure employee engagement. Five do not mention employee engagement anywhere in the article two mention it once 15

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5. Over-claiming and mis-claiming the importance and role of engagement (CIPD) u

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Employers want engaged employees because‌they deliver improved business performance Research has repeatedly demonstrated a relationship between how people are managed, employee attitudes and business performance A good summary of the performance link with employee engagement has been published by the government-sponsored Engage for Success movement 16

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5. Over-claiming and mis-claiming the importance and role of engagement u

Does engagement cause performance?

– The relationships…have not been rigorously conceptualized, much less studied – Without empirical research…practitioners are especially vulnerable to positive-sounding repackaging of workplace issues – we know little about engagement’s uniqueness as a predictor of job performance

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But does satisfaction cause performance?

– The search for a relationship between job satisfaction and job performance has been referred to as the 'Holy Grail‘…study after study failed to produce the expected strong relationship – the satisfaction–performance relationship is largely spurious – results consistently showed low or no correlation between the two…correlation only because performing well made employees more satisfied

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Why isn’t employee engagement more evidence-based? [1] u

Not much to do with individual HR people – it’s more institutional

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Training and incentives for HR

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HR loves a fad and seems to view them as good for (not damaging to) the profession

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If things are viewed as ‘doing good’ they are not subject to usual scrutiny (e.g., charities, recently convicted TV celebrities)

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Too much good intention (road to hell, etc)

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Lack of focus on the problem – what is the specific

problem engagement will fix and why will it fix it better than anything else?

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Why isn’t employee engagement more evidence-based? [2] u

A reluctance or inability to analyze and diagnose apparent problems (Einstein’s 60 minutes)

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Assumption that performance can always and should always be improved

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Broad plausibility of the happy-productive worker idea – it makes sense right?

– But way too general to be useful (e.g., food is good) – Sometimes some happy workers are more productive to some extent in some ways than less happy workers – Need to go beyond this to look for specific links and contextual limitations 19

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Broad plausibility should not be good enough for professionals/experts u u

Engagement is good (for performance) Engagement may be good up to a point then it doesn’t make any difference

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Maybe some forms of engagement are better for performance

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Engagement is too broad – doesn’t really mean anything

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Maybe some forms of engagement are better for some types of performance but not others

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Maybe it’s the mix of attitudes that’s important

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Maybe some people perform well without being engaged

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Increasing performance could be achieved better using other methods There’s quite a lot we don’t know about employee engagement and performance so I should scrutinize claims, beliefs and practices

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Whenever you hear a claim about employee engagement take it seriously – What does engagement mean precisely?

– What is the claim really suggesting?

– What specific evidence is being presented to support that claim – How much evidence is there?

– What is the quality of the evidence?

– Can I scrutinize the evidence or is it secret?

– How much should I trust the claim?

– Is there good quality evidence for the absence of a link between engagement and performance or just an absence of good quality evidence – so we just don’t know…

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Thank you Thoughts, comments, criticisms, etc? r.b.briner@bath.ac.uk http://cebma.org/

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