Inside Out E-Column: Aligning Employee Engagement with Marketing Communications

Standing up for trust.

Do you ever wonder how you know for sure when you’re hitting the mark with employee engagement? Sure, you can look at things like employee survey scores, KPIs and lots of other metrics – and that’s important. But aside from the numbers, how can you tell when you’re getting to the very heart of employee engagement?

When you strip everything else away, the over-the-top, extra-mile performance that most organizations crave from their employees is rooted in people’s emotions. It comes from the heart more than the head, and when you’re talking about the heart of engagement, the level of trust and loyalty in an organization are pretty compelling indicators. But how do you measure those vital qualities?

You can get some sense of it from engagement surveys, but few things make the point more powerfully than a recent event where employees stood up for a beleaguered leader that they love and respect.

A few weeks ago, CBS Sunday Morning ran a story on the CEO of Market Basket, who found himself on the outside looking in following a family tussle for the reins to the company’s leadership. The way employees responded sounds almost like something out of a business fairy tale. But it really happened, and the lessons from that story – along with others like Whole Foods and Radio Flyer captured in this enlightening 8-minute clip – offer a shining example of what the heart of employee engagement looks like … without needing to check on a single number.

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