Employees are responsible for it, too

We talk about employee engagement. A lot. We measure it, predict it and help companies improve it. As a feedback and analytics company, people reach out to us to help them discover how they can improve business results by ensuring that employees are at optimal engagement.  Our experience has yielded a some key findings, including:

1. Companies deploy employee engagement surveys that often measure job satisfaction, not engagement.
2. Most Everyone -- from the marketplace to employees, managers and leaders in organizations -- assume that engagement is solely the company’s responsibility.

In this moment, we are forced to creatively manage our lives and businesses given the challenges of COVID-19. We’re doing more with less — less cost, less facetime, less clarity. For business leaders, it may appear that employees are grateful to be employed. But, does that mean they are engaged? 

Even prior to these conditions, business news regularly bombarded us with messaging that the U.S. workforce is disengaged. If you’re a part of an organization that conducts yearly engagement surveys, your analytics may also raise the question, what do we need to improve?

Leaders are making commitments to diversity. But, it’s managers’ actions that matter more than you may realize.

2020 has been a year of defining events that became worldwide shared experiences. While we collectively grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic and living within a patchwork of governmental advisories and work from home arrangements, we witnessed appalling injustices, including George Floyd’s tragic death. Those events sparked national protests which raised awareness of racial injustices. 

Inclusion and equality are top-of-mind for many these days, especially inclusion and equality at work. Talmetrix prides itself on considering diversity and inclusion in everything we do - research, solutions advisory, and product development. We aren't perfect, but strive to be a model and partner for our clients, which is why we’ve included the Inclusion and Equality Index (IEI for short) into our solutions playbook. 

A message from Chris Powell, CEO of Talmetrix 

It’s Time to LISTEN & LEAD!

I wasn’t always just black. I used to be just a kid...you know a human being.

I was 7 years old and landed the lead role as the frog in the spring school play. My entire family was excited, including my grandmother who made my costume, and my mother who taught 6th grade at the same school that was 95% white. The play was a success. A few days later, some of the older students commented to me that they had never seen a black frog before me. I was curious and confused about why I had to be a black frog versus just a frog.

by Kara McCord, M.A. IO Psychology

How Does this End?

Right now, in this moment, your organization might very well be in survival mode. Your team is learning to work from home, or you’re trying to figure out what social distancing looks like in a workplace. Think of survival mode as “phase 0” on the journey toward re-entry. On any given day, it might feel like survival mode will last forever, but it won’t.

We’re all on a journey of re-entry or put in a more aspirational way: a journey of renewal. But where are we going? How will we know it’s time to go back? And what are we going back to? Talmetrix believes your team already has the answers to these questions, you just need to know how to prompt them to share and how to listen for insight.

by Kara McCord, M.A. IO Psychology

Work (and life) as we knew it came to a screeching halt due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The federal government is passing massive legislation to offer aid to Americans at a record-breaking pace, the economy is more volatile than ever, and organizations are changing in the form of remote work or furloughing their workforces.