Five barriers to improving employee engagement

While senior business leaders agree there’s value in workplace culture and employee engagement, many struggle with putting it into practice and knowing how to inspire improvement. Based on more than a decade of workplace research at Energage, here are the five most common barriers to improving employee engagement in the workplace. Barrier #1: Lack of focus at the top A majority of organizations still don’t administer engagement surveys or use other disciplined ways of collecting employee feedback. This leaves leaders to assume (or guess) what matters most to their people. The first challenge is setting priorities at the senior team level. Everybody is busy, so it’s easier to move on to more tangible issues than it is to sustain a leadership focus on engagement. Barrier #2: External investors don’t prioritize Winning support from other stakeholders – especially investors – can be a hard sell. While boards of directors are close to the business and may be more likely to appreciate the need to build an engaged workforce, finding the right balance between investing and short-term returns can be a challenge. Executive teams often think twice before taking actions that might shake investor confidence. Barrier #3: Communication channels are saturated Improving engagement requires high levels of communication. And in our information-saturated world, it’s difficult to cut through the noise. It can be a challenge trying to get the attention of employees, and soliciting input also creates vast amounts of feedback that can overwhelm the engagement team. Barrier #4: Engaging leadership behaviors don’t come naturally Inspirational communication and greater transparency are key to greater employee engagement. But leaders at all levels also need to actively engage employees both individually and collectively. And this takes sustained commitment. Such behaviors often go against the grain of what’s taught in most formal MBA courses and the instinct executives develop as they climb the organizational ladder. Barrier #5: Bringing the rest of the organization along Once the leadership team aligns and connects with direct reports, how can that extend to all levels of an organization? This can take tremendous effort, especially In larger organizations, Many look to formal training. But that is less important than gaining the commitment of managers to adopt a mind shift. Managers benefit from formal training only if they are first committed to investing time in their people.

Fraser Marlow is head of research for Energage, a Philadelphia-based research and consulting firm that surveyed more than 2.5 million employees at more than 6,000 organizations in 2017. Energage is The Denver Post’s research partner for Top Workplaces.