Page 55 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

42B RE-ENGAGE

could drive down levels of employee engagement across all industries.
The research we have conducted into U.S. employers who participate
in Best-Places-to-Work competitions clearly shows that employers can
significantly influence, if not control, how motivated and satisfied their
employees are. Still, we couldn’t help wondering how such a “tectonic
shift” beyond employers’ control—the economic crisis—might affect
employee feelings and perceptions about their workplaces.

Engagement Scores Up . . . Until Mid-2008
One of the unique aspects of the Best-Places-to-Work surveys is that
the annual awards events are conducted in 45 different cities at differ-
ent times of the year, but at the same time of the year in each location.
In Omaha, Nebraska, for example, Best-Places-to-Work polling begins
each February, while in Kansas City, Missouri, survey responses are
collected in August. We had access to year-over-year survey results for
hundreds of employers, allowing us to compare what employees said
about their employers in the fall of 2008, in the midst of an economic
“perfect storm,” with their responses in previous, calmer years.
Most previous employee engagement research had focused on
internally stimulated employee engagement drivers and had not con-
sidered externally influenced factors. In a survey conducted by Hewitt
Associates early in 2008, the Conference Board sought to find out
if the economic conditions at that time were having an impact on
employee engagement. Among the questions asked was “Is there a
recession?”
“The short answer is that, based on Hewitt research on employee
engagement and motivation in more than six thousand organizations,
we don’t see a psychological recession overall. During the last five
years, overall levels of engagement have remained relatively stable, at
just over 50 percent globally.” 15
So the general consensus, at least through the first half of 2008, was
that employee engagement in the United States was stronger than in
most countries and apparently immune to the reports of a coming re-
cession. Economists later reported that the recession technically began
in December 2007, but as we now know, the worst was yet to come.