Page 80 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

Steering the Ship and Inspiring the Crew C67

: WHO DRIVES EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT MORE, MANAGERS
OR SENIOR LEADERS?

Anyone who stops to seriously consider the question, “Who drives em-
ployee engagement—the supervisor or senior leader?” must inevitably
answer, “Both, of course!” And yet hundreds of companies around the
world, including many Fortune 500 multinationals, continue to use a
popular 12-question employee engagement survey that contains not a
single question about senior leadership.
Inherent in the design and widespread use of this survey is the
assumption that direct managers and supervisors hold all the cards
and are the “dealers” in the employee engagement card game. There
is no disputing that direct supervisors have a powerful impact on the
employees they supervise. They hold many critical powers: to hire the
right people; to assign the work that uses the employees’ talents; to
communicate clear expectations; to coach, care for, listen to, confront,
develop, recognize, and reward their employees—or not do these vital
tasks. Managers control the levers available in the everyday interactive
moments when they choose to behave in ways that either engage the
employee or have the opposite effect. Managers and supervisors also
have the power to act as transmitters, interpreters, and enforcers of the
strategies, policies, decisions, and directives of senior leaders.
In our experience, however, it is the senior leadership team (often
with input from the board of directors) that creates the culture, sets
the tone, inspires trust and confidence, or undermines it. We believe
that senior leaders—CEOs and their direct reports—most strongly
influence the very managers they hold accountable for engaging em-
ployees. If engaging employees were a card game, the senior leaders
would be dealing the face cards.
By conducting employee surveys that fail to take into account these
higher levers, we do a disservice to those senior leaders who sincerely
want to create more engaging workplaces and need to be confronted
with the sometimes painful-to-hear workplace realities that candid
survey feedback provides. Why? Because it tells them exactly how
they can do better in very specific ways. Of course, there are some