Report: State of Employee Engagement Activities, 2013

We just published a Temkin Group report, State of Employee Engagement Activities, 2013, that examines the employee engagement efforts within more than 200 large organizations. Here’s the executive summary:

Only 25 percent of employees at large organizations are highly engaged. To understand what efforts are underway to improve employee engagement, we surveyed 221 CX professionals from large organizations. While most firms measure employee engagement, less than half place a high priority on taking action based on employee feedback. A lack of a clear employee engagement strategy and the narrow reach of employee engagement activities contribute to less than one in four organizations earning strong or very strong scores on Temkin Group’s employee engagement competency assessment. When we compared companies with stronger employee experience scores to the other companies, we found that these leading firms have better financial and customer experience results. They also have more coordinated employee engagement efforts, more involvement by the CX team in these efforts, and are five times more likely to place a high priority on taking action on employee feedback.

Download report for $195

As part of the research, nearly 200 large organizations completed Temkin Group’s employee engagement competency assessment.  As you can see from the results below, less than one quarter of respondents earned a “strong” rating, and companies are particularly weak in one of our Five I’s of Employee Engagement: Inspire.

Here are some additional findings from the research:

• Seventy-five percent of companies with stronger employee engagement efforts have above average customer experience compared with 50% of companies with weaker efforts
• Eighty percent of companies with stronger employee engagement efforts have above average financial results, compared with 53% of companies with weaker efforts
• Ninety-four percent of respondents measure employee engagement and two-thirds measure it at least annually.
• Only 43 percent of respondents believe that their executive team highly prioritizes taking action based on the employee engagement feedback.
• The top obstacles to improving employee engagement are a clear employee engagement strategy and inconsistent buy-in among middle managers.
• In 53 percent of companies with stronger employee engagement efforts, the CX group is active in the efforts compared with only 35 percent of other firms.
• Firms with stronger employee engagement efforts are five times more likely than other firms to treat the results from employee engagement surveys as a high priority.

Download report for $195

The bottom line: Employee engagement is an under-appreciated corporate asset