Closing the Engagement Gap: How Great Companies Unleash Employee Potential for Superior Results [Hardcover]

The authors of this book work at Towers Perrin, a firm that specializes in providing companies with services for Human Capital. You can hire the firm to help you with executive compensation, consulting of all kinds including financial risk management related to your employees. Gebauer and Lowman are involved in both their research arm and their workforce effectiveness practice. I mention this right up front because I want you to understand the financial interests the authors have attached to this book. That being said, I like the book a lot. The bottom line is that they believe and what you to understand how your employees can be a strategic competitive advantage. They provide five core principles that you can use to close gap between the kind of employee engagement you have now and where you want it to be to reap the bottom line rewards that come from having great employees that work as a team and provide your company with a superior position in your marketplace.

The five principles seem simple and they are, in a way. But you saying them and agreeing with the ideas in your mind and executing them in reality can be a very treacherous transition. They are:
1) Know your employees
2) Grow them
3) Inspire them
4) Involve them
5) Reward them

Knowing them isn't just about saying hello to Bob when you see him. You need to know what makes them tick as a person and what they truly contribute and could contribute to your organization. And considering what your organization can give back to Bob would be a good move, too.

Growing them is about developing them as professionals in both the near and long terms. This way you know what you need to invest, what return you are getting, and both you and the employee share a vision for their future in the company.

Inspiring them provides the means for an emotional connection to the employee's work, their team, the organization, and is best when they feel they are contributing to a vision that they know inspires others and fires up everyone in the organization.

Involving them allows people to use their creativity. You not only don't know everything; you can't. To get strategic advantage from your team, let them teach you. The best companies learn daily from their employees and allow their employees real discretion in their work.

Rewarding them is more than just the dollars and cents of their paycheck and benefits packages. You need to show appreciation and to find fresh ways to keep them engaged. Pay is critical, but by the time it becomes a sore spot you have dropped the ball in many other places.

The writing is not technical and offers many insights from real world companies and their issues. I think you can get some real value from this book and recommend it.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

I read this book with the intent of seeing how the engagement strategies recommended might tie in to Web 2.0/social networking techniques. The closest area that was relevant to this is the Involve Me chapter. There were a few cases cited where online involvement was described, but not as many as I was hoping for.

With that said, though, the book still provided a wonderful context for how to think about engaging your employees. The Know-Grow-Inspire-Involve-Reward framework is a practical way of considering employee engagement. So while I didn't get the virtual detail and examples I was hoping for, I do have a good way of thinking about overall strategies.

What gap? Recent research conducted by the Gallup Organization indicates that 29% of the U.S. workforce is engaged (i.e. loyal, enthusiastic, and productive) whereas 55% is passively disengaged. That is, they are going through the motions, doing only what they must, "mailing it in," coasting, etc. What about the other 16%? Are they engaged? Yes. However, they are doing whatever they can to undermine their employer's efforts to succeed. They have a toxic impact on their associates and, in many instances, on customer relations. These are stunning statistics. How to explain them? Reasons vary from one organization to the next. However, most experts agree that no more than 5% of any given workforce consists of "bad apples," trouble-makers, chronic complainers, subversives, etc. How to close this gap between active, productive, and positive people and those who aren't?

In order to answer that question, Julie Gebauer and Don Lowman (with Joanne Gordon) completed on a rigorous examination of the 2007-2008 Global Workforce Study ("Closing the Engagement Gap: A Roadmap for Driving Superior Performance") sponsored by their employer, Towers Perrin. This study is based on data generated from two sources: 90,000 employees working full-time for midsize to large organizations in eighteen countries worldwide, and, "the world's largest employee normative database, with data that is updated annually from more than 2 million employees at a range of companies in more than forty companies." Gebauer and Lowman identified the top ten items that drive employee engagement around the world. (Please see Page 13.) Citing statistics somewhat different from Gallup's (i.e. 41% of global workers are enrolled but not yet engaged and 30% are disenchanted), they identify "five actions to convert the enrolled and enlist the disenchanted": Know Them, Grow Them, Inspire Them, Involve Them, and Reward Them. So far, no head-snapping revelations but then Gebauer and Don Lowman zero in companies (the "Engaging Eight") in which a rational-emotional-motivational connection with workers enables them to "willingly and enthusiastically put forth extra time, energy, and brainpower to help their companies compete and succeed." The exemplars are Campbell Soup Company, EMC Corporation, Honeywell International, McKesson Corporation, MGM Grand and Casino, North Shore-Long island Jewish Health System, Novartis AG, and Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI).

Throughout the balance of their book, Gebauer and Lowman devote a separate chapter to each of the aforementioned "actions" needed to close the performance gap between between active, productive, and positive people and those who aren't. I think it was a brilliant decision to take that approach rather than devote a separate chapter to each of the "Engaging Eight" because how companies achieve a given objective such as "growing" people varies (sometimes significantly) between and among them. However, profiles of the exemplary companies suggest a wealth of possibilities for results-driven executives to consider. Readers will also appreciate the "Key Acts of Engagement" recommended in Chapter 7 (Pages 236-255) It remains for them to determine how to increase their associates' engagement. In the final chapter, Gebauer and Lowman assert that most organizations "have a ready, willing, and capable reservoir of talent, energy, and dedication. But it's up to them to tap it in meaningful ways. And, as we have shown, direct bosses are critical catalysts of engagement, but without engaging programs and policies set up by the organization - and engaging behaviors from the most visible senior leaders - direct bosses' efforts will fail to deliver full engagement."

My own opinion is that "full engagement" is the ultimate destination of an on-going, never-ending process but seldom (if ever) reached. And even then, it is possible but unlikely that full engagement can be sustained. The point is, and here I completely agree with Gebauer and Lowman, all supervisors must create the conditions that drive engagement, including C-level executives' actions and behavior, learning and development opportunities, and the company's image and reputation. It is no coincidence that many of the companies that appear each year on Fortune magazine's lists of those most highly admired and best to work for also appear each year on the magazine's lists of those most profitable and most valuable.

One of Gebauer and Lowman's concluding points really caught my eye: "Only 1 in 10 of the 88,000 respondents in [the Towers Perrin] Global Workforce Study agreed that their organization's senior leaders treat employees as vital corporate assets." That is an astonishing statistic, one that underlines the importance of trust within a workforce. Fred Reichheld has much of value to say about it, characterized as "organizational glue" in several of his books, notably The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value (2001) with Thomas Teal and Loyalty Rules: How Today's Leaders Build Lasting Relationships (2003). Trust must be earned over time but can easily be lost and seldom regained. Presumably Julie Gebauer and Don Lowman agree with Reichheld that if there is an absence of trust within a workplace, it will be impossible to "unlock employee potential for superior results."