Engagement tied to executive compensation
I generally loathe reality television, so I didn't watch "Undercover Boss" on CBS this past Sunday, but this week Steve Tobak at BNET's "The Corner Office" blog interviewed Larry O'Donnell, COO of Waste Management, who was the show's first subject.
The interview is generally interesting, but one comment caught my eye. O'Donnell says he was interested in participating in the show as a way to increase employee engagement at the company, which has 45,000 employees. He's a firm believer in employee engagement at all levels, and the company measures it regularly. In fact, he says:
"Not only is it a metric, it's actually in management's bonuses. Engagement is critical, and this is a whole new way to go about it." [emphasis added]
How do you like that? Tying employee engagement to compensation. Associations talk a lot about engagement, but are any of them tying it to staff compensation? If not, I think they could:
- Member engagement. If you've figured out a reasonable way to measure member engagement over time (volunteer applications, online discussion activity, knowledge contributions, net promoter score, however you want to track it), you can pin these numbers to bonuses for volunteer or membership directors and staff.
- Employee engagement. This might be even more abstract an intangible, but if you can gauge the mood of your staff in regard to engagment or loyalty over time, you can tie it to bonuses or compensation for the CEO, COO, or other senior staff. Waste Management does a yearly employee survey to measure employee engagement.
I've only been thinking about this as long as it's taken me to type up this post, so this is a fairly rough idea, but I wanted to make sure I passed it along, because I think it's worth considering. Engagement is a sign of a lot of other good practices, so it would be interesting to see it incentivized for staff and management at associations. And incentivizing anything with money works in two ways: it motivates people more directly (say what you will, but money talks), and it also shows your staff and membership that you're serious about engagement if you're willing put money at stake for it.
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Comments
I think this is an excellent idea, personally. The more engaged an employee is, the more they care about serving members and the better able to serve members they are.
Posted by: Maggie McGary | February 12, 2010 1:31 PM
A downloadable Saatchi & Saatchi report on how and whether organizations are engaging employees through corporate sustainability programs is available from Brighter Planet at http://attachments.brighterplanet.com/press_items/local_copies/55/original/employee_engagement_2009.pdf?1265816076.
In brief, the research finds that 86% of respondents were not engaged by their employers on sustainability, even though the same percentage said that their organization promotes employee sustainability in some area. Much of the blame seems to focus on the fact that their employers have not included them in the crafting and prioritizing of those efforts: They report that only 16% of companies have ever surveyed them on their sustainability interests and habits, and 14% of respondents said they did not even know whether their companies have an employee sustainability engagement policy.
We at ASAE & The Center also hear sometimes that "we're too small" to get involved to use sustainability to engage employees and members. They might be intersted to learn that the survey found that small organizations "are taking the lead on employee sustainability engagement," with organizations of fewer than 100 staffers almost twice as likely to promote sustainability “very frequently.” As a result, "their efforts are twice as likely to be effective at changing employee behavior," wrote analysts.
I'm not surprised that the report also confirms what we keep hearing: The most effective employee engagement programs are those in which an organization’s management or board is "the main advocate for employee sustainability." When that trait is in place, employee engagement programs organized around social responsibility "have proven three times as effective as those in which an employee sustainability director was the main advocate."
The study highlights another thing we run into often in our conversations at meetings and events: a real desire by employees to know what their organization and coworkers are doing around sustainability. This was true for more than 60% of the Saatchi & Saatchi survey respondents.
I also thought it interesting that 67% of respondents who DO know their organization's positions on social responsibility issues disagree with them and want them changed. Sometimes I wonder if that is why associations aren't taking time to compile what they're already doing around sustainability--they fear their employees will get mad that they're not doing enough or that they're holding to a line that the individual worker doesn't agree with. I find that a bit ironic, though, since 46% of survey respondents report that their companies publicize sustainability efforts primarily as a "means of employee recruitment and retention."
Posted by: Kristin Clarke | February 13, 2010 11:22 AM
I love this idea and think it could easily translate to various positions within the association.
I'd like to see the annual conference evaluated on how it engaged attendees. It could grade how many sessions allowed attendees to discuss issues presented and learn from each other instead of sitting passively listening to a monologue. Or how much time was allowed for horizontal, peer-to-peer learning and discovery in the entire conference schedule. Or how mnay structured, facilitated networking sessions there were.
My mind is racing with ways to apply this to associations!
Posted by: Jeff Hurt | February 19, 2010 8:51 AM