I had an interesting experience in a pilot class on employee engagement that shows the importance of keeping the focus on individuals and resisting the urge to roll-up data.
During the class, we anonymously polled the ten participants on the degree to which they were getting their needs met in our eight employee passion areas: meaningful work, fairness, growth, autonomy, collaboration, recognition, connectedness with leader and connectedness with colleagues. We averaged all of the scores to get a class average in each of the areas.
The overall results were good, ranging from a low of 72% in the Collaboration category to a high of 86% in the Fairness category, but they didn’t tell the real story. While the overall class scores looked good, a review of individual answers showed that an individual’s assessment looked more like this:
Meaningful Work 90% needs met
Fairness 40% needs met
Growth 40% needs met
Autonomy 100% needs met
Collaboration 100% needs met
Recognition 70% needs met
Connectedness with Leader 30% needs met
Connectedness with Colleagues 100% needs met
This pattern was repeated time and again on each student’s individual assessment except that the highs and lows were different for each person. While the average made it seem like employee’s needs were being met at a 70% plus level, the reality was that people were having dramatically different experiences in the organization.
As you consider organizational assessments, be sure that you do not miss the power in individual responses. For leaders looking to address issues in their organizations and meet the needs of their people, it’s important to remember to test, address, and manage at the one-to-one level.
This is great information, thanks David!
Hi Nick,
Thanks for your comment. I’ll be exploring this concept of employee passion in greater depth in upcoming posts.