Making Your CEO Care About Employee Engagement
A few weeks ago, friend and fellow blogger Lance Haun wrote an article over at TLNT titled Five Reasons Your CEO Doesn’t Care About Employee Engagement. It’s a really thought provoking piece. Check it out if you get a chance.
I recall having a conversation about the article with a colleague and their reply was if the CEO doesn’t care about employee engagement, then get rid of the CEO. Obviously the implication being that the CEO is a goofball for not understanding employee engagement and should be tossed out of the building.
And while this might be true, I’m not sure it’s the first reply I would come up with.
If employee engagement is important, then you have to show how it directly correlates to the business objectives of the organization. We can’t just say something is important or valuable and expect the world to jump on board. We have to show how it’s valuable and the impact it has on the business.
Frankly in my entire career, I’ve never seen a CEO completely ignore something that was shown to be valuable to company’s business objectives. That doesn’t mean 
With regard to employee engagement, one firm that has done a tremendous amount of work in this area is Gallup. Several years ago, they introduced the Q12 – a 12-question survey that allows companies to measure employee engagement. They’ve also produced a white paper on their research, outlining the relationship between work engagement and business outcomes. You can download the white paper here.
My point is before you fire the CEO (or another member of the leadership team) for not caring about employee engagement, make sure they understand it and how it impacts the organization. To assume the mere words “employee engagement” are self-explanatory and therefore important and essential is…well, you know what happens when you assume…
Having employees that are engaged with the company is important. It’s our job to show the organization how important engagement is to the bottom-line.
Image courtesy of sushi♥ina
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