Hewitt Associates has just announced the results of their 2010 Best Employers in Canada study and it has some useful message for all companies.
They assessed three factors:
- STAY – Willingness to remain with your current employer
- SAY – How positively you talk to others about your employer
- STRIVE – How motivated you are to go above and beyond to contribute to the business success
Among the 50 “Best Employers,” the average employee engagement score (i.e. % of employees who responded positively to all three factors) was 80%.
Particularly important, I think, are two key findings. First, there was two-way communication. To quote the Hewitt news release:
One characteristic common to all organizations with high engagement is open, transparent, complete and timely two-way communication. During the last year, employees were well aware of the challenges the organization was facing, understood the possible solutions, proactively offered input, and committed to the course of action the organization’s leaders decided to follow.”
A second finding, employees in these high-engagement companies exhibited:
- Support for improving productivity
- Willingness to make trade-offs in benefits over the shorter term (e.g. reduced salaries and work hours to enable colleagues to be retained on the payroll)
- High trust and confidence in their leaders.
So, once again we see the impact of excellent leaders who foster open communication leading to trust. Especially in tough times, your people will demonstrate greater patience, resilience and discretionary effort when they trust you and your colleagues in management.
