No subject in business has been made more needlessly complex than employee engagement. First, the executive team is the problem. Leadership is not an altruistic endeavor, they are just as compartmentalized and disengaged as the rest of the organization, they just hide it better. Here's the problem, neither the vendors nor HR are positioned to force change on disinterested leadership. Without a solution to the blocking that ALWAYS occurs from the culture, politics, and siloed organizations, there's no meaningful solution to transforming engagement. Here's a simple albeit stressful test, survey employees whether they expect the next HR engagement survey will result in meaningful changes. What do you do if the answers are a resounding "NO"? Employees' perceptions are based on the history they've observed. What possible change should be expected if HR does this every year and nothing changes? Engagement by committee, committees never do anything stupid nor brilliant, they come up with the average wrong answer. When there's a solution to leadership blocking, CEOs will get involved and then the results can be seen in the income statement, not just some arbitrary EE/EX measurement scheme.
I am positive that they elaborate on this point in this video and in their EE Best Practices video and mention that surveys are very much an introductory baseline for EE, the goal of the survey and action plans are to inform the executive to have their buy-in. Obviously, it depends on whether they would like to improve, but even then it is fair to argue that most executives would be better off addressing EE considering the weight it carries in overall employee and company performance. If you want the specifics on how effective EE can be in increasing performance I recommend watching the Best Practice video. The data speaks for itself, from there on it's an evolving process where management progressively invests more in EE. In short, I generally disagree with discrediting the role of EE simply because of its complexity or because of blocking at the executive levels. EE is researched, measurable, and approachable enough to be relevant in today's corporate environment.
