New Valuegraphics Research May Hold The Secret To Employee Engagement
Values Thinking at Work
New Research May Hold the Secret to Employee Engagement
Pic Cap: Profiles for the Retirement Community workforce are an example of how Values Thinking can help organizations increase employee engagement.
Study after study points to employee engagement as one of the key factors in reducing costly employee turnover. It’s no wonder there are as many checklists and infographics about boosting employee engagement as there are companies who claim to have the answer.
Depending on who we listen to, the solution is about training, better communication, benefits packages, recognition, fostering happiness, hiring practices, or another one of a dozen silver bullets. It’s impossible for even the largest and best-funded HR department to do all of these things well.
The problem is deciding which tactics an organization should focus on, and how to prioritize to get the best results. New research about human behavior might be able to help.
Ask any student of sociology or psychology how humans make decisions and they would say the same thing: what we care about, in other words, what we value, determines what we do. In fact, we spend all our waking hours seeking more of what we value, and less of what we don’t.
As a human behavior expert and pioneer of Values Thinking, I’ve created a way to make decisions based on what people value. Studying human behavior with a social science lens helps organizations focus more time and attention on delivering what stakeholders care about.
Giving people more of what they value is an incredibly simple and powerful thing to do. If a group of people highly value personal growth, and we provide them with more ways to grow, they will become more engaged. There’s a very direct link between values alignment and employee engagement.
To help organizations harness the power of values, I’ve worked with a team of academic researchers to create the world’s first database of personal values; what everyone on earth cares about. After analyzing more than half-a-million surveys in 152 languages, the data set covers 180 countries with more accuracy than required for a Ph.D. from an Ivy League university.
Below is an example of values at work from the Valuegraphics Database: profiles of employees in the retirement community sector. These profiles illustrate how Values Thinking can help guide decisions about job descriptions, training, recruitment, recognition programs, and more.
Of course, this is just an overview; the full profiling of the retirement community sector workforce is far more detailed, and a profile for a particular organization within the sector would be even more precise. Even still, with these over-arching insights for the entire industry now available, organizations within the sector can start using Values Thinking to increase employee engagement.
Around the world, employee engagement is at a shockingly low 15%. Using Values Thinking to understand the workforce is a powerful new resource to help HR professionals make decisions based on what people value and care about the most.
Case Study
Valuegraphics Profiles for the Retirement Community Workforce
The retirement community workforce can be segmented into three profiles based on their shared values. To make the segments memorable, I’ve given each one a name.
32% of the workforce is called Thelma. 26% are named Sue, and 24% go by the nickname of Cory. If you are doing the math it’s clear 18% are missing. Those are the tiny splinter groups...profiles that are too small to worry about.
Thelma, Sue and Cory all place enormous importance on loyalty. Each is fiercely loyal and expects loyalty in return. Loyalty comes up quite a bit in Valuegraphics profiles, so we know quite a bit about these people. Loyalty is visible in the routines and processes that loyalists like to maintain. Loyalists are resistant to change because it feels disloyal to the way things are right now. They are quite likely to collect something because collecting is a kind of loyalty to a specific category of things. Loyalists tend to be in long term relationships of one kind or another, and have a close group of friends.
For employers, this loyalty can be activated if these loyalist values are triggered.
Thelma is loyal because as far as she is concerned it’s just what people do. In fact, she thinks it’s a silly question; aren’t all people just loyal to each other? A differentiating value that helps to further understand Thelma is compassion. Finding assignments and a career path for Thelma that trigger her values of loyalty and compassion will increase her engagement. Length of service recognition, feedback about how much she means to the residents she works with, and skills-training that teaches new and better ways to be even more compassionate are just a few examples of initiatives that will ring true.
Sue is loyal because the patients she cares for have earned it, and deserve respect. One important value for Sue is personal responsibility. She lives to get up off the couch and get things done. Sue will thrive and be far more engaged if she is looking after the extreme cases where people need her the most. Any training that can help her understand how to be more responsible for the people who rely on her will be enormously motivating.
Cory is loyal because every day at work is an adventure. Loyalty for Cory is, in part, about personal growth. For Cory, every day brings opportunities to grow by listening to the stories the residents want to tell. Cory will be the most engaged in a position where soaking up the life-lessons residents want to share is part of the job.
Of course every industry (and every company within an industry) will have a different set of profiles to consider. But what’s important is this: to boost employee engagement, use shared values to make decisions, not demographic stereotypes that make no sense in a contemporary workplace. Because what we value determines what we do.
Resources:
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/238079/state-global-workplace-2017.aspx
https://www.zenefits.com/workest/employee-turnover-infographic/
https://www.employersresource.com/blog/the-costs-and-trends-of-employee-turnover-part-1/
https://blog.smarp.com/employee-engagement-8-statistics-you-need-to-know