More than any time in the history of the world, Technology (driven by knowledge) and Service Delivery (driven by employee engagement) are the keys for organizational growth, and the foundation for the evolving economy. With this environment, comes a need to place focused emphasis on attracting the best people (read: the RIGHT people) to achieve sustained organizational success.
The value of having the right people in the right seats is that it allow organizations’ to work more efficiently and, to use an overused term, do more with less. The extra effort put forth to complete work that is necessary for your company’s success, but falls outside the normal job description or requirements, can be defined as “discretionary effort”- that effort which goes above and beyond what is minimally required to perform the job. Discretionary Effort is the foundation of, and a measuring stick for, employee engagement. That is, the more engaged an employee is the more likely and willing they are to put in extra effort on behalf of the company’s goals.
HR Leaders, therefore, can strongly impact the organizational success (revenue and profit), by ensuring that employees are motivated and engaged. The first step is discovering and defining what attributes of your workplace drives motivated employees- your employer value proposition. Once you have that in place, it’s necessary to develop an effective strategy to communicate those attributes to develop an emotional connection across the talent life-cycle- candidates, new employees, employees, and exiting employees.
In my experience, and based on research from Gallup, Tower Watson, McKinsey, and others, sustainable organizational success is tied directly to the level of engagement (discretionary effort) of your employees. Companies who do this effectively, are filled with employees who take pride in the work they do, and who are exceedingly willing to actively drive the organization’s overall success- the 110%ers.
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