Strategic HR Review

Our take: building engagement cultures

Jay Romans, Jeff Tobaben,
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Jay Romans, Jeff Tobaben, (2016) "Our take: building engagement cultures", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 15 Issue: 2,
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 Our take: building engagement cultures
Jay Romans and Jeff Tobaben

Abstract
Purpose – Leadership is about mobilizing self and others to attain a common purpose. The actions
chosen to accomplish this are guided by a set of core values. Yet many companies lack the investment
in establishing a common purpose and set of core values. Effective leaders use the principle of purpose
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to establish a direction that will motivate and capture the energy of those needed for success. In other
words, they build engagement. The key to having an engagement culture is the top team. Organizations
that have strong engagement cultures are populated with senior leaders that make everyday – and
Jay Romans is Senior everyone – count daily. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the four key principles that must be
Vice President, Human deployed to build an engagement culture.
Resources at Owens and Design/methodology/approach – There are a wide variety of engagement/culture surveys on the
Minor Inc., market today, but the real key to having an engagement culture is the top team. Effective leaders
Mechanicsville, Virginia, constantly seek out new ways to improve. They use the principle of purpose to establish a direction that
USA. will motivate and capture the energy of those needed for success. They demonstrate stewardship,
Jeff Tobaben is CEO at provide feedback and consistently inquire into the quality of their plans, as well as the effectiveness of
Evolve Performance their organizations and their own leadership. The approach of this paper requires four key principles to
Group, Bryan, Texas, be deployed to build an engagement culture: align the top team through the development of a core
USA. purpose; senior leaders embrace stewardship; senior leaders practice feedback; and senior leaders
model caring and listening.
Findings – To build a culture of engagement, leaders must require that developing engaged work
teams be a part of the business strategy. This means engagement becomes the way the company
operates, not something done in addition to the company’s work. In other words, it is a fundamental tenet
of the company that business performance is achieved by leveraging the organization’s human capital.
High-performing leaders make employee engagement non-negotiable, by establishing two things:
importance and accountability. Organizations that have strong engagement cultures are populated with
senior leaders that make everyday – and everyone – count daily. If an organization is to build a culture
of engagement, then it must first be modeled by leaders. These leaders are not afraid of tough
questions, comments or challenges. They seek out those who will engage in the tough conversations to
build their capability and that of the organization.
Originality/value – High-performing leaders make employee engagement non-negotiable, by
establishing two things: importance and accountability. The approach of this paper involves leveraging
the talents of the organization’s employees and engaging them to produce stronger business
performance. The world’s best-in-class organizations understand that human capital yields organic
growth and creates brand loyalty. When senior leaders align their top team through the development of
an engaged workforce, we then see an engagement culture emerge that drives business performance
and creates a true competitive advantage for the organization.
Keywords Culture, Leadership, Human capital, Engagement, Employee engagement, Metrics
Paper type Viewpoint

uilding a high-performance company with engaged employees does not start with

B picking the right survey; it starts with having the right leaders. There are a wide
variety of engagement/culture surveys on the market today, but the real key to
having an engagement culture is the top team. Based on our research and experience, the
following key principles must be deployed to build an engagement culture:

PAGE 76 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW VOL. 15 NO. 2 2016, pp. 76-82, © Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1475-4398 DOI 10.1108/SHR-02-2016-0010
 ‘‘Organizations that have strong engagement cultures are
populated with senior leaders that make everyday – and
everyone – count daily.’’

 align the top team through the development of a core purpose;

 senior leaders embrace stewardship;
 senior leaders practice feedback; and
 senior leaders model caring and listening.
Leadership is about mobilizing self and others to attain a common purpose. The actions
chosen to accomplish this are guided by a set of core values. Yet many companies lack the
investment in establishing a common purpose and set of core values. Effective leaders use
the principle of purpose to establish a direction that will motivate and capture the energy
of those needed for success. In other words, they build engagement. There is no shortage
of definitions for purpose.
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 “The organization’s fundamental reason for existence beyond making money- a

perpetual guiding star on the horizon; not to be confused with specific goals or
business strategy” (Collins and Porras, 1994).
 “By purpose, I mean an individual’s sense of why he is alive” (Senge, 1990).
 “Purpose is the statement of a company’s moral response to its broadly defined
responsibilities, not an amoral plan for exploiting commercial opportunity” (Bartlett and
Ghoshal, 1994).
Purpose then is a reason for existing and a path to find meaning and motivation to endure
and move forward. Some excellent examples of purpose statements include (Disney) “To
make people happy” or (Becton Dickinson) “Helping all people live healthy lives”.
Leadership teams must invest in determining “why” they exist versus “what” they do if a
culture of engagement is to be built. If done right, then this is a work that will take several
months to accomplish.
Companies with strong cultures of engagement also have leaders that demonstrate
stewardship. Stewardship is the felt responsibility and accountability to wisely manage the
resources and capabilities we have been provided. Engaged cultures have leaders who
take responsibility for not only their own talents but also for those in the organization. Steve
Covey noted, “People with primary greatness have a sense of stewardship about
everything in life, including their time, talents, money, possessions, relationships, family,
and even their bodies. They recognize the need to use all their resources for positive
purposes, and expect to be held accountable” (Covey, 1991). Effective leaders, capable of
building a culture of engagement, demonstrate stewardship over their own resources,
whether time, talents, duties or others.
Organizations that have strong engagement cultures are populated with senior leaders that
make everyday – and everyone – count daily. Everyone can see them hold themselves
accountable for using the company’s resources effectively and efficiently. They hold others
accountable and build the capabilities needed to meet and exceed stakeholder demands.
Feedback is the fuel of growth. People, as well as an organization’s capabilities, will decline
over time without feedback to point out new opportunities. The goal of feedback is
performance improvement, constantly seeking out new ways to improve. What do you do
if you are the best in the world? How does an athlete go undefeated for a decade? Edwin
Moses won 122 high hurdle races in a row. He won gold medals in 1976 and, then, again

VOL. 15 NO. 2 2016 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW PAGE 77

 in 1984 in the 400-m high hurdles. What was his secret? Continuous feedback to lower his
time. With limited competition, Moses set up video cameras to film himself running the high
hurdles, with the goal of lowering his hurdle clearance. The feedback paid off – in 1976, he
won the gold medal with a time of 47.63 s, setting a new world record. In 1983, he set a new
world record in the high hurdles with a time of 47.02.
Effective leaders use feedback to continually build their capability. If an organization is
to build a culture of feedback, then it must first be modeled by leaders. These leaders
are not afraid of tough questions, comments or challenges. They seek out those who will
engage in the tough conversations to build their capability and that of the organization.
Think of the best boss you have worked for and the qualities that you valued. I am willing
to bet that two of those qualities were that they cared and listened. In our experience,
engagement cultures are populated with a high percentage of caring managers who
listen to what others have to say. “Leaders who aspire to build high commitment/
high-performance organizations must inquire into the quality of their plans, as well as
the effectiveness of their organizations and their own leadership if they are to succeed”
(Beer, 2009).
These leaders ask questions about themselves and the organizations for which they are
responsible. They seek knowledge about how they are doing in meeting the needs of the
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organization, as well as those of their employees. When people bring up issues or

problems, these leaders stop and listen. They also seek counsel on how to address or solve
these issues or problems. Working for these type of leaders causes employees to believe
that they care about them and their families in a personal, “real” way.
Yes, we have had the opportunity to work with organizations where leaders have these traits
and behaviors. In those organizations, we have found a high degree of employee
engagement. Below we have summarized these results and provided a path forward for
building an engagement culture.
To build the appropriate culture, leaders must require that developing engaged work teams
be a part of the business strategy. This means engagement becomes the way the company
operates, not something done in addition to the company’s work. In other words, it is a
fundamental tenet of the company that business performance is achieved by leveraging
the organization’s human capital. High-performing leaders make employee engagement
non-negotiable, by establishing two things: importance and accountability.
Making engagement important is done in several ways:
 It is part of the company’s operating system.
 It is talked about constantly and at every opportunity. Many of the best companies that
we have worked with conduct very short five- to ten-min meetings that focus on
improving one engagement area daily.
 Engagement data are consistently revisited throughout the year to determine areas
where teams can leverage things they do well or manage around areas where they
have trouble. This allows leaders to “aim” engagement at solving business problems,
launching new projects or completing other company goals. Many of the companies
we have partnered with have utilized engagement to correct a variety of business

‘‘High-performing leaders make employee engagement

non-negotiable, by establishing two things: importance and
accountability.’’

PAGE 78 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW VOL. 15 NO. 2 2016

 ‘‘These leaders are the guiding light for the organization, and
the facilitators of the company’s ‘why.’’’

performance issues, such as increasing safety ratings, reducing turnover, driving client
loyalty, improving per-person productivity, etc.
 Engagement data are used as one of the points of consideration in succession
planning (you would not want to promote someone to a role that oversees more team
members if that person has difficulty building engagement with smaller teams).
 Providing managers and employees with appropriate training on the value of
engagement and what steps the organization will take after the survey. Most
organizations fail miserably in this area – the collected data rarely have any real utility
in the day-to-day business, because managers do not understand its importance and
relevance for their team’s day-to-day activities.
Leaders must also build accountability into the engagement initiatives of their
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organizations. All too often, this is omitted, preventing most companies from getting the
most from their investment. There are three important things following an engagement
survey: sharing the results with all of the team members, creating action plans on those
results at the small team level and making progress on those action plans. As part of a
leader’s decision process, there are several things to consider with respect to
accountability:
 Is there managerial and team accountability for completing action plans based on the
team’s results? The most engaged teams take action and attempt to improve the
workplace to drive better business performance. Leaders should consider this
non-negotiable.
 Are managers held accountable for building engagement among their team
year-over-year? Companies that truly understand the value of an engagement culture
incorporate engagement growth into each manager’s annual performance review.
 Is there accountability for ongoing engagement activities? High-performing leaders
decide that engagement is important to the company’s success, setting clear
expectations for managers and teams relative to the activities and frequency of
engagement conversations.
 Is there an appetite to consider that some portion of a manager’s variable pay be tied to
engagement growth? When it comes to money, tell me how I am paid and I will show
you how I behave. Linking pay to engagement is a bit of a tricky task, but it can be done
so that there are no “false positives” on future surveys. Do not compensate for overall
score – if you set the mark at 4.0 on a five-point scale, then your company may
miraculously get to a 4.0 on the next survey. Instead, think about paying for business
growth based on the past year’s results or picking one key item that will be the driver
of growing engagement (check with your provider for some help in this area).
Let us now take a look at some outcomes of accountability. As previously mentioned, the
three things that are vital after the survey are sharing the results with all of the team
members, creating action plans on those results at the small team level and making
progress on those action plans. These three steps are so important that Evolve
Performance Group asks items that give an insight to how teams and managers perform on
these points on every administration after the initial benchmark. We have learned that how
people respond to these three additional items has a strong impact on an individual’s level
of engagement.

VOL. 15 NO. 2 2016 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW PAGE 79

 We classify engagement participants into four categories – fully engaged, engaged, not
engaged and actively disengaged. The Figure 1 below reveals the engagement levels of
one of our heavy industry clients. The left column displays the percentage of employees
that fall into each category.
In this illustration, team members that strongly agree with the statement “I saw the results
from the previous survey” have a very different engagement profile versus that of the whole
company. The population of those employees who are fully engaged increases from 10 to
15 per cent just by sharing the results. Also, notice that the population of actively
disengaged employees declines. Team members that strongly agree to the next two items
also see dramatic changes in the engagement levels.
As stated earlier, organizations that have strong engagement cultures are populated with
senior leaders that make everyday and everyone count daily. They exhibit a high degree of
responsibility toward accountability that they both expect, and demonstrate, outwardly and
openly. There is a strong sense that the accountability and importance around the
engagement culture they are building is absolutely non-negotiable. These leaders are the
guiding light for the organization and the facilitators of the company’s “why”.
So what is the payoff? More loyal employees, better employee well-being, better family
well-being, better business performance and, potentially, additional jobs. Increased
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business performance comes in a number of ways: increased sales/market share, an

increase in client engagement metrics and decreases in turnover and safety incidents.
In one organization we tracked, as engagement grew from one year to the next, so did their
market share – by 69 per cent. The groups that did not have an increase or remained
unchanged in their engagement each saw a decrease (Figure 2).
In another example, we see how an engagement culture that is fostered by senior leaders can
affect client relationships (Figure 3).
The above-mentioned illustration reveals that business units with higher levels of engagement
also have higher percentages of top box responses in four key client indicators – a direct
reflection of the health and stability of the relationship between an organization and its clients.
Senior leaders have three “levers” they can pull to drive business performance. They can invest
in capital assets (purchase new equipment, build new facilities or invest in other assets to
increase their business) and improve processes (deploy programs like Six Sigma, Lean
Thinking, etc.). While these two levers are important, they typically only give you a “first mover”
advantage – meaning, that other companies will eventually catch up.

Figure 1 Engagement levels based on post survey activities from previous

administration

PAGE 80 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW VOL. 15 NO. 2 2016

 Figure 2 Retail sales market share changes based on engagement increase/decrease

Figure 3 Customer engagement results based on employee engagement levels

80%
72.9%
67.6%
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70% 65.8%
61.2% 61.8%
60% 53.7% 53.1%
50.4% 49.6%
50% 46.0%
38.8%
40% 36.2%

30%

20%

10%

0%
Overall Sat. Ease of Doing Repurchase Intent Likely to
Business Recommend

Bottom Half Engagement Top Half Engagement Top Quart Engagement

The true differentiator is the third lever, especially in a heavily commoditized world – the human
capital lever. This approach involves leveraging the talents of the organization’s employees and
engaging them to produce a stronger business performance. The world’s best-in-class
organizations understand that human capital yields organic growth and creates brand loyalty.
When senior leaders align their top team through the development of a core purpose,
embracing stewardship, practicing feedback and modeling caring and listening, we then see
an engagement culture emerge that drives business performance and creates a true
competitive advantage for the organization.

References
Bartlett, C. and Ghoshal, S. (1994), Changing the Role of Top Management: Beyond Strategy to
Purpose, Harvard Business Review, Boston, MA, p. 88.

Beer, M. (2009), High Commitment High Performance, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, p. 133.

Collins, J. and Porras, J. (1994), Built to Last, Harper Collins, New York, NY, p. 72.

Covey, S. (1991), Principled Centered Leadership, Summit Books, New York, NY, p. 64.

Senge, P. (1990), The Fifth Discipline, Double Day Publishing, New York, NY, p. 148.

About the authors

Jay Romans, SVP Global HR, Owens & Minor, has a career of consulting for large, global
organizations and has held Senior Leadership positions at two fortune 500 companies.

VOL. 15 NO. 2 2016 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW PAGE 81

 Romans is a proven executive with deep experience in the oil and gas, manufacturing,
distribution and medical service industries. Romans has worked in all areas of human
resources on a wide variety of operational improvement projects, organizational
effectiveness initiatives and transformation issues that include executive compensation
design with the board of directors, succession planning, talent acquisition and
development, executive assessment and benefit plan design. Jay Romans is the
corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected]
Jeff Tobaben’s, CEO, Evolve Performance Group, human capital development career
began in the automotive industry, where he specialized in adult learning programs for some
of the world’s largest auto manufacturers and retailers. His passion for improving employee
and customer relationships drove him to launch his own company, focusing on curriculum
design, development and facilitation. His success caught the attention of Gallup
Consulting, who quickly acquired his start-up venture and signed him on as managing
partner. Once that project was fulfilled, Tobaben moved on to create Evolve Performance
Group, where, throughout the past 13 years, he has worked to leverage human capital for
a diverse collection of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the automotive,
manufacturing, oil and gas, technology, distribution and financial services industries. He
now devotes his time, expertise and unique approach to architect solutions that empower
his clients to make data-driven decisions, driving improved employee engagement and
workplace conditions, reducing turnover, strengthening customer relationships and
creating sustainable business performance.
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