Employee Engagement & KM

[Dinesh Tantri]

Gary Hamel has written an interesting post in which he refers to a global workforce survey by Towers Perrin- "Consider the recent “Global Workforce Survey” conducted by Towers Perrin, an HR consultancy. In an attempt to measure the extent of employee engagement around the world, the company polled more than 90,000 workers in 18 countries. The survey covered many of the key factors that determine workplace engagement, including: the ability to participate in decision-making, the encouragement given for innovative thinking, the availability of skill-enhancing job assignments and the interest shown by senior executives in employee well-being.

Here’s what the researchers discovered: barely one-fifth (21%) of employees are truly engaged in their work, in the sense that they would “go the extra mile” for their employer. Nearly four out of ten (38%) are mostly or entirely disengaged, while the rest are in the tepid middle. There’s no way to sugarcoat it—this data represents a stinging indictment of the legacy management practices found in most companies."

And then Jon Husband wrote a follow up post on why one of the core objectives of E2.0 has to be employee engagement - http://tinyurl.com/ycps74d

This is one of the reasons any sort of change is difficult in enterprises - not impossible but definitely difficult. But this is a very very disturbing statistic - "barely one-fifth (21%) of employees are truly engaged in their work, in the sense that they would “go the extra mile” for their employer."

Are there any India specific studies that you know of in this area? Unless people are engaged at work and passionate and willing to be lifelong learners - any change management strategy will produce very shallow ripples. I agree with Hamel that we need fundamentally different management practices in the 21st century.

[prahaladmungara]

dinesh all km activities in organisations are user centric only. users mostly are employes predomonently or they have their share in effectively organising km activities . It varies from organisation to organisation but any where employees contributions towards km depends on the motivation and other factors. I hope u understand , similarly may be only some 30-40 percent may be the active contributors, this is my observation sir . In absolute situation all are contributors but may not be. All our efforts are towards this only i believe thank u for this thought sharing

[Lakshman Pillai A]

Thanks Dinesh for sharing this very important fact. >> "barely one-fifth (21%) of employees are truly engaged in their work, in the sense that they would “go the extra mile” for their employer."

In general, am not surprised at this number. When the leader is great, this will go up significantly. I have seen that personally in many cases. When a leader is great enough to respect and empower ALL the members of the team, lazy people will get energized or go away from that team. A leader and systems have power to increase the engagement level of the employees as well as the number of highly engaged employees. I was lucky to have great manager & leader 80%of the time. Can very much feel the vacuum.

>> I agree with Hamel that we need fundamentally different management practices in the 21st century.

In 2006, McKinsey reported that management will move from Art to Science. It is difficult to make most of the leaders great by helping them develop the Art of leadership. Now there are thousands of managers and team leaders with less than 4 years of experience. To make them good, scientific management will be introduced.

System thinking and visibility is key. When people get a systematic visibility into what they do and don't they will either improve and escape. Until we pass the sense of ownership to people, "most" of them will never work at their potential. Too much of dirty and not so polished politics make great minds under-perform as well. System thinking has the power to polish the politics or to eliminate politics slowly to a minimal level.

[Lakshman Pillai A]

In the context of PM, I will be talking about empowering managers and team members through systematic approach to get visibility and drive performance at the session - Role of KM in Smart Project Management