Brand continuity, strategy development, marketing, HR, and operations must come together to bring the employee experience into the same value as we hold the customer experience and shareholder goals.
A lot of work has been done on the customer experience, so now it's time to apply the same effort and innovation to the employee experience: how they experience work in your organization or team. At every level. Because we also know, the underengaged populate every level in the organization. And when we address it, it can't simply be focused on implementing flexible working, bonuses, bean bags, and a ping-pong table, but in making people feel valued, inspired, and enabled to make their mark, so they can bring their best selves to work.
The aim of this book is to help you find a way to that point: where everyone in your organization “gets engaged.” It's a significant journey: an all or nothing experience. There are no degrees of engagement. Just as with safety, you are either safe or you're not; you either have an engaged workforce or you don't. There are no half measures.
The Workplace Scorecard – Scoring the Top, from the Bottom Up
Let's get back to our nine engagement tools: MI-9. The workplace scorecard of the future will score all nine elements: fair Trade, cause, clean and meaningful infrastructure, confidence, connection, collaboration, community, capability, and freedom.
The vision with MI-9 is that in the future it will be your people who complete the scorecard – the many, not the few. Your organization's score will appear in the annual report. There will be a Quality of Work-Life Index and an Employee Confidence Index. The value of a strong infrastructure that works for people rather than against them will be recognized and implemented. In his book, Macrowikinomics: New Solutions for a Connected Planet, Don Tapscott emphasizes the importance of a true “infostructure,” which supports better decision-making and capability development.6 If the goal is to reenthuse people, then the very least we can do is give them the tools to connect, brainstorm, and share ideas in new and easy ways.
In the future, employee advocacy will grow in importance as people are enabled to be their best and feel their best at work. Strong communication; a clearly understood vision; knowing they are making a difference and where their role fits within the grand scheme; feedback on their performance; the ability to play to your strengths; managers and leaders who really listen and care – all of these elements contribute to employee advocacy. All the evidence suggests that a sense of freedom, of control over one's destiny, plays a crucial role in achieving engagement and inspiring that advocacy. It energizes you to go all-in.
But none of these factors in isolation will achieve this. The problem of engagement is so great, the solutions so wide reaching, that all are necessary in some degree, and no single fix will be sufficient.
The MI-9 formula proposed here is a starting point. Those companies that can demonstrate all nine engagement triggers and calibrate them to their people's needs can expect to be able to demonstrate higher levels of connectivity between people, a key ingredient critical to people's success, health, and happiness at work and a critical means to volunteerism and engagement. Fair trade will extend beyond the concepts we think of today: to the point that giving employees a fair deal and a good experience at work ranks as highly to outsiders as companies’ growth, profit, and environmental and social responsibility credentials, for ESG.
Engage, Enable, Energize. What Does MI-9 Feel Like to People at Work?
To understand what all of this might look and feel like to the people who work for an engagement-focused employer, let's break down the nine engagement tools of the MI-9 formula into the 2 Fs and 7 Cs, looking first at the 2 Fs. Here's how your team might view you through the lens of the MI-9:
1 Fair trade: I do a fair day's work for a fair day's return. My return on the discretionary effort I volunteer is rewarded both financially and personally. I know I contributed, I know what I do counts, and I am given a fair go!
2 Freedom: I feel in control of my destiny; I can think, feel, and share. I have a voice. I can have an opinion. In my world, I can agree or disagree, but then I commit. I know I am seen as a responsible adult.
These 2 Fs mean that companies will be obliged to engage in fair trade in all relationships across the value chain and beyond. We can expect to see fair trade commissions with a remit as serious as those of human rights and worker rights commissions today. The means will count as much as the end. The businesses of the future must be fit for human consumption, a magnet for talent, ideas, improvement, innovation, and growth, producing better results with less profit consumption. Isn't that the aim? A win-win? And investors will respond accordingly: money flows where engagement goes.
The seven Cs of MI-9 will also be tangible to people in the workplace of the future. Colleagues will be able to vote one another in or out of the company, based on how well they fit the culture and ethos. Underengaged colleagues will no longer be tolerated. Work will be open-sourced: the right people matched to activities and projects based on strengths and capability. The great work will go to those with great engagement. The business of the future will grow because its people are alive and growing, bubbling with enthusiasm to be a part of something valuable and meaningful to them. People will feel valued.
The seven Cs will look and feel something like this to your teams:
1 Cause: I have a purpose. I make a difference. I know I'm working for something bigger than profits, productivity, or production. What I do and how I do it contributes to the greater business, to a cause. I know I must make my world a better place – both at work and outside work. I know I need to keep my company fit, to keep my world healthy and my mind happy.
2 Clean and meaningful infrastructure: I feel my workplace works for me, not against me. I have clean / perfected processes and policies to help me. Nothing stops me from doing my job well. I have clarity on what's important and what I need to do. I know where to go if I need help. I have an infrastructure built with me in mind. My workplace also fits with the outside world; it is responsible.
3 Confidence: I feel my doubts are resolved, my world is transparent, and communication is fluid. I know when things are going well or not, and I know when I've done a great job. People understand me. I trust the people around me. I trust my managers and leaders. I have one foot in the present and one foot in the future; I am set up for success.
4 Connection: I am in partnership with my colleagues and peers – we connect. I have a great relationship with my co-workers and managers, my customers and suppliers. I see the connection between the micro vision of my team with the macro vision of our leadership.
5 Collaboration: My workplace is a network of alliances working toward one common purpose: to be the best we can be. If one fails, we all fail; together we succeed. We follow the best, not just the boss. We come together naturally to achieve our results.
6 Community: I feel I have a network of support. We build communities of practice, of expertise, of problem solving. We are social and professional in our community building. We bring the outside world in, and we go to the outside world to challenge ourselves to learn and grow from others.
7 Capability: I am capable of performing my role, my job. I am learning all the time, from others, from across the business and from the outside. I am surrounded by capable people. Because of this, I feel I am growing, and our results show we are growing. I work for a capable organization. I know we are set up for success.
Fueling Your Fitness Program
MI-9 are the tools to engagement at work; they become the triggers, the fuel for achieving results; when people experience these 2 Fs and 7 Cs, they