You've Done Gallup.....Now What?

When we ask if a company is investing in engagement, we often hear,  “Oh, yeah, we have Gallup.”  Even I have relied on Gallup as a measure of my team’s level of engagement.   Unfortunately, many executives believe that using Gallup will solve all of their engagement problems when in fact, doing a Gallup survey is just the first step.

Gallup determines the level of engagement of your people by asking 12 basic questions they’ve honed by surveying millions of employees.  Make no mistake, Gallup knows how to do research.   It is no coincidence that the world relies on Gallup to learn about everything from Swine Flu to Sarah Palin.   Engagement is just one of many research products Gallup offers.

Unfortunately, the Gallup questions are really designed to assess the level of engagement but are only partially useful in helping you focus on what you need to do to make improvements.  While “having a best friend at work” may be a great indicator of your level of engagement, what’s a manager supposed to do with that?

Another limitation is that the issues are usually reported at the manager level, so that’s where improvement initiatives are typically generated.  That is fine as long as that is where the problems exist.  The risk is that the process to address more systemic issues can devolve into multiple, fragmented and disassociated initiatives.  If the problems are more structural, there may be no mechanism for escalating the problem, or if there is, top executives may not have a true understanding of the root cause issues.

What this means is that while Gallup can represent a good start to addressing engagement, believing that it provides a “comprehensive solution” to systemic issues will leave both management and employees disappointed.

Scott