Engaging Your Employees

So what is employee productivity?  Employee productivity would seem to be as simple as how much an employee produces, but what about the big picture.  Let’s take a look at a fictitious company, Hard Numbers Corporation.  They have decided to measure employee productivity as x widgets per employee hour.  Since they started focusing on employee productivity they have been able to increase average widgets per employee hour from 80 to 92, a 15% improvement.  The problem is that they have only experienced a slight decrease in costs and their sales are flat.

Now lets take a look at their competitor, Highly Engaged Corporation, they also decided to measure employee productivity.  They took a more balanced and holistic look at employee productivity.  They chose the following metrics to track employee productivity:

1. Revenue / Employee
2. Operating Margin / Employee
3. Customer Retention Rate

They then chose to focus on engaging their employees.  Hard Numbers Corporation chose to focus on widgets per hour resulting in their quality declining and their client’s becoming dissatisfied and turning to other organizations for their needs.  High Engaged Corporation focused on employee engagement and as a result they experienced increased sales resulting in higher Revenue per employee.  They also experienced lower costs increasing their operating margin as employees found better ways to make widgets.  The customers really appreciated dealing with the employees of Highly Engaged Corporation as the employees really took an interest in them and besides the product quality was great.

Now you may be saying to yourself, nice story but I doubt it works like that.  Let’s take a look at some organizations that have focused on employee engagement and let you be the judge.  Here are fourteen organizations that focus on employee engagement and as a result are leaders in their fields