Employee engagement is out. Here’s a better metric

Socializers are outgoing, driven, and motivated by fun and rewards. They are only 12% likely to produce great work but 55% likely to demonstrate engagement.

Builders are warm, friendly, emotionally intelligent, and diplomatic. They’re 45% likely to produce great work and 85% likely to demonstrate engagement, and they tend to be motivated by goals, fun, and rewards.

Achievers are driven and high-energy but can be tense and moody. Of all the groups, they have the highest likelihood of doing great work (66%) and demonstrating engagement (96%). They are motivated by fun, rewards, and avoiding punishment.

Taskers are generally quieter, more composed, and more resistant to feedback. They respond well to rewards, but not to fun or punishment. They have a 10% probability of producing great work and a 46% probability of engagement.

Coasters tend to be pessimistic and prone to stress. They appreciate rewards, seek to avoid punishment, and have just a 3% chance of producing great work (and only a 17% chance of demonstrating engagement).

The idea behind these categories is not for leaders to pigeonhole their employees but to better understand their strengths and shortcomings, so they can provide the right support. The most effective modern leaders closely observe their people, adjusting their management approach to help each individual develop and thrive. Leaders who know their people well will recognize which worker personas apply to which team members.

CREATING TAILORED STRATEGIES

Leaders can create tailored strategies that encourage crucial great work behaviors.

Achievers, for example, work hard. But sometimes they’d prefer to tackle the next challenge rather than continue their involvement in a “finished” project that might benefit from further refining. By helping Achievers “improve the mix” and “deliver the difference,” our research shows, leaders can double and even triple the likelihood that these employees will produce great work. One company helped their Achievers “deliver the difference” by instituting formal evaluations three months and nine months after each project. These became institutionalized opportunities to fine-tune completed projects, ensuring they accomplished what was intended.

It doesn’t come naturally to Taskers to “ask the right question” or “go and see.” Here, it can be inspiring to hear stories of colleagues whose orientation shifted after they received unexpected answers or made surprising observations. One example: Rob, a claims manager for an insurance company, sought the perspective of a job applicant he was interviewing for a call center position. Asked to describe the best practices she’d learned at her previous job, the applicant described how her calls seemed to go more smoothly when she first assured customers that she was there for them and could help them. That insight led Rob’s company to change how it answered calls from customers who were reporting accidents, meaningfully raising customer satisfaction.

Coasters score low on all of the key behaviors. But our research shows that by strengthening workplace culture, including the addition of more employee recognition, a Coaster’s probability of great work can increase sixfold or more.

Socializers are nearly three times as likely to produce great work when they’re part of an inclusive workplace culture—where all employees feel they are valued and belong. My own department, for example, includes a number of high-performing Socializers. The warm, welcoming culture that brings out the best in them also resonates with the rest of our team, and during the initial stages of the pandemic, it became clear that we needed to reinforce that culture in a remote work setup. We made time to eat lunch together virtually, dropped off small tokens of appreciation at one another’s doorsteps, and developed innovative ways to celebrate our successes.

Builders have an appreciation for the big picture, but they aren’t as likely to talk to an outer circle. Pete, from the example above, is a Builder: a natural creator of relationships and connections whose colleagues generally come to follow his thinking quickly. Often this is an asset. But in the context of a challenge demanding outside perspectives, it was a consequential shortcoming.

By understanding Pete’s persona, his manager could have partnered with him to preempt the issue before it became a fatal flaw. Perhaps the manager could have kicked off the project by inviting outside experts in for a wide-ranging, creativity-sparking brainstorming session.

A BETTER METRIC

Employee engagement is not a meaningless measure. But like the standard HR metric that it replaced—employee satisfaction—it’s insufficient. If we want to significantly boost business results in 2022, we’d be wise to set our sights on measuring, encouraging, inspiring, and increasing great work.