Another workforce trend that got a lot of attention at the HROToday Forum last week in Philadelpia was Employee Engagement.
HROToday pulled together an interesting panel of 5 high powered CHROs from various industries. The moderator teed up multiple industry trends to get reaction from the panel on each from a macro and individual level.
Employee engagement was the first (I think) trend put on the table. There wasn’t anything shocking here – each CHRO validated the focus on measurement and the direct impact engagement has on the business overall.
What was really interesting to me was that the issue of engagement remained pervasive through most of the other trends. Culture, talent acquisition, talent retention, etc. During each of these discussion points someone on the panel would associate back to impacting engagement.
I’ve written a lot about engagement. I believe that engagement is ripe for disruption. I believe that the way we measure it, the way to attempt to address it, the way it’s defined… it all needs to get shaken up. I also believe that the new employee engagement model – one that is embedded in the entire employee lifecycle from candidate engagement to onboarding, wellness, performance, learning, and on and on… will vary by industry and employee demographic. It will leverage smart data and be the defining measurement(s) for the next wave of HCM technology in both platform and point solution form.
It was refreshing to hear these CHROs reference engagement across the employee lifecycle. I hope their peers are thinking the same way.