"Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it."
              -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Organizations with highly engaged employees have increased quality and productivity, more efficient and effective teams, increased retention rates and lower employee turnover. These characteristics are of great benefit to the employees, supervisors, managers, customers, the organization itself and ultimately, the taxpayer.

The NC Office of State Personnel defines employee engagement as "the extent to which employees are passionate and excited about their work and consistently strive to deliver quality results." Engaged employees are passionate and excited about their work and the organization and consistently strive to deliver quality results. There are many factors such as leadership, supervision, co-workers, benefits, organizational culture and work environment that can impact employee engagement.

Why should creating a high-performance work environment be a top priority for your organization? It makes good business sense! A high-performance work environment requires having employees who are highly engaged and committed to the organization's mission, vision and strategic goals. For more information on what a high-performance work environment looks like, refer to the PERFORM model in the Work Environment section.

The Corporate Leadership Council (CLC) surveyed more than 50,000 employees at 59 member organizations in 27 countries and 10 industries. They found that there is a real, bottom line impact of employee engagement.

Our focus in this segment is intentionally on performance, rather than retention. We recognize that organizations can (and do) have many employees who are content with their jobs and intend to remain employed at those organizations for long periods of time (i.e., retention). But this does not necessarily mean that they are high-performing employees. CLC research supports this by concluding that having increased satisfaction with one's total compensation provides up to a 21% increase in one's intent to stay, but only a 9% increase in effort.

This is an important contrast. Unless your employees are highly engaged, they will not expend the level of effort required to move your organization forward. The degree of employee engagement determines the level of employee of commitment.

There are two kinds of commitment: rational and emotional. Rational commitment is the factual, intellectual reasoning that leads employees to remain in an organization or particular jobs (e.g., salary, health benefits, work hours, vacation/sick leave, parking, etc). Rational commitment is a driver for retention.

On the other hand, emotional commitment reflects the feelings that employees have about their jobs, such as whether the work performed is of value to the organization, or the type of interaction with the supervisor, etc.

It is the emotional commitment that drives discretionary effort. Discretionary effort is how hard an employee is willing to work, going "above and beyond" what is required. Emotional commitment is four times as valuable as rational commitment in increasing effort levels. The manager contributes significantly to the degree of commitment to the team, the organization and the job, and is viewed as a conduit for commitment.

Therefore, management must assess and respond to the level of employee engagement within an organization. The Employee Engagement Survey is a tool that will help your organization conduct an engagement assessment. Employees who complete the survey may include individuals from the first-line worker all the way to the head of the organization. The survey can be used for any size group or entity whether it is a random sample, a work unit, section, division or the entire organization. It is extremely important that management respond to the survey results once the results are collected.

We also provide a companion tool to help managers quantify the survey results and categorize the recurring themes, which then may be addressed according to the priorities established by your particular organizational needs. See our Guide for Interpreting the Engagement Survey.

And finally, an additional tool, the Engagement Results Analysis, enables managers to focus more closely on the analysis of the survey results and view suggested solutions for improvement to the work environment. The Office of State Personnel can provide assistance with the analysis, interpretation and action planning for this survey tool. The Corporate Leadership Council (CLC) also has survey tools and analysis of the results.  If you are interested in finding out more about these options, please contact the Office of State Personnel at performance.solutions@osp.nc.gov.