160,000 Employee Professional Services Firm Decides Engagement is a “Racket”

I’m pretty good at keeping my finger on the pulse of what is going on in the engagement space but this little ditty almost slipped by me. And the fact that I’ve only seen one update referencing this (and on Google + no less – which may explain why no one is talking about it…) tells me I’m either not the only one who missed it …or… there is a huge number of companies, consultants and people that simply don’t want you to know about it.

On December 1, 2015 the website Financial Review (http://afr.com) ran an article with this headline: KPMG Dumps “Abused” Staff Surveys. I was able to access it via a link on my phone but when I went back to the article on my laptop it was behind a “free 30 day trial” paywall – they wanted my credit card info now and I’d have to cancel later to avoid the charge. Homey don’t play that. But I was able to copy and paste the content from my phone so I wouldn’t have to rely on memory. If you want to try to access it here’s the link – your mileage may vary: http://www.afr.com/leadership/careers/jobs/kpmg-dumps-abused-staff-surveys-20151110-gkvctt#

ENGAGEMENT DOESN’T DRIVE PERFORMANCE

That is their headline not mine.

According to the article the lead partner of KPMG’s global HR transformation center of excellence, Robert Bolton, said KPMG will stop using employee engagement surveys and start using “a more robust diagnostic that focuses on ‘something truly worth measuring’”.

And the heresy continues …

“There is a massive industry behind the belief that if a company drives up engagement productivity will increase.

In reality, engagement is an ill-defined term. And measuring it once or twice a year with some static survey is not very scientific, no matter how much it’s dressed up to appear so,” Bolton said.

Mic Drop

The article states, but doesn’t link to any studies, research or data, that

“hard evidence is mounting that contrary to popular belief, engagement doesn’t drive performance. In fact, the inverse is true. Performance drives engagement.”

Ah… the old “which came first” the chicken or the chicken nuggets debate. Not the first time this question has been posed. This article from USC backs up the performance=engagement point of view. And this isn’t new. The validity of the engagement=performance was questioned 5 years ago in a PDF from Talent Management Magazine from 2010:

Since the drivers of employee engagement are not identical to the drivers of business results, attempting to maximize employee engagement can actually take an organization in the wrong direction. [emphasis mine]

Interesting.

If KMPG is right – and that annual surveys on engagement have no value what does that say about pulse surveys? Does doing something irrelevant more often make it relevant?

Curiouser and curiouser.

Who knows where this is going but I’m going to continue to follow KMPG to see if focusing on performance will ultimately drive engagement (or if they even care or bother to measure it in the future.)

What say you – time to double down on the beliefs of the past or do you think there is an ember of truth here that needs to be fanned into a flame?

I’m in the latter camp. I believe engagement is a context within which you conduct business not a program or an activity.

Employee Engagement is an business environment.

Thoughts?