What does engagement look like?
You know that you have engaged employees when you can see changed behaviors, positive customer satisfaction surveys and vivid, clear and isolated examples of someone engaged. You can also monitor engagement by creating and maintaining an engagement website for your employees.

What is it?
Engaged employees believe in the mission of the organization. They deliver higher customer satisfaction. If you have grumpy employees you will have grumpy customers therefore engaged employees drive better financial performance.

Engaged organizations provide helpful management and managers are out in front. You have to provide career satisfaction and have high performing teams. Winners want to be on winning teams.

How do you measure engagement?
Non-anonymous leader preference surveys are a great tool to measure engagement. They will determine what leadership attributes are most important to each employee so the leader can deliver on them. They recommend employees take this survey once a year including at the start of the onboarding process because everybody’s needs and wants change over time. Confidential engagement surveys are another great resource. Although this survey is confidential, participation is not since leaders are aware that their team members have participated. This survey should be taken twice a year so the results don’t become stale.

Kristen starts with the realities of today’s workforce - unemployment rate is very high and will lag even as the economy improves. The workforce is changing and always will. It’s becoming more virtual and one generation is leaving as another is entering. The European birth rate is declining and in 30 years there will be 70-80 million fewer Europeans forcing us into a global, skilled labor shortage.

The overall vision is a truly exceptional onboarding experience that engages new hires and transferees before their first day, considers and provides for the needs of the new hire and their family, provides them with all the necessary tools and resources to be productive and add value from day-one, delivers transactional components and a memorable experience and creates a world class experience. Kristen isn’t interested in best practices she’s interested in next practices.

Lets talk about employer branding - Kristen asked the attendees: “Why do companies brand their products and services?” A few of the answers were “to set themselves apart”, “employee loyalty”, “recognition”… the answer she was looking for is to make money!  Branding is a two sided coin. On one side you have your external brand image, on the other you have your internal brand image. You have to nurture both in order to be profitable and to survive. Nothing will kill your external brand faster than a bad internal image.

To bring the brand to life and create an exceptional onboarding experience make sure you have a process in place and ready before the new hire arrives. Pre-arrival don’t keep them in limbo start engaging them right away. Day one and two make sure they have what they need to start (computer, phone number etc..) and make sure to give them an insider tour. Set them up for success right away. Weeks one and two make sure they have a functional overview, they know exactly what their job is and what you expect from them and continue to onboard them as the weeks pass.

A brand is a relationship, like the one you have with a friend. Think of your best friend… Do you notice when they lose or gain ten pounds? Do you remember the last time they made you mad? Did you forgive them? You want them to love you, trust you and forgive them right? Don’t you want the same thing from your brand? Do you want to get the shiny best place to work awards or do you want to be it? These are the qualifying questions you have to stop and ask yourself.

Don’t try to sell your employees, find a few that are already engaged. Polly started “culture talk”, an internal social network for EMC employees. The already engaged employees helped her develop the network by simply being so engaged. There are now dozens of bloggers and hundreds of micro-bloggers on the site. They have photo contests like “a working day in the life of..” and even talk radio!

Engagement opportunities become like viral fly paper. Employees are organically bringing potential hires to the company better than an agency could for you because your target audience is where your employees are (twitter, facebook, linkedin…)

A defining moment….
A mother and son who both work for EMC needed help. The son was diagnosed with cancer and needed a bone marrow transplant in order to survive. The doctors at Stanford said there was no chance in finding a match because of his mixed ethnicity. The mother wouldn’t accept this and asked if she could put out a notice on the social site. It took off. Suddenly facebook, twitter and youtube were inundated with the cause. In the end they didn’t find one donor….. they found two and now he is cancer free. You can’t measure that kind of engagement and caring from employees. Watch the thank you video here

Polly says that the top five satisfiers for employees today are that they feel connected, valued, respected are able to do what they love and are treated like adults.

She leaves us with some tips. Start inside, lead with trust and tap into employees that are already engaged and involve them in your business objectives. Try one of the free social networks or explore an enterprise-class version but start small like Ning. Let others do the work; it’s about results not control so let go… Publicize your business-centric victories it will engage more people and they will feel involved.

Watch your people bloom and do your job for you!

The vision of Bridge Consulting: To help organizations connect people and strategy to achieve business results.

Chris outlined the problems in creating an engagement strategy. These include it being difficult to focus and stay motivated during challenging times, for example when you have an illness in the family or when your company is laying off employees. Pace of change is also disturbing to employees, companies are cutting and usually tell employees that they aren’t planning on continuing but change happens quickly. This leads into morale and trust and their decline and the last problem, competing or unclear messages and priorities.

She stressed that determining your priorities is crucial. You need input, engagement surveys, a business strategy, organizational initiatives and a very good Employer Value Proposition.

Bridge Consulting used the “Line of sight” strategy - Line of sight is like peeling an onion you start with the individual and then move in sequence to the department, division, company strategy and finally marketplace.

An important factor is effective communication, it should be 60% listening and 40% talking ideally. Chris notes that Blackberrys are the worst thing to happen to communication because seldom give people our undivided attention anymore. Blackberrys make people feel discounted when you’re having a conversation and simultaneously are using one.  Very importantly leaders need to walk to talk. She knew an executive that used to keep a card in his pocket. He would write down ideas that employees came to him with and take it out on Fridays to review. He used a card because he didn’t want to get overloaded with ideas, he knew that if he wrote everything down he wouldn’t get to them all and he wanted to make sure that he didn’t promise too much.

In summary Chris’ advice is to determine a few priorities that will truly have an impact, get leaders involved because they are critical to engagement and find creative ways to connect people to the business.

Dave recalls Peter Dricker asking CEO’s “What’s your business?” … always, the answer was their business IS the learning business… because having outstanding products and service depends on having outstanding talent.  Dave explained that being successful in workplace is essential before a company can be successful in the market place.

Talk about learning at the speed of business!  HCI is hosting TWO simultaneous conferences the next two days… Talent Engagment and Retention on the east coast, AND Learning Innovations on the west coast.   We invite you to join us through blogs following each event… see the Talent Development blog for more entries as they occur on our Learning Innovations conference.

I’m thrilled to be a room with 150 corporate leaders in learning…. join me real time as I report on the Talent Development blog to hear the insights from our presenters about how learning drives business in their companies.

Kelly starts the discussion by outlining how using Taleo’s technology platform streamlined and enhanced Manulife FInancial’s onboarding process.  The First 100 Days project help Manulife’s new recuits become productive, engaged employees from day one.

Manulife’s onboarding objectives: Welcome and wow new hires make them think “this was a great decision.” Deliver on expectations and reputation, engage employee in the culture and rich history of your organization. Articulate new employee fit and contribution opportunity, make sure that they have everything they need on day one to be productive. Operational excellence of employee induction and development. Reduce time to contribution.

Offer package - Go Green!
Before they used paper forms which was expensive (they saved 100K) and cumbersome. They now use the New Hire portal which includes an electronic signature which allows them to save 31 trees a year!

Enrollment.
Before they used a written and web based process with written materials. It was confusing and unclear who they should contact for help. They now have a self service process with an enhanced web based approach. Employees can do it at any time prior to hire and it is very user-friendly.

Orientation.
Before it was content driven, they focused on policies and the basic benefit and pension information driven by recruitment. Now it is experience driven, interactive and they focus on the company’s story and history and how the employee is now a part of it. They have tours, Q&A and simply a lot of fun!

Assimilation.
Before it was “sink or swim” for a new hire when starting at the company. Now they take more of a role in assimilation in order to help the employee succeed. They use a checklist, milestones with dates, socialization  and defined manager accountability.

English and French, reminders for people to fill out forms, form tracking, also milestone tracking (have lunch with them, ask them how they are doing etc.. ) For Manulife, they were already using taleos applicant tracking system

Bottom line:
New hires love the onboarding process. They’ve said it makes them feel welcome, it’s user-friendly, organized, efficient and are very impressed on how “green” it is.
Filling out forms is now faster (from three weeks to nine minutes). It’s simply better. Managers are informed and accountable for their new hires. The two weeks between a new hire giving notice and coming onboard is where you can potentially lose them. Employees have reasonable milestones, they aren’t overwhelmed when they start and decreased time to contribution. It’s cheaper! Thousands of dollars were saved (the 100K) in shipping costs for the onboarding documents.

Delivering engagement - Onboarding.
Jim stresses that onboarding is a management, not an HR function, you have to get line management engaged and involved in the process. You should also double team them, a supervisor and an HR Representative should be involved. It is also extremely important to be ready when your new hire arrives! Make sure they have a desk, a computer and a phone, all the basic stuff that you need to be productive. New hires should be able to go to their desk and call their families right away with their new contact information. Also, give people the tour - show them their new workplace, introduce them to their new co-workers, show them the kitchen, give them insider information.

Onboarding for tomorrow.
NRC has created a series of minuettes about onboarding for new employees. Jim sees this as one aspect of the future of onboarding because it’s out of the box, fun and engaging. Be creative with your own onboarding process!

Sustaining engagement retention.
In order to keep your employees you have to give them important work to do! Everyone wants to feel valuable, it’s your job to help your employees by giving them work that makes them want to
Continue to train your employees. Not only for the job they signed on for but to grow. Give them financial help. For instance, NRC will pay for a year of education for their employees for a commitment of two years employment from them. Opportunity - Supervisors need to take their hands off the wheel and let their employees drive. NRC believes in situational leadership, they put the staff member on the table to lead because they have the first hand knowledge of the situation, it makes them feel empowered and engaged and it inspires others.

What does success look like?
Employees should be able to say:

I fully support the values for which this organization stands.
I believe strongly in the goals and objectives of this organization.
The longer I work for this organization  the more I feel a part of it.
I am proud to be associated with this organization.
This organization energizes me to go the extra mile.
At the present time, I am not seriously considering leaving this organization.
I am considering leaving in order to retire.

How do you measure success?
Ask your employees - Survey them! Contrary to what you may think employees do not get tired of surveys but you have to act on what the results tell you. Don’t take the results lightly you have to convince your employees that you are really listening to them.

Work-life balance.

This is by far the most important aspect of having happy and productive employees. They have to have work-life balance. NRC hates workaholics. You have to respect people’s time, do not have extra, un-necessary meetings or bog them down with busy work.

NRC adopted a work day system they call “New flex”. They realized that they  didn’t care when employees work as long as they are productive. This program allows employees to work anytime they want to from 5AM to 11PM, any day, from anywhere (home, office etc..) This not only created stronger bonds with the employees but also boosted moral and achieved higher quality work.

You can email Jim at: james.mcdermott@nrc.gov

Paul explains his seven “C’s of Culture” for us. They include:

• Camaraderie - Beryl has company activities such as dress-up day, family day, activities that show caring and that promote employees bonding.
• Celebrations – Beryl has a program “Pride” where employees can log onto an intranet site, fill out a form about a co-worker whom they think deserves recognition that employee gets sent a certificate and a copy gets submitted into a raffle. They always celebrate holidays.
• Community – Beryl and it’s employees are involved in many charity and service related programs.
• Communication – Beryl not only posts the state of the company, including financials for the employees to review but they also post their four core values on the walls and are committed to them. They are: Passion for customer service, always doing the right thing, never sacrificing quality and spirit of camaraderie.
• Caring – Beryl has another intranet site dedicated to letting employees letting Paul know what’s happening with others in the company. Paul then sends them a handwritten note to connect on a personal level.
• Commitment – Beryl has six full-time staff members dedicated to training.
• Consistency – If things work, do them again. If they don’t, don’t.

Paul’s closing advice for engaging your employees: Give them a voice, ask what they think and give them credit for their opinions. Pay them fairly. Recognize and reward, people need to be valued. Offer opportunities for advancement. Support out of the box semantics, have fun with titles. Infiltrate the workplace with fun! Walk the talk as a leader. Send handwritten notes, create traditions and open your heart.

Paul is the author of “Why is everyone smiling?”

Tweet your HCI Experience! Use the hashtag  #humancapital

 How do you use your alumni network to communicate with alumni? What’s proven to be effective? Communication is a critical component. At implementation, we communicated through a variety of channels. We sent direct email, postcards, posted information on the existing Hewitt Alumni LinkedIn group, and our website. We also asked our current associates to reach out to their former co-workers to let them know about the network. Ongoing, we continue to post information on the LinkedIn and now Facebook pages about the site. We also are beginning biweekly “did you know?” emails to registered and unregistered members to let alumni know what is new on the site and alumni who have recently joined the network. Presentations with HR groups such as HCI also bring awareness to the network. Once a alumnus joins the site, they receive regular updates, invitations to events directed to both alumni and Hewitt associates, and a quarterly newsletter. With the new upgrade of the SelectMinds tool alumni can also establish newsfeeds to receive regular updates.

How did you select the members of the Hewitt Global Alumni Advisory Board? What was the criteria you used to select the members? How long do they serve? We wanted to make sure that our committee reflected the diversity of our alumni and our organization. We went to several HR leaders and asked for alumni recommendations. As we talked to the HR Leaders, we received similar alumni recommendations and those are our board members. The board will serve a year, but the current board, since it is their first year together, wanted to stay on for a second term to continue their work and maintain their momentum. After next year, we will ask each board member to identify their replacements.
How do you manage which alumni are invited to participate in the network? What about those who potentially left on bad terms? The alumni network is open to all former associates left Hewitt in good standing. SelectMinds tool helps us manage our alumni population. Since this is a private network, when an alumni attempts to join the network, they must provide a few pieces of information to validate their identify.
How do you manage content on the site to ensure nothing negative or confidential is posted and shared? All member submitted content, such as news and events, has to be approved by our Hewitt Channel Manager before it is posted. The exception is the Forum section in which alumni can post discussion topics and ask other alumni to comment. For Forums, we have worked with Select Minds to create a word filter that disallows posting of Forum items containing sensitive content. Members can report inappropriate content on the site and our Channel Manager also reviews the site daily for inappropriate posts.

How Hewitt’s Global Alumni Network Delivers Immediate Value 

In the meantime, get your public sector human capital management fix here in one, or all, of the 16 federally focused webcasts- one as soon as tomorrow- we have planned in the next year. (Oh yeah, and you can read, network and research there, too.)

Thanks to all of our participants, presenters, partners, and HCI staff that made the event truly memorable.