Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture

Chapter 28. A New Measuring Stick

Nancy's father had always told her that great leaders don't have all the answers. Rather, they surround themselves with people who are smarter than they are and who help them find the answers. That's why Nancy had hired Brenda. Brenda was more than her executive assistant. She was a Harvard MBA who planned to run her own company one day. She was only 30 years old, but she had a lot of experience and knowledge, and she wasn't shy about sharing it with Nancy. During the turnaround, Brenda shared a lot of valuable ideas, but nothing was more valuable than the information she shared on employee engagement.

She eased Nancy's frustration at not being able to measure the company's progress by letting her know that there was indeed a useful measuring stick. It wasn't an exact science, but it had been used by a large number of companies, and there was a lot of evidence to show that engagement was the measuring stick Nancy was looking for. For years, companies such as Gallup had been measuring the engagement of millions of employees for countless organizations. For example, Gallup uses a 12-question survey, called the Q12, whereby employees, based on their engagement score, are classified into one of the following categories:

1. Engaged Employees are energized by their work and the mission of the company.

2. Not engaged Employees have quit before they quit. They're at work but not working with energy or passion.

3. Actively disengaged Employees aren't just miserable. ...