Sigh. 

I know, I know.  I am really really really really happy companies I talk with are finally getting the point about the importance of understand and improving employee engagement.  Whether these newly minted clients understand the linkage between engagement and retention, are looking to improve a stale employee satisfaction survey, or became enthralled at one of my Hold’em Seminars, I’m not exactly sure.  I’m betting on the last one.  

Sure, some of my clients come to me with a specific problem.  “We’re having difficulty finding medical personnel. ” “We’re experiencing a higher than normal turnover.”  “Our clients are complaining about our customer service”.

Other times, it’s hard to pin down.  Maybe something about employee satisfaction, increasing employee morale, improving retention.  Sometimes ’cause the boss said so.

The companies asking to partner with my organization are not concentrated in any specific industry or geography.  We’re going to be interviewing blue and white collar employees.  Some using paper and pencil, some via the Internet.  Many of the employees have advanced degrees, many don’t need them to be proficient in their jobs.  Some companies are as as small as a few hundred employees, others have tens of thousands.  There are leaders in their industries, as well as laggards in their market.

And there-in lies some of the frustration.  Why are these companies pro-actively addressing workforce engagement?  Why make the effort (now) to better Recruit, Retrain, Reward, and Retain talent?  Why ask employees what they think, knowing the mere fact they asked employees means the company will be “forced” to take some action?

And more importantly, why aren’t the companies that really need to get a better handle on both their customer and employee engagement doing it?  Or at least talking about it. 

I know every journey starts with a single step (blah blah blah blah blah blah blah), but in the case of employee engagement, but in this case, even Neil Armstrong would have difficulty getting some owners and managers to make even “one small step for man”….