Global Office • 12101 Tukwila International Blvd., Ste. #330 • Seattle, Washington 98168206.628.4800 • 800.426.3660 • Fax 206.587.6007 • www.thepacificinstitute.com

Engagement, Culture and Leadership Development consistently show up as the ‘hot topics’ amongst Human Resource Executives. With 30 years of experience in Human Resources, Joanne Morton, Human Resources Executive and Consultant with The Pacific Institute, sits down to answer our questions regarding these top issues affecting HR today.

1. What do you mean when you talk about employee engagement?High employee engagement means that when employees come to work they know exactly what they need to do. They understand how their work activities are aligned to the vision and purpose of the organization. They understand how they make a positive difference and that what they do adds value to their customers, stakeholders, fellow employees and their communities. Employees derive satisfaction from what they do and look forward to coming to work. They receive positive recognition for what they do well and they enjoy working on high performing teams. They actively value diversity of thought and recognize the value of different perspectives. Engaged employees are empowered leaders.

2. What drives engagement?Organizational culture drives employee behavior and therefore is the primary driver of employee engagement.

3. What are the outcomes of engagement?Employee engagement not only increases employee satisfaction, it impacts productivity and bottom-line business results. Highly engaged employees result in higher levels of customer service and satisfaction, innovation and quality of products and, regardless of the industry, a safer workplace.

Joanne Morton is a Strategic HR exec-utive with “hands-on” tactical imple-mentation skills. She has over 30 years’ experience in the HR field, with

a broad foundation in all areas of HR and uniquely experienced in grow-ing businesses, developing leaders, and changing organizational cul-tures resulting in high performance teaming, collaboration and innova-tion.

Joanne improves employee en-gagement and transforms business culture by developing leaders and leadership strategies. She works to increase employee empowerment and engagement, creating highly effective and innovative teams, ul-timately leading to improved bot-tom-line business results.

Over the years Joanne has held var-ious senior Human Resource roles with well-known companies such as Watlow, Caterpillar, Anasazi & REZ Solutions and AMR/American Air-lines.

PICTURE THE POSSIBILITIES…Highly Engaged Employees

“Employee engagement not only increases

employee satisfaction, it impacts productivity

and bottom-line business results.”

Global Office • 12101 Tukwila International Blvd., Ste. #330 • Seattle, Washington 98168206.628.4800 • 800.426.3660 • Fax 206.587.6007 • www.thepacificinstitute.com

4. What is leadership’s role in engagement?Leadership is the single most important driver of culture. Culture is defined as “the shared values and beliefs that drive behavior.” If leaders influence employee behavior (and an organization desires to improve employee engagement) then developing leaders to be more effective will positively impact culture and thus engagement.

Leaders + Culture = Engagement

5. Why does engagement matter?Highly engaged employees result in better business results.

6. How is engagement measured?Typically, organizations conduct annual Employee Opinion Surveys (EOS) that can be short, simple “pulse surveys” or more extensive analytical enterprise surveys. Executive leaders tend to require action items from functional leaders to improve results. Often these action items are short term fixes and are not integrated nor sustainable. Therefore, organizational efforts to improve employee engagement often fail.

7. Can culture be measured?Culture can be measured. There are several different tools that can measure culture. The significance of culture and how it impacts business results is detailed in an eleven-year study conducted by Kotter & Haskett. Based on the results of the study, roughly 70% of organizations are passive-aggressive (non-adaptive) cultures. Behavior of this culture type is characterized by top-down, command and control behavior that creates managers, not leaders, and

results in a lack of trust among employees, fear of expressing differing opinions, internal competitive win-lose behavior and an inflexible mindset toward change. The productivity and financial impact of these cultures over the study’s timeline shows that although organizational revenue, stock prices and net income increased over the study period, the measures did not increase as significantly as adaptive cultures which are characterized by engaged and empowered employees who are adaptive, resilient and demonstrate trust and teaming behavior.

8. What does “good” leadership look like?The two most important strategies of good leadership are:

• communicating the vision, ”the why,” and how employees’ roles are aligned with the vision and values; and

• creating an environment where dialog and leader feedback on employee goals, performance and development is on-going, the “what” results and the “how” behavior.

9. What is the impact of leadership on engagement and culture? Leadership is the single most significant driver of culture. Leaders communicate “what” needs to be accomplished and “why,” as well as “how,” employees are to behave. Leaders impact employee behavior by what they communicate or fail to communicate and how they deal with or fail to deal with inappropriate employee behavior. Gruenter and Whitaker refer to culture as “...shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate.” In other words, if a leader fails

Global Office • 12101 Tukwila International Blvd., Ste. #330 • Seattle, Washington 98168206.628.4800 • 800.426.3660 • Fax 206.587.6007 • www.thepacificinstitute.com

to address behavior that is inconsistent with the vision and values of an organization, then the leader is condoning inappropriate behavior. Employees tend to behave based on what they see, not what company policies communicate.

10. What is HR’s role in improving engagement results? Many executive leaders tend to look toward Human Resources as “the owner” of culture. HR does not “own” culture. Enlightened leaders recognize that HR is a key strategic function that supports the organization. Culture is “owned” by the leaders. All leaders must be aligned and consistent in their leadership communication and behavioral styles.

11. What is executive leadership’s role in enhancing and sustaining improvements in engagement and/or culture?Since leaders drive culture, executive leaders are role models of communication and behavior. For example, it is critical that leaders do not recognize and reward employees simply for meeting business financial or productively goals, the “what” but also recognize the “how” of the appropriate behavior that is demonstrated to achieve those results.

12. How does an organization create and sustain a safety culture, innovative culture, quality culture?Sustaining cultural transformation is dependent on integrating “people” systems and processes to ensure that they support the “new” cultural behavior expectations and not the “old.” For example, when recruiting talent, are recruiters seeking new talent that already demonstrates the values of the new culture? When onboarding new talent, is the “what” and “how” communicated? There are many systems and processes that must be revised and integrated in order to sustain effective culture change.

So, what does all this mean?HR leaders are often challenged with improving employee engagement and developing leaders. To be truly successful, Executive Teams - which typically include valued HR executives - need to understand their current and desired culture. Then their journey toward improving employee engagement begins… and what an exciting journey it is. Picture the possibilities.

The Pacific Institute® is a global consultancy with over four decades of expertise in delivering customized solutions that empower organizations and individuals to improve performance and reach their full potential. Founded in 1971 in Seattle, Washington, we’ve served clients in over 60 countries and 23 languages. We’ve worked with over half of the current Fortune 1000 companies, as well as governments, educational institutions, professional athletes and sports teams, and other organizations. To date, more than 6.5 million people around the world have participated in our programs.

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