LEAP Listens
LEAP Listens is a bitesize podcast hosted by Sara MacGregor and Roger Cayless who are both leaders in Employer Branding, Candidate Experience and Recruitment Marketing. In this ongoing series of podcasts they tackle client and industry themes and along the way host expert guests who provide opinion, stories and advice on the world of ‘people communications’.
LEAP Listens
Why employee engagement scores are broken with Howard Krais
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In this episode of LEAP Listens, Sara and Roger are joined by communications and change specialist Howard Krais to challenge one of the workplace’s biggest assumptions: that employee engagement scores actually tell us anything useful. Drawing on decades of experience in internal communications and organisational change, Howard explains why leaders obsess over metrics that rarely lead to action, and why trust is the thing organisations should really be measuring.
From survey fatigue to people-centred change, Howard shares a more practical approach to listening at work, one built on transparency, follow-through and making employees feel genuinely heard. The conversation explores why most surveys fail to drive meaningful change, how organisations can close the feedback loop properly, and why listening is becoming one of the most important leadership skills in modern business.
LEAP Listens is brought to you by LEAP Create, an award-winning people communications agency. Find out more at leapcreate.co.uk
Welcome And Host Banter
SPEAKER_00Welcome to Leap Listers, the Bite-sized employer branding podcast. I'm Sarah.
SPEAKER_01And I'm Roger.
SPEAKER_00And we lead Leap Create. Leap Create is a creative communications agency and we specialise in employer branding and internal communications. We work with in-house professionals to help bring the story of your company to life to help attract and retain your best talent. This is our sixth series of Loop Listens. And if you're new here, we chat to a variety of industry specialists about workplace culture and how to communicate with candidates and employees. And if you want to know more, head over to our website or Spotify for over 70 episodes to listen to. Welcome. Hi Rog.
SPEAKER_01Hello, Sarah. How the devil are you?
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm okay, but I can't stop sneezing. So this is going to be quite an interesting podcast for me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I wonder if we can age listeners by asking them who remembers Miss Popoff from Rental Coast.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, that's definitely me today. So I'm a little bit nervous.
SPEAKER_01Cool. Well, we've got a another exciting guest today.
SPEAKER_00We do, Howard Craze, who co-funded True with Anne-Marie Blake, and um very experienced in the world of communication and um change, working in many senior roles. I'm sure he'll talk about that. Um, but we're going to be talking about something that might feel quite controversial. So how Howard doesn't actually believe in engagement. So um, before everyone sort of panics and you know, hear us out on this. Um, but we do spend quite a lot of time, don't we, measuring scores, running surveys. But what if we're measuring actually the wrong thing? And that's what we're going to be talking about today, and that's his argument. So yeah, I'm interested to hear.
SPEAKER_01It's not just a clickbait headline, which we'll definitely be using.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, so looking forward to talking to him about that today.
Meet Howard And The Big Claim
SPEAKER_00Excellent. Let's jump in. Welcome to the podcast, Howard.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Love to be here.
SPEAKER_00So, Howard, tell us about you and the work you're currently doing.
Why Engagement Scores Fall Flat
SPEAKER_02So I've spent most of my career in the world of internal communications. Uh, worked in lots of big companies uh over the years, probably over 30 years now. Um, and then three years ago, together with my business partner Amory Blake, we set up through um a community a company based on, I suppose, a core principle, which was what we called at the time people-centered change. So doing change with people rather than to people. And that's been underpinned by the work I've done on listening, how employ how organizations listen to their employees, uh, which was work which came out of an IABC meeting a few years back, and then with a couple of other guys, ended up with a book called uh Leading the Listening Organization being published a couple of years ago. So, yeah, just deep into communications, listening, uh, and all that sort of jazz.
SPEAKER_00One thing we talked about, Howard, um, that you said when we previously spoke was very powerful. Um, I don't believe in engagement, and I think that's probably going to ruffle some feathers. But what do you mean by that?
Trust And Better Ways To Measure
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's it's a bit far out, I guess. And I wrote an article on LinkedIn a few months ago to sort of say this that I don't think that you know engagement in the way that we've always thought of it is really that important. And I think that the reason, you know, and I recognise a lot of people have engagement in their titles, get measured on engagement scores. Uh, and it's been the orthodoxy, really, for communications for for so many years that we're sort of tied into this notion of engagement, which is, I guess, you know, simplifying is uh trying to get discretionary effort out of people. And I I I think for a number of reasons, I don't think that you know that stands up anymore. And mainly, I think, because I don't think leaders are that bothered by it. Yeah, everyone would like to believe that we're creating the opportunities for people to work harder or do more or be more um engaged with the smallly, if you like, in in what they're doing. But I I think leaders don't care about engagement scores. Engagement scores don't really mean anything. Um, you know, I as I do the listening work and you look at surveys, they generate scores and what have you. I don't think leaders really understand those scores. I think they make arbitrary decisions about, well, we've got to move the score from 67 to 72 over the next five years. And what does that mean? It means nothing. And and I've not really ever heard anyone say, you know, unless I've got an engagement score of 95, which would be pretty good, um, then I'm then I won't be happy. Um so I don't think I don't think, you know, I I also see people talk about engagement the month before the survey, the month after surveying by people, I mean leaders, and then and then it goes off the agenda. And you you look at what XCOs and you look at what leadership teams and boards talk about, you know, they talk about financial results, they talk about other key indicators, you know, they talk about productivity, you know, mu results and that sort of thing. I don't think they talk about engagement in that way. So I don't think it's important for leaders, and I don't really buy into this discretionary effort thing either. I think that to be honest, I think that if you're in a team of people that you get on with and you work well with, and there's plenty of work around teamwork, it doesn't have to be called engagement, if you're set to challenge, you work hard to do it together. You know, you're driven. Most people, even in in most situations, most people want to achieve what they're you know, a problem that they're set to solve. And so is that discretionary effort? Probably, but I don't think it's engagement in the way that we believe that you know, by connecting to a strategy, by by feeling, you know, all of what whatever it the engagement here is. Um, so I don't I don't think that engagement means very much today. I think trust, on the other hand, is much more important, you know. So it's not like I'm saying, well, you know, you don't need anything in this space. I think trust is the key thing. If you trust people around you, if you trust your your manager, if you trust your organization, given the sort of permanent state of change that organizations are in these days, you're more likely to give it a chance, you're more likely to go with what's going on if you trust the reasons for that, if you trust you know what you're told or or the opportunities you have for conversation and for feeling that your voice gets heard. I think trust is much more important than um than this notion of engagement.
SPEAKER_00So, how do you then, if you're working with companies, how do you change that behaviour? So if they're very led on engagement, um how do you then explain that to them and and what does that look like in practice?
SPEAKER_02Well, I I mean, obviously every project would be different, you know, if it's if if we were able to talk about bringing your people with you. And if I go back to what I said at the beginning about people-centered change, you know, what what I believe is that we can deliver change in a better way. I think you know, the the sort of apocryphal McKinsey's number of 70% of change programs not delivering what they promise, and why is that because you know, largely because you don't bring your people with you, says that it's not about engagement, but it there's uh other things that we can do, many other things that we can do. But broadly, you know, if we're listening to people, if we're making people feel seen and heard, feeling that they've got, if forgive the horrible phrase, skin in the game, um, you know, allow you know, listening to their questions and and their concerns and you know, answering their questions, you know, listening to their concerns, responding to them, starting to encourage their suggestions and taking those seriously, then I think you bring you start to bring people with you through change. I don't think it needs to be called engagement. I don't think engagement means anything in this notion, you know, in this sense, but I think it's just there's there's some more basic human interactions that we do every day by by making people feel listened and heard um and involving them in the change that's going on. Um and you could say it's semantics, you know, we can we yeah, um, and I'm definitely not going to go into a potential client and die in a ditch and say, well, it's not engagement, is it? You know. Um I'm not that bothered about what they want to, you know, in the sense what they want to call it's the behaviours, and it's the it's it's it's the processes and behaviours that go behind that and how we involve people that's important, whatever we choose to call it.
SPEAKER_01So I I completely agree with you that I think trust is at the heart of everything. And I remember I sort of wrote a thing probably about getting on for 10 years ago now, and it was about how I think you can win awards, and it all sort of started with trust with the client, and it sort of came down from there because you know that's how you get more interesting work. How do they how do you do more interesting work? Their client trusts you to do this, and so it led on. Um, so I totally agree that I think trust is actually key to everything. How do you measure it? Because both trust and engagement are ultimately abstract terms, and there's obviously that desire to put a metric around it. So, in the same way as someone might measure engagement, how do you measure trust?
Rethinking Performance Metrics
SPEAKER_02Um, I I I wonder, you know, I do wonder whether we're I I get the thing around measurement. Um, I really do, in that we you know, to some extent in in our in our sort of world, we want to have some proof points for success. But you know, if we if we were if we were really measuring the right things and measuring, you know, we're we're doing this project to affect this change, this you know, and and and if we do these things, then this should happen. And if we were really clear about that, I think that that's the measurement I want to see, rather than necessarily creating in indices or numbers which don't in themselves mean a whole heap. And again, I I I sometimes look at the rest of the organization and I wonder whether finance are doing this, or I wonder if HR are doing this, or I wonder if IT are. I don't think they are, I don't think they're sort of struggling to come up with measurements or abstract the sort of concepts. It's it's much more around you know tactical results, and and that's what I would much prefer us to be judged on, um, which means being a lot more savvy about what we're meant, you know, the types of things we're measuring, and we're measuring things because that's what we're trying to deliver. And I understand as well that you know it's difficult to say that because communications did this, then this happens because there's other things going on in the world, of course. But I think we could be a lot smarter and better at doing that, and and you know, really at the beginning of a piece of work or at the beginning of a project, recognizing the state you're in now and the state you want to go to, and therefore, if you're going to do certain things, which isn't just communications, of course, but if you get to to you know that that end point, then it's a success, and that's that's much more where I would prefer to see measurement and that conversation about measurement rather than necessarily engagement scores, let alone the sort of um output scores that we uh we often sort of uh have because that's all we've got.
SPEAKER_01So just to sort of follow up, so many things are tied to that, aren't we? You know, with metrics, data, you know, so people want these kind of empirical things. So have you got a sort of a philosophy for kind of completely rewriting it? You think there's people's performance appraisals, people, you know, people want a number, don't they? They want a metric. Have you got a sort of overarching philosophy around how you completely change the way all of that works?
SPEAKER_02Well, I wish I had. Um, but but I would say that I, you know, but there's many, many far more clever people than me who have struggled with this. And and again, you know, in my experience with big corporates, and I worked with people like Ernst Young and GSK and Matt Westfier, some big big corporates. And I was that you know, I led the communications that GSK went through a new a new performance measurement program, and and we were you know deeply involved with with that. Um it is funny, you know, that that you need to, you know, the companies who get stuck on these bell curves and they sit stuck on you know trying to come up with what they think is equitable, but it's equitable from the comp from the company's perspective and not from the individuals necessarily. I think I think the whole measurement scheme is is you know is in danger of being unfair and discredited and you know very 20th century. And and I think you know, I'd love to think again, if you take a properly people-centred approach and think, are we setting the right objectives? Are you delivering on those objectives? That doesn't mean that the person setting the objectives has to get the objectives right in the first place, or as a partnership. That's that's not given. Uh, and that if you get your objectives, you shouldn't be then told later on down the line, well yes, but we had too many people who achieved our objectives in the same way, and therefore you you're you know you're gonna get downgraded in some way, but that doesn't feel very good. So I think, yes, I think that um I I understand why there's a a thirst for measurement in all areas, and we all want to prove how important we are, uh but we do complicate it. I don't necessarily have the answer. Um if I did I'd probably be a very successful consultant rather than struggling one.
SPEAKER_00I'm sure you are. So you talk a lot about you know, we talked just about data there, and everyone also then talks about survey fatigue. Um but you say um that there's not too many surveys. I know sorry, I'm gonna start that again. Um everyone talks about survey fatigue, but you say it's not um that there's too many surveys, it's that organizations don't do anything with the results. Um so what breaks that cycle?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, absolutely. So so I think that a lot of people internally get you know just used to saying, well, we have we do too many surveys, survey fatigue. Uh and I don't ever think that's the case. Um survey particular, I mean we get asked our opinion now, you think about it, outside of work by almost everyone we touch. You know, if you're going through an airport, you get asked by every concession that you go into, every retailer, the you know, the airport, the airline, um everyone's asking you for your opinion, whether you fill in these surveys or not, uh, and I've stopped because I it's it's because I don't think anything happens with what I say, I don't think it's important. I think that all they're after is a you know, like their MPS score, they're not particularly bothered about any criticisms or or suggestions that I might make. But I think that if um if you believe the opposite, if you and especially internally, if you believe your voice accounts for something, if you see that something happens because of the feedback and survey, you probably believe it's a good process. And therefore you're more likely to take part the next time than the next time. And I think that, you know, again, all big surveys, particularly big surveys, but all surveys and organizations either are done because we're in a it's a process that we just are bought into every year, we don't really think about what we're doing it for, or um they're there to validate an existing, yeah, we're gonna do the survey to prove something, and it's not really great either. So I think I think that if you feel that your voice accounts for something, you will take part quite positively. The more that you feel that you're being asked because it's just oh, here we go again, nothing really happens, nothing changes, then why bother? And uh and that's that for me is survey fatigue, it's oh here we go again, you know, it's it's yeah, it's not that it's too many. And I think people would actually be, you know, you you could do more and more surveys if if people saw that something was happening every time. Yeah, my perfect world, and I know I live in a perfect world, which uh in my own head where it's all perfect and everything works really well. But you know, I think if I would have if I was like uh you know, my perfect CEO world or head of HR, whatever it was, you know, do a survey twice a year, for example, be survey twice a year. I'd have one uh whatever level you say, whether it's organizationally or or you know, a sort of function level or business level, wherever, I'd say you you select one at one action, just do one thing, you communicate the hell out of that, you know, demonstrate transparently what we're going to do. Let's say it's about decision making or it's about recognition. These are the types of big issues that often come out of surveys, right? And then you say, We're gonna bring some people together, we're gonna fix it, we're gonna tell you how we're doing it, we're gonna demonstrate that we've done it. Six months' time, we'll take the next thing off the list, just one thing. You don't, and and what happens instead? You know, you get we do the big survey, reports go to everyone in two's got five or more employees, so you're creating noise in an organization, you have this fevered sort of period of a month or so. Learn how to use the tool, whatever the tool is, you know, record everything, all this noise, and then you forget about it, it all goes in the drawer, and then a year later you come back to it. What did we say we're gonna do? Oh, I can't remember. Quick communicators dispatched off to find out the sort of you said we did thing. Uh, people say the organization is pretty cynical with this, so why bother? And I think that you know, you you could take surveys or similar as really great opportunities to drive proper improvement um if you're serious about it.
Listening Audits And Closing The Loop
SPEAKER_00But I think what happens is they get so much feedback on so many different areas and trying to do everything all at once to try and fix everything. And actually, that isn't the reality, is it? If you focus on one thing at a time, we've got an initiative here at Loop Create called um the eating elephants initiative, where we've looked at all of our friction points, and we're, you know, as an eat, you know, you eat an elephant one bite at a time, and that's exactly what we're doing, focusing on one particular thing, putting experiments in place to see how that's improving. And and that works, that's a really good way of dealing with these things. And I know that's slightly different because we're in a smaller organization when you've got lots of people and lots and lots of friction points, but you're exactly right. It's focusing on one particular thing, showing the improvement so that people feel actually, yes, I do feel listened to, um, which goes into my next point, actually, because you recommend um doing a listening audit, don't you, as well as doing a comms audit. Um, and I'm just interested to know what that actually looks like in practice.
SPEAKER_02I I think um I'd I've been in lots of cons audits, which are very good and very thorough, but I think that what as listening becomes more important, more companies are sort of thinking, how do we listen well? And you know, when we wrote our book, the first chapter of the book is called The Advent of the Listening Age. And I think that even in the two years since the book was published, the number of people who talk about listening, if you look at Gallagher reports and that sort of thing, you just see listening is becoming more and more important in discussion and the way that comms leaders are thinking. So I do think it's happening, and and and so an audit would be saying, in my in very simplistic terms, I I would want to ask leaders, how do you think that you listen in your organization? And and when we did our work on listening, you know, a lot of that was from the leader's perspective more than the communicator. So how so the you know, my my going in expectation is the leader would say, Yes, pretty good. You know, I I do this and we have a survey and we we have some networks and whatever, so I think that we do some good listening. And then you go and ask the employees, and they probably say, No, we don't feel that we're listened to, we don't see any evidence of that, we don't feel that when we're asked for our views that it makes a lot of difference. Or maybe they do, I don't know, but it depends on the organization. But I think that you would, you know, if a leader has bought into the importance of listening, and then hears from employees who say we don't feel listened to, then I think you've got a real opportunity. Say, okay, so what do we need to do now to to fill that gap? Let's look at the tools you've got, let's look at the uh the things that you're doing and and see, you know, how are they working or what else do we need to do?
SPEAKER_01Just to say as well, we don't encourage the literal eating of elephants.
SPEAKER_00Um elephants were harmed.
SPEAKER_01It's definitely a metaphor.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, it's not just just on that, just on that, you last you remind me of really I think it's an important point in this sort of listening piece, which is someone who I know well who who runs a relatively small company, and and uh it really stuck with me this. She said, you know, that there's a really important lesson. She said um her company introduced some new uh benefits package for their employees, and she said, I was totally kicking myself because what happened was that whether through a survey or whatever, employees had said we'd need some changes in the benefits, but these things are not five-minute jobs, so it taken a few months, maybe six, eight, nine months, to sort of come from the start to finish an announcement to the employees of what the new benefits were. And she said she was kicking herself that she didn't link it back to the fact that this is what people had asked for. So there's a really important point here about closing the loop, and and and and it and that's that's again, I think a mindset thing, whether it's a small company or a big company, it is not the sort of you said we did, but it's just reminding people A, that these things are not five-minute jobs, but B, this has come for you, and and we've done this because you've you know, you've asked for it, you've suggested it, you've been involved in it, or whatever it might be.
SPEAKER_00It is an interesting point. And also made me then think about actually when there is a friction point and there's then a solution to that, it's not just launching with the solution, it's bringing people on that journey to help build that solution as well. I think that's really important. So that you're not, you know, they've asked for this, okay, let's deliver that. And then, you know, yeah, we've ticked that box, but actually everyone's like, well, that actually isn't what we were meaning in the first place. So yeah, bringing people on the journey as well to help do that. I think that's that's a key point as well.
Book Picks And Final Takeaways
SPEAKER_02Sometimes in in very big companies, um, and and my screen is certainly one of the companies I worked in more than others, um, the head office is such a powerful sort of magnet for talent and and for like the what I you know in the Berticons call the the clever kids. And um you you forget that 98% of the organization is outside the the head office, and it's almost like if if it's not invented here, it can't be very good. And and so just as you're saying, Sarah, you know, that there's so much again. If you're taking a proper people-first approach, you know, there's so much talent, so much sort of good ideas and and uh experiences in our organizations, which exist outside of our our own sort of little thiefdoms and kingdoms and head offices. Um, so it's just a state of mind, and and I think you you know you you can just get some phenomenal results when you start involving the people who are really affected by some of these things rather than just the sort of small number very close to you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Had. There's so many sort of really interesting insights that you've given us and our listeners there. Um we are around about that time where we need to be finishing up, but we do always like to ask people before we go, um, if there's anything interesting that they're currently reading or listening to that they feel they'd like to recommend.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, absolutely. Um, so I I I do like to read, and I but not business books actually, that much. Um so the book I'm reading at the right at the moment is called The Racket, and it's um it's non-fiction, although I'll read much more fiction, but it's non-fiction book. It's it's called um uh On tour the tennis's golden generation and the other 99%. So it's written by an Irish tennis pro called Conan Island, and it's uh it's much more sort of the experiences of someone who's in the sort of world 200 ranked 250 or wherever it may be, which is really interesting, you know, from a people perspective, the struggling people desperate to try and break through. Um, so I'm I'm sort of halfway through that, which is uh which is very interesting. But um and also the the book I'm listening to um when I'm running or um on journeys is um currently is called 1929, um written by Andrew Sorkin. And uh this is um 1929 inside the crash. So this is quite interesting because it's um sort of a really interesting sort of uh deep dive into what caused the Wall Street crash, the people involved, how you know, I suppose you had people assuming, particularly in the US at that time, that growth was forever and uh and and record growth was forever, and then you know how it all came tumbling down. So yeah, a couple of interesting things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they're two really fascinating. I love I love the idea about the um tennis, because like you say, you can imagine that the bookshelves are adorned with all the tennis players' biographies that who we know. So that idea of of that other 99% that's exactly yeah, yeah. That's a brilliant idea, isn't it? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that sounds great.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you for having me on. I really enjoyed it.
SPEAKER_00Great. Well, thank you, Howard.
SPEAKER_01Brilliant, thank you very much. Well, that was another interesting one, wasn't it, Sarah?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, it really was. He's very, very down to earth, and I think because of all of it his experience, he's been there, done it, hasn't he, and and seen it all. And actually, he's just got a very straightforward, no nonsense approach about it. Like, let's not talk about the fluffy stuff, let's actually talk about what matters. Um, and I really like that about him.
SPEAKER_01And almost like coming bringing it down to rather than a giant philosophy that I was trying to sort of almost press him for actually saying it's just really what works, does it ultimately does it work? You know, that's the the thing, and what why are we measuring all this stuff that no one ever does anything with? Um, I thought, as you said, down to earth and um talked a lot of sense. Yeah, nice bloke. Nice bloke. Thoroughly nice bloke. Yeah, it's important. There we go. And um, I guess the because he was someone that we saw speaking at uh a conference about internal communications, which is an area that we're sort of finding ourselves getting much more deeply involved in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And um, our next few podcasts are actually all around internal comms. So yeah, I'm really super excited for that. And I didn't sneeze once through the whole thing. I know I'm about to though.
SPEAKER_01I think if you had a wrap up, you would disappear. So let's disappear.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, ready?
SPEAKER_01That'd be perfect.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that would be, wouldn't it? Bye, Rog.