A few weeks ago I wrote about some new research by Insead business school looking at how to effectively disseminate the strategy of an organisation to employees. They bemoaned the traditional cascade style approach where strategy is decided from upon high and then delivered to employees via the management hierachy.

Instead they suggested that the best way to disseminate strategy is to encourage employees to participate in its construction. That way they develop a sense of ownership over the strategy and are more likely to both support the strategy and understand it.

It’s an approach that is supported in a new report by the Institute for Corporate Productivity that looks at the practices that deliver employee engagement. It outlines a number of things that seperate the best from the worst when it comes to employee engagement.

Central to their thesis is that employees both understand the key organisational goals, and are empowered to achieve them.

The report goes on to recommend that employee engagement should be a core metric in managers performance reviews, although they fall short of suggesting that the annual pantomime of appraisals are not fit for purpose.

It concludes by making four recommendations for actions you should take to engage employees:

1. Tailor your approach and ensure that engagement activities are linked to strategy
2. Ensure that employee engagement is important to the C-suite
3. Communicate, communicate and communicate. Use all of the tools available to regularly share results and successes.
4. Use two way communication to learn what’s working and what isn’t, and thus evolve your efforts

The report then outlines ten steps you can take to increase employee engagement. You can access these in the report below.