Design your Engagement Survey so that it creates Engagement.

Although many companies has understood that having high scores in satisfaction surveys does not correlate strongly with customer satisfaction and financial results anymore, they are struggling to understand why and what to do about it. Some companies have found that having high employee engagement impacts customer engagement which in return does create positive financial returns for the corporation, but don’t understand how to increases employee engagement. The increasing importance of employee engagement and the resulting lower importance of employee satisfaction have its roots in the generational mixture of the corporation in question.

The new generation is very different from Baby boomers (born 1940-60) that was motivated by duty to the corporation they served and  generation X (1960-80) with a focus on individual return versus the sacrifice of serving the corporation. Generation Y (1980-2000) is only loyal to the corporation if it serves a higher purpose, listens to them and invests in them.

This is very important to understand when designing an engagement survey for a given corporation. The questions themselves can create or destroy engagement – make sure you ask the right questions.

To create additional engagement you should think about including questions about the future direction of the corporation – get the employees opinion of what is important. The fact that you ask will increase employee engagement and if you ask questions about the future purpose of the corporation it will go even higher. GenY is motivated by purpose in opposition to Baby boomers acceptance of a focus on shareholder and the more personal gain/sacrifice view of GenX  motivated through profit sharing .

If you accept that pay itself does not motivate (too little can demotivate however) this is an overview of what motivated the different generations:

	Motivated by	Willing to	Activity should   benefit	Employee measurement
Baby Boomers	Duty	Sacrifice	Shareholders	Retention
Gen X	Balance	Sacrifice for personal gain.	Shareholders, Management and Employees	Satisfaction Survey
Gen Y	Purpose	Engage in return for benefits to society	Society and environment before corporation	Engagement Survey