Story:
Employee Engagement Network: One Person on One Day Can Create a Community

By David Zinger - Catalyst for a 20% global increase in employee engagement by 2020! at David Zinger Associates

August 21, 2010 at 6:47am

employee engagement

Community

work

employee

Moonshots

Redefine the work of leadership

Summary

Employee Engagement. From 1 person to 2860 members one person at a time. The employee engagement network has grown from myself to 2860 people in two years. We now have over 1000 blog posts, 560 forums, and 160 videos.

Visit The Employee Engagement Network and join a community that will increase employee engagement around the globe!

Context

I believe as we proceed through this decade that communities will trump organizations, associations, and institutions. Although we began in Winnipeg Manitoba we span the globe and are gathering everyone interested in employee engagement together. We are moving from a network to a community to a mobilized community to increase employee engagement.

Triggers

As the old line in the movie Network stated: "I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore." We can't have increasing levels of employee disengagement. This hurts organizations, employees, customers, stakeholders, employee's families, etc. It just plain hurts.

Unfortunately the level of disengagement as reported by Hewitt in their July 2010 survey suggest that employee engagement continues to decrease and we recently saw some of the worst drops in engagement since they began monitoring it.

Engagement is not a problem to be solved, it is an experience to be lived.

There is no way to engagement, engagement is the way. We have much work and opportunity to create engagement for the benefit of all and as a community we can do this is so many different ways. We don't need a single definition of employee engagement as much as a movement working to improve engagement for all around the globe.

Key Innovations & Timeline

We started in February of 2008.

We will continue to grow and mobilize.

Our first step is the gathering, connecting, and engaging of the community.

Challenges & Solutions

We will have many challenges ahead. To embrace our differences and yet to work together. The solution is to create stronger connections between the members of the employee engagement community and to find meaningful contributions we can each make.

We have already created 5 free informative and very visually appealing e-books on the topic.

Benefits & Metrics

The Employee Engagement Network is a work in progress. My personal goal would be to see us increase employee engagement by 20% by the year 2020. A 20/20 vision if you will.

This would results in about a $200 billion yearly benefit to the global economy based on figures that Gallup has released over the past 10 years.

The economics of this are massive and it must impact the employee for their benefit. Engagement will not sustain itself if it is a veiled attempt to suck out more discretionary effort from over-taxed employees.

Lessons

The lessons will be unfolding over the next 9 years.

Early lessons:

Community will trump organization.
The glue of community is meaningful contributions.
A strong community needs a founders and hosts.
We can make a difference.
I know the results I would like to see tied into the community and I know the community will play a huge role in revising and achieving those results.
Don't stay out in the cold, create connections, engage, and make a difference.

Credits

The credit for this community resides with each member who joins and than choses to engage!

Materials

Here is the website for the community: http://employeeengagement.ning.com/

Take a look at these 3 powerful and free community publications composed by over 100 members of the network.

Documents

TOPTENSBook.JULY12 (1).pdf

Employee Engagement Manager Free Ebook (1).pdf

Employee Engagement Questions.pdf

Images

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August 21, 2010 at 1:11am

David Zinger

Mireille:

Thank you for such encouraging feedback and to encourage me on Twitter to post the story here.

David

August 21, 2010 at 9:57am

Mireille Jansma

Hi David,

Great story, great initiative. I hope many other people here will appreciate what you all do. Personally I discovered your community about one month ago, and it is one of the most active and interesting online communities I have ever had the pleasure to join. The conversations are open, pleasant and very informative. The video resources are a real treasure trove (http://employeeengagement.ning.com/video).

Thanks, Mireille

August 27, 2010 at 1:34am

Matt Shlosberg

David -

Thank you for the post. This is a very interesting idea.
Just wondering... do you have any metrics or any way to measure the success of such an effort? How can you tell if people become more engaged as a result of joining and participating in your network?

August 27, 2010 at 2:50am

David Zinger

Hi Matt:
You can see frequency and contribution and that would indicate engagement in the network. I don't actively measure at this time as pay mindful attention. This will become a bigger challenge/conundrum as we look at a 20% increase in employee engagement by 2020 when there are so many different definitions and measure.
David

August 27, 2010 at 6:04am

Ellen Weber

Bravo Mireille and David for modeling here just what you suggest builds community. Thanks for your example of promoting what works, welcoming others into your discourse center, and looking to wider communities for innovation insights. No wonder it works - it bears marks of a workplace community many crave. No only can it make a difference - but it will develop many intelligences along the way! Refreshing!