As many people know, the level of employee engagement has not improved in the past several decades, since organizations started measuring it in the late 1990's. Sure, some organizations have excellent employee engagement, such as Costco, Whole Foods, and Google. But overall, organizations struggle making the changes necessary to improve employee engagement.
Fortunately, the International Standards Organization (ISO) has been working for the past few years on establishing best practices and standards for engagement. Thus was the same organization that helped organizations improve quality standards 20+ years ago.
According to Dr. Ron McKinley, co-founder of the International Center for Enterprise Engagement, "Our aim is to do what ISO 9001 has done for quality management: clarify the confusion in the marketplace in terms of nomenclature and the implementation framework so that organizations have a clear path to success through people" (enterpriseengagement.org).
Because ISO is an international organization, working groups from around the world were formed to help develop these standards. I have been fortunate to be part of the Technical Advisory Group for the United States.
So what is ISO developing? There will be standards for engagement portals and best practices. At a high level, organizations can work through a checklist that will help them focus their engagement efforts. If you wish to get a copy of the checklist, you can download it below or contact us at bob@transcendengagement.com.