The document argues that chasing employee engagement is too narrow of a focus for leaders and that they cannot directly drive engagement. Instead, leaders should focus on building a great corporate culture that people want to engage with. A great culture has six key attributes: great purpose, great leadership, great opportunities, great work, great wellbeing, and great employee recognition. The goal is for the organization to become such a strong magnet for talent through its culture that people will naturally want to work there and be engaged.

1. A CALL TO
GREATNESS
Why chasing employee engagement
is thinking too small.
by the O.C. Tanner Institute

2. “Scores are low,
it’s time to get our
people in gear.”
“We need to drive
engagement.”
“We really have
to engage our
employees.”
These phrases imply leaders can “drive”
engagement or “get” people in gear.

3. THEY CAN’T.
We tend to believe people
can be coerced, enticed, or
incented to engage.

4. BECOME
All we can hope for is to
the kind of corporate culture people
want to engage with.

5. METAPHOR ALERT:
IF PEOPLE WERE
TOOTHPASTE...
A story in Wired Magazine told of a team of
Colgate-Palmolive chemists who were having
trouble getting fluoride powder into a tube.

6. THE SOLUTION
was to electrically ground the tube and
impart an electric charge to the powder.
ONCE THE TUBE BECAME IRRESISTIBLE TO THE
POWDER, THE POWDER RUSHED IN TO FILL IT.

7. IT’S THE SAME
WITH PEOPLE.
Leaders may not be able to drive engagement, but
they can earn it. They can make their culture so great,
that people will rush in to fill it.

8. EVERY
ORGANIZATION
SHOULD.
BUT
HOW?
Any organization can become
a stronger magnet for talent.

9. Top HR consultant, Josh Bersin, put it this way:
“Using the word “engagement” often limits our
thinking. It’s assumes that our job is to reach out and
“engage” people, rather than to build an organization
that is exciting, fulfilling, meaningful, and fun.”1

10. We recently studied attraction and engagement insights
and models from Aon Hewitt, Deloitte, Gallup, Towers
Watson, and our own proprietary global studies to discover
six attributes of a culture that inspires engagement.
WHAT DOES A TRULY
MAGNETIC CULTURE LOOK LIKE?

11. A GREAT CULTURE HAS:
GREAT PURPOSE
GREAT LEADERSHIP
GREAT OPPORTUNITIES
GREAT WORK
GREAT WELLBEING
GREAT EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION

12. Focusing on culture is the exciting part of HR. It’s an opportunity to:
To see how O.C. Tanner helped The DOW Chemical Company influence greatness,
1 http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2014/04/10/its-time-to-rethink-the-employee-engagement-issue/3/#6c78d5603455
influence greatness
be strategic and impact performance
help your organization become the kind
of place people are naturally drawn to
work for and engage with.
WATCH THE CASE STUDY HERE