Jul 25, 2014 | Blog

TOMS sets Expectations for Engagement: Lessons from HCI's 2014 Employee Engagement Conference

Engage Your People

The Human Capital Institute 2014 Employee Engagement Conference kicked off on Wednesday in Seattle with an engaging series of workshop sessions that emphasized the link between learning and development and employee engagement. This would prove to be a recurring theme of the conference as several keynote speakers alluded to the fact that the single most important factor in moving the needle of engagement is providing development opportunities for individual employees.

On Thursday, Rick Badgley, Vice President of Talent Management at TOMS, delivered the opening keynote and provided a great session that illuminated the transformative power of corporate culture on employee engagement. TOMS, as Badgley stated, is a caring company that sells shoes. This is evidenced by their much publicized business model of “One for One”, a policy that gives back to communities in need for every single pair of shoes they sell. This altruism and corporate social responsibility is a key cog in fostering a culture of engagement because it makes clear the alignment between employee and organizational goals. It’s easy for the employees at TOMS to get excited about going to work when the organizational mission is so evident and life-changing for so many.

But for Badgley it doesn’t stop with a corporate mission that is so easy to root for. In fact if TOMS were to merely assume that company culture was the only factor in driving employee engagement they would not be maximizing the value of each employee. Instead, as indicated by the title of his sessions, Creating Employee Engagement by Aligning Expectations, the secret to TOMS success in employee engagement is in creating and setting employee expectations from the very beginning. As Badgley says, the foundation for employee engagement at TOMS is connecting the individual role and responsibility to the business objectives and bonus pay.

Three key expectations to set in order to instill employee engagement.

  • The expectations of the company. More than just mission, vision, values and behaviors that we seek as part of the values. Rather it is how the employees all work together at TOMS. Badgley cited this as the “How” we work, rather than the “Why” we do what we do. While it may be easy to find candidates that want to make a difference once they’ve been initiated into the culture it’s more valuable to set the expectations of the way the work gets done. And HR leaders must address and acknowledge the brutal facts about the organization, as Badgley puts it, “The good, bad and the ugly about ourselves. We’re not flawless and we dig that about ourselves.”
  • The expectations of the job.  Badgley inserted a sidebar here about job descriptions. He is not a fan. “When was the last time you asked someone about their job description? The day after they were hired?” Instead he prefers to issue position expectations, because these can be both very specific and clearly stated. These position expectations can be reinforced with equally specific success measures.  This process proves to be very impactful within performance appraisal as he says people expect what you inspect.
  • The expectations of the person. Badgley describes this as knowing very clearly what the individual “wants to be when they grow up.” If the organization isn’t aware of what its people expect from their job then how in the world will it be able to align individual expectations with business objectives? This knowledge should be the basis for onboarding and continue through career development.

 

The presentation from Rick Badgley was a great way to kick off the 2014 Employee Engagement Conference, but it also serves as a fantastic precursor to HCI’s next event, the 2014 Learning and Leadership Development Conference, coming up in September in Boston. As we’ve learned from this conference, engagement and development are part in parcel with each other and if you were unable to attend the sessions in Seattle, whether live or virtually, there is an opportunity to revisit these themes later this year.