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Articles on Employee Engagement from the Gallup Management Journal

The Gallup Organization has very graciously allowed GovLeaders.org to post a number of articles from the Gallup management Journal. They all appear in the "Articles" section of this site, but a consolidated listing appears below for readers who are specifically looking for more information about Gallup's research on employee engagement. Readers of GovLeaders.org are eligible for a free trial subscription to the Gallup Management Journal.

Is Your Company Bleeding Talent?

The Gallup Organization surveyed more than 200,000 workers from dozens of organizations and industries in an effort to identify the factors that most influence retention, productivity, profitability, customer loyalty and safety. Curt Coffman and Marcus Buckingham published their findings in First, Break All the Rules. They found that employee responses to six key questions had an especially strong correlation to performance, and concluded that those six factors represent the foundation of great management.

Building a Highly Engaged Workforce

The Gallup Organization's research indicates that 29 percent of all workers in government are "actively disengaged," compared to 16 percent across all sectors. This Q&A with Curt Coffman (co-author of First, Break All the Rules and Follow This Path) summarizes some of the key findings of Gallup's management research, including a description of some of the things managers can do to keep employees engaged.

Their Best Friend At Work

Diane Marinacci of the General Services Administration has built a high-performance team by putting an unusual amount of effort into the hiring process and using a variety of management practices that foster teamwork and make it clear to her staff that she really cares about them. Excellent article from the November 2003 Gallup Management Journal.

Transforming Government

This article from the August 2003 issue of the Gallup Management Journal describes how Marcella Banks, Assistant Administrator of the Federal Technology Service (FTS) of GSA's Greater Southwest Region, transformed FTS into a truly world-class organization. Banks, already a gifted leader, made excellent use of Gallup's Q12 survey data (which GSA uses widely) to take her organization to a whole new level. The results they achieved are quite impressive.

Getting Personal in the Workplace

According to recent research by the Gallup organization, there is a very high correlation between negative workplace relationships and "actively disengaged" workers (i.e. those who act out their unhappiness at work). Conversely, over 80 percent of engaged workers indicate that their organizations actively encourage friendships at work. These findings have major implications for government managers. Few public sector organizations actively promote friendships at work, and many managers are reluctant to confront the problem employees who tend to be poison to workplace chemistry. This article was published by the Gallup Management Journal in June 2004.