Linking the Employment Value Proposition to Employee Engagement and Business Outcomes | Organizational Development Journal

In 2007 while I was employed at AT&T, I designed and executed a strategic analytic initiative to link employees’ perceptions of the employment value proposition to employee engagement and business outcomes. This approach, which is sometimes referred to as linkage analysis, is a methodology for understanding the relationship between employee, customer, and financial data. Linkage analysis allows organizations to connect elements of the work environment—as described by employees— to employee engagement and organizational outcomes such as customer satisfaction and financial performance. And while it is now common for many survey providers and consulting firms to offer this type of analysis as part of their products or services offerings, it was less common at the time of this study which is why we decided to conduct it in-house. The reason for the initiative was that one of the business units was experiencing high employee turnover which was having a negative impact on revenue, efficiency, and cost. The study was designed to pinpoint areas that were driving aspects of employee engagement and turnover so that action plans and investments in these areas could be executed to achieve a higher ROI. Note: This article was published in the Organizational Development Journal in 2007. Given the style of the journal, the article had to be written in a more academic format.  While such a format is different from my preferred style of writing, the article still provides useful insights for those who have an interest in this topic. This article has been cited 100+ times in both the academic and practitioner literature.