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Employee Engagement: Outside-In Versus Inside-Out Perspectives

Gallup’s Q12 gives leaders a fast and accurate reading of an organisation’s climate. In this article, Johan du Toit relates Q12 with Schein’s Career Anchors with its inside-out perspective, showing us how the combination of these instruments can be used with great results at both the team-level and at the corporate-level.

by Johan du Toit

Employee engagement is a hot topic. These two words generate far over a million hits on Google, but sometimes it becomes difficult to see the wood for the tree.

Gallup’s Q12
I am a big fan of the Gallup Q12 Employee Engagement survey. It is simple to administer, quick to analyse, yet full of deep insights into the state of corporate well-being.

The Q12 statements were crystallised from extensive and rigorous studies by Gallup researchers. Their ground-breaking work found that when employees (strongly) agreed with these 12 statements, conditions were such that key measures like employee retention, productivity, profitability and customer loyalty were (greatly) enhanced.

The Q12, in my mind, gives leaders a fast and accurate reading of the organisation’s climate. The statements probe for the salient features of the work environment that boost work performance.  That is why I think of the Q12’s perspective as outside-in – the proximate environment enfolding and influencing the work participants. Positive environments foster engagement, while “toxic” ones cause disengagement.

I have worked with advanced knowledge workers in many of my consulting engagements.  Some of them are uncomfortable with parts of the Q12.  Statements 5 and 10 – respectively concerned with the importance of Caring and Camaraderie – usually cause the most discomfort.  The adjective “best” in statement 10 usually precipitates the most discussion. The recurrence of their scepticism about this soft-stuff has made me consider this discomfit from another perspective; an inside-out point-of-view.

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