Talking to someone (as I always am) at church a few weeks ago, I got around to asking what turned him on about the company he works for. He didn't use the words, but his answer translated as "Engagement. Everyone's engaged in what we do."

My friend works for David Weekley Homes and when I accessed their website, here's what I read:

I also saw that DWH is the nation's largest privately-held home builder. It is also
consistently one of Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For. Those
positives attest to successful employee engagement. So, I phoned the HQ in Houston and asked to interview David Weekley, President.

DWH is in its fourth decade and located in 16 cities in 7 states. You can imagine it keeps David Weekley busy. We agreed to an e-mail interview.

The first thing David shared is "we work hard to have everyone understand our purpose of 'Enhancing People's Lives.' That refers to the people who work at the company."

That made me think they must pay a lot of attention to building employee engagement. But David corrected me: "We go to great lengths interviewing, testing, and conducting home interviews of our candidates. We want to hire team members who already have a belief system and values similar to ours. The servant-leader attitude is part of our culture. That develops early in one's life. We feel it's better to hire for it than try to train it." (Italics mine.)

So, what about keeping that engagement high throughout one's employment at DWH.  I asked if and how DWH managers' maintain strong engagement among their employees.

David made it clear. "Management lives our culture. Managers hold weekly 'planned encounters' with each team member, seeing how they are doing and how they can help them. We have quarterly growth reviews where we gauge employees' feelings about their jobs and the company. We apply subjective and objective measures. We have annual 360 degree reviews and employee engagement surveys. Our managers know they can’t get promoted, unless their team like working with them. We know that an employee who enjoys working with his manager is much more likely to be fully engaged in his work."

I wanted examples. David  was delighted to offer, "Letters from homeowners explain how they are 'in love' with our salespeople and builders. Our customers say how DWH people changed their life and became their friends. And we use three objective surveys during the home-buying process. These are telephone interviews and give us close to 100% response. Our managers and our employees live and die by those surveys. We're constantly working to raise scores that are high to begin with."

Today, more and more companies focus on employee engagement. They develop their managers' skills to stimulate that engagement. Yet one thing to keep in mind is that engagement is merely a tool useful in creating results.

I asked David if DWH aims their employees' engagement at desired outcomes. He quickly offered, "Yes! Engagement is key – but it has to be around the right focus and for us that is delighting the customer. Delighting the customer is our Noble Cause. Our employees are truly engaged in this cause. If a home has a roof leak
after 5 years and the house is 'out of warranty,' we fix it. A roof
should not leak; so we simply fix it.That commitment is telegraphed to our customers and creates very personal relationships during the months of building the new home."

I am always excited by companies that give real life proof that employee engagement produces positive performance that produces successful results. If you know of such a company, I encourage you to let me know about it so I can feature them here.

Use the Comment space or send me an e-mail!

Tags: Employee Engagement, success