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Workers increasingly expect their employers to provide holistic support that improves their quality of life.
Yet companies find these offerings are frustratingly underutilized despite investments in a wealth of benefits such as mental health and financial assistance. Leaders are now exploring ways to meet employees' expectations while improving their return on investment.
“Companies have put 30, 40, 50 programs out there...[They're] getting between 1% and 5% to 6% engagement rate across the employee population,” said Stephan Scholl, CEO of the IT and consulting company Alight, at a Tuesday roundtable panel at Fortune’s CEO Initiative in Washington, D.C. “CEOs, CHROs, and a lot of CIOs are now playing a much stronger hand in figuring out what do we do?”
At Morgan Lewis, the law firm took an unorthodox approach and formed a new C-suite role in 2019 focused solely on employee engagement: a chief engagement officer.
The chief engagement officer is responsible for the firm's employees' "life interests," including engagement in programming and well-being initiatives, said Jami McKeon, Morgan Lewis chair. Morgan Lewis’s chief engagement officer has trained partners and other supervisors on how to give better feedback and engage with employees and sends weekly alerts in its intranet calling attention to new benefits, new hires, and personal announcements from staffers like marriages or the birth or adoption of children.
McKeon says that communicating existing benefits to employees helps drive engagement, as does creating a dedicated role.
“Just the title says to everybody, 'We're focused on employee engagement, we're focused on an engaged relationship.'"
Employees' distrust of HR may also factor into erecting this new title. Only 21% of employees say they trust the head of HR to tell the truth about what is happening in the organization, according to Edelman’s 2022 Trust Barometer Special Report. While HR is responsible for administering trainings and benefit announcements, this trust issue may impact how and whether workers take advantage of an organization’s full suite of offerings.
“The CHRO isn't trusted, so…chief engagement officer is maybe a refreshing way of dealing with [improving ROI],” said one attendee.
Paige McGlauflin
paige.mcglauflin@fortune.com
@paidion
