Several articles on Baldrige.com have emphasized the value of employee engagement and satisfaction. “Valuing workforce members” is a Baldrige core value, as the Criteria state: “An organization’s success depends increasingly on an engaged workforce that benefits from meaningful work, clear organizational direction, and performance accountability and that has a safe, trusting, and cooperative environment.”

The best way to evaluate how well you are creating an engaged and satisfied workforce is through a Baldrige assessment using the Baldrige Criteria. You can find out how to do that here.

The Criteria consist of powerful questions, rarely asked, about how an organization functions. If you cannot do a full assessment but want insight into how to improve your workforce focus, here are 10 critical questions to ask and answer:

1. How do you determine the key factors that affect workforce engagement and satisfaction and assess performance on them?
2. How does your culture promote open communication, high-performance work, and an engaged workforce?
3. How does your organization benefit from the diverse ideas, cultures, and thinking of your workforce?
4. How does your workforce performance management system engage employees and support high-performance work?
5. How does your learning and development system address your organization’s core competencies and strategic challenges, action plans, performance improvement, innovation, ethics, employees’ needs, knowledge transfer, and reinforcing new knowledge and skills on the job?
6. How do you manage career progression and succession planning?
7. How do you assess your workforce capability and capacity needs including skills, competencies, and staffing levels, and prepare your workforce for changing needs?
8. How do you recruit, hire, place, and retain new employees?
9. How do you manage and organize your workforce to accomplish the work of your organization?
10. How do you ensure, improve, and measure performance on workforce health, safety, and security, and how do you support employees through policies, services, and benefits?

To read the world-class responses of Baldrige Award recipients to these questions, click here and then click on the award application summary you wish to review. Go to Category 5, Workforce Focus, to learn about how the organization values its workforce.

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