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Engagement at 3M: A Case Study
Karen B. Paul and Cindy L. Johnson
In tough times, companies increasingly focus on the need to cut costs and be efficient. The goal is to get more done with less. Yet what if instead of cutting programs or focusing on which HR processes could be streamlined and enhanced for better efficiency, HR professionals focused on just optimizing across their entire function? This is essentially the idea behind integrated talent solutions at 3M, a global technology company, which seeks improvement in integration across its HR processes.
Although the idea of integrated talent solutions is relatively simple, its execution is anything but easy. Instead of deliverables from each HR function, the goal becomes delivering integrated solutions for clients. This was essentially the challenge Angela S. Lalor, senior vice president of human resources, gave to the Talent Development and Organizational Effectiveness organization at 3M in 2006. This is the story of how 3M’s human resource function more tightly integrated all of its services through the use of employee engagement and how learning and development came to be the major focal point for the integration.
Aligning HR Processes With the Business Strategy
If HR processes are aligned with the corporate-wide business strategy, integration across HR processes is simpler to achieve. In 3M’s case, this meant enhancing innovation through employee engagement.
Throughout the twentieth century, 3M had an unsurpassed record of breakthrough innovation and bringing new products to markets, earning its place as a Fortune 500 company and frequently appearing on lists of most admired companies. But in 2006, the company was struggling to keep its momentum in driving efficiency gains while reaffirming its commitment to radical innovation.
To meet these challenges, 3M decided to leverage its existing high levels of employee engagement and use engagement as a tool to boost creativity and efficiency simultaneously. Its top management team worked with HR executives to develop corporate and business unit plans to help the company achieve the balance it needed between increased creativity to feed the pipeline of radically new products, on one hand, and the efficiency it needed to turn new ideas into new products and bring them to market at the highest speed and lowest cost possible, on the other hand. To be successful, employees at all levels must be actively engaged or the objectives of developing new products and reviewing existing products and processes to help customers will fall short of expectations.
By taking a different and more consistent approach to employee engagement since 2006, 3M has capitalized on its past successes and improved business performance. It has found that engagement is the key to balancing creativity and efficiency, freedom, and discipline. Its renewed focus on employee engagement has allowed it to boost innovation without losing momentum in its drive to efficiency.
Providing a Unifying Framework and Measurement
As part of the initial rollout, 3M instituted a common worldwide definition and measurement of engagement for all its employees. It defines employee engagement as “an individual’s sense of purpose and focused energy, evident to others in the display of personal initiative, effort, and persistence directed toward organizational goals.” This definition provided not only a common language and framework for employees to learn about engagement, but also the foundation for ways to bring various HR services together to deliver for the businesses. This common definition also allowed for the measurement of perceptions of engagement.
3M has been actively measuring employee attitudes about the workplace since 1951. In 2007, it also started to measure its level of employee engagement. The survey assesses the conditions for engagement, employee perceptions on issues ranging from job challenges to fairness, the relationship with managers and other employees, and actual levels of engagement itself. It also looks at the alignment between the company’s aims and employees’ aims.
The survey is global and standardized throughout the company. This allows 3M to benchmark its results against those of other companies. Standardization provides the basis for the survey to be used as a data-gathering exercise. The data allows for comparisons at the local, divisional, and company levels and provides the basis for developing strategic tools to help the company achieve its goals at these same levels. Further, by providing a baseline measurement of employee engagement, subsequent progress on plans can be tracked and reported.
The objective for this effort is twofold: to create a corporate-wide plan to provide overall education, training, and development on employee engagement and to provide support to the business units to enable them to take action on the concepts communicated in and through the corporate-wide components of the strategy.
Using Leadership Development as the Catalyst for Change
3M started its engagement journey by building the fundamental concepts into its leadership classes worldwide. For subsequent innovation to emerge, it is critical that leaders create the conditions for engagement. 3M views engagement as essentially a leadership responsibility, and as such, leadership development would become a key for success. By leveraging its leadership development programs, 3M was able to educate leaders not only on the conceptual portion of employee engagement, but also to provide practical advice. While a leader is teaching, he or she can provide stronger linkages between leadership (as defined) and how it translates into specific behaviors.
The cornerstone of 3M’s leadership development programs is the concept of leaders teaching leaders. Senior executives teach other executives, which in practice is an engagement exercise in itself. The leaders quickly learn which practices are the most successful with other leaders. The process of leaders teaching leaders also provides a model for participants on how to engage people. Leaders also share their own individual success stories and their approaches to engagement.
Action learning is another key component of 3M’s leadership development programs. In action learning, participants, whether in the company’s Accelerated Leadership Development Program or Emerging Leaders Program, are charged with a business problem to solve with a group of other participants. Typically, each group is given about 10 days to solve their problem. Conclusions of the projects are reported back and debriefed in front of the CEO and those who report directly to him as part of the last day of the experience.
The CEO also sets an example by teaching in 3M’s Leadership Development Institute. This modeling by example has led 3M senior executives to take very seriously their roles as teachers in 3M leadership programs. The CEO is also an active mentor and has all top executives serve as mentors in a formal program. Each executive has two mentees for a one-year period, with an emphasis on diversity.
Feedback from 3M’s leadership development programs also provides reciprocal loop learning for human resources both in terms of future topics that should be covered as well as how seamlessly HR processes are working to provide solutions. 3M’s leadership development programs have been honored with both Fortune’s 2009–10 Global and North American Top Companies for Leaders and CEO Magazine’s 2009 Best Companies for Leaders.
Most recently, leadership development staff have been raising the bar on their own award-winning approach. In the nine years that 3M has offered the Accelerated Leadership Development Program (ALDP), 71 action learning projects were successfully completed during 23 sessions.
Participants and experts outside the company have recognized the program as highly successful on a number of fronts. To adapt the program so that it connects to the new Emerging Leaders Program, the following changes were made for 2010:
Each action learning project will have an economic goal of at least $25 million in new sales. This goal will be achieved without reducing existing international growth plans or division strategic plans.
These changes help cultivate the growth mindset of 3M’s subsidiary leaders and to achieve the company’s leadership development objectives. Typically, an ALDP team has 60 to 70 hours to develop and recommend a solution to the CEO, operations committee, and sponsors, after which the sponsor is left to resource and implement the plan. Under the new approach, ALDP teams create the global direction and strategic intent for their projects. The results from the projects become the starting point for the action leaning projects in the Emerging Leaders Program.
The new Emerging Leaders Program is designed to address the issue of rapid growth and how to maximize 3M’s capabilities worldwide. For the first session, participants are from three global regions: Central Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America.
The emerging leaders have 50 to 60 hours of action learning in which to build a plan to implement or alter the ALDP project recommendations in their region or country. Those plans are then reviewed for resource approval by the area vice presidents. After the program is completed, the participants will be expected to work approximately 15 percent of their time during the next 12 months implementing their plans. Additionally, there would be two or three review meetings when the emerging leaders group in the three global regions would report their lessons and results to their executive sponsors.
This change has created a very exciting and challenging learning experience, and the monetary goal has raised the stakes for both senior executives and participants alike. Action learning projects are now enjoying their highest scores since their inception in 2001. Commentary from leaders participating and teaching reflects the highest level of engagement, with class scores moving from 4.68 to 4.82 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most engaged. Leadership development at 3M has become a catalyst for change and engagement.
Providing Education and Tools
Another prominent component of 3M’s support for engagement is education. 3M deploys learning modules delivered in traditional classroom settings as well as utilizing intranet-based training. As part of the initial rollout, 3M trained HR employees worldwide on engagement and provided a tool kit for HR business partners to use with their organizations to improve engagement.
For example, one item in the tool kit is the employment value tool. This tool is a discussion guide for supervisors, which supervisors are then trained to use, to help them discuss with their employees what areas and types of work are most engaging. The discussion is voluntary on the part of the employee and begins with the employees completing a form that they deliver to their supervisors before the discussion. The process is optional. Then, based on the information in the form, the manager holds a discussion with the employee. The discussion focuses on the employee’s view of his or her current work and position, development opportunities, compensation, benefits, management and work environment, and a variety of other factors. The outcome of this discussion helps a supervisor better understand the individual’s wants and needs, what motivates them, and how best to engage each employee.
To further educate supervisors, a series of engagement videos were created. Each video is no more than 10 minutes in length. The purpose of the video is to elaborate on an important component of engagement.
Topics have ranged from the business case for engagement to the importance of trust, especially during hard economic times. Angela Lalor, senior VP of human resources, introduces and positions each video. A typical video highlights a senior executive providing a point of view on the topic followed by a subject matter expert providing a skill-building component.
3M also uses social media to educate employees. In fact, 3M has used social media extensively (for example, DIY Video—a YouTube-like internal video posting system, blogs, wikis, and an internal social networking site). A recent employee engagement video contest helped to unleash the creative energies of employees and provided new tools and techniques for creating new patterns of communication and also as a method for engaging employees. The purpose of the video contest was to encourage the use of social media within the company and to provide video footage that could be used for elaborating on key messages such as employee engagement for 3M. Several winning entries can be seen on the 3M Careers Facebook page. 3M has found that engagement and leadership development are key topics of interest among many new recruits and that the video contest was a fun method of providing information and giving applicants an insider’s view of both employee engagement and 3M.
Aligning HR Processes to Deliver Solutions
A company that develops and hopes to maintain a culture of innovation must actively manage and engage talent at all levels. At the core of 3M’s Human Resource Principles is “respect for people,” which provides a strong, solid foundation for talent processes. The 3M Human Resource Principles are
3M also changed its Leadership Attributes to underscore the importance of employee engagement as a leadership responsibility. The 3M Leadership Attributes are
Make courageous decisions.
Think from the outside in.
Drive innovation and growth.
Develop, teach, and engage others.
Lead with energy, passion, and urgency.
Live 3M values.
3M’s Leadership Attributes serve as the common thread aligning its HR processes and practices. The Leadership Attributes serve as the foundation for all of 3M’s upper-level leadership development courses. As part of these courses, leaders participate in a 360-degree process whereby they are given feedback and coaching on the Leadership Attributes. There is also a 360-degree process available to all employees that provides feedback on the Leadership Attributes and advice and guidance for a development plan based on the scores. In 3M’s talent development process, leaders are identified through the businesses during management team reviews, which review individuals as part of the performance management cycle. Before these meetings, individuals self-define their contributions in terms of what they delivered versus what they committed to deliver. During the consensus management team review, there is also an assessment of the individual’s leadership attributes.
To get a cross-sectional look at talent, 3M instituted functional (or tier) reviews. Here all employees belonging to a functional grouping (for example, engineering, or R&D) are reviewed regardless of their business unit to get a functional perspective on the organization and talent.
These various assessments roll into the “Health of the Organization” process, where more factors are calibrated, including further development and reward and recognition. All the information from these processes feeds succession planning. Each month, the CEO holds reviews of talent and placements. Twice a year, during the “Health of the Organization” process, he personally reviews each business’s talent pipeline with them and reviews how they are developing talent.
3M’s talent mindset also helps it maintain a balance between current human capital needs and those of the changing market. To do this, the company seeks to strike a careful balance between developing people within the corporation and attracting new and experienced talent from outside the company. New innovations and business strategies can often be most quickly realized with existing internal talent. In other situations, specific knowledge needs may make external talent the approach of choice. A connection to the business strategy and a knowledge of the talent needs and talent capabilities of the particular business unit are critical to engaging all essential talent.
The company has always relied heavily upon employee engagement. Innovation, arguably 3M’s most treasured asset, rests upon and is fueled by employee engagement. New employees at 3M quickly learn of the expectations around involvement and taking action. Thus, it was natural for 3M to treat employee engagement as part of the innovation process—something powered by concerned employees working to solve customer challenges.
Management plays a big role in engaging employees and giving them the best opportunity to innovate. Through employee engagement, management makes sure that the aims of the firm and those of its employees are aligned. They encourage risk taking. They reassure employees that innovation is a priority, that they have the support and backing of executive management, and that failure will be tolerated. They cultivate trust in management through timely and meaningful feedback and discussion and by rewarding employees for taking risks and for success in bringing new products to market, by giving them cash rewards, status elevations, or promotions, according to what managers feel will be the most valued.
But ultimately, innovation comes from engaged employees who are able and willing to put their best effort, passion, and energy into creating new products, thus actively seeking feedback from customers, networking with peers within and outside the firm, seeking more experienced mentors, taking the time to “tinker,” showing resilience and persistence when faced with early failures, and taking risks.
HR’s job at 3M is to facilitate the integration of the firm’s business processes and practices to ensure that its culture is one that sustains engagement and innovation over time. At 3M, managing and engaging talent isn’t an annual “event” but a continuous process, composed of various integrated subprocesses, evaluations, and tools.
About the Authors
Karen B. Paul is manager of HR measurement, talent solutions, at 3M. Previously, she was the talent manager for several of 3M’s global big businesses. Before joining 3M, she was manager of research and development at NCS Pearson. Her articles have been published in the Journal of Applied Psychology and T+D, and her work on employee engagement was profiled as a best practice case by the Conference Board. She co-wrote the chapter “Selection in Multinational Corporations” in the Handbook of Employee Selection (with Paula Caligiuri; Erlbaum, 2010). She received her PhD in industrial and organizational psychology from Bowling Green State University.
Cindy L. Johnson is director of talent development, talent solutions, 3M. The focus of her work is designing and building accelerated global talent development programs for 3M’s future leaders. She conceptualized and developed the Leadership Continuum, a career-long growth process for 3M employees through the executive levels based on global leadership competencies. And she recently completed a two-year project managing the design and building of 3M’s new Leadership Development Institute. She has more than 25 years’ experience in executive and global leadership development, employee development programs, and facility management.