After 18 Years, EEA Shifts From Building the Framework and Building a Community, to Expanding Its Impact
Creating the Knowledge Base
What the EEA Has Built
The Next Stage: Enhanced Outreach and Benchmarking
To our knowledge, The Enterprise Engagement Alliance it is the only professional community specifically focused on the strategic and systematic engagement of all stakeholders across the enterprise—employees, customers, distribution and supply chain partners, communities and others whose actions contribute to organizational success. It is a community, learning organization, think tank, and a media company, not an association.
For the first 18 years, the EEA’s primary focus was building the intellectual and practical framework for this emerging field: developing a curriculum based on research and effective practices; creating a community of academics, practitioners and business leaders; and developing practical tools for applying many of the principles that transformed quality management—clear goals, alignment, measurement and continuous improvement—to people management, all communicated through our two weekly newsletters: ESM for enterprise engagement and RRN for total rewards.
Click here to learn more or join the EEA.
Creating the Knowledge Base
Academic oversight has long included Gary Rhoads, EEA Academic Director for Stakeholder Engagement and CX-EX and Professor Emeritus of Marketing and Entrepreneurship at the Marriott School of Business at Brigham Young University. Rhoads has advised the EEA curriculum since development of its original textbook and serves as a liaison with the academic community.Darwin Hanson, EEA Chief Advisor for Human Capital Analytics, CEO and Founder of TM Evolution and President of the International Center for Enterprise Engagement, an advisory firm focused on impact measurement, helps guide the EEA’s work on human capital analytics, total rewards and the application of statistical process controls to people management.
The EEA Impact Council adds another layer of practitioner input. Its advisors represent expertise across stakeholder management, human capital analytics, incentives, recognition, appreciation, channel engagement and other disciplines. The EEA shares with them for review effective-practice content and help develop meaningful measures for employee, customer, sales, channel, supply chain and other engagement activities.
The council is part of a broader network that now includes more than 130 academics, executives, investors, advisors and practitioners who have contributed insights to EEA research, education and forums since its creation.
What the EEA Has Built
Today the EEA provides an integrated collection of education, media, research, assessment and measurement resources:
- Enterprise Engagement: The Roadmap — the comprehensive guide to strategic and tactical enterprise engagement implementation.
- Enterprise Engagement for CEOs: The Little Blue Book for People-Centric Capitalists — an executive introduction to the economics and management principles of creating value through people.
- Engagement Strategies Media and Rewards Recognition Network — weekly media platforms now reaching approximately 20,000 professionals a month in management, HR, sales, marketing, total rewards and related fields.
- EEA Impact Academy and Study Guide — education and certification in enterprise engagement strategy, implementation and measurement.
- EEA Self-Assessment Tools — anonymous tools for professionals to evaluate their own knowledge and the capabilities of engagement solution providers.
- Stakeholder Management Maturity Assessment — a confidential benchmark of an organization’s level of strategic and systematic stakeholder management anyone can access today.
- Enterprise Engagement Index — a transparent framework using financial and workforce information to evaluate how effectively organizations create value through employees and customers.
- People Value Impact Calculator — a framework applying statistical process controls to connect people-related investments with measurable outcomes.
- The Stakeholder Management Forum and Library for Leaders, Academics and Investors brings together academic research, case studies, EEA-produced how-to material and discussions with practitioners and investors containing over 300 how-to and reference resources on all aspects of enterprise engagement and total rewards.
- The EEA YouTube library alone includes more than 75 programs featuring more than 130 speakers and panelists, including: The EEA’s YouTube forums have featured more than 130 speakers and panelists, including former CSX CEO Joe Hinrichs, former WD-40 CEO Garry Ridge, JUST Capital CEO Martin Whittaker, B Lab co-founder Bart Houlahan, ROI Institute founder Jack Phillips, University of Michigan HR authority Dave Ulrich, stakeholder-management pioneer R. Edward Freeman, London Business School Professor Alex Edmans, former Delaware Supreme Court Chief Justice Leo Strine and, reflecting the breadth of the forums, well-known figures such as Seinfeld actor John O’Hurley.
The Next Stage: Enhanced Outreach and Benchmarking
With this infrastructure now in place, the EEA’s next stage is focused on outreach. That means working more closely with the investment community and
reaching senior management in HR, sales and marketing at leading companies—the functions responsible for enormous investments in people but which often operate through separate strategies, budgets and metrics.Benchmarking. One element will be research to benchmark the current state of strategic thinking. The EEA is developing a survey of executives in sales, marketing, human resources and more to determine how many organizations align engagement activities with organizational goals, measure their impact and continuously improve them—and how many still manage incentives, recognition, employee engagement, customer loyalty and related efforts primarily as separate tactics.
The objective is to establish a benchmark, identify the gaps and begin a broader management conversation around a straightforward question: Can organizations apply the same strategic discipline to people that transformed quality and process management around the world?
Senior HR, marketing, sales, financial and management outreach. The EEA has introduced a free professional management membership for C-suite and management in sales, marketing, human resources or in any other part of an organization the consumes engagement services. This free Professional Management membership provides ongoing access and dialogue for those seeking to move toward a strategic and systematic approach to stakeholder engagement across the enterprise, along with basic support for those pursuing certification.
Asset and private equity management managers. As part of the effort, the EEA has developed a highly targeted list of public and private equity management with whom to share the latest research on the connection between stakeholder engagement and long-term financial results.
Business school professors. The EEA has built a targeted database of 200 professors at leading universities in human resources, marketing, and finance to regularly share the latest case studies and research on all aspects of stakeholder engagement.
The business media. The EEA publishes a monthly newsletter for business editors at nearly all the major media in the US as well as at 100 trade publications in leading industries with whom is shared insights and research on all aspects of engagement and systematic use of total rewards.
Case studies and research. Through its RRN and ESM weekly media, the EEA will continue to publish information on companies that practice stakeholder management (known as Golden Rule leaders) as well as on the growing body of research on effective practices and financial impact.
Click here to learn more or to join the EEA.
Enterprise Engagement Alliance Services
Celebrating our 17th year, the Enterprise Engagement Alliance helps organizations enhance performance through:1. Information and marketing opportunities on stakeholder management and total rewards:
- ESM Weekly on stakeholder management since 2009. Click here to subscribe; click here for media kit.
- RRN Weekly on total rewards since 1996. Click here to subscribe; click here for media kit.
- EEA YouTube channel on enterprise engagement, human capital, and total rewards since 2020
Management Academy to enhance future equity value for your organization.3. Books on implementation: Enterprise Engagement for CEOs and Enterprise Engagement: The Roadmap.
4. Advisory services and research: Strategic guidance, learning and certification on stakeholder management, measurement, metrics, and corporate sustainability reporting.
5. Permission-based targeted business development to identify and build relationships with the people most likely to buy.
Contact: Bruce Bolger at TheICEE.org; 914-591-7600, ext. 230.
