Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by Mark Hordes for the Organizational Excellence Journal, published by the Sinclair Group. To read the complete article, check out others, sign up for free email alerts, and obtain information about the firm, please click here.

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It is a common practice for people to visit their physician, insurance agent, stockbroker, accountant and attorney at least once a year to assess and rebalance their lives. So why do many organizations fail to follow this common-sense idea when it comes to assessing the health of their organization?

[Here is the first of four benefits that Hordes discusses.]

1. Provides immediate opportunity for employee involvement and engagement: Partly, it’s because organizations fail to understand four benefits of conducting an Organizational Excellence (OE) best practices assessment at least once a year. Understand the benefits, and you’ll be on your way to helping keep your organization and its people in good health.

Before many organization transformations, leaders ask, “What is the best way to engage and involve our workforce in our Organizational Excellence initiative?”

In an OE survey, leaders and employees reveal what is working and what is not working well with the organization.  A good way to proceed is by having every employee rate the organization against best practices through open-ended questions to provide input on the strengths and weaknesses of the company.

Employees value this opportunity because it gives them immediate access to a platform for involvement, and creates a sense of ownership in the company.  Allowing the entire organization to participate in this type of activity is a best practice.

Having only a sample of the workforce participate can create feelings of separation and cause the organization to lose the input of those who wish to speak up and voice an opinion. When seeking to implement change through an improvement process, creating dissonance among employees leads to resistance, which is very difficult to overcome.

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To take a self-assessment survey and find out where you stand on a variety of crucial categories like change management, employee performance, knowledge management, employee relations, safety practices, energy level and more, please click here.

We will email you two reports — Your organizational profile and a Predictor of Success Scale. We’ll also send you our Leading From Commitment® White Paper and provide a consultant to share ideas for performance improvement based on the findings in your assessment reports. There is no charge or obligation for this meaningful analysis.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Mark Hordes is the Organizational Excellence Practice Leader for Sinclair Group, and has over 30 years of professional experience in organizational design and development, human resources, building high performance organizational cultures and implementing large scale change management transformations. He has worked for and with leading organizations across the globe including, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell Oil, Schlumberger, ConocoPhillips, Baker Hughes, Celanese, as well as other Fortune 500 enterprises.