Employee Engagement: Can't Disengage Yet

Employee Engagement is engaging.

Yesterday's post  titled "What Does Employee Engagement Really Mean?" generated a lively and thoughtful conversation through comments and emails.

Why?

Well, I think organizations see the impact of dis-engagement. They react to it because it gets in the way of productivity, growth,retention, and customer satisfaction.

But I think the real driving force behind Employee Engagement are the employees themselves.  There is a generation of workers who are prepared to contribute, but not at the cost of violating a set of values that include:

• A challenging work environment
• Opportunities for growth
• Respectful treatment and interactions

What Are People Saying About Employee Engagement?

Shane at ZoomStart weighed in with some clear and simple observations. He says this:

"In my experience all of these points  boil down into one. Responsibility.

The key is to hire good people and let them do their jobs. When you give people direction without micro-managing them they take ownership of the work they're doing. They're responsible for what happens. They become engaged."

Simon Clay Michael is all about career planning and job searches. Here's his immediate thought:

"I'd add Physical Space to the list.Having spent a lot of time (in a previous life) visiting and working from client sites, it was easy to see that poor work spaces or office appearance did set the "Mood" for the employees, and ultimately their level of engagement.

He later added this to the conversation: " As soon as you said fundamentals, I thought of a more obvious requirement: "Tools". Having the right tools and equipment.

And Peter Vajda expands the topic in a holistic way that includes some questions for reflection:

"Walking the talk" about engagement needs not be discussed and espoused so much as it needs to be lived. It's hard to live the life of engagement, i.e., honest, healthy, mutual relationships, when one is caught up in the daily insecurity of needing to serve one's own ego, when one comes from a "I-You" place rather than a "We" place.

As a manager, when my aim is to support others to achieve their results, to be helpful to others, to view the organization, the team as a group of "people", not objects, right here and right now, then perhaps engagement will be more than a discussion topic, it will actually be a way of life, life at work."

One liners - for me..ask questions to foster engagement, such as:

What's on your mind? What do you think?
What do you want/need to do your best work?
What are we doing/not doing that is inhibiting results?
What will happen if we do/don't (action)?
What won't happen if we do/don't (action)?

And One More Way to Look at Engagement

Kathy Sierra notes that Too Many Companies Are Like Bad Marriages at Creating Passionate Users . Kathy talks about the "before" and "after" customer relationship experience. Try substituting "employee" relationship and see if you are experiencing--or creating--similar situations. I think it's a practical

Thought for Today: Engagement involves a commitment that two people make to each other. Maybe we should stop talking about Employee Engagement. That seems to imply a responsibility on the employee's part. What if we said Employment Engagement? That lends more of a sense of mutuality to the dynamic and requires a two-way commitment to maximize the relationship.

What about that?

Comments

[Alexander Kjerulf]

Good point about engagement going both ways. Too many workplaces are asking employees to be committed to the company - with little or no commitment going the other way.

My only beef with employee engagement is that it sounds kinda uninspiring. Were you engaged today? Does your boss engage you?

Which is why I always talk about happiness at work. The two are virtually synonymous anyway. You can't be engaged at work unless you're happy. You can't be happy if you're not engaged. But happiness just sounds more engaging (heh!) than engagement to me.

Creating a happy workplace sounds like more of a fun, worthwhile and meaningful exercise. It also sounds more like something employees, managers and owners can get behind and work together on.

Bu you probably knew I'd say that Steve :o)

[Shane]

Peter makes a great comment about creating an atmosphere of "We" in the workplace rather than "I-You".

I like to see a balance of both these things. "We" can't take responsibility for what "I or You" did (good or bad). At the same time, "We" learn together, move forward together, create an amazing team, and accomplish things that "I-You" never could alone.

[Steve Roesler]

The Chief Happiness Officer is back!

I like your take on the terminology. There always seems to be some reluctance in business to associate the words happiness and work--as you well know.

The engagement issue is more analytical and diagnostic. For those managers who need to break things into chunks in order to be able to address them, that seems to be a workable approach.

For those who are inherently tuned into the human factor, the whole issue seems like second nature.

[Steve Roesler]

Hey, Shane,

Nice observation about the "we" unable to take responsibility. There are a lot of organizations I've worked with that misinterpreted the idea of teamwork and consensus and ended up diluting their ability to get things done. Why? There was no individual responsibility/accountability for a lot of the action items.