Employee Engagement: There’s No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

Dov Seidman’s recent post says that most management efforts at employee engagement have been ‘out to lunch.’   As in, taking employees out to lunch, as if that kind of reward or team-bonding activity had some effective influence on the engagement behaviours of employees. Lunching isn’t inherently a bad thing (depending on how healthy you’re eating I suppose, or if you let anyone drink alcohol) but there’s no proven cause-and-effect relationship with employee engagement. I like this one of Dov’s key points:

“The frequency of lunches, performance reviews, volunteer program outings and team-building exercises does not produce higher levels of employee engagement. Employee engagement is determined by the quality and meaningfulness of these interactions, and the journey managers are enlisting their employees to engage in.”

He makes an excellent point about engaged employees – that “…they exhibit many more specific “engagement traits” – including a willingness to put in a great deal of extra effort, increased loyalty, a greater willingness to recommend their company as an employer of choice, efforts to  inspire others in the company through concrete comments and actions, and similar outcomes – compared to other employees.” It doesn’t matter if they think they’re engaged or not, or if they tick a box on a survey saying they’re a 4 or a 7 on an engagement scale of 1-10 as those abstract measurements are devoid of applicable usefulness. Engagement is observable behaviour.

And please do tip your waiting staff. I’m pretty sure an engaged server wouldn’t spit in your soup.

Zombies In The Workplace

 

“The cost associated with employees who are disengaged and under-performing can be frightening.” Frightening like a zombie movie! Here’s a great graphic from Todd Wasserman that breaks down and aggregates those costs when employers put bodies into roles just to fill a vacancy.

I’ve heard bandied around the rule of thumb that cost of replacing a bad hire and dealing to their collateral damage can be equivalent to their annualised salary.

I wrote an e-book ages ago (available on Amazon) milking the whole ‘employing zombies’ metaphor. At no stage did I ever come up with a line as cool as my favourite ever from a zombie movie, “If you love me, you’d let me eat your brains.” That is a tough one to argue.

Michael Bertrand’s blog post expands on the zombie metaphor, the subsequent costs of disengaged employees and the wisdom of investing more time, effort, money and hiring external consultants in getting it right. I may be a tad cynical about that last one but the general theme is one with which I agree. When it comes to hiring, no body is better than any body.

Are Engaged Employees Healthier?

Smart employers provide a wellness-supportive work environment and try to nudge their employees into healthier lifestyle choices. They’re not being nice, they’re being smart.

This article and this article refer to the latest Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD’s) Employee Outlook survey. Having a job makes people happy, the British government’s wellbeing report has revealed, but experts say that workers’ wellbeing really depends on employee engagement. The report showed that engaged employees score much more highly against the Office for National Statistics’ ‘happiness index.’

Don’t get me started on happiness indexes but the notion sounds about right. “Good managers spend time coaching and developing, providing high quality feedback, and rewarding and recognising good performance.”

“While satisfaction with immediate managers is generally strong, there are continuous issues around a lack of personal development – including coaching on the job, discussing learning and development and giving feedback on performance.

“Perceptions of leaders also need to improve, with views on leaders’ consultation being particularly poor and trust and confidence in leaders falling further this quarter.”

I used to work in local Government. When I started, there was a ‘Rubbish’ department. It became ‘Refuse and Recycling.’ Last I heard, it had become ‘Waste Minimisation.’ These aren’t just superficial labels, they represent a shift in thinking. A similar shift has occurred when it comes to wellness at work. It’s gone from ambulances at the bottom of cliffs (sometimes literally) to prevention and a broadening of scope from the merely physical and work-related.

I’ve worked with organisations that offer subsidised gym memberships, 10,000 Step programmes and reward-point-scoring health insurance schemes. In-house Occupational Therapists teach posture and micro-pausing to the masses, ergonomic furniture is installed while Sven the masseuse takes your shoulder massage booking. I actually saw one company intranet’s homepage announcing the boss was paying for a diet specialist to come in and speak, although this was right next to an advert for the social club’s fish ‘n’ chip evening. I love those situations, like my local supermarket which had a sale bin of toothpaste right next to a sale bin of chocolate bars – 5-for-$4! An aisle of value but also an aisle of irony.

My point here is that even if you’re not an employer that doles out massages and gym memberships, your workplace has a tremendous capacity to affect your people’s physical and mental health one way or the other. That some employers make efforts to bolster worker wellness isn’t altruistic. They reap the benefits of attendance, attitude, engagement, productivity and more. A study published in the U.S. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that for every dollar a worker’s illness cost, the average impact on their employer’s productivity was $2.30. So, for example, preventing staff illnesses causing $10,000 of medical costs could enhance your bottom line by $23,000.

I read a book last Christmas called ‘The Blue Zone. Lessons for living longer from those who’ve lived the longest’ by Dan Buettner. He and his team have studied the four little pockets of humanity where they have a ridiculously long length and quality of life. (None are in New Zealand. They’re in Sardinia, Costa Rica, Japan and California.) There’s a quick online quiz, after which it tells you how long they reckon you’ll live if you keep going the way you’re going and how long you could live if you take their advice. Take the test but do it with friends. (Ironically, doing it with friends is part of their advice.)

I need to get a pet and at least one more friend at ‘organ-donor’ level. Otherwise, I’m pretty sweet. You might be pleasantly surprised at their alcohol and exercise advice. Having a reason to live is important and, for some, work can provide that. Friendship is generally good for your health but there are different levels of friend. I think we all know that. We might not have it written down but we have a ‘friend matrix’ somewhere. When you’re a kid, you need a friend with an X-Box. When you leave home, you need a friend with a van to help you move. When you’re my age, you need a friend with a spare (functional) kidney.

In 2007, Gallup research found that “having a best friend at work” increased the likelihood of someone being engaged at work by 700%. Sarah Burgard from the University of Michigan has shown that job insecurity (fear) causes more illness than actually losing a job. Disconnected employees are more likely to get sick and more likely to miss work. A study by the Confederation of British Industry estimated that fifteen percent of illness days taken were not due to actual illnesses.

A recent episode of TV’s ‘The Biggest Loser’ was filmed in New Zealand. I presume New Zealand paid for this because it seemed that the phrase, “In New Zealand” had to be said at least every ninety seconds. “I’m eating an apple IN NEW ZEALAND.” “I never thought I’d be doing push-ups IN NEW ZEALAND.”

There is a lot of time on screen of exercise, dieting and dramatic weigh-ins which probably makes for good TV but is unlikely to lead to ongoing long-term wellness-supportive lifestyle changes. What does help are social proof, goals, regular non-judgemental behaviour-based feedback and a sense of purpose. Not surprisingly (hopefully), these things are also powerful drivers of workplace behaviours that support not only wellness but productivity and profitability.

An obese person sat next to me on the plane recently. Despite he and I both paying for one seat, he was taking up a good third of my space. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me IN NEW ZEALAND.

Employee Engagement – Gamification, Risks And Focus.

This ComputerWorld article refers to businesses that have used online games to stimulate customer interest, involvement and eventually revenue for the business. “The Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s home loans division has employed gamification to boost revenue. It’s ‘Investorville’ app lets consumers go through a simulated process of property investment, with the aim of making people feel more comfortable about signing up for a CBA home loan.”

The article then goes on to ask the question – Can the same approach rekindle or kindle employee interest, participation, focus and effectiveness? I think I recall reading somewhere that some spy agencies are recruiting using online games. More for the nerd roles than the James Bond roles.

Certainly when you watch gamers, even non-obese ones with reasonable skin conditions, they seem very very focused. If that’s what you’re looking for in an employee then maybe consider gamification. But focus is a double-edged sword. Strong focus on one thing makes the brain very susceptible to not noticing anything else. I heard a radio interview yesterday with adventure racer Steve Gurney who, amongst his many adrenalin-fuelled experiences, had been hit by a train in the middle of a race. He had stopped on the crossing to look for the next marker. He was very competitive and focused on winning what was, in effect, a game. Very focused on one thing. The interviewer asked him how he had come to be hit by the noisy train. “I didn’t notice it…”

That quote might not be exact. Check out the whole interview here. He is an awesome achiever and I’m keen to check out his new book ‘Eating Dirt.’ Here’s the blurb: For adventurer Steve Gurney, life is about taking risks and he fears that New Zealand society has become over-regulated, risk-averse, and wrapped in cotton wool. His challenge is to let children make mistakes, climb trees and play bullrush – to help them learn how to find their limits in later life.

I also highly recommend the book ‘The Invisible Gorilla’ which expands on ‘Inattentional Blindness.’ Gurney’s train incident might be better labelled ‘Over-attentional Blindness.’ It wasn’t that he wasn’t paying attention. He was. It was just that the game blinkered that attention extremely narrowly. And that’s what happens in workplaces where the total focus is limited. Be it money or whatever, if workplace leaders using incentives or gamification to redirect or narrow the focus, just be aware of unintended consequences or the light at the end of your tunnel might be the headlamp of an oncoming train.

And, for banks, it shouldn’t be too hard for a game designer to make a version of Angry Birds called ‘Angry Investors.’