The Employee Engagement Racket

This blog post from Liz Ryan reckons employee engagement is a racket for HR consultants to lever their way into organisations’ budgets preaching the faux theory de jour:

“Every decade or so, a bright new theory about managing people gets HR chiefs all excited… What is Employee Engagement? It’s a made-up construct that seeks to measure how well our employees like us. We used to talk about employee morale…”

Given how she defines employee engagement, I agree a bit with her. Quite a bit. If it is just another phrase for employe morale, I’ve blogged repeatedly how that doesn’t have that much to do by itself directly with productivity and profitability or even being a decent place to work. What people think they feel or say they think they feel on a survey is probably not worth the time to collect.

However, that’s not the true definition of employee engagement as measured by directly observable discretionary behaviour by employees. They don’t have to be happy or be able to recite the company’s mission from memory. Those two things may or may not contribute to a state of mind where the employee applies discretionary effort. That’s employee engagement – doing more than you have to, more than you’re told to – seeking improved mastery, autonomy and a sense of purpose, driven by heightened self awareness and a desire to influence others.

By that true (truer?) definition, I would not agree with Liz. Not about employee engagement anyways. I probably would about the whole general  ‘racket for HR consultants to lever their way into organisations’ budgets preaching the faux theory de jour’ thing. That happens all the time and for $3500 a day, I’ll tell you all about it. Might even draft up a survey…

I Like The Product So Much That I Bought The Company

I recall an advert from a couple of decades ago where a chap was so enamoured with his electric shaver that he bought the company.

This article references a four-year study showing that simple share ownership, not owning the entire company or a majority or even a significant slice but mere share ownership, improves employee engagement. No doubt the Microsofts, Apples and Googles of this world would agree with that. Actually, I have no idea. In my mind or imagination I have an image of their creative types slaving away out of a sense of purpose and mission. Might just have been a movie. Or three movies.

Here are some other perspectives and some more depth.
My problem with surveys, once again, is the futility of asking people if they would work harder if they had owned shares in the company for which they worked. Asking people their intended conditional behaviours is lazy. Better to observe and compare their actual behaviours under different conditions. ie working with and without share ownership or before and after.

But let’s take the predictable findings at face value. I am a sole contractor. I own my company. I am my company. I’ve never worked harder or been more engaged. I think share ownership as part of remuneration might work pretty well and move people in the direction of hugely engaged owner-operator types but it’ll never quite get to that level. I like my product so much that I AM the company.

Employers delude themselves over staff engagement levels

Depressingly but unsurprisingly there may be a gap between what bosses think workers think and what workers actually think, or at least what they say they think.

This article references a couple of surveys making these 'revelations.'
Supposedly, two out of five employers described staff morale as either ‘high’ or ‘very high.' A different survey, this time of employees, showed that almost three out of five seemed to have adopted a ‘not bothered’ attitude to work.
Have a read and have a ponder on the implications. To me, one of the fundamental underpinnings of genuine employee engagement is a  sense of common purpose and clear shared expectations between everyone involved in the work - be they employer or employee. A lack of that will lead to lower engagement and a subsequent loss of productivity and profitability benefits.

The trouble with the results of those UK surveys (if they're accurate) is not only is there that lack of a sense of common purpose and clear shared expectations between everyone involved in the work but there's an absence of any meaningful and systemic communication to capture that gap and reduce it.

We shouldn't be relying on external, averaged and general surveys to tell us what is entirely predictable and, if not avoidable, at least simply mitigated through observation and enquiry.

There'll always be gaps between perceptions of employers and employees. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them change their spots.