Congratulations On Your Engagement

Today’s business section in the Herald runs my latest column on employee engagement.

Q: I want to be a great leader. What’s this thing called “employee engagement” I’ve been hearing about? Is it just consultants coming up with some new term to sell me their services, or what? I’m hoping it’s real. Economic times are tough. I need something to get more out of the team I lead. – Bewildered of Birkenhead

A: Dear Bewildered of Birkenhead,

The phrase “employee engagement” might be new and it certainly is flavour of the month in leadership literature, but the underlying concept is true and timeless human nature.
Employee engagement is not “morale” or “satisfaction” or “happiness”. Plenty of unhappy people are highly productive and plenty of deliriously happy folk are fine with showing up, punching a clock, getting paid and going home regardless of whether anything productive happens. Employee engagement is the extent to which an employee chooses to apply discretionary effort. It’s doing more than you have to because you choose to.
So, there are engaged employees doing more than they have to, present employees who do only what they have to, and disengaged employees who are reading this careers section at work to find a new job with anyone who isn’t you.

The numbers vary a little across time, industry and geography, but they’re remarkably consistent: 26 per cent are engaged, 28 per cent are disengaged and 46 per cent are present.

These are averages. What are the proportions in your workplace?

Click here for more…

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.

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.

Best Friends At Work?

I read this New York Times’ article about how it is supposed to be harder to make friends once you pass the age of 30 and it reminded me of some old Gallup surveys I saw on employee engagement citing “having a best friend at work” as an indicator of employee engagement.

The article itself is quite interesting as someone myself who recently nudged over the line of [SPOILER ALERT] being closer to 60 than 30. Just. Recently.
“Gallup also observed that employees who report having a best friend at work were:

• 43% more likely to report having received praise or recognition for their work in the last seven days.
• 37% more likely to report that someone at work encourages their development.
• 35% more likely to report coworker commitment to quality.
• 28% more likely to report that in the last six months, someone at work has talked to them about their progress.
• 27% more likely to report that the mission of their company makes them feel their job is important.
• 27% more likely to report that their opinions seem to count at work.
• 21% more likely to report that at work, they have the opportunity to do what they do best every day.”

I don’t know if ‘having a best friend at work’ really is a major driver of employee engagement. It stirs up conversations for sure whenever I bring it up in workshops. Even Gallup referred to it as “controversial” but they stuck by it. I guess I can see it as symptomatic of a workplace culture that allows trust, belonging, contribution, support and all those good things that do definitely drive engagement. Certainly, on the flipside, those without employment at any time also lose a massive chunk of chance to interact socially which us humans definitely need. Losing a job isn’t just losing a pay-cheque.

So, what does work provide that potentially generates and builds friendships?

“As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other…”

Where these days (or ever) do those conditions occur? Schools and workplaces. And if you’re over 30, you’re probably not at school anymore. (Maybe we all should be?) Unless you’re a teacher. But then, that also counts a workplace. Teachers must have lots of friends.

Top 5 Factors To Win Over Staff

This article in a newspaper over the weekend created a sense of conflict within me. Firstly, it made me use the term “newspaper” when paper never entered into it. I read the headline online via my iPhone and emailed the link to it to myself so I could access it on my laptop at home and refer you to it when I got around to next posting on my blog. No paper was involved, yet I still used the term “newspaper.” That aint going away in a hurry.

Secondly, it’s painfully obvious that a lazy or perhaps pressured and under-resourced media outlet pretty much regurgitated verbatim much, if not all, of a press release. If you told me it was a paid placement I wouldn’t be surprised.

The sense of conflict in me  I mentioned earlier comes from me mostly agreeing with much of what it says. Yet again, I’ll stress that I believe there is a major difference between true employee engagement that drives productivity and profitability and everyone just being happy and this being a great place to work. If I worked in a car factory that let me take home a new car every night, I’m sure I would think and tell everyone I knew, including Fairfax’s business news ‘reporters’, that this factory was a “great place to work.” It doesn’t mean I’m actively engaged and it doesn’t help productivity and profitability. That said, their key points aren’t a million miles away from the drivers of true engagement which I reckon are self awareness, autonomy, mastery, purpose and developing others. Their top 5 factors to win over staff are:

1. Set clear expectations
2. Communicate well
3. Shared company values
4. Reward and recognition
5. Promote within

Assuming there is a company mission that could connect with individual employees’ senses of purpose, the top 3 definitely reinforce the driver of purpose and self awareness. Numbers 4 and 5 reinforce mastery and developing others. So, on balance, I like this research and its findings if not the article per se. (Once again, I’ll confess the reason I like it is because it agrees with me.)

More internal conflict is generated for me as its primary superstar employer is Chorus. I don’t know the company that well. I’ve never worked with them or for them. They’re one of the companies that fell out of the restructuring of New Zealand Telecom. Their vans are double parked all over our country whilst men and women with pliers are up to their armpits in cables. They may do more than this. Other than hearing about them in the business news due to the restructuring, their other claim to fame in my memory was shunting those people with pliers out, away from being ‘employees’ and into being ‘self-employed contractors.’ Away from all that security and benefits and overheads and inclusiveness and legislative protection.

I am a self-employed contractor. I love it. I chose it. I’m not dissing the business model. I am wondering if perhaps Chorus’s current high levels of employee engagement might be due to them only surveying employees? Much of the actual working workforce performing their actual core business are no longer employees, they’re self-employed contractors. They may not be so happy – or engaged. If Chorus did include them than bloody well done. They must have handled the displacement and contracting process with Saint-like genius and I’d applaud them for that. If.

Read the article but be warned, do not eat beforehand. The gratuitous self-martyring of some of the bosses quoted may cause you nausea. I especially liked one HR Manager’s story of refusing 3 attempts to upgrade her airline seat so she wouldn’t put herself above anyone else. I got the same sickly-sweet feeling that much non-business class airline food causes.
The other sense of conflict it caused me is that it made me struggle to work out the possessive of Chorus and apostrophes and the need for an extra s. Is it Chorus’ or Chorus’s or something else?