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.’

Time Flies When You’re Having Fun… At Work?

 

This article out of ‘Medical Daily’ cites some research published in ‘Psychological Science’. It seems that our perception of the passing of time is affected by positive approach motivation (fun.) This is as true at work as it is anywhere else. If you gotta be there no matter what to make rent, you may as well not be miserable while you’re there (at the very least.) If nothing else, the days will go by quicker.

I spent quite a few years performing stand-up comedy. My speaking and MCing for corporates and at conferences still involves a lot of humour but I’ve been winding down my pure comedy activities for a couple of years as I’ve been increasing my efforts on training and writing. BUT this past couple of weeks for a couple of reasons, my passion and energy has bounced back for comedy and I’ve done a couple of gigs. All new material. Terrifying and exciting myself. And they’ve gone surprisingly well. I’m once again keen to tear it up a bit.

 

Comedians get a prescribed timeslot. My gigs were 8 minutes and 20 minutes. You get flashed a red light when your time is up. It’s the 2nd worst thing to do to go over time. When it’s going well and you’re having fun, time flies.

I hope you brain-based bosses know this intuitively. It’s great there’s some research to back it up. I think I’m posting this one just for me…

Do You Keep Repeating Ineffective Management Behaviours?

This blog post by Kevin Herring kicks off by referencing the popular definition of insanity often credited to Einstein – that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. (If I’m going to write a blog called ‘The Brain-Based Boss’, it’s only fair that I entertain some metaphors and allegories on mental illness.)

Kevin supplies a great case study from his work with one manager and one high-potential / under-achieving employee. Years of repeated and ineffective ‘pep talks’ took place. They did the same thing over and over again and expected a different result. The boss chose to break the cycle and got a different (and better) result. If you want the details of the happy ending, go read Kevin’s post.

Maybe it’s a potentially great quote or maybe it’s something wise I actually thought of myself but I find myself saying sometimes that the two best times to change how things are done is when things are going badly and when things are going great. I am not a big fan of the ‘if things aint broke, don’t try and fix ‘em’ school of thinking. The rate of change and the level of interdependence are such these days that to expect the external marketplace to keep on some hopeful status quo path is pretty unrealistic. Change when you choose to before you have to change when you’re forced to.

Kevin calls it a ‘conversation inventory’ – a deliberate, proactive and scheduled effort to catch yourself falling into these tickbox patterns of management behaviour, repeated cycles of failed attempts to influence the behaviour of others.

Worth a go. Be crazy not to.

Has Employee Engagement Become Nothing More Than Cliche?

Is all the talk around employee engagement just fluff?

This HR Magazine editorial is hopefully a slap in the face to those employers who enter ‘best workplace’ contests or initiate workplace culture surveys for the wrong reasons. I always ask people why they do things – not just these things but any things. The primary driver for such contests and surveys should be to improve performance, productivity and profitability. The driver should not be about winning a trophy. By all means win trophies but they are means to an end not ends in themselves. As the editorial itself says, “…is there a risk that the purpose of engagement – ensuring colleagues apply themselves to their jobs, for a better overall performance – is being lost in the race for points?”

“…the real commercial benefit comes when actions are taken on the findings, driving broader business strategy.”

One interviewed HR Director commented, “”Perhaps it’s because I spent too much time analysing our Best Companies data and noticed all the questions are about how good people feel, with barely a nod to how conscientiously they apply themselves to their work.” And that is what employee engagement is, not that people feel happy or not. Or even whether they feel engaged or not. It is their observable behaviour of applying discretionary effort.

In the interests of consistency I’d also like to point out that I like this editorial because it agrees with me. I am nothing if not consistent.

The Future Of Employee Engagement Surveys

 

This HR Magazine article  by Samantha Arnold makes some excellent points about the problems with surveys as they are commonly conducted and gives some advice for using them effectively. Its well written, concise and agrees with what I think. I like it.

Don’t get hung up on response rates. Create a results focus. Make it easy for managers. Make it business-relevant. All good ideas. Even the one commentor so far makes a great point – you absolutely must provide follow up!
My own two cents’ worth would be about the very existence of a survey in the first place. Mailing out sheets of paper or emailing a link to an online survey to already very busy people is only going to be a great idea if the information coming back is going to be both useful and used. HR folk and managers reading articles or approached by consultants quoting other bits of research often provoke some employers into conducting a survey of their own. I applaud research and information gathering. I’m less enamoured with the shotgun-spraying of surveys.

Even if you find out that x% of those of your employees who responded think they’re engaged or not engaged compared to y% which is the national or industry average, what do you do with that? AND whether or not employees think they are engaged isn’t the actual indicator of engagement. That is their behaviour. A self-completed survey of what people think is interesting and may reveal actions that need to be taken BUT it won’t and can’t reveal engagement. That needs to be observed.

Engagement is not morale or climate or happiness. It is the observation of discretionary effort. Make the effort and get out and observe. That’s useful, accurate, objective and gets to your brain a lot quicker than the aggregated results of a survey.

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.

The Great Divide – Rob O’Neill’s Article On The Employee Engagement Gap In New Zealand

Rob’s article yesterday gave a very detailed snapshot of a study into the current state of employee engagement in New Zealand and, to a lesser degree, compared with Australia. I have one bugbear with something that someone from the research company said that worries me which I’ll turn to soon but the article as a whole and its primary conclusions were spot-on, I think.

That primary conclusion was reflected in the article’s title – there’s a big difference between the engagement levels of the bosses compared to the bossed. The opening paragraphs screams it out, “A massive gulf is emerging not just between managers and workers in this country, but also between senior managers and middle management – and that will damage productivity, both management experts and unions are warning.”

The average figures generally reflect other engagement studies. About a third of people are disengaged. BUT when they stratified their findings by pay-grade, the startling gaps became plain. “57 per cent of leaders were engaged at work while just 32 per cent of non-managers – or those people that actually do the work – were engaged, a 25 percentage point difference.”

While the disparity between bosses and the bossed is a worry, let’s look at that 32% of non-managers who actually are supposedly engaged. Other studies have shown that to be in the mid 20s so 32% is less bad. (In New Zealand we use the phrase “less bad” way too much.) Other studies routinely show, with some variation here and there, about a quarter of workers are engaged and a quarter disengaged. The rest are ‘present.’ They show up, consume oxygen, do what they’re told to or paid for and no more. That’s where the greatest  performance improvement potential lies.

Here’s my beef from just one quote in the article from one of the researchers, “Only a third of New Zealand employees without management responsibilities report feeling engaged at work…”

Report feeling engaged! To me, what people report they think they feel is perhaps interesting but that is not engagement. Engagement is a set of observable behaviours which, to be fair, the article does go on to outline later. To me, the most basic, yet critical, of which is the acid test of engagement. The engagement that leads to the productivity and profitability benefits not just changes in people’s feelings. That acid test is discretionary effort.

People can say they feel motivated or unmotivated or engaged or disengaged or any number of adjectives. It may or not be accurate but what matters is their observable behaviour, not what they report they feel. If the research cited in the article was a genuine measurement of actual behaviour reflecting the correct definition of engagement then the startling gap is indeed a worry. I myself only have three facial expressions and one of them is startled so I’m OK.

The research company is also in the business of selling solutions to the problems they just identified. I can’t bag them for this. Why else does research ever get done? (One of my other facial expressions is cynical.) That said, I can’t disagree with their generalised solution guidleines:

1. Be visible and available for people throughout the organisation,
2. Build an environment of openness and trust,
3. Connect your employees and their work to a shared vision and values.

I’m always raving on about autonomy, mastery and purpose being great drivers of engagement. Their point 3 certainly ties in with purpose. Their point 2 seems synonymous with autonomy. So while I’ve nitpicked a bit, its a great article and seemingly research highlighting a problem that needs addressing.
Someone should definitely do something about it. That’s where my third facial expression arrives – looking around innocently…

Can Crowdsourcing Improve Employee Performance?

This recent item from CBS News considers how looking to co-workers for feedback might be an improvement on the traditional linear boss-worker performance reviewer-reviewee relationship. According to a study it cites, 45 percent of HR leaders don’t believe that employees’ annual performance reviews accurately reflect the quality of their work. As an employee, I certainly never believed that (unless it equaled or exceeded my own expectations.)
The article doesn’t go into the practicalities of how it could or should be done but they stipulate 3 benefits:

1. Capture feedback continuously
2. Widen the circle
3. Feedback is genuine

For all its downsides, the traditional one-on-one approach is simple. (But is that sufficient reason to keep it alive?) Probably all the benefits of a peer-to-peer feedback system could be incorporated into a traditional approach – if the manager could be bothered getting out and seeking and aggregating the feedback. Which is, of course, where it falls down.
The aggregation is important to keep it honest and timely so it’s not just all warm and fuzzy cuddle feedback but open and honest corrective feedback too. As grand as crowdsourced feedback would be if it could be practically done, there definitely needs to be a means of keeping a practical ratio of positive and negative.

Psychologist Marcial Losada’s 1999 study looked at communication in teams, particularly the ratio of positive to negative statements. Various teams were tagged as being high, medium or low performing teams based on profitability, customer satisfaction and evaluations from management. The lowest high performing teams has a ratio of positive to negative statements of 2.9013:1. (For us non-academics, let’s round that to 3:1.) The highest performing teams averaged around 6:1. But there were diminishing returns and eventually a negative effect. Some of the worst performing teams had an 11:1 ratio so everyone must have been so busy hugging and bestowing warm fuzzies on everyone else, that no one ever did any actual productive work. That level of positivity is over-the-top, unrealistic and evidently not productive.

What’s so special about this magical zone of positivity? Losada says a highly connected team balances internal and external focus while also balancing enquiry and advocacy. If you’ve ever been in a highly negative workplace, you’ll know what he’s talking about. If you do something and make a mistake and you get slapped with blame and negativity, that drives the behaviours of avoidance and defensiveness.

Isn’t that right, you moron?

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?

Some UK Employee Engagement Stats

This company’s website has some useful overview stats on employee engagement, especially the consequential benefits. It’s simply but very effectively presented in graphical form. Nice job. Some telling stats too – such as 75% of managers having no engagement strategy despite 90% of them stating that they know it’s important and impactful on business success.

Who Says Work Has To Be Fulfilling?

 

This HBR Blog post  poses a challenging and provocative question for those of us who seem to always be championing that workplaces should attract engaged employees and provide them an environment and culture that nurtures employee engagement. I’m one of those champions who sees a bedrock foundation of such a culture as having to include providing meaning for the people from their work – a purpose to get out of bed and zip in to work beyond the mere collecting of a paycheck. (Not ‘instead of’ but ‘as well as’, although there are many for whom it is ‘instead of’ and good on them but that is neither practical nor desirable for everyone.)

My scan of their post makes me think that they’re saying, “fageddaboutit.” Its too hard to find a fulfilling job. You have to make rent. Suck it up and suffer a crappy third of your day every day and whore yourself out for a buck. Even if you do luck your way into a fulfilling job, it won’t last. Get your jollies in your spare time. Be realistic.

They make many good and fair points. We do have to make rent. So do the people you lead. If everyone really was solely out to get fulfilled by their work above earning a wage, wouldn’t a lot more of us be working on water purification projects in Sub-Saharan Africa? But I can’t just let it slide. My view on getting meaning or fulfillment from your work (and the guts of what I try and advise my kids) is, Be realistic and aspirational.

Starting out, a lot of people flip a lot of burgers, push a lot of trolleys and pump a lot of gas. Substitute whatever jobs you personally perceive as being unfulfilling. I work with a lot of senior and highly qualified professionals who get an immense amount of achievement and satisfaction from their work on top of a kickass paycheque. But I work with a lot more front-line and first-time supervisors who don’t have that kickass paycheque and who don’t YET get an immense amount of achievement and satisfaction from their work – but they might.

I’m not extrapolating from the 100 or so employees I’ve worked with in the past year who stack vegetables that everyone can be fulfilled by such a routine and repetitious set of tasks. But some people can and do. I’ve met and worked with them. Most don’t. They punch a clock, make a buck and move on. Maybe their lettuce-stacking enables them to buy the turntable that launches their MC / DJ career? The moving on in the search for the possibility of eventual fulfillment is as much a driver of employee engagement as actually ever arriving at some magical and transitory arrival point called ‘fulfillment.’

Employee Engagement And The Workplace Environment

 

This blog from TNS quite rightly suggests that the workplace environment is more than merely “the physical characteristics that make up a workplace.” It goes on to suggest that resource supply is a critical influencer of employee engagement. I agree but think they could have gone a lot further and deeper with their point.

Hopefully, most employers are keen to create a productive workplace and go about the relatively easy task of setting up the physical space in which work occurs. Many things are highly prescribed by law such as workplace safety or incentifized by potential downstream costs such as using ergonomic workstations to prevent the costs of lost-time injury due to occupational overuse syndrome or whatever it’s called these days. They’ll install heaters, fans, air conditioning, legionnaires disease filters, white strips on staircase steps, adjustable chairs and so forth. Those things are tangible, observable and relatively easy.

Employee Engagement Is Influenced By An Interdependent Workplace Eco System

I prefer to think of the workplace environment as a bit like an eco system and I have worked in a few swamplike places over the years. But, of course, I mean eco system in the sense of non-obvious interdependencies. The physical, cultural, social and many other words ending in “al” aspects of the workplace combine to produce whatever level of effectiveness and productivity you’re currently enjoying (or enduring.)

No doubt, you may have someone who has it in their job description to make sure the aircon works and the chairs are adjusted, perhaps even one or more people whose job is nothing but doing those things. But whose job is it to make sure the non-obvious and non-tangible environmental factors are at least acceptable and hopefully improving? The boss you say? Sure, why not?
Me, I say it’s part of everyone’s job. If workplace leaders are hiring inherently engaged and motivated people and desire to create a workplace culture that nurtures genuine engagement, then those employees should have zero qualms about speaking up or taking action themselves. The boss can too (and should.) The boss certainly bears the ultimate responsibility but it should be everyone’s job.

Then again, it should only ever rain at night.

Kudos – Can Automating Employee Recognition Enhance Employee Engagement?

I was recently contacted by someone from marketing at a company called Kudos - a polite and literate human, not a bot. They asked if I’d blog about their product. This was new to me. There’s no commission nor would I seek one. I don’t use their product – I’m a self-employed sole-charge contractor. I give myself recognition all the time which probably could be a bit more positive than it is, although some days I think I’m way too fabulous.

I knew (and know) not very much about the specifics of Kudos beyond their website and what other bloggers reveal. So, don’t think for a moment I’m formally recommending them at all, or commenting on the reliability or functionality of their offering one way or the other. I’m not because I can’t and I shouldn’t. Plus, as I said, not only am I a a self-employed sole-charge contractor, I also have a history of being flippant with a sideline as a professional stand-up comedian making serious business points using humour as a lever.

So, after that long introductory proviso, I like the idea of Kudos. That’s all I’m even remotely qualified to comment upon.

I like that here is a possible solution to the problem I’ve personally encountered with managing operations that are 24/7 and / or geographically distributed. As I said, I sometimes think I’m pretty fabulous but no amount of fabulousness makes you omniscient or ominprescent. You cannot be everywhere at all times. Tons of things are happening in the workplaces you’re supposed to be leading when you’re, quite simply, not there. You can’t be. And no matter how charged up you are about “catching people doing things right” and how committed you are to ensuring your people get all the positive reinforcement and corrective feedback they need, you, alone, simply cannot.
I paraphrase Tom Peters (I think) a lot when I say the true test of your communication / leadership / whatever is what happens when you’re not around. A challenge I often throw at people I train is how can you be more influential over what happens when you’re not around. The idea of Kudos seems to be a great tool for helping here.

In your absence, employees can give each other feedback online and you can be kept in the loop. If it works and if some tricky bits can be handled well, then this has the potential to be very helpful. If you’ve ever sent an email that someone else has misinterpreted, then you’ll know what I imply by “tricky bits.” And, in the same way as email in some workplaces has laughingly replaced face-to-face communication lies a potential pitfall. There’s no substitute for feedback that is BEST:

B -behaviour based
E -esteem building
S -specific
T – timely

Target behaviours when recognising employees

Sure Kudos would be great if it can create a formal record and trail. It would be excellent if it helps bring together teams spread over time and space. But it would need to be implemented carefully with accompanying training and moderation. Carol Dweck’s research on mindset showed the dangers of how just gushing with praise for the wrong behaviours can be counter productive. (Kids praised for “being smart” avoided challenge later on whereas kids praised for “working hard” sought challenges.) I think that any automating of feedback needs to cater for this pitfall.

The ratio of positive to negative statements in employee recognition

Psychologist Marcial Losada’s 1999 study looked at communication in teams, particularly the ratio of positive to negative statements. Various teams were tagged as being high, medium or low performing teams based on profitability, customer satisfaction and evaluations from management. The lowest high performing teams has a ratio of positive to negative statements of 2.9013:1. (For us non-academics, let’s round that to 3:1.) The highest performing teams averaged around 6:1. But there were diminishing returns and eventually a negative effect. Some of the worst performing teams had an 11:1 ratio so everyone must have been so busy hugging and bestowing warm fuzzies on everyone else, that no one ever did any actual productive work. That level of positivity is over-the-top, unrealistic and evidently not productive. Kudos would need to factor this in too.

Another opportunity for automated recognition systems to be corrupted would be familiar to you if you have teenagers on FaceBook, Tumblr etc. Often you’ll see ‘like for a like’ requests. (Actually, you see that a lot with grown-ups’ LinkedIn recommendations.) They may indeed be genuine reflections of actual positive experiences or they could simply be recognition as a tradeable commodity. Again, Kudos would have to tackle a praise ‘black market.’ (But who am I to criticise? I’m not even sure I spelled “tradeable” correctly.)
There could be, I suppose, an application for Kudos in my current working environment where I frequently subcontract to a few training providers. I don’t have colleagues or bosses in the traditional sense. They generally employ a contractor model but we contractors too have our our needs for recognition (prick us, do we not bleed?) and we are even more problematically spaced out over time and geography. There’s definitely potential usefulness for Kudos or similar in that structure.

I’m not meaning to be negative. I do like the idea of Kudos. I also like the idea of cars and there are road rules and safety systems in place for those. Give it a try. There’s a free offer. Check out that new software smell. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, that’s what I say (despite my stance against meta-amphetamine…)

I’ll keep looking at it. Let me know your thoughts if you’ve had direct experience.

Look Like You Mean What You Say

Looking and sounding like you mean what you say is called congruence.

Here’s a Freakonomics blog post about the advantages of looking trustworthy. They reference a, perhaps not unsurprising, piece of research which found that, “… people are more likely to invest money in someone whose face is generally perceived as trustworthy, even when they are given negative information about this person’s reputation.”

In researching my current book, I came across one so-called research finding that concluded that people with assymetrical faces made better leaders. The reasoning behind this was that beautiful people have it easy their whole lives so they don’t have to put in the effort with people to influence them, whereas not-so-beautiful people had to develop influencing skills their whole life because nature didn’t give them any natural advantages. This does seem to contradict books like ‘Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful.’

Both are interesting possibly but is either of any use to a leader in the workplace trying to be a Brain-Based Boss and get better results by applying this thinking in the real world of work?

I suggest that while it may be possible to change how symmetrical your face is in order to enjoy any supposed benefits, that’s a tad crazy. (Crazy isn’t like pregnant. No one’s ever a “tad pregnant.” You either are or you aren’t. With crazy however, there is an abundance of shades.)

My point, surreal as it was getting, is that the face-shape research might be amusing but it isn’t usefully applicable in the real world of work.

Looking trustworthy has more potential usefulness. I couldn’t tell with just a skim read of the article but I hope that whatever trustworthy looks like isn’t something you’re born with but is a set of behaviours you can learn and use. And by “use”, I don’t mean “fake and manipulate.” And I don’t just mean raised eyebrows and a smile. There must be a combination of micro body language movements that reflect a genuine trustworthiness.Straight posture, open gestures, eye contact and many more that a mere still image in a lab test cannot hope to portray.

If you are trustworthy, it’ll enhance your professional communication and leadership effectiveness if you can also look trustworthy. Here are some clues:

No disrespect to the follically challenged, and I get that these are simple computer generated images, but I think the +3SD guy would look even more trustworthy if he added some hair (though not not in beard or mustache form) and lost the black t-shirt…

Improved Employee Engagement Reverses Downward Trend

Here’s some fresh research on employee engagement numbers. It contradicts some other surveys and suggests a trend. Maybe that’s accurate. Maybe that’s not. Whether some average in a survey is bigger or smaller than some average in another survey should be of little interest to me or you. What should matter is how your engagement levels are trending at your workplace. Survey that or, better still, wander around and observe it and immerse yourself in it yourself. That’s quicker, cheaper, more accurate, more timely and more useful to you right now.

Having just lambasted survey results and generalities, there are some specifics that could be of applicable relevance to you. Here’s a quote, “The report also identified three main drivers of improved employee engagement – career opportunities, recognition of employees’ hard work and organisational reputation… This last factor was particularly valued by European employees, who were more concerned about their employer’s public reputation and values than personal recognition.”

I recently blogged about the extent to which corporate social responsibility could be a lever to attract and retain talent and to enhance employee engagement. In short, I thought it could if there was a direct, personal and emotional connection between the type of corporate social responsibility and the individual employees. Otherwise it could just be hype and spin – a superficial facade or off-target wasted effort.

So, if we accept this new research tagging employer reputation as being a genuine driver (or represser) of employee engagement, then that would seem to further suggest that corporate social responsibility might be a good thing, not just because it is inherently a good thing, but because it drives employee engagement. AND, as I am at pains to often stress, employee engagement is a good thing, not just because it is inherently a good thing, but because it drives improved revenue and profitability. And that’s a good thing even for bean counters* who might not personally care about employees or society.
*

Corporate Social Responsibility: A Lever For Employee Attraction & Engagement

This Forbes article contains some challenging results from surveys about what some employees would be willing to trade off in terms of pay in exchange for a workplace that was into social responsibility, positive environmental impact or similar values. I’m a little cynical but having made some similar trade-offs myself in recent years, I can believe it. I think my cynicism is around the fact that these employees must have some baseline of income they’d demand before they start getting all altruistic. Fair enough. The happiness research says that beyond a certain point, more money doesn’t make you sustainably happier. So maybe some of these warm, fuzzy organisational behaviours would?

When it comes to employees, ‘happy’ is not the same as ‘engaged.’ Happy is whatever you think it is for you. Engaged means you’re applying discretionary effort at work – i.e. doing stuff you don’t HAVE TO because you CHOOSE TO. That said, I’d like to be happy and I’d like employees to be happy. Of course, the big question is to what extent am I, or any employer, willing to pay for that happiness? My usual answer applies, “It depends.”
It would depend a whole lot less if there was a genuine willingness to make some trade-off. We’d all love to hug a tree but might be less inclined to live in one.

35% would take a 15% pay cut to work for a company “committed to corporate social responsibility” (whatever that means.) 45% would take a 15% pay cut to work for a company making a social or environmental impact. (I presume they mean a positive impact?) 58% would take a 15% pay cut to work for a company “with values like my own.”

Employee engagement and people’s natural internal motivation is driven by, amongst other things, a sense of purpose – contributing to something greater, something beyond self. I think that, for this influence to kick in, it would have to be a more specific personal connection than merely a general or vague corporate social responsibility. It would need to be precise and relevant to the individual. Taking a 15% pay cut to work for a company that might cure cancer sounds like a box you’d tick on a survey. But if you had cancer or loved someone who did, you wouldn’t have time to tick the box or take surveys because you’d be passionately engaged in working towards helping cure cancer. Nothing inspires a personal protest against motorways more than a letter revealing your house is in the way of a motorway development.

The sad thing, not so much about the article itself but how some employers may interpret it, is how some employers may choose to use the information from the survey. If the primary finding was that people will take a pay cut to do good deeds with us, you’d like to think that would encourage employers to do good deeds etc. The last recommendation of the article was to optimise social media to spread the word about the good deeds. This spin angle is what many businesses will pick up on. What will get generated may not be a better world but a noisier one. But I suppose the community-minded employee has to find out about potential employers somehow. I do worry that the truly socially responsible corporates will be drowned out by those with shiny facades and little true depth.

So, long-story-short-too-late, I agree that community contribution or social responsibility or whatever label you choose to use, could be a useful lever for enhancing employee engagement but it would have to be strongly personally relevant and emotionally connecting. But, even if it wasn’t, I’d prefer banks etc not to be parasitic blood-sucking leeches.

Overcoming Bad Attitudes At Work

Here’s a short, snappy, quirky YouTube video on overcoming bad attitudes at work. It’s a sensible approach given it’s less than a minute.

You’ll often hear people in the workplace comment about others, “Oh, they’ve got a good / bad attitude.” A mental model I see used a lot in leadership and supervisor training is that of the iceberg. The tip of the iceberg, the only part visible above the waterline is a tiny proportion of the mass of the iceberg as a whole. (Just watch the movie ‘Titanic.’  Spoiler Alert! – It’s really loooong. The movie and the iceberg.)

The tip of the iceberg is behaviour – what people say and do. That is observable. That’s all you can see or hear. You can’t see ‘Attitude.’ You can only see behaviour. Underlying that behaviour is attitude, underlying that are feelings and underlying those are beliefs. Each subsequent layer takes up a greater proportion of the iceberg but gets decreasingly visible.

As a leader in the workplace, it’d be great if you had the time and ability to influence beliefs and feelings for the better with a view to generate better behaviours over the long-term but the further down the iceberg you go, the greater the challenge. I’m not saying you shouldn’t try, although with beliefs there are some times when it’s inappropriate. You do need to stop first and work out if it’s worth the effort. As a baseline, you ultimately should be primarily concerned over observable behaviour in the workplace.

A case I came across in one workplace was that of an fifty-something man supervised by a barely-twenty-something woman. The situation was coloured (pun intentional) by racial / cultural issues too. Long-story-short, he was generally perfectly capable at his job but acted in a hostile manner towards her. Her supervisory performance was more than competent.  You can try to change the sexist beliefs of one person in a particular workplace. Good luck. You should definitely try but it probably aint gonna happen. Beliefs like that are at the foundation level of the iceberg. You’re a team leader or manager, you’re not a shrink. But you absolutely must target and manage the observable behaviours that reflect any sexist attitude.

If you do ever succeed in genuinely changing someone’s truly bad attitude, you are allowed to stand at the pointy end of your workplace and shout, “I’m the king of the world!” (Just be wary of what happened to the last guy who did that…)