Having Skin In The Game

This article is from a publication called BedTimes. That title piqued my curiousity as the article was about employee engagement. It transpired that BedTimes was a publication for the sleep products industry. I don’t know what else I thought it might be. And it was a very good article from an employer’s perspective, not a writer, journalist or expert, consultant, or commentator. Someone, as they say, with skin in the game. And that was kind of their point.

The phrase “skin in the game” has been attributed to Warren Buffett about having your own money in an investment, as opposed to just talking about it or investing for others. (It wasn’t Jimmy Buffett unless you count poker games as investments.) I’d kind of hoped it traced back to roman times and gladiators because then it would have something of a literal bent. But no. From an employee engagement perspective, it makes sense. People who actually own a company tend to work, as they say, like they own the company. It’s easy to offer glib advice to people wanting to work their way up corporate ladders to work like they own they company. I actually agree with the advice but it’s often just easy to say. You cannot make others feel like they have a genuine stake. But employers can set things up so that employees do have a genuine alignment between their own goals and that of the company. But it’s foundation stuff, not some ‘plaster over the cracks’ 2-month project.

For a start, Brain-Based Bosses can structure their recruitment processes to seek, hire and retain people who already have goals that align with the company’s. If the company succeeds, then they do. Part of that might be financial but not in isolation. There needs to be more. That’s a whole lot easier than changing people or changing goals or making other people change goals midstream. Those ways lead to a lot of pretending. And, you know, sometimes even that pretending leads to a short term uptick in engagement. ‘Fake it til you make it’ kind of thing. But it isn’t sustainable nor that much of an uptick.

I particularly liked this paragraph in the article about why, in many or most cases, such employee engagement improvement efforts do not work:

“Frankly, it’s because in many cases employees really don’t have a stake. Too many companies try to paste “engagement” initiatives on a foundation that’s fundamentally flawed. It won’t work. True engagement is a natural, organic extension of a company’s culture, and people can’t be cajoled, tricked or bribed into feeling it. There just aren’t any shortcuts.”

New Zealand’s gambling agency the TAB have a slogan, “It means more when you’ve got something on it.” That’s their version of having skin in the game. You can watch a sporting event and appreciate it. You can watch it and might even experience some vicarious emotions if you support the team that’s playing from your country, town, school or one you unilaterally and arbitrarily have chosen because you find their colours, mascot or swarthy south american star player aesthetically appealing. But nothing is quite like the effect on your biochemistry when the team’s loss causes you to lose something too. It might be the money you wagered. It might be you lose face at the pub or workplace the next day. But you lose or win something depending on the results.

It can’t just be the potential loss of a job or bonus if things go south. There needs to be potential wins too. Don’t underestimate the value of pride. When your employees are at parties (in their own time, of course) and others ask them what they do or where they work, what do they say? That’s actually quite a good indicator of pride and engagement, or the lack thereof.

How many employees feel that way about their workplace? Do yours? Does Jimmy Buffet? Of course, his lack of feeling might be due to other causes entirely…

Why Are So Many Employees Disengaged?

This ‘Psychology Today’ article is grrrrrr8. Not just because it declares the obvious – that most employees are disengaged. Your first question should be, Why?” The answer is:

“The number one factor the study cited influencing engagement and disengagement was ‘relationship with immediate supervisor.’”

The article also addresses the second question that doesn’t get asked that often – WHAT’S WRONG WITH THESE IMMEDIATE SUPERVISORS?!

Often shouted by bosses is the phrase, “Recruit attitude; Train skill.” That makes sense. BUT most don’t do it although they do say it. It’s even more true of recruiting frontline leaders – the ones whose relationships are the most critical for the business. And what should those attitude qualities being recruited look like. Psychology Today says:

“the qualities companies traditionally look for when selecting and developing managers and executives are often not conducive to building positive, productive, engaged employee relationships.”

The problem is that employers are recruiting for skill not attitude, despite many saying the opposite. They’re hiring or promoting people into leadership roles because “they’re good at their jobs” or “they deserve a promotion” and leadership roles are the only promotions available. Other options might be better for those people. They deserve something but not to be given a role for which they’re not suited. It doesn’t help them or those they end up leading poorly.

So, a primary focus for Brain-Based Bosses should be redesigning your recruitment processes to attract and snare frontline leaders who have a demonstrated track record of repeatedly being inherently good at building (and maintaining) positive, productive, engaged employee relationships. Then ensuring they’re developed as leaders as soon as practicable, with emphasis on those relationship skills. (Professional relationships – not relationships as Fonzie would have seen them. If you don’t know who Fonzie is, Google him…)

'Stay' Interviews

Every employer does job interviews when seeking new people. Many employers do exit interviews when wondering why people leave. I like this idea of ‘Stay’ Interviews – interviewing people who are already working with you before they leave and on a regular basis. Why not find out as close to the current truth amongst your workforce as you can while there’s still time to do something with the information?
Personally, this is what a regular performance one-on-one chat should be anyway and coming up with a catchy and clever new name for it doesn’t make it different or separate. (Although , I really wish I’d come up with it!)

If it’s true that half your employees are actively seeking employment elsewhere at any given time, how focused on, or interested in, their outcomes for you are they really going to be? The metaphor here is keeping your finger on the pulse of the people in your business. As this article says, “Research by Towers Watson (2012) suggests organizations with high sustainable engagement have operating margins three times those of organizations with a disengaged workforce.”

A news item today laments that New Zealand mothers being visited by the free post natal support service Plunkett are highly prone to lying about what they do with their babies for fear of being judged by the visiting nurses. However counter-productive that attitude is, it is a very human one and quite predictable and understandable. So, would ‘Stay’ interviews be prone to the same problem of employees simply saying what they think bosses want to hear? The article I linked to above is sadly lacking on details about ‘Stay’ interviews and focuses mainly on surveys. There is way too much emphasis on surveys generally.

‘Stay’ interviews and engagement surveys aside, the best way to assess engagement levels is simple observation. Are people doing more than they have to because they choose to? Don’t worry about why they are (yet) but are they? If they are, they’re engaged. They can say what they like in a survey but there’s no hiding actual observed behaviour. Just be aware of surveys – Snow White did one once and discovered that six out of seven dwarves weren’t happy…

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…

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.

*

Feedback: What Happens In Vagueness Stays In Vagueness

Here’s a blog post about the dangers of non-specific feedback. The blogger references the work of psychologist Carol Dweck who I also quote in my book ‘The Brain-Based Boss’ on the subject of fixed versus growth mindsets. Here’s an excerpt:

The work of psychologist Carol Dweck is germane here. What she’s found is that, when children are praised in abstract–”You’re so smart” or “You’re so creative”–rather than concretely about how they improved their performance–”You put in an enormous amount of work, and it paid off”–the feedback is diminished. How come? Because the child takes from the teacher or parent the idea that she is innately smart or creative, and that she doesn’t need to work at it–so she doesn’t.

On the other hand, very specific feedback–especially about something an individual can control–can work wonders.

Quite rightly, the blogger points out that general statements such as ‘Good job’ might make you feel better and make you think that you’re dishing out some positive feedback but it needs to be more than merely positive to be useful and conducive to enhanced productivity. That phrase would need to:

• be said at the time the specific action warranting praise occurred or as immediately afterwards as possible.
• be said to the specific individual performing and controlling the praiseworthy action that you’d like to see more of.
• contain a few more details and expectations than 2 words of generality (what exactly was the bit that was good?)
• some connection to a greater goal, the wider team or higher purpose.

So, here’s some specific feedback to several new Twitter followers I’ve gotten recently – If you’ve only got 17 Twitter followers yourself, best not describe yourself as a ‘social media guru.’

Never Go Shopping When You’re Hungry: The Perils Of ‘Impulse Buying’ When Recruiting

Here’s a recent newspaper article about impulse buying. They say you should never go shopping when you’re hungry. You get too much of the wrong stuff that you don’t need that does you harm and that you’ll regret. It’s the same with recruitment. I mean metaphorically hungry though, of course. Mind you, it’s probably not good to recruit when literally hungry either. Who knows what lowered blood sugar levels will do to your concentration as you stare at, and steer through, the dross, irrelevance and incomprehensibility on many applicants’ CVs?

The inherent problem is that many bosses recruit precisely when they have a vacancy. Of course, duh! BUT that is when they’re experiencing all the downside of having that vacancy – extra workload, inconvenience, lowered morale of those who remain and are doing that extra work, the ramifications if there were negative circumstances surrounding the departure of the previous incumbent, etc. So often, too often, there is a disproportionate drive to ‘get the vacancy filled.’ That’s totally natural, totally understandable and definitely something a brain-based boss would be mindful to manage. Clearly if the maths says that there should be more people to do the work, you need to recruit, but that is quite different from simply filling a vacancy via automatic replacement. Vacancies are always going to arise and workplace leaders should always have a part of their time allocated to thinking about the ‘what-ifs.’

Vacancies present a chance to re-evaluate the team’s set-up. Does it need to be filled at all? Should / can that role be changed? Should / can other roles be changed? Could others step up and a lesser role be back-filled? Yes, there is a cost to being a person down, but there is a greater and longer-term cost in recruiting with reckless pace and haste and getting it wrong or missing out on team enhancement opportunities.

If you do go shopping when you’re hungry, remember, beggars can’t be choosers. (Thank you ’2-for-1 cliche sale!’)

Employee Entanglement

It’s a new year so is it time for a new leadership buzzword? I have got to start inventing new words or phrases. Here’s an article that introduced me to the term ‘Employee Entanglement’ as the better thing beyond mere ‘Employee Engagement.’

I was quite prepared to put on my cynical hat and mock yet another buzzword that some author or consultant had invented to be a guru about. I’m not saying that Employee Entanglement isn’t that but, based on this brief article, I like what he’s saying, it seems to be a fresh and novel way to catch attention about a timeless and essential approach to leadership and I want to read more.

The article cites a book by Ramon Benedetto, a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and co-author of It’s My Company Too! How Entangled Companies Move Beyond Employee Engagement For Remarkable Results. I haven’t checked it out yet. I’ll do so though. The Kindle sample chapter awaits me.  I’m intrigued. Nevermind judging books by their covers, many of us can’t get past the title. And this is a good one.

The article’s final paragraph nicely sums up Benedetto’s key point, “So if leadership is wrapped up in a command-and-control mentality, they’re not going to achieve success. Instead, they need to foster a trust-and-track type approach: hire the right people and give them the ability to succeed.” Sounds very engagementy to me with its strong autonomy references. I applaud the attention-getting because it’s getting attention for something very worthwhile.
That said, they definitely want to you to buy the book and the subsequent speaking and consultancy but, hey, who doesn’t?

Happy new year everyone – the time when many of us resolve to give things up like smoking, over-eating and making unachieveable resolutions.

Employees React Negatively When Prompted to Think About Money

Here are some studies that show that reminders about money led consumers to react against people who would normally influence their decisions.

For all the talk and research about the extent to which money motivates people, I”m certain its very important. My personal stance is that people get a job for money but, unless they have a routine, linear and unthinking job, money doesn’t motivate them to do any more or better work. Money gets people to show up and it’s a control mechanism. Calling the carrot or stick of money a motivator is giving it too much credit. And if there’s one thing money doesn’t like, it’s credit.

Christmas The Season For Layoffs? Ho Ho No!

Let’s compare and contrast two recent New Zealand newspaper articles about bosses. (Do they still call them ‘newspapers’? Other than crumpling them up to pack into boxes of crockery when shifting house, I haven’t touched news in paper form for years.)

They’re both good articles. One notices that a disproportionate number of redundancies occur nearing the end of the calendar year. This might possibly be due to planning schedules and so forth but it also has the double-whammy effect of being at the same time some tribalistic ritual and consumer frenzy called Christmas occurs. Have a read. It’s position is probably that New Zealand employers are not that much concerned about employee engagement or being tarred with a Grinchiness brush.

Contrasting that is this article from a competing newspaper. It says that gone are the days of splashing talented employees with status trinkets and disposable goods and experiences and they’re being gradually replaced with things of meaning to nurture a culture that talent will want to belong to and stick around with. It does lament that New Zealand is a bit behind but the trend is positive.

The only criticism of the 2nd article is my usual one – they have all the right research but make a sloppy observation that employee engagement equals happiness. It doesn’t. Engagement is the choice to apply discretionary effort. Happiness is just nice.

My Christmas shopping this year is easy. Everyone’s getting my new book ‘The Brain-Based Boss’. I have yet to to hear how my teenage kids feel about that. Luckily I”m not relying on them for reviews…

Well Well Wellness - Employee Engagement Is Healthy

 

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.

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.
I'm doing a show in the 2013 New Zealand International Comedy Festival. I'm not too sure if any / many of my 'Brain-Based Boss' readers know that I also  perform stand-up comedy? Anyways, my show is based around this book 'The Blue Zones' and is all about health. They do say laughter is the best medicine. My show is called 'The Grin Reaper.'

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 Is Not Happiness

It is not your responsibility to make your employees happy.

This blog post from Ed Muzio talks of a trap for employers when it comes to employee engagement. He had me worried for a while with his talk of happiness, as if employee engagement and employee happiness were interchangeable terms. But then he got on track (by which I mean, he stated a line of thinking with which I agree) and his key point was that the trap employers fall into is thinking that employee engagement is their responsibility to generate and maintain.

Let’s leave the whole ‘happiness’ thing out of it. Engagement is not happiness. Radiantly joyful workers can be costly and unproductive. They can be efficient and productive. Dour workers can be either-or too. Engagement does not equal happiness. Engagement is the choice by employees to apply discretionary effort. They choose to do more than they HAVE TO. Why? Less to d with happiness than it is with the fundamental human needs for mastery, autonomy and purpose. I love Dan Pink’s book ‘Drive’ on this.

But I like the blogger’s key point. It isn’t the employer’s responsibility. You, me or anyone else cannot truly motivate anyone else. Genuine, long-term behaviour-changing motivation must be internal. I suppose you can put a gun to someone’s head or threaten their children and that will ‘motivate’ them to do what you want. Yup. Effective – in the short-term – but relationship-damaging and expensive, plus you and your gun would always have to be around. The same goes for any so-called incentifying carrots and sticks. The best an employer can do (and should do) is create and maintain an engagement-supportive workplace. THAT’S the responsibility of employers. Individual engagement is up to individuals.

You can’t force, even in a seemingly unforceful and caring way, others to be engaged. It’s up to them. It’s like donating blood. Donating blood is a noble and unselfish act (assuming it’s your own blood….)

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.

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.